The Arafura and Timor Seas

Cape York to Timor

The wind was with them and very fair that day, so that the men, although seated at the oars, were able to take their ease. Will motioned James to take his place, and came forward to look at the chart Mary had spread on the bow.

“With luck, we should make Timor in a month,” Mary said, tracing what she believed to be their route between the islands that dotted these waters.

“A thousand miles in a month?” Will asked sceptically.

Charlotte, clinging to her father’s leg, said, “’Nother boat.” But neither of her parents heard her.

“We have done at least two thousand already, in just eight weeks,” Mary pointed out.

“’Nother boat,” Charlotte repeated, pulling hard at her father’s shirt, and pointing.

Will glanced back, and gave a start. A war canoe as long as the cutter, but sleeker and with much more sail, was coming up on them fast.

“For the lova—pull, mates! Pull for your life!” Will shouted.

There was a stunned silence as each confirmed with a backward glance that his words were no mere figure of speech. Oars hit the water with force. Scrapper was the paddler nearest Will. Will pulled the boy from his seat and took the oar himself, for he was much the better rower.

By then the great war canoe was close enough to see its occupants: a dozen naked war-painted men, spears aloft, relishing the impending slaughter—or so it seemed to Mary. She grabbed Charlotte up in her arms as if to flee, although of course there was no place to go. What should she do if they were taken? Dive overboard, choose drowning to butchery—or worse? The choices were so terrible that her mind could not compute the odds. She stared hard at the savagely-painted faces, trying to judge the men to whom they belonged.

Scrapper made a dive past Mary’s legs to where her things were stored in the bow, and rose up with the musket in hand. As he stuffed it with powder and shot, the gap between the two boats continued to narrow.

Mary could now clearly see the face of an old chief, sitting in regal fashion, surrounded by his warriors. He smiled broadly, perhaps for the same reason his warriors smiled. But little Charlotte could not know that. Secure in her mother’s arms, she smiled brightly back at him, and waved her tiny hand.

Scrapper took aim, and yelled, “Hey, you bastards! Here’s a bellyful of—”

“Wait!” Mary shouted. For in the same instant she sensed a change in the intent of their pursuers.

Scrapper appealed to Will who, on the foremost oar, was rowing for all he was worth. “Whose bloody musket is it anyway?”

“Mine,” Mary said. Her hand closed on the barrel of the gun. “Give it to me.”

Reluctantly he relinquished the gun, perhaps because by then it was obvious to him too that the gap between the boats was widening. The war canoe had given up the chase.

Mary put Charlotte down and, with both hands free, rolled the oilcloth back around the gun and replaced it in the bow.

Will, likewise gauging the danger to be past, rose and motioned to Scrapper to retake his place at the oar. Then he and Mary stood in the bow together, neither meeting the other’s eyes as they watched the war canoe recede into the distance.

Later, remembering Charlotte’s smile and wave to the old chief, Mary would always believe that the innocent childish act had saved their lives. The children overall had been less trouble on the trip than she had anticipated. Except for the week of stormy seas, and the one to follow when they had nearly died, and an incident when a jellyfish brushed Charlotte’s arm and left her wailing for hours, the children had been hardly any trouble at all.

Emanuel was always within easy reach, in Mary’s arms or tucked into the bow of the boat. When the weather was good and the sea calm, Charlotte would clamber between the rowers to the back of the boat, where whichever two men were not at the oars would be resting. Next to Will she favoured Bados, who had found a bit of bamboo on one of their stops, carved a little flute for her, and taught her to play simple tunes. Charlotte also liked to sing, and learned the words to most of the shanties which Matey led. He knew many from his days as a mariner on sailing ships, and adapted them to the rhythm of their rowing.

Once, when they were camped on a small island, Will came upon Charlotte bellowing out words in no way fit to come from the mouth of a child. He chuckled behind his hand, but scolded Mary for allowing it, and said she ought to serve up a punishment that would prevent the little girl from ever using such foul language again. Mary agreed to talk to Charlotte, but said that if any punishment was to be meted out, it belonged to Matey for singing songs with lyrics a child ought not be learning. Will did speak to Matey about it, and thereafter, Matey limited himself to songs appropriate to a ship that was homeward bound, and not likely to land a child in trouble for learning. For uncouth as Matey was, he had no desire to see the little girl grow up rough. He went so far as to explain to her that shanties belonged on the sea, and one never should sing them on land.

