Читать книгу Mistress Betty Carew - Mary Gaunt - Страница 7

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There dwells a wife by the Northern Gate,

And a wealthy wife is she;

She breeds a breed o' rovin' men

And casts them over sea.

She wills her sons to the wet ploughing,

To ride the horse of tree,

And syne her sons come back again

Far spent from out the sea.

The good wife's sons come home again

With little into their hands,

But the lore of men that ha' dealt with men

In the new and naked lands.

THE MORNING of the 25th of March, 1796, broke bright and fair in the little town of Sydney, and Mr. George Bass, who had been moving quietly about the room in the new barracks which he shared with young Devereux—for he was glad to escape when he could from his cramped quarters on board the Reliance, slipped on a pair of long sea boots, crushed a sou'-wester on his head, flung a heavy cloak and his oil-skins over his arm, and with one glance at his sleeping companion softly opened the door and let himself out into the roadway. A sentry started up and confronted him.

"Who goes there?"

"Good luck," said Bass, impatiently.

"Pass good luck, and the best of good fortune go with you."

"That's a good omen," said the explorer. "I treat you for that when I come back safe."

There was a breeze blowing from the west, a gentle breeze, that set all the waters of the cove sparkling in the sunlight. The stir of busy life was beginning, for the sun was up over Flagstaff Hill, and all the cocks in the settlement were crowing. The air was fresh with the freshness of early morning, even the miserable mud huts of the convicts and the yellow brick tiled houses of the civilians and officers were glorified, and Parson Johnson's ugly wattle and dab church on the other side of the cove took on a beauty of its own. The Tank stream running a banker sang dreamily as it flowed between its green banks, and the song it sang to George Bass was of love and success, success and love. The little wavelets that rippled round the black sides of the old Reliance and beat against the rocky shore of the cove sang the same song, and his feet kept time to it as he swung along the road to the boat landing on the west side near the market-place and the Government storehouse. There were some she-oaks still standing there, though Governor Hunter threatened their lives every time he looked at them, and the wind, as it sighed through their needles, sang a different tune. It was a sad refrain, but Bass did not heed it. Love and success, the bright morning said to him, and love and success it should be. He would listen to no other tune.

A man and a boy were already in the little white boat, and as Bass sprang down the bank and into it, Flinders loosened the painter from a stump and pushed off with an oar.

"Never knew you late before," he grumbled. "George, my friend, this dangling after women doth not become thee."

Bass looked into the bright, clever, boyish face, and laughed.

"Just after sunrise, I said, and here I am. Peter, stow that cloak and oilskins under the thwart and see they don't get wetter than you can help. The boat's leaking like a sieve. Where's that tin pannikin? Stir yourself now and bale. We'll have a fair wind anyway down the harbour."

"We shan't catch it yet awhile," said Flinders, who was recovering his good humour now he was fairly off, looking up into the clear blue sky overhead, "but catch it we shall before we've done. The glass is lower than I've seen it in these parts yet."

"Prophesy me no evil things," said Bass, contentedly, taking the steering oar while Flinders shook out the sail.

Merrily danced the little Tom Thumb over the waters of the bay, and soon they had left behind them every sign of human occupation. These three were alone in strange seas in the tiny boat. They had passed through the frowning heads before they had their simple breakfast, and were sailing south into the unknown. For once Bass lent a deaf ear to Flinders' plans and hopes. He was building for himself a castle in Spain, building it broad and wide, building it tall and high, and the queen of that castle was a beautiful dark-haired maiden with glorious, thoughtful eyes. Ah, George Bass, who lived and loved, and was glad and miserable one hundred years ago, you are not the only one who has builded himself castles in Spain.

And all day long the little boat sailed southward. The boy sat on the bottom boards munching biscuit contentedly enough, and his masters took turns at the steering oar. The sun poured down on them, and the blue sky was cloudless. They seemed to be in the bottom of a depression, with the blue sky fitting down as a lid, fitting closely too, save where to starboard stood out the dark line of coast. A few gulls wheeled round them, but in all the wide sea there was never a sail.

Flinders was in extravagant spirits. All sorts of possibilities were in the air. They two, with this snippet of a boy, were helping to lay the foundations of an empire, they were laying the foundations of their own fortunes. If they found this river then this voyage of theirs in the little boat should never be forgotten, and the names of Bass and Flinders should be remembered when in years to come this new country should be great and powerful. And then he would pause, chaff his companion, and take a deep draught of water, for the heat was sweltering.

And Bass was unusually silent. For once he listened with but half an ear to his friend's talk of exploration and empire, to his hopes of wealth and fame. A new voice was speaking in his heart, and it was drowning all others. What were empire and wealth and fame to him, weighed in the balance with soft dark-brown eyes and a ripe red mouth? Nothing! No, not nothing, but only spoils to be laid at her feet.

And then the day began to draw in, and the little cask of water was empty.

"Water and biscuit and salt pork for breakfast," commented Bass, "biscuit and water and salt pork for dinner, and salt pork and biscuit and no-water for supper."

"We'll go ashore," said Flinders. "I reckon we're far enough south by now."

"Put your helm up, Matt. Slack away your sheet, boy."

But the breakers were dashing against the foot of the cliffs. There seemed no chance of their getting ashore without swamping the boat, though after sailing a mile or two they saw a place where evidently a little creek came down to the beach.

"I'll have to swim for it," said Bass. "Don't clear out and leave me now, old man."

He stripped, tied the rope that was attached to the cask round his waist; and threw it overboard.

"Sure you're all right?" asked Flinders.

"There's a buoy for me, anyhow. I can't drown. Here, give me a hanger in case of savages. Now then."

He let himself down quietly into the water, swam into the breakers, the cask bobbing after him, and the next roller carried him ashore. He waved his hand and disappeared, and for half an hour his companions waited. There was very little daylight now, the objects on shore loomed large and distorted, and Flinders was getting anxious when there came a hail out of the growing darkness.

"Ay, ay, right you are."

He made a flare with some cotton waste, and a moment or two later Bass had his hand on the gunwale, panting a little from his struggle through the breakers.

"Quick, then," said Flinders, taking the steering oar and helping him, "that last roller carried us too close in. It'll never do to be beached. The cask! Ah!"

The breakers had caught them, and the next moment they were high on the only little bit of sand the rocky beach afforded.

But not dry though. Provisions, ammunition, arms, clothes, were wet through and through with sea water.

The two men looked at each other for a moment; the boy picked himself up from the sand where he had been flung, and they drew the boat out of the reach of the waves.

"That decides it," said Flinders, as Bass scrambled into his wet clothes; "we'll stop the night here."

"We can't. The breakers are up to the foot of the cliff when the tide's in."

"How about the creek?"

"It might float a toy boat as far as I've been."

"Heigh-ho for a sailor's life! Cramped quarters for us this night as well as damp ones. Get in, Peter, you young beggar. Wait for the next wave. We must launch her."

It was as Flinders said, cramped quarters, and damp ones, too, and the night seemed intolerably long. Their oil-skins protected them somewhat, but as they roused each other to change watches they were both inclined to be a little sarcastic on the rosy pictures Flinders had been painting in the warm sunshine. But the daylight came at last, and they found themselves under the lee of Red Point.

"Too far south for the river Hacking spoke of, I believe," said Bass.

Flinders shaded his eyes.

"There's an Indian on the beach. I wonder if we can get anything out of him."

They went in as close as they dared. Bass produced a little mirror and a long string of beads, and held them out. The blackfellow was joined by another, and presently both plunged into the water.

"Oh, by Jove!" said Flinders, "I'm not bargaining for passengers."

"The water'll wash a little of the stink off," opined Bass. "In the interests of science, friend, I suppose," and he helped haul the dripping, shiny black figures aboard.

"Now," said Flinders, "if we wink an eyelid on the wrong side over we go. George, you're a better hand at their lingo than I am. Ask your friend with the nice piece of bone in his nose, and the charming head-dress of fish-guts, if there is a river anywhere in these parts."

They had evidently seen white men before, and as far as Bass could make out from the smattering of Botany Bay dialect he had picked up, and their broken English, there was a river to the south, and they offered to pilot them there.

"Pray heaven," said Flinders, "it be not far off."

It was not far off, but, alas, for their hopes of a mighty river, the stream was so tiny that the little Tom Thumb could barely float in it. They saw more blackfellows in the distance, and Bass promptly turned their visitors out, hanging a string of beads round each oily neck.

"Ten," counted Peter from his place in the bottom of the boat, "and they do say as they be the most outrageous cannibals."

"Well, they won't begin on you, Peter," said Bass, "a snippet like you ain't worth it. Matt, we must make shift to clean the muskets and dry the powder, cannibals or no cannibals. We'll fill our little barico again, too. I doubt that water I got last night was very brackish."

The creek was very pretty and wild looking once they got beyond the salt of the sea. Its banks were stony, covered with mosses and creepers, with ferns and flowering shrubs, but it was only a tiny creek, they soon saw, flowing from the lagoon at the foot of Hat Hill, and from among the bush and undergrowth peered faces, a spear poked itself through the ti-tree, a hand clasping a waddy lay on that stone.

"We must put a bold face on it," said Bass. "Go to sea again before we've dried our powder and our clothes I won't. Here's a nice flat piece of ground with plenty of sun on it. Out with you, boy. Here, my friend," he caught the stark naked gentleman whose head-dress Flinders had disapproved of, and thrust a broken oar into his hand, making signs to him that he expected him and his friends to mend it.

There was a tremendous yabbering as the blackfellows clustered round him, all talking at once.

"Now, Matt," he called hastily, still with his back to the boat and her occupants, "quick. Get out the powder. This hot sun'll dry it in no time, and the oar'll keep those follows going a bit."

Once the little company were hard at work he took up a musket and began to clean it. The powder was all spread out now, and so were all their spare clothes, and Flinders, too, started on his musket. The blackfellows looked round, then they dropped the oar with a sort of shriek that made little Peter shiver and run close to Bass. One or two spears were poised, and Flinders whistled.

"We're in a tight corner, George. What would Mistress Betty Carew think if she could see her lover now?"

Bass dropped his musket coolly. It would never do to seem afraid. There was a large pair of scissors in the pocket of the oil-skins that lay drying in the sun, and he picked them up and snipped off a piece of his own hair and hold it up for their inspection.

"Go on with your work, boy. If you are to die you may as well go before your Maker with a clean sheet."

Then he cut a lock from Flinders' dark head, and held that up too.

"Sacrificing my lovelocks in this wholesale fashion," said that young gentleman cheerfully, seizing the scissors. "Look at the beggars. Look at their rolling eyes and gleaming teeth. Here, I'll settle 'em," and he cut a very matted unpleasant-looking chunk of hair from the blackfellow nearest him.

The man gave a sort of howl, whether of pleasure or pain it was difficult to say, but young Flinders chose to consider it the former, and forcing the man gently to his knee's, caught him by his greasy beard and proceeded to clip it close.

"Are you getting on all right, George? The powder must be pretty near dry by now. Jove! you should see this beggar's eyes roll. Wonder what would be the effect of taking off a little—just a little snip, from his nose. Wouldn't it make him yell!"

"For heaven's sake, Matt! The position's critical!"

"It's all right, man. I'm resisting temptation. It isn't exactly the place for a scrimmage. Now then, No. 2."

It was ticklish work. Bass and the boy worked double tides, and Flinders clipped one naked savage after the other amidst a crowd of wondering spectators, and they knew it could not possibly last long. Bass put the clothes and provisions back into the boat before they were half dry, but half-dry powder would be useless. He filled the little cask with water. The sun was high in the heaven now, and the very rocks were hot. He looked up the creek, and he saw more dark figures stealing along through the brushwood. Then he felt the powder; it was dry at last.

"Matt," he called, with a sigh of relief. Flinders shut up his scissors with a snap, and one savage was turned off with his toilet but half complete. "Into the boat with you." The next moment they were in the middle of the tiny stream, as far away from their new friends as they could get, which was not very far, and the naked black figures bunched themselves together, and poising their spears, began a sort of mournful recitative, which ended with a yell that sounded decidedly defiant. Bass and Flinders each took an oar.

"Boy, toss them those beads on the thwarts there. That'll keep them going till we get out to sea, if we've luck. The best of these Indians is they never seem to be able to quite make up their minds to stick you as long as you look them in the face."

But it was not till they reached the open ocean that they breathed freely. They tossed their oars in board, Bass set the sail, and Flinders, wiping the sweat from his brow, remarked:

"Mistress Betty Carew has me to thank for her lover this day."

"Mistress Betty Carew," remarked Peter, who was coiling the anchor rope up neatly, "is away to the woods by now, I guess."

Bass gripped the sheet.

"What do you know of Mistress Betty Carew?" he asked, sharply.

"Oh, naught, sir, naught."

He put his hand on the boy's shoulder and shook him roughly.

"Sir, sir," pleaded the boy. "It was only Sim the Chute and Long-Nosed Bill said as Lieutenant Williams was bound to have her, if he had to carry her off to his farm at Toongabbee."

"Let him alone, George," said Flinders. "Will you pay heed to the gossip of convicts and common soldiers?"

"If it should be true," he said, beneath his breath, and an awful fear took possession of his soul.

"But it ain't likely to be true," said his companions. "Gad! explorers shouldn't have hearts, it hampers 'em dreadful. We'll have to get ashore somewhere for to-night. The wind's against us, and we're about done."

The pleasure of the voyage was gone for Bass. The boy's words frightened him. It might, as Flinders said, be only camp gossip, but he longed to be in Sydney again, to see with his own eyes that she was safe, to protect her if need be. But the wind was against them. There was nothing for it, as Flinders said, but to land and rest after their labours.

They beached the boat in a little sandy cove under Hat Hill, and making of her a breakwind, they covered themselves in their oilskins and lay down on the warm sand. Flinders and the boy were asleep as soon as their heads touched their rough pillows, but Bass lay and watched the clouds scurrying across the sky. In the wrong direction, south they were flying, and he repeated the words he had heard over and over again. He would never dare—he would never dare. He comforted himself with the thought as a star peered out from among the wild clouds—he would never dare. And yet it was quite feasible, in the state of the settlement at present, it was perfectly feasible for a cold, unscrupulous man to carry off the woman he admired, provided her relations made no fuss. Would they make a fuss? They would—surely they would. And he must sleep; he would never be fit for work; for him the night would never end, and to-morrow if he did not, and then he went over it all again. It seemed to him, when at last he had given up all hope of wooing sleep, that tricky sprite came to him, and it seemed but a moment before Flinders was shaking him by the shoulder, and he opened his eyes to see the cliffs above him looking dark and threatening in the first faint light of the morning.

And the wind was still against them, and the sea was getting up. Flinders proposed they should stay where they were, and explore a little way inland, but Bass would not hear of it. He was feverishly anxious to get back to Sydney and see with his own eyes that all was right. It might be only camp gossip, as Flinders said, but still he wanted to be sure of that. And so all day long they pulled against wind and sea, and at nightfall they reckoned they were only four leagues nearer home. Darkness fell, the clouds were racing across the sky, the wind shifted every few minutes, there were vivid flashes of lightning and deep growls of threatening thunder. Flinders turned the boat's head inshore.

"We must shelter," he said. "Out with the anchor, boy. This little cove'll shelter us from every gale but a southerly one."

And Bass was perforce obliged to acquiesce. It was madness to try and go any further.

The wind freshened. It was a gale now. The flashes of lightning grew more frequent and more brilliant, the storm clouds heavier, the thunder closer. Round went the wind, and when it was sou'-east Bass, with a feeling of exultation he did not care to own to, for this was a home wind, shook his comrade wide awake.

"Heavens! How you sleep! How can you! In this gale?"

"How can't you after such a day's work? Gad! Listen to the shrieking of the gale! The wind's shifted."

"Another point and we'll be ashore and the rocks are——"

A great green sea came rolling in; in the lightning flash it looked mountains high. Bass slipped the anchor, and in a moment it had caught them. Would it leave them on the point, or would they just clear it? The three held their breath, Flinders seized the steering oar and tried to guide the boat, and Bass shook loose the sail. The lightning showed them poised high on top of a great green precipice; to port were the dark frowning cliffs; they could just see the line of white breakers at their feet, and then the great sea swept them down—down into its depth, and another towered high behind them. Down, down, the following sea caught them, and as it tossed them up they saw by another lightning flash they had cleared one point. It was breathless work. Flinders strained at the steering oar and Bass sat with the sheet in his hand, easing it a little on top of the seas where they felt the full force of the wind. The boy baled as hard as he could, but still the seas slopped over the gunwales, and the frail little boat was more than half full of water.

"My land!" said Flinders, "but it knows how to do things in these parts!"

George Bass said nothing. For the first time in his life he feared death.

"I'll keep her nor' by east, George. We must run before it. I doubt we mayn't save our skins."

If he should drown now. If this great green wave coming behind should swamp them. If he should never stand among the currajongs and the oaks above Parramatta any more, never feel soft arms round his neck, never hold in his own——

"For God's sake George, don't let her jibe, man. Ease your sheet a bit more!"

Then came the rain. Regular tropical rain that came down in a deluge. It blotted out shore and sea, and wild sky over head. It grew darker and darker, and soon all they could see was the white tops of the waves, the breakers, and the dark line of the cliffs to port. The water lapped round their feet, and all their baling could not keep the boat dry. They grew used to it a little, the racing waves, the shriek of the wind, the roar of the waters, but it was near the end now, it was very near the end, they had been running before the gale an hour, and it seemed to Bass the little Tom Thumb could last no longer. Every race down the big incline he thought would be her last. More than once he thought the end had come, and he pictured the woman who, with weary, loving eyes, should stand on the crest of the hill and look down the reach of water for the lover who should never come back to her, who was lost, and no man could tell her how he died. Oh, the weariness of the long wait! The awfulness of the suspense! His heart ached for her sorrow and if——. Then he came back to this world, and Flinders was calling out that the dark loom of the cliffs was gone, and there was only the white line of the breakers. There came a sudden lull in the storm, as if it were gathering itself for fresh efforts. Bass pulled down the mast and sail, Flinders got her head to wind, and Bass seized an oar.

"Now, Matt," he cried, "it's neck or nothing," and he was surprised how cheerful his own voice sounded. "We must pull for the reef, man, pull for the reef. Bale, boy, for all you're worth."

They rested on their oar's a moment as a sea passed them, then in the lull that followed they rowed with might and main. Another pause, another lull, another pull, till every sinew ached, the moments seemed to stretch themselves into hours. One more tremendous wave—Bass gave up all for lost—and the boat was floating half full but safe in the quiet water on the other side of the reef and the gale was shrieking away harmlessly over their heads.