Читать книгу The Adventures of Ralph Rashleigh - James Tucker - Страница 10

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IN the early hours of the morning the lights of Port Jackson were seen pricking the darkness, and as day dawned the Magnet entered the Heads — the two bold precipitous rocks which guard the entrance of one of the finest harbours in the world. A pilot had come aboard and took charge during the last lap of seven miles from the entrance to the site of the embryo town of Sydney.

Rashleigh stood on deck watching the land in which he was to live for the rest of his life appear on the horizon; and at this first gaze he found it forbidding, without charm or beauty. Sandy bays fringed by stunted trees, opened far inland between harsh, rocky headlands, with dense forests of gloomy green covering the background. It appeared as a primeval, uncultivated region, bare of any evidences of the softer, tamer results of the work of man for which he and his comrades longed. Even the Golden Island, to which someone called his attention, added to his sense of disillusion, for it appeared in the grey dawnlight as a sterile tract of rugged grey rocks, covered at the top with trees of dull green in which was no beauty. The Magnet rounded the last promontory, and came into view of the embattled fort at the entrance to Sydney Cove, and the straggling row of cottages which stretched along the high ground. This was a part of the town of Sydney known as the Rocks. Shortly afterwards the vessel came to anchor at a point, opposite a neck of land, from which the whole town was visible. It was an unpretentious specimen of civilization in the raw. Narrow, straggling streets lined with one-story houses scarcely more than large huts, with half a dozen decent residences, and a few miserable cottages appearing through the trees of the north shore of the harbour. Such was the town of Sydney then. There was not a patch of cultivated land to be seen from the ship, even thus close inshore.

The day following their arrival, the Colonial Secretary, the Chief Superintendent of Convicts, and other officials, came on board to deal with the newly-arrived contingent of prisoners. Each man was called into the cabin and full particulars taken of their names, ages, religions, birthplaces, trades, and so on, all of which were entered in a register, with a minute description of each man. When this ceremony was concluded, the officials departed, and a more general class of visitors were allowed on board, some just curious for news of the old country, some to greet expected relatives, and some to inquire whether there were men who practised trades in which labour was required. Among the last was an elderly gentleman who was seeking a suitable assistant for his teaching academy, to whom Rashleigh was recommended by the surgeon-superintendent, in whose cabin he was then actually at work. He was called out and presented to the schoolmaster, who, satisfying himself as to Rashleigh’s capacity, departed without any definite decision being come to.

For two weeks the prisoners kicked their heels in the confinement of the Magnet before they were paraded preparatory to going ashore. A new suit of clothing was handed out to each man, and they were broken up into divisions and rowed ashore to a spot near Fort Macquarie, whence they were marched through the Domain to the Prisoners’ Barracks, and, after a formal parade, were dismissed. Numbers of the older prisoners now joined the new chums, bargaining for clothes, trinkets, and other small property, and many of the new-comers found themselves dexterously robbed before bed-time, by men whose criminal agility had not been lessened by punishment.

Four days after his arrival at barracks, only Rashleigh and two others remained of the one hundred and forty who had reached the colony with him. Those who were masters of trades had been ‘assigned’ to various masters in need of workmen, and such as had no special training or aptitude were sent to the interior, to be employed upon timber-felling and agriculture. Rashleigh was eventually assigned to the schoolmaster, and in a few days discovered that his billet was in the nature of a sinecure. His employer made no real demands for industry upon either his assistant or the scholars of his so-called classical and commercial academy, and was apt on any excuse to leave Rashleigh in sole charge, whilst he indulged himself in whatever amusement was to be had in the town.

The improvement in his environment and the conditions of his life had the effect upon Rashleigh of making his consciousness of being a life-convict dwindle. He was now respectably clad, and had all the liberty he wanted out of school hours, and quickly drifted back into the kind of leisured existence he had pursued when Hartop had helped him on to the criminal road. He made the acquaintance of other educated convicts, mostly employed in Government offices, who had formed the habit of meeting in the evenings in a kind of convivial political club. They debated affairs of State with easy condemnation of the powers that were, and the view that the welfare of the colony was shamefully neglected by Government was universally held, and inspired most of the speeches. The extremeness of the views expressed resulted eventually in their meetings becoming of interest to the Sydney police. Rashleigh was one evening riding the full flood of his impassioned eloquence upon the delinquencies of the Government, and roundly condemning the harshness of Governor Darling’s rule, when half a dozen constables in charge of a police officer joined his audience.

The officer took the names, addresses and other particulars of every one present, paying special attention to the man whose indiscreet speech had been cut short in the middle by the police intervention. No steps beyond this examination were taken that night, but the implicit warning was not lost upon Rashleigh, who abandoned forgathering with the embryonic political agitators forthwith. This meant cutting himself away from the only congenial society that was available, for the lower class of the population of the town were of so degraded a type that the solitude of his own companionship was preferable to their company. The small class to which Rashleigh temporarily belonged was sandwiched between two main sections of the community, one comprising high Government officials and the few large merchants — the then aristocracy of Australia — and the lower social dregs of the convicts, or, as they were officially known, prisoners of the Crown. Many of these had served their sentences, and had established themselves successfully in business of various descriptions, amassing wealth which they mostly used for the indulgence of the weaker appetities of the criminal type. Many of these men had made their fortunes by trading in rum and tobacco with the convict population, and their business morality was as loose as could be, stopping only at practices which would put them back to their former convict status. So Rashleigh was lonely, being denied the company of any women of decent rank by his position as a convict; and he was too fastidious to purchase the use and company of such frailer members of the sex as were open to sell themselves and their companionship for a consideration. The pretty ladies of Sydney in those days were the very dregs of their outlawed class, wallowing in indescribable sloughs of debasement and debauchery, preying upon the desires of debased and despairing men.

Rashleigh’s period as a respectably living being, to all intents and purposes in the enjoyment of his freedom, came to a drastic close about a month after the police had interrupted his speech to the political malcontents. One day a constable came to the school with an order signed by the Chief Superintendent of Convicts, that one Ralph Rashleigh should accompany the bearer to Hyde Park Barracks. On reaching the barracks, he was placed in strict and solitary confinement, and before sunrise next day he was handcuffed and dispatched with a messenger-guard to a Government agricultural establishment at Emu Plains, about thirty-five miles inland. He was not permitted to visit the school to obtain his belongings, the messenger proving impervious to entreaties and bribes. He was compelled to take the long tramp as he was, in a thin suit, and a light pair of shoes, which were in tatters long before he reached Parramatta, the end of his first day’s stage. Next day he was obliged to walk the remaining twenty miles barefooted over the roughest roads, so that his feet were cut and bleeding before he reached his destination.

This agricultural establishment employed at various times between 70 and 140 convicts. In an official return dated April 1, 1827, the number is given as 134; another dated February 16, 1829, as 6 overseers, 10 mechanics and 49 labourers.