Mary liked the shanties Matey led, for it helped the men to keep the rhythm of rowing, and created a sense of harmony among all aboard, whether at the oars or not. Bados, when he was rowing, joined in on the shanties in a deep rich baritone. But when the sail was up and the men were not at the oars, he occasionally turned to singing of a different type. Slow and mournful songs came from deep inside him and rolled out across the water. All up and down the boat, men, children, and Mary fell silent.

The songs he sang created a sense of closeness, but of a very different quality from the physical rhythms called forth by Matey’s shanties. Bados’s songs bound them together in a mood of aching loneliness, even as their minds travelled to different places in an effort to claim, in memory at least, what it was they longed for, or had lost a long time ago.

Once when Bados was singing such a song, Mary turned around to see Cox, on the most forward seat, with tears streaming down his cheeks.

She touched his hand and said, “I’m sorry, Coxie,” although she had no idea what might have caused the tears.

“She’s gonna perish there without me,” he choked. “Same as that other girl back in Londontown that I treated so bad, drinking up all my wages while she was dying of consumption, and brawling to boot, so fierce as to land me here on this far side of the world! Ah, Mary!” he agonised, “if I knew how to go back to my Florie, by God, I would do it.”

Mary was amazed by the confession. She knew from a previous conversation that Cox felt bad about leaving Florie, but had no idea that he had grown so fond of her as all that. It occurred to her that whatever each person was missing, or wherever they would like to be at that moment, Cox was the only one who longed for something back in Botany Bay.

During the first days of sailing across the Sea of Timor, there were frequent native sightings. In many places that seemed uninhabited they saw crocodiles, which precluded camping there. There were nights when, although land was at hand, the proximity of unfriendly natives and fearsome beasts put them so much on edge that they felt compelled to anchor offshore and sleep on the boat.

However, by now all the men were skilled at the oars and in excellent physical condition. That, combined with favourable winds, made it a near certainty that they would reach Kupang within a couple of weeks. One day, as they were congratulating themselves on the success of their escape, James broached the subject of a story.

“A story? What do you mean?” Cox asked.

“We can’t just walk in and say, ‘Good day, Governor. We’re bolters from Botany Bay looking for passage on a ship back to civilisation,”’ James explained. “We must have a story.”

“We’ll say we’re shipwreck survivors,” Matey said complacently.

James turned to him. “What ship? Sailing under what flag?”

“English, for sure,” Will laughed. “Seeing how we don’t speak nothing else.”

“That much is certain,” James agreed. “But if one calls the ship by one name and one another, and we give different reports as to where she went down or who the captain was—you see what I mean?”

“’Tis understood,” Mary said, speaking for all of them. “A story we must have. You lay it out, James, and we’ll learn it together so we don’t give ourselves away.”

By Mary’s calculations they were within a week of Kupang when they came upon a small island with a fine little cove, waterfalls tumbling down a rock face, and no boats about to suggest human habitation. The cutter was again in need of caulking so, after exploring the island to confirm the absence of natives and crocodiles, they decided to spend a few days there, resting and repairing the boat.

It proved a good choice. Both fish and game were plentiful, requiring no great effort to feed themselves. On what Will had decided would be their last night before pushing on, the men sprawled around the fire, their muscular, sun-darkened bodies relaxed and their bellies full of food. Bados picked up his flute as he always did of an evening, and began to play a tune. Mary moved a little away from the fire to bed down the children, because the music soothed them as it soothed her. Luke rose and added wood to the fire. It blazed up, lighting the faces around and adding warmth to the moment.

“Ah, that feels good,” Cox sighed, holding his hands out to the fire.

“Like to stay here a bit, I would,” Pip said wistfully.

“Good island, this ‘un,” Matey agreed. “No bleedin’ blacks to creep up and cut your throat.”

Bados laid his flute aside and stared moodily into the fire.

“Like to get my hands on one that tries,” Scrapper boasted.

Luke gave him a playful punch on the shoulder. “You should’ve said so sooner. We could’ve let you loose on those big fellers back there in the war canoe.”

“With a musket in me mitt, you better believe it!” Scrapper yapped.

“A musket and no bleedin’ woman winkin’ her eyes at the cannibal bastards,” Matey carped.

Will sprang to his feet and gave Matey a kick that sent him sprawling. “Mind your fucking mouth!” he snarled.

Matey picked himself up, a grin on his face but with a look in his eyes that Mary had seen before. She dreaded what it might portend. Feigning an apologetic demeanour, Matey slapped Will on the back and said, “Ah, man, I meant no disrespect. Why, Miss Mary’s the best captain I ever knowed. Ain’t she, boys?”

The others murmured agreement. Will looked around like an animal at bay, then drew back his fist and punched Matey square in the mouth. Matey went down again, but this time he came up with the nearest weapon to hand: Bados’s flute. He smashed it against Will’s face.

In a flash, Bados was on Matey, choking to kill. Not until Mary’s hands grasped Bados’s wrists did the big West Indian seem to realise what he was doing. With a half-sob, he scooped up the broken flute and ran toward the beach.

There was a stunned silence. Matey threw an arm around Will’s shoulder and made a show of concern for the bruise he had made on his cheek. “Sorry, Cap’n. Reckon I been too long without a bottle. Beginnin’ to wear on my nerves, it is.”

“Ah, you’re just a wore-out old salt,” Will growled, choosing, for his own reasons, to minimise the incident by responding with an insult instead of his fists.

The rest of the men glanced at one another and away, none wanting to add to the conflagration, or to be seen taking one side or another.

Nor did Mary speak. She picked up the wooden bowls scattered about, placed them in the empty stew pot, and trudged off toward the surf to do the washing up. Pip, whose job that usually was, followed at a distance, perhaps understanding that she wanted to be alone and was only using the chore as a pretext for getting away from the men.

If it was solitude Mary sought, she did not find it on the beach. There was Bados sitting on the sand, knees drawn up to his chin, sobbing. She knelt beside him and laid a hand on his arm. She wished she had the words to express what a solace his strong, silent presence, coupled with the music, had been from the start. She knew that his nightly melodies helped not only her and the children, but the men as well, to mitigate fear and loneliness each time they laid down to sleep in a strange and dangerous place. But as this had to do with emotions which she was unaccustomed to putting into words, she remained silent, hoping her hand on his arm would convey all that.

Little by little his sobs quieted. At last he spoke. “I tell you Mary, I feel real bad. I vex before, but never so I want to kill a man. You leave me now. I don’t go with you no more.”

“If you stay here, Bados, you’ll never get back to England. Nor to the West Indies.”

He took a breath and let it out in a long and hopeless sigh. “Day I left Barbados, everybody say how I be a free man now, I gonna make my fortune and buy all my family out of bondage. But my mama, she just look at me and say, ‘Son, you been a joy.’ She done seen the future and know I never coming back.” He paused, and added with sad finality, “I ain’t no fool, Mary. This fair island, it be the closest I ever get to home.”

Mary recalled the island off the coast of Arnhem Land where she had briefly fantasised spending the rest of her life. She understood something of his attraction to this place, but now as then, she considered the practicality of such a course. “’Twould be impossible to stay alive here with nothing to start you out, Bados. Timor is but a few days further. Why not go on that far with us? Lay in some supplies and then come back.”

Bados was silent, and she could tell he was considering her suggestion. His question showed that he recognised the sense of her suggestion, as well as its flaws. “How’d I find my way back?”

“I’ll show you how to read the chart and use a compass. Once we arrive, we’ll not need them anymore. Nor the boat.”

He sat there fingering the pieces of his broken flute. “I got no schoolin’, Mary.”

“Nor I, Bados. But charts are easier to read than books, and the compass easier yet. I give you my word—”

“Miss Mary!” Pip’s squeak of alarm caused Mary and Bados to look up. Silhouetted against the firelight, they could see Will walking toward them. Both rose. Bados faded into the shadows. When Will arrived, Mary was alone, scrubbing the stew pot in the surf.

“Taking a long time to wash up, ain’t you, girl?