The Coral Sea

So great was their fear of discovery that silence reigned even after they were past the neck of the harbour and far out to sea. The men at the oars pulled hard, with little conversation beyond an occasional murmur. They kept their ears tuned to the sounds of the surf because, on this moonless night, it was hard to discern exactly how far they were from shore. All were relieved when dawn greyed the sky and the outline of the land and its rocky points were clearly visible.

It was Will who finally broke their self-imposed silence by announcing, “Come broad day, we’ll start looking for a harbour to put in and rest.”

Mary, who had curled up in the bow next to the sleeping children, raised her head and called back to him, “Better we row on through the day and not stop until nightfall. If no safe place be found then, we should go on through another night.”

A mild grumble went up from the men, and Will opened his mouth to contradict her. But before he could speak, Mary rose and said to the group at large, “Or have you forgotten how many bolters were caught on their first or second day out and brought back to hang? All because they stopped to rest, and the mariners, who well know the region around the settlement, were able to overtake them?”

Will’s mouth closed in a grim line. Mary unrolled the chart and studied it. Taking the compass from the leather tobacco pouch, she turned to the sea and set a course. Except for when she was tending to the children, she remained thus throughout the daylight hours, and would do so for many days to come. Although she faced away from the men as she pointed out the direction they were to go, they were not even one day out when she began to feel the respect her knowledge of navigation inspired in them.

She likewise felt her husband’s coldness toward her and realised her error in countermanding his order. The crew had a great liking for him, and respected him for his boating skills. It would not do to be at odds with him, not when they needed every scrap of ability each of them had if this reckless adventure was to succeed.

Turning from her vigil in the bow of the boat to nurse Emanuel, Mary covertly studied the men. At the back sat bandy-legged Matey; next to him, Scrapper, one cheek disfigured by a knife scar so close to the eye that one wondered that he had not been blinded in that particular altercation. Scrapper practically lived in Matey’s shadow, either for the protection the older man afforded him, or because there was, between them, a genuine bond of affection. Mary had no liking for either, but watching the strong and perfect harmony with which they rowed, she saw Will’s wisdom in insisting that both be brought along.

The centre seat was occupied by Luke and Cox. Luke’s freckled face was creased by a grin as he endeavoured to teach the carpenter to handle the oars. “It’s the hat,” Luke teased, pointing to the rag Mary had hung over Cox’s bald pate to protect it from the blazing sun. “Too bad we ne’er thought to swipe Old Phillip’s topper. What with a brain so blistered, you keep forgettin’ it’s an oar and not a hammer you’re swinging.”

“You got enough hair for both of us there,” Cox shot back, casting a glance at Luke’s reddish, shoulder-length strands, banded back with a twist of rope. “Whyn’t you chop off the bottom half and hang it over my poor fried dome?”

As Luke trained the carpenter, Will, seated on the foremost bench, instructed James, who sat beside him. The two were about the same size, just under six feet tall. But in other respects they differed greatly. Will’s deeply tanned torso rippled with muscle, while James’s office job had rendered him so pale that he dared not remove his shirt for fear that the sunburn beginning to redden his face would spread fire across his upper body.

When James lifted a hand to wipe sweat from his brow, Mary saw that his palm was raw with broken blisters. The bleeding hand returned to the oar and James continued to pull without complaint. Will must have seen the hand as well, but showed no sympathy. He needled James by reminding him that all his book learning and jiggling of numbers were now the most useless of skills. “A fine burden you’ll be till you learn to pull your weight,” Will gloated. “If’n you ever do.” And a few minutes later, “Now didn’t I tell you don’t do like that? You keep making a mess of it, don’t expect me to stop these other boys from flinging you over the side.”

Not at the oars just then were Bados and Pip. They were engaged in hoisting the cutter’s single sail. They did so efficiently, Bados being the biggest man in the group, and experienced at sail-rigging. Pip, although small, was nimble of body and quick to follow Bados’s instructions. This last, Mary noticed, was not something others on Will’s crew would do. Mary surmised that Will had observed as much and that was why, when there was a job requiring two men, he regularly teamed Bados with the boy. In this way he could make use of the black man’s abilities without evoking the kind of dissent that might have occurred had he tried to put Bados in charge of a white man on his crew.

As Mary took stock of her companions, her main concern was their thinness. She had gained a little weight during the three months of occasional feasts at Smit’s table, but the others had not had that advantage, and the years of malnutrition had pared them to the bone. Of all the disasters that might befall them, the one Mary dreaded most was the thought of slow starvation.

She had known at the outset that they would likely be sailing for at least one night and day, and maybe a second one as well, depending on how far they travelled and where they found to come ashore and rest. A river mouth was the most desirable, for they would need fresh water soon. Despite the necessity of conserving supplies for the long journey ahead, with uncertain sources of food along the way, she had prepared balls of rice and beans and baked potatoes that could be eaten by hand as they travelled. She thought it unwise to have the men weaken at the outset, when survival depended on putting as much distance as possible between themselves and any parties sent out to fetch them back.

A little after midday, she held up a tidbit of food and motioned Will to come forward to have a word in private. He hesitated a moment, then called for Bados to take his oar.

When Will came to her, Mary asked in a low voice, “Do you think the governor has sent a boat after us?” She handed him the bite, and waited to get the answer she expected.

“Sure he’ll be fool enough to do that,” Will chuckled. “Useless though it be, when we’ve got the swiftest boat in the colony and my men at the oars. There’s not one among the mariners who can match the least of my crew when it comes to rowing!”

“Yet if he sends a party overland by some shorter way, might not they be lying in wait for us at some likely river’s mouth?”

Will considered this possibility a moment, then as Mary had expected, nodded assent. For he was not stupid, her husband. It was simply his disinclination to think a thing through. Mary saw that this gap in his thinking was hers to mend, and sooner rather than later. If she waited too long and then showed herself to be at odds with his decision, as had happened this morning on the issue of whether they should take the first river mouth they came to or continue rowing through the day, conflict was sure to follow.

Thus, early in the afternoon, she planted in Will a good reason for continuing through a second night, and waited to see if it would take root. As it happened, two things occurred which supported what she knew to be the safest course. First, no good landing place presented itself, in part because she had charted a course due north. This put them some distance out from the shore, which curved to the west just above the neck of the Sydney Cove. Second, as the sun dipped closer to the horizon, the wind came up and blew in such a way that they were able to use the sail and give the men a rest from rowing. Thus, when Will informed them that they would continue on through the night, and begin at daybreak to skirt the coast in search of a river mouth where they could take a good long rest, all could see that this was a right decision—and not see that Mary had any hand in it.

They could hardly have been luckier in their choice of a place to put ashore than the small river where they harboured late on their second day out—this after more than forty hours of rowing and sailing. They encountered no natives who might have objected to their landing, and they were able to help themselves to what the area offered, which was, in fact, an abundance of many foods which they already knew and valued.

Will sent two men down to collect shellfish, and took three others with him to cast the net for fish. Mary asked Cox to chop a cabbage palm and peel it, layer by layer, down to its delicate, edible heart. James she directed to gather wood and build a fire, for however limited his other skills, this was something any man would know. Then she asked him to pick leaves from sarsaparilla creepers among the rocks, these being familiar to all in the colony for the sweet tea they yielded.

By the time Will and his men returned, two kettles boiled, one for tea and a second one, with a handful of rice and a little salt thrown in, awaiting the fish that they brought back. Mary handed each man a bowl of tea to hold them while the stew simmered to readiness.

Mary used her own tea time to nurse Emanuel, then went to check on Charlotte. The three-year-old sat near Bados, who was showing her how to draw designs in the sand.

Luke, sprawled on the ground nearby, peered at Bados’s sand drawing and asked, “What’s that supposed to be?”

“A palm tree like grows back home, in Barbados,” Bados explained.

“Barbados, eh? I heard tell it’s a pretty isle.” Luke clicked his tongue in sympathy. “Bet you’re sorry you ever set foot in England. What got you transported?”

“Cucumbers,” the black man replied.

“What’s ‘cumbers?” Charlotte wanted to know.

Bados made a rough sketch in the sand. “Looks like a fat green stick, and good to eat. Stole seven of ‘em from a kitchen garden. A year I got for every one.”

Luke sighed. “Nothing I’ve missed like fresh vegetables. Last good meal I had was a big vegetable stew with a couple of poached rabbits tossed in.”

“You got transported for poaching?” Mary asked in surprise.

Luke grinned. “More because I riled the gamekeeper. But he riled me first.”

“How’s that?” Bados asked.

“He caught me with the rabbits fair and square. Said he wouldn’t turn me in, but was gonna keep my rabbits. It was him standing there, fat as a squire’s hog, saying how much he was gonna enjoy them rabbits roasted. And me fair hungry, with two kids at home who hadn’t had a scrap of meat for weeks. Got me in such a rage I knocked his block off and took me rabbits home to the wife. Was just finishing the meal when he come with the law.”

They all laughed at Luke’s audacity, if not at the outcome. Their talk of food reminded Mary of how hungry everyone was. She laid Emanuel down to nap on a scrap of canvas in the shade, told Charlotte to sit beside him, and set about ladling bowls of stew.

Once and twice over, Mary filled the bowls, with the men allowing as how it was the finest meal they had ever eaten. Mary felt deeply satisfied, and not only from the food. The ingredients in the stew had been commonplace in the colony, if never so plentiful as this. The richness they tasted—she knew, for she tasted it, too—was the flavour of freedom.

She was about to refill her own soup bowl when she noticed that one filled previously still remained. She looked about to see who might be missing.

“Where’s Cox?” she asked.

“Yonder,” Will said, jerking his chin toward the shore.

Mary saw him sitting on a rock, bald head slumped on his chest like a man condemned to die. She picked up his bowl of fish stew and walked down to where he was.

“Are you not hungry?” Mary asked, supposing that his sunburn had given him a fever.

Cox shook his head, and made no move to take the bowl she held out to him.

“What is it, Coxie?”

He let out a sigh which was more like a groan. “’Twas bad of me to leave like that, Mary, without a word to Florie, no goodbye nor nothing.”

“She knew you were going, Coxie. I know she did.”

“Don’t that make it even worse? Her sitting there sad as a whipped puppy, waiting for me to do whatever I was gonna do. Florie’s mind’s been fuzzy, you know, ever since that first night the women came ashore. I was the fifth or sixth bloke on her, and I saw she was right off her head.”

“That’s two years past, Coxie, and you did look out for her all the time since,” Mary reminded him gently.

Cox choked on a sob. “But who’s looking out for my Florie now?”

“Come, have some stew,” Mary urged. “When you get to England you can write to her.”

“Yes, damn me, that I’ll do. Florie would like that,” Cox conceded, and did not resist when Mary lifted his big paw and placed the bowl of stew in it.

They stayed in that place two days, long enough to dry fish to add to their provisions, and to stow the supplies in a more orderly fashion. Then they sailed two days more, and again went ashore. The second spot they chose for rest and replenishment was even more pleasant than the first. Just a little way back from the beach, they found a shady glade and a place where the river formed itself into a pool, ideal for fishing and bathing.

“’Tis fitting,” Mary told Will with a smile, “that your son should celebrate his first birthday in such a perfect place.”

“Aye.” Will took the baby from her and tossed him aloft, to Mary’s consternation and to the child’s delight. “Had we a bottle of rum, we’d toast you in style, my boy!”

Mary for her part thanked all the stars in the firmament that there was no rum to be had. Nor could she understand, when she watched the group take its ease after another plentiful meal gathered from their surroundings, what Will and his companions felt might be added by inebriation. Back in Botany Bay, yes, she could easily understand why one might wish to drink oneself into a forgetful stupor. But in an Eden such as this?

Looking about, it was hard not to compare this place to the colony, and to feel that in less than a week they had travelled from Purgatory to Paradise. Music from Bados’s flute floated on the air. James sat with his back against a tree, writing in his journal. Matey was at work repairing a sail, while Scrapper mended a hole in the fishing net—until Luke challenged Cox to an arm-wrestling contest, and the others stopped to watch and cheer.

Mary wandered over to the fresh-water lagoon where Pip and Will were playing with the children. She sat down on the bank and dangled her feet in the cool, clear water. Will, with a mischievous glint in his eye, handed Emanuel to Pip. Grasping Mary by the ankles, he pulled her laughing into the water. This she would recall later as the one and only time they ever joined in play. And play they did, the children splashing around them, all through the hot afternoon of Emanuel’s first birthday. Not till the sun went down did they drag themselves out and return to the fire, which James had kept burning, to feed the children again, and to help themselves to more of the plentiful stew.

Then each person curled up on whatever bedding they’d had the wits to bring and fell asleep, except for Bados, who stayed awake for a time, playing his flute.

Again they sailed a full day and straight through the night. Mary stayed in the bow of the boat with the children, and used the compass to determine their north-westerly course. They followed the shore (but not too closely), slowed by a current which flowed in the opposite direction, but often aided by the wind, which let them make full use of the cutter’s single sail.

Mary was always glad when dawn came and, compass in hand, she could determine that they were on course. But if dawn was a relief, the heat of the day, when the sun fell full on them, was not. During their first week out, both Cox and James, unaccustomed to working out of doors, suffered terribly from sunburn. At stops along the way, Mary gave them cooling poultices made of leaves and fat, but the burns already inflicted they could only endure. By the end of the second week they were as brown as the others; a fortunate thing for, as they travelled north, the intensity of the sun increased.

One late afternoon, they landed in a likely-looking cove and sighted, just beyond the trees where they had put ashore, a curl of smoke indicating a native encampment. Will took the musket, which was their only weapon, and the men approached cautiously, by twos, a little spread out. Mary waited with the children back at the boat, to see what the situation might be. It was only a couple of minutes before she heard Will shouting for her to come. With Emanuel in her arms and Charlotte by the hand, she made her way along a well-worn trail until she emerged in a clearing. There were a few crude huts and, in front of several of them, smouldering fires with meat roasting atop. But not a soul in sight.

“Is no one about?” Mary asked.

“None we’ve spied,” Will told her. “What you see is what we seen when we got here.”

Matey grabbed a hunk of meat off some aborigine’s fire. “Looky here, boys! The wogs have laid on a party for us!” the old sailor chortled. He flipped the meat from hand to hand to cool, then set to gnawing it like a dog.

“Will, do you think—?” Mary was about to ask if he thought it was wise to go thieving from the natives, who might not have run away so far that they couldn’t come back and attack. But it was already too late. Others were now doing as Matey had done, running from fire to fire, snatching up and squabbling over whatever was cooking there. Only James held back, along with Will, Mary, and the children. But he too must have realised that there was nothing to be done.

“Shall we camp here, then?” Mary asked. “Or back on the beach?”

Will squinted at the sky. “Here, I reckon. If it rains, we can shelter in these huts.”

“Then I’ll go back for the kettle and other needs,” Mary said.

“You do that,” Will said, and then, seeming to notice that she had a baby in one arm and a toddler clinging to her skirt, said, “You, James. Lend her a hand.”

It would have been easier to leave the children there, but Mary sensed that it would not do for her to go alone with James, for if Will did not notice now, he might remember at some time in the future and hold it against her then. Thus she, James, and the children made their way back to the boat. They did not speak, nor did Mary feel it necessary.

James had said before, when commenting on how he had observed her mind at work, “Are we not alike in this?” She still felt a kind of amazement that he should have recognised the seriousness of her thoughts, and judged them to be in any way equal to his own. But there were moments such as this, as they walked in silence to the boat and back again, when she did indeed feel them to be joined in similar thoughts—or in this case, a similar foreboding.

At dusk a light rain began to fall, so they took shelter inside the crude huts. Mary suggested to Will that perhaps he should post a watch. He agreed to send Bados to sleep in the boat, but scoffed at the idea that a watch was needed in the camp.

“They ran like rabbits,” he pointed out. “Scared plumb out of their wits. Probably never seen civilised folks before. They didn’t attack us by day, sure and they’ll not risk it by night.” With that, he rolled over and fell asleep.

Mary said no more, but had Bados carry all of the cooking pots back to the boat rather than leave them lying about. Then she lay down inside a hut with her children and, uneasy though she was, soon fell asleep.

She woke sometime in the night. Through the doorway of the hut, she saw an aborigine woman soundlessly collecting things left behind. Other shadows flitted through the camp. Before Mary could make up her mind whether to awaken Will, they were gone.

Mary rose at dawn, for by then the weather was so warm that it was better to do whatever needed doing during the cool of the morning. Emanuel and Charlotte were awake as well, and James, when he heard her murmuring to the children, roused himself to collect wood and build a fire. Bados appeared soon thereafter, bringing the things she needed to make breakfast. The rest slept on. With no one to order them about, only the smell of cooking food would entice them to rise.

Mary had only taken the first johnnycake from the fire and handed it to Charlotte when she heard Scrapper shout. She looked up to see him dragging Pip violently from sleep by the hair of his head. “Who took my shirt? Were it you, twerp?”

“No, I swear!” Pip grabbed hold of Scrapper’s hands and tried to disentangle them before the hair detached from his head.

Then a shout from Cox. “What the hell? My knife was in the log, right at my hand. I know; I felt it in the night. And now it’s gone!”

James looked around sharply. “The abos must have come back for their stuff, and picked up a bit of ours in the bargain.”

“They wouldn’t have the nerve!” Matey retorted.

“I saw them,” Mary said, holding out a johnnycake to her husband.

“Saw them?” Will snatched the food from her. “Why the hell didn’t you wake us up?”

“They were many,” she said quietly. “I thought it better they come and go in peace, for if they had set upon us, who knows what might have happened? We might have driven them off, but some of us, sleeping as we were, might have been wounded. I thought you would not want to risk that, when we’re needing every man at the oars.”

Will chewed on her words and on the johnnycake for a moment, then, as she went back to cooking, turned away. She heard him order the others to pack up, saying that they would not spend any more time in this blasted place, but would sail on.

That was not a decision Mary would have made, for she believed the aborigines desired conflict no more than she. Although there would have been some risk to remaining, she saw by the sky that a squall was coming, and thought it the greater risk. But by then they were on their way, as Will had commanded.

It soon began to rain, no longer the light drizzle it had been the night before, but hard now, accompanied by a rising wind. Mary forced the children to stay in the cramped but covered space under the bow of the boat, for, in a continuing rain such as this, she knew how quickly one could become chilled. Emanuel cried and Charlotte fretted but Mary was firm, only allowing them out when the baby needed to nurse, or Charlotte had to be held over the side to relieve her bladder and bowels. Then she dried them as best she could, and tucked them back into the covered bow. As the squall worsened they sailed close to shore, looking for a place to shelter. But it was a wild, rocky coast, and each time they approached, they saw it would be dangerous to attempt a landing. On the third such attempt, rocks loomed up so sudden and close that no one had to tell the crew to veer seaward.

But the sea, in this squall turned to gale, was hardly less threatening. The boat rose and plunged over range upon range of watery mountains. The men at the oars struggled to keep it headed into the waves, while the rest bailed for all they were worth.

The storm raged for nearly a week. The men rowed, fought the mountainous waves, and bailed out the water that poured in on top of them. Before the ordeal was half over, they had become like mechanised skeletons, barely able to lift the oars and keep up with the bailing.

It was on the morning of the seventh day that Mary awoke to sunshine glittering on a still-choppy sea. She took out the compass. The boat was drifting south. Now it was possible to set a course and sail, but who had the strength? The men lay collapsed over their oars or curled in the stern, sleeping the sleep of the utterly exhausted.

“Will!” she called out. “Luke! Scrapper! James! Come on, Coxie. Here, Matey. Pip? Would you row to your last breath, or die without trying?”

Of all the crew, Pip was the frailest, yet his eyes opened first. Responding to Mary’s voice, he dragged himself up and took an oar in hand. One by one, five others moved to the oars. At Mary’s direction, they brought the boat around and headed it in the north-westerly direction. Will and Matey set the sail, which allowed the men to spend more time recovering as the wind pushed the cutter forward.

After sailing northwest for a full day, and still no sighting of land, Mary realised that the storm had blown them far out to sea—how far, she could not calculate. She only knew that they must make landfall soon. Despite days of drenching rain, they had little water in reserve, for the simple reason that most of their containers were unlidded. Whatever fresh water they had collected had either been spilled or had been contaminated with salt water in the heavy surf. She lifted a slim brown arm and reset their course due west, hoping that they would strike land by the following day.

They did not sight land, not that day nor the next. From the chart and others Mary had studied in Smit’s cabin, she knew that there was a point at which the eastern coast of the continent bulged out. Beyond the bulge, it angled toward the west. If they had been blown past that bulge then the distance to land was even further than she supposed. The coastline had been mapped by both Captain Cook and Dutch sailors before him. But the treacherous Coral Sea, which they must sail through to get there, was as yet uncharted.

Another day passed and still no sight of land. Beneath the light of a crescent moon, Mary picked up a whimpering Emanuel and put him to her breast. He nuzzled, sucked, and nuzzled. The whimper became a weak cry. Mary laid him back in the bow, knowing he would soon fall asleep.

A little while later, Will crawled forward and curled up against her.

With tears in her voice but not her eyes, for she was too dehydrated, Mary told her husband, “I have no milk.”

Will clutched her hand, and laid his head on her breast. Perhaps she should have been comforted, but all she felt was one added burden. What she sensed in his embrace was not the strength of a man aiming to console but a frightened boy needing consolation. Perhaps the warmth of her body did console him, for he soon fell asleep. Mary did not sleep. How could she, when she knew that in the bow of the boat two emaciated children lay, not sleeping but dying?

Mary woke to find the children silent and men collapsed all along the length of the boat. She hardly felt it worthwhile to move herself. They had been out of sight of land nigh onto two weeks, she calculated, first with days of storm, followed by more days of endless blue sky and sea. However, after lying there a few minutes, she forced herself into a sitting position and scanned the horizon.

A speck? A speck! Could it be land?

“Land!” she cried hoarsely.

“Land?” Will whispered, staggering to his feet.

Suddenly the boat was alive with shouts of, “Land!” “Dear God!” “Land ahoy!”

There was a scramble for positions, and six oars smacked the water. With what strength each rower had left, he pulled for the saving shore.

The speck Mary had sighted proved to be not the mainland but a mere spit of sand. It supported a few scraggly bushes but, as far as they could see, no animal life at all. They paddled around the tiny island, seeking a break in the reef where they could ease the boat through into protected water. Once anchored, the men crawled out of the cutter and dragged themselves to shore.

The children lay crumpled in the bow and did not move. Will started to lift them out but Mary stopped him. “Leave them here where they have a bit of shade. I’ll bring them out later, when we’ve found water and something to feed them.”

Will staggered to shore and fell onto the sand alongside the others. Mary, barely able to stand herself, caught hold of him and urged him up. “Please, Will! Look for water!”

As he stumbled off to do her bidding, she went from one man to the next, pleading. “Matey, do you want to die of thirst? Get up and help Will search for water! Luke, go see if you can find some small animals to snare. Come on, Coxie, we need food. A bird’s nest would be right handy. Bados, won’t you throw out a line and see if you can catch some fish? Pip, Scrapper, be good lads and see what you can net. James, do find some driftwood and make a fire. We’ve a bit of rice left, and if water’s to be had, there’s soup at least.”

One by one the men rose and began to stagger about the tiny island, so small that the whole of it could easily be viewed from end to end. James found enough driftwood to build a fire, but Mary was loath to use their last sips of fresh water to make the promised soup.

Will and Matey, who had circled the island in opposite directions and then criss-crossed it, returned with discouraging news. “There’s not a drop of sweet water to be had.”

“No cabbage palms, nor any other edible plant neither,” Cox offered on his return.

“Not one of these bushes got a bird’s nest in it,” Luke announced gloomily.

“I saw some small bright fish, but they scooted away,” Pip reported.

“I seen ‘em, too,” Scrapper added. “We got no net fine enough to catch them.”

Suddenly there was a shout from Bados down on the beach. Heads turned to see him half in the water, half out, struggling with something. The men rushed to his aid and, in a few minutes, they returned carrying a turtle so large that it took both Bados and Will to lift it.

“Here you are, Mary,” Bados grinned. “Work your magic!”

Will let go of his side of the turtle so suddenly that Bados, who was holding it by the opposite flipper, was almost jerked off balance.

“Since when do you call my wife by her given name?” Will snarled at the black man.

Bados dropped the turtle and walked away. The eyes of the men slid past Will uneasily. Then they did what men do: they turned their attention to the turtle to prevent its escape, and pretended the incident had never happened.

Mary handed Will a knife. “Catch the blood,” she said coldly.

She walked down to the shore and past Bados, who stood staring moodily out to sea. She climbed into the boat and lifted Charlotte from the bow. “Give me a hand, please, Bados,” she called in a weak voice which revealed how little strength she had left.

Bados hesitated, then waded out to the boat. As he took the starving child from her, she said softly, “If my babies are to live, Bados, ‘twill be your catch that saved them.”

Without looking at her, Bados replied, “I think that turtle come on the beach to lay eggs. Same as they do back in Barbados.”

“Pray you find some,” Mary said. Then she lifted Emanuel from his nest, slipped over the side, and splashed through the water to shore—a woman so emaciated that she seemed no more than a child herself, carrying a small, limp doll.

Bados laid Charlotte in the shade of a bush and walked away. Mary put Emanuel next to his sister, and collapsed beside the children.

When she next opened her eyes, James was kneeling beside her, holding a wooden bowl. “It’s the blood. Here, Mary. Drink.”

“The children—” she began, but he interrupted.

“I have already given them as much as they can take. Here. You must.”

Mary closed her eyes and forced herself to drink.

She wondered, later, whether Will had deliberately sent James with the blood, rather than serve her himself. Not that it mattered. What mattered was that they had food, some part of it in liquid form. Within the hour, all had eaten as much as they could manage after coming so close to starvation.

Mary fell asleep. When she woke, she saw that the children needed to be moved in order to keep them in the skimpy shade cast by the bush. Both woke and, although they did not become active at once, it was clear that they felt revived.

Glancing round, Mary noticed that Will and the men were cutting strips of turtle meat and laying them out to dry in the sun. Will must have noticed her moving about, because he soon wandered over.

“Is that smiles I see on them little faces?” he asked jovially.

“They’re ever so much stronger,” Mary agreed. “And in so short a time! Turtle blood must agree with them.”

Beyond Will, she saw Bados approaching. He did not come near, but called out, “I find them eggs. They yonder, by the fire.”

Will whirled sharply, but Bados had already turned away. This time the black man had not used Mary’s name, but neither had Bados directed the report to Will by name. Will scowled after him, then stalked off in another direction.

All through the afternoon, Mary gave the children such sips of blood as she could persuade them to drink, and allowed each a sip or two of water as well. On the morrow, she judged, their tiny shrunken bellies might be able to tolerate eggs. She herself drifted in and out of sleep, not bothering, for once, to busy herself with cooking for the men. Let them get hungry enough, she thought with grim satisfaction, and they’d be perfectly capable of feeding themselves.

The sun was near to setting when she woke to find Charlotte gone. She looked about and saw her sitting at the edge of the gentle surf. Will lay dozing nearby. Mary went to the child, who was playing in the sand. Charlotte looked up at her with bright blue eyes, much too large for her tiny face.

“I make a house,” she informed her mother.

Mary sat down beside her and took a handful of wet sand, which she dribbled onto Charlotte’s heap, giving it turrets. “Now we have a castle, like they build in England,” she said.

“Is this England?”

Mary smiled at the absurdity. “No, precious. This is not England.”

“Where is this?” Charlotte wanted to know.

“Very far from England, my love. And far from Botany Bay.”

Mary and James had exchanged few words on the voyage thus far, and then only when a task at hand required it. Mary might say, “I will have the fire built here, if you please, Mr. Brown.” Or he, “Thank you, Mrs. Bryant,” when she doled out his share of the food. So James looked up quickly from writing in his journal when she approached him next morning.

“Mr. Brown,” she said stiffly. “I wonder if you might possess a timepiece.”

“Regretfully, Mrs. Bryant, I do not.” He smiled ruefully. “And have not since the day of my arrest. Have you need of one?”

“Aye, sir. For you see, I have a quadrant, and some slight knowledge of its use, but no means of determining high noon.”

“And none of the others in our company have a timepiece either?”

“Indeed, several do.” Mary’s eyes slanted with humour. “But as in your case, I expect their timepieces are being maintained by jailers or some other they have encountered since they were taken into custody.”

James smiled, and then ventured, “You could use a stick.”

“A stick?” Mary gave him a blank look.

“Stuck into the sand. When its shadow reaches the shortest point—or ceases to exist—there would be your exact midday.”

“Ah. I was not aware of that!” Mary exclaimed. “Would you be so kind, Mr. Brown, as to tend to this for me, and to inform me of the moment? I shall be ready with the quadrant, and perhaps can determine our latitude.”

“I should think our longitude would be more important,” James remarked. “That we might know how far we are from the coast.”

Mary gave a small shrug. “Of course. But the instruments I have do not provide that information. All we can know for sure is that the mainland lies to the west. If we sail in that direction, I hardly see how it can be missed.”

James did promptly inform her of high noon, as near as could be determined by stick and shadow. When Mary had finished calculating the latitude, she saw, as she had suspected, that they were north of the bulge in the continent’s eastern coast. This was a favourable thing, indicating that, due to the storm, they had travelled much further north than she would have imagined possible in so short a time. But being so far north was also a disadvantage. The mainland now angled away from them, so it would take even longer to get there.

They left the sand spit the following day, for little good it did to have a bounty of food when there was not a drop of water to drink, apart from a few sips Mary had held back for the children. There was no doubt in her mind that the tiny atoll where they had rested was indeed in the Coral Sea, or as Captain Smit had called it, “the impossible sea.” Her calculations as to latitude confirmed it, and coral was often in evidence, either as small islands like the one that had saved them or, more ominously, as reefs just below the surface. She stood in the bow, her eyes constantly skimming the water. Occasionally she raised an arm to signal a turn to left or right.

“Starboard,” she would say quietly, and behind her Will would echo loudly, “Starboard!” The rhythm of the oars would shift to change direction, then steady again. Mary’s eyes never left the water.

There was no reason for Will to resist the instructions she gave, but as was his wont, he could not long abide being directed by someone else. This Mary knew, but knew not how, with coral all about, things might be done differently. She only hoped that when the moment came that he must rebel, it would not cost them too dearly. But of course, it did.

She had just spoken, as she had dozens of times before, “Port.” But instead of passing the instruction to the rowers, he leaned forward, squinted over her shoulder, said, “I don’t see—”

“PORT, HARD!” she screamed.

The boat spun at her command. Too late. There was a scraping noise against the bottom.

“Goddamned thing came out of nowhere!” Will exclaimed.

“I heard some splintering,” Cox called from midship.

Mary turned around. “Jump over and take a look, Coxie.”

The carpenter hung his head shamefacedly. “Ah, Mary. Big old ox like me, I’d sink right to the bottom.”

Mary grasped that the man couldn’t swim, and said, “You then, Scrapper. Swim under and see what the damage is.”

“I ain’t no fish, and I don’t float, neither!” the young tough called back indignantly.

James lifted his hands with a smile that said sorry, but he was also a non-swimmer.

“I can paddle about a bit,” Luke offered, “but doubt I can hold my breath long enough to see the bottom.”

Pip’s petrified expression said he would take the plunge if Mary required it of him, but he did not expect to survive the ordeal.

Will said nothing, nor did Mary turn to him. Truth be told, she did not know whether her husband could swim, and she thought it unwise to humiliate him again if it happened that he could not.

Matey solved the problem by standing up and throwing off his shirt. “Damn me if I ain’t stuck at sea with a bunch of lily-livered landlubbers!” With that he dove overboard and swam under the cutter. A minute later he popped to the surface. “It ain’t clear through, but she’ll need caulking pretty quick.”

Matey was hauled aboard. Men picked up the oars and began to row. The tension of sailing through these claws of coral showed on every face, except Mary’s. As if in a trance, she pointed to the left, then straight, left again, now right. With no further hesitation, Will, standing behind her, called her signals to the rowers.

Mary had become as tanned as the men. The hunger endured during the week they had battled the storm, and the week of near-starvation that followed, had pared away her curves, leaving her with a hard leanness that was more that of a boy than a woman. Will caught the long braid of sun-bleached hair hanging down her back, and held it briefly in his hand. Mary felt the gesture, and in it the longing, which she understood. She supposed that the softness of her hair was the only thing about her that seemed feminine, in the old way.

At long last the mainland came into view. The very sight of it in the distance gave the rowers a renewed energy that bordered on the jolly. It was dusk by the time they approached close enough to see how rugged this part of the coast was. Mary scanned the shore, looking for a place of sufficient calm where they wouldn’t be thrown against the rocks. Will, standing behind her, motioned for the men to row parallel to the shore, as he looked for a likely spot.

Cox called, “We got to make land, Cap’n. She’s seeping bad.”

“Yonder,” Will pointed. “Between them rocks.”

“Won’t be easy,” Matey allowed, not willing to admit himself afraid.

“I’ve landed in worse, and on darker nights back in Cornwall,” Will said confidently. “There, men!” He pointed again.

The oarsmen followed his lead. The boat rose on the crest of a wave and came down frighteningly close to the rocks. There was a momentary calm when all saw the small, sandy cove Will had sighted, where they could land safely after all.

Suddenly, out of the twilight, a lance sailed past, just inches above the bow of the boat. What Mary saw in that instant made her scream. Dark bodies perched among the rocks on either side of the tiny cove, spears poised and letting fly. Many fell short, but more than a few struck the boat. Every oar swung to a single side, forcing the cutter to turn tail and plow into a wave. For the next few minutes there was no time for anything but pulling on the oars and bailing. At last they were past the breakers, exhausted. And night was upon them.

“The bastards!” Will howled in frustration.

“Next time I’ll have a bloody musket in me hand!” Scrapper boasted uselessly.

Matey guffawed. “You fancy you could hit something at that distance? You make me laugh!”

“I could hit you at this distance, needing nothing but a fist,” Scrapper threatened, rising and half turning around in his seat.

Matey grabbed Scrapper by the throat and squeezed until the boy gagged. “And a bit of air, maybe?” Matey grinned evilly.

Cox rose and interposed his bulk between them. “Bless me, boys. That’s enough!”

Mary ignored the ruckus and turned to face the open sea. “A little to starboard, there. That’s it,” she said quietly.

Pip leaned forward. “Can you see in the dark, Miss Mary?”

“The coral is not something you see, Pip. You feel it,” she said in a low voice, for she knew no other way to explain it.

Charlotte whined, and the baby wailed. Will said, “They’re needing something to eat.”

“Then they must be fed,” Mary said, without taking her eyes from the black water. Raising her voice to be heard further back, she said, “Easy to port. Slowly. There.” And lowering her voice again, to speak to Will, “Give them a sip of water first.”

*

They made it safely through the night, although by what magic or miracle Mary herself could not have said. Dawn found them sailing smoothly between the coast and a string of off-shore islands. A little after sunup, they came upon an island with a likely-looking cove, into which flowed a freshwater stream. As there were no native boats or signs of encampment, they deemed the place to be uninhabited. To everyone’s relief, Will announced that they would lay up there for a few days, long enough to repair the boat and replenish their supplies.

After the boat had been dragged into the shallows and overturned for caulking, Bados was sent to fish and look for turtle eggs, and Luke sent to set snares and explore the area. In mid-afternoon, Luke returned with a dozen small animals.

Charlotte watched with fascination as Luke cleaned them and showed her the young that came out of their little pouches. But she set up a wail when she learned that she could not keep them as playthings for, being separated from their mothers, they were as good as dead already.

“I never saw creatures such as these, with pockets on their bellies, and young ones inside,” Luke admitted. “But it seems like they ought to be edible. There’s only vegetable matter in their innards, so I can’t see they’d be much different from rabbits and squirrels like we have back home.”

“I’ll spit them over the fire,” Mary decided. “That should make them tasty enough.”

“Get ‘em warm and we’ll eat ‘em, no questions asked,” Cox called from where he and the others were at work caulking the overturned boat.

“I et monkey before, in Africa,” Matey offered.

“What took you to Africa?” James queried.

“Jumped ship there, back in ‘75,” Matey responded. “Stayed ten years. A hell hole, it was, but better’n being keel-hauled for kicking the bosun in the nuts.”

“I et a rat once, in London.” Pip, sitting atop the boat’s upturned bottom, nodded at the skewered meat Mary had just placed over the fire. “Cooked it just like that.”

Scrapper, who sat facing him, looked closely at Pip. “Thing about eating rat,” he dead-panned, “it makes you look like one. Twitchy little nose, just five or six whiskers stuck in around the mouth—.”

Pip flung a handful of caulking at his tormentor. Scrapper gave him a shove that sent him sliding down the side of the boat onto the sand. Pip sat up, unfortunately in line with Scrapper’s foot, which kicked him square in the face.

“Aye, but you’re a mean bastard, Scrapper!” James exclaimed.

“That I am,” Scrapper said complacently. “But I don’t look like no rat.”

Pip crawled across the sand to Mary, wiping blood from his nose.

“Get back over here, boy,” Will commanded. “The job’s not done.”

Pip hunkered down between Mary and Luke like a cowering pup.

“Leave him be,” Mary said shortly.

Before anything could develop between husband and wife, Luke stood and said easily, “I found a nice little spring a ways up yonder, Cap’n. Tasted mighty sweet. Mind if I take the boy with me to fetch back a few pails?”

Will gave a curt nod and turned away, letting it pass. Mary understood that the others were aware of the tension between herself and Will. It saddened and shamed her, but there was nothing she could do except, like Will, let it pass.

Over the next few days, as they enjoyed an abundance of fresh food and clean, clear water, small annoyances faded and a sense of camaraderie returned. Mary asked that Pip be regularly assigned to attend to Emanuel, for fear that when she was occupied in cooking and drying meat and fruit for their onward journey, he might crawl into the sea and drown. Will saw the need and readily agreed.

Mary herself, when she had time, took Charlotte in hand and taught her to swim in the clear lagoon, as she herself had been taught to swim at about the same age. When Mary was busy preparing food, Charlotte trailed after Will, or hung around with whoever was doing something the child deemed of interest.

One day, as Will stood examining the caulking done the day before, Mary went to him and spread her chart on the sand at his feet. “We’re here, I judge.” She pointed to Cape York’s eastern coast.

“How much further to Timor?” Will wanted to know.

“Maybe fifteen hundred miles.”

James came to stand next to Will. He pointed to New Guinea. “There is nothing here?”

“I don’t think so,” Mary replied. “That is to say, nothing that would attract a European ship that might get us home by and by. Once we get round this point,” she touched the northernmost tip of the Australian continent, “we’ll be out of the coral and the sea will be safer. But the land may still hold hazards. Captain Smit says natives to the north are cannibals.”

At the mention of Smit, Will snatched up the chart, rolled it, and walked away, slapping it irritably against his thigh. “Matey! Scrapper! Bados! Luke! Come on, mates. The tide’s come in. Let’s get this tub floating again.”

Mary followed him, put her hand round the chart next to his, and said quietly, “Here, let me take that so it doesn’t get in your way.”

He gave her a hard look, but her eyes were mild and non-confrontational. He let go of the chart, and went on gathering his men about him. Mary understood the mention of Smit to have been an indiscretion on her part, and vowed not to be so careless again.

But that evening, when all were bedded down on the sand, and quiet, so that Mary fancied only herself and the stars were conscious, resentment welled up inside her. It was too much, she thought, to do all that she was expected to do and, beyond those burdens, to mould her every word in such a way that none gave offence to Will. Although her husband slept on one side of her, and her children on the other, she felt an ever-deepening sense of loneliness; an emptiness that needed filling with the presence of the only person, since the death of her parents, who made her feel understood, and less than totally alone.

A few days after leaving that place, and finding themselves forced toward the mainland by coral, they came to a river and rowed up it a ways, looking for a place where the boat would be sheltered near a likely spot for camping. But the vegetation was altogether strange, denser than any Mary had ever seen. Seemingly impenetrable greenery grew right down to the water’s edge—and hung over into it; trees, bushes and vines, as thick as could be. Birds in number were disturbed by their approach; and butterflies, some so large that they might be mistaken for birds, fluttered over the water. They steered toward the middle of the river, although the current was stronger there, to avoid being swatted in the face by branches that reached out from either shore.

“’Tis eerie,” Mary murmured. “I’ve not seen such as this before. Why, look yonder.” She pointed to a spiky plant growing in the fork of an overhanging tree. “It’s like there’s not enough ground, so you’ve got plants growing right out of trees, and vines hanging from both.”

“We’ve come into the tropics, that’s what we’ve done,” Matey announced. “I seen the likes of this, I have, over yonder in Africa, down south of the Canaries.”

They paddled the better part of an hour until they came upon an opening in the trees, a muddy bank backed by mashed-down vegetation. “There,” Luke motioned. “Might that do?”

Suddenly Bados, who had spoken scarcely a word since Will’s reprimand back on the sand spit, half-stood in the middle of the boat and shouted, “No! Turn round! Turn round!”

Startled, the others gaped at him. He was pointing at the far end of the muddy bank.

“What?” asked several voices. “What you on about, Bados?”

Mary’s gaze followed in the direction he pointed, and at first found nothing. Then, what she saw all but stopped her heart. It was a creature lying in the mud, and close to the colour of it. The snouted head alone was nearly three feet long, and the length of its body she could not guess. They were still fifty yards off, but now that she had spotted it she could see the huge jaws, slightly parted, from which protruded great fangs.

“A dragon!” Pip squeaked.

“No sir!” cried Bados. “That’s a crocodile! They got them in Barbados, too. We need be taking ourselves back the way we come!”

“Where’s that musket?” Will cried. “We’ll put an end to that monster!”

“No!” Mary said sharply. “’Twould be a waste of ammunition. For, dead or alive, there may be others! We’ll not stay the night here with such beasts as this about.”

“Turn round!” Bados begged again, his voice hoarse with terror. “A crocodile takes a place to be his own, he won’t think twice to come after us!”

“Fine by me!” Scrapper yelped. “This whole bleedin’ place is givin’ me the willies!”

He dug an oar into the water to bring the boat about, and the others, without waiting for a command from Will, did the same. Once turned around, the rowers pulled hard for only a moment, then eased off and let the current carry them swiftly back the way they had come.

Mary dipped a hand into the water, tasted it and, finding it sweet, began to scoop up fresh water to refill their containers. Will, although he was not at the oars, declined to help. Plainly in a snit over having been countermanded by his wife, he lapsed into moody silence.

Matey clapped him on the back. “Doubt you could’ve taken him with one shot anyway, Cap’n. Was one croc I knowed of in Africa that got to grabbing natives when they went down to the river for water. They asked a Frenchman what had a gun to come and kill it. He told me later that the first three shots barely fazed it. ‘Course he got it in the end, and I helped him skin it. When we got a look at the hide, you could see why it wasn’t easy for a musket ball to sink in. Like a kind of armour is the hide of them beasts.” Matey paused, and added in an awed voice, “And the one I skinned wasn’t near the size of the one back there.”

As they approached the sea, Mary called back to Bados. “What more do you know of these creatures, Bados? Will we be safe on the beach, or ought we to travel on, away from the river’s mouth?”

“Them we have in Barbados, they live in murky places like back yonder. But I tell you same as Matey, I never in my life seen one so big as that. The ones we got at home, they more the size of a man. That one, why, he be long as any three.”

They floated in silence for another minute, then Bados spoke again. “They make a track, a smooth-like place where they drag that big tail. We might get ourselves some little way up the beach from this river, then look around for tracks, to know if it’s common for them to come down to the beach. Them back home, though, they don’t do that.”

“Once we find a likely looking beach out in the open,” Luke put in, “Bados and me can scout the area for tracks.”

They did find a safe place further along the beach, although none truly felt assured of safety, even after Luke set up a line of snares at the edge of the forest to catch anything that might come creeping out to molest them in their sleep. “Ain’t nothing I got that can hold one of them monsters,” Luke admitted. “But if one gets snared, it might thrash about in breaking free enough to wake us.”

They all agreed that that was a reasonable plan and, nervous though they were, made a show of normalcy. The men went off to fish and hunt, except for James, whom Mary sent to gather firewood, and Pip, who was now regularly assigned the job of tending the children when they were on land. Charlotte, after being long confined in the boat, had a great need to run about, and little Emanuel, when he wasn’t creeping across the sand, liked to walk upright with someone holding his hands.

Luke soon returned, but with only a single small animal he deemed edible. He went off down the beach to see what luck the fishers were having, and Mary set to chopping the flesh of the animal into small pieces to add flavour to the day’s soup. James returned with an armload of wood, and came near to Mary to lay a fire.

Any keen observer with an understanding of human nature would have guessed that these two were in love, not by longing looks sent to each other—for there were none—nor by the time they spent together, since they approached one another only when the task at hand required it. Rather, it would have been apparent from the way they avoided each other’s eyes. When they were in close proximity, their movements became stiff and guarded, as if not trusting their own bodies to keep the secret of their hearts.

However, no one else was about, so James, as he arranged the wood and put flint spark to the kindling, spoke to Mary. “When you were at the quadrant, I saw that we have likely crossed over the Tropic of Capricorn.”

“I am quite sure of that,” Mary confirmed.

“And your chart shows Kupang to be only ten degrees south of the Equator.” James glanced up at her for confirmation.

“That’s right,” Mary nodded, for by now she had a map of their route well established in her mind.

“Then it is as Matey said: we have reached the tropics. I venture to say that the rest of our journey from here to there will be in this clime, and with vegetation such as we encountered today.”

Mary glanced toward him with a wry smile. “And with creatures such as that monster we saw today? Was it your intention to comfort me with such knowledge, James?”

James laughed. “Not knowledge, Mary. Just a guess, based on books I read when I was a boy back in Canada. I had a fascination with the tropics and hoped some day to visit.” His smile faded, and he added, “But of course, with no notion then of the circumstances that would bring me here.”

“Do you regret coming with us?” she asked, stopping her work long enough to look directly at him.

“Coming with you,” he said quietly, “is one of the few things in recent years that I shall never regret.” With that, he rose and moved away.

They sailed north for many more days, past white sand beaches lined with swaying palms and grey sand beaches interrupted by rocky outcroppings. Sometimes there was no beach, just mangrove swamps swarming with insects which tormented them even on the boat. As they were now sailing between the coast and a string of offshore islands, the sea itself was turquoise and smooth. Its transparent quality made it easy to see the coral, providing one’s eyes were focussed on what lay just ahead of the boat, and were straining to see beneath the surface every minute. As Mary’s were, day after day. At times images rose up in her mind, most often of Colleen, Dr. White, and other friends she had left back in Botany Bay. Soon, though, she found that she could not allow the images to linger, but must keep her mind empty of thought. For when memories filled her inner vision, she could not sense the coral, or see the subtle change in the colour of the water which forewarned her that coral lay in their path.

One afternoon they came to a great wide river backed by rolling green hills. Will wanted to spend some days there, for it offered fine shelter, and the land around did not seem quite so wild. But Mary insisted that they continue north. “Such a place is sure to have a settlement of savages about, and it might be a large one,” she reasoned. “We’ve got but the one musket. If they came at us in numbers, we couldn’t be certain of driving them off.”

So they travelled on, and camped instead on a beautiful island to the north, with forested slopes rising up from a crystal clear lagoon. Small streams sent sweet water trickling musically over pebbles and cascading down rock faces covered in soft green moss. To Mary’s eyes this was the most enchanting place they had yet come to on their journey. As she stood silently absorbing its beauty, there was a moment when she failed to understand the compulsion, shared by all, to press on.

That evening, as James laid the fire and he and Mary had their usual moment to exchange a few words in private, he said, “The aborigines around Botany Bay were peaceable enough. Have you reason to believe the ones here in the north are more like those who attacked us?”

Mary glanced around. Although no one except Pip and the children were in sight, she lowered her voice. “Captain Smit told me what Captain Cook wrote of the area when he passed this way some twenty years back. By the last reading I took of our latitude, I believe that great river we passed two days ago may have been one where Captain Cook put in. He stayed a good long time to make repairs to his ship after it ran aground.

According to his log, there were many natives in the area, and they were friendly.”

“But you did not want to chance them treating us as well?”

She gave him a wry, sideways smile. “I did not want to chance our men not treating them well. According to Captain Cook’s report, he and his men made friends with the locals by offering them gifts—not the hurting end of a musket.”

James gave an admiring chuckle. “An amazing mind you have, Mary, that you can see the shoals of human character that lie just below the surface, which are as likely to threaten our progress as any hidden reef.”

*

By now Mary judged them to be coasting the most northern part of the continent, a region which her chart showed as Arnhem Land; so named, Smit had told her, after the ship of a Dutch captain who had discovered it a century before Cook’s voyage in these same waters. Days were stressful for, despite the translucent beauty of the water, coral shoals lay thickly beneath the surface, affording Mary hardly a moment in the day of looking away. And sailing by night to avoid the heat was far too dangerous.

They had travelled some distance north from the river where Captain Cook’s ship had laid up for repairs, and well beyond the beautiful island where Mary’s imagination had teased her with the notion of remaining ever after; thus her eyes kept scanning the west, searching not for land but for a watery passage across the top of Arnhem Land.

Finally there came the jubilant day when Mary’s quadrant calculations informed her that they had reached that latitude. Thus did they leave the Coral Sea and, sailing westward between many small islands, approach the Arafura Sea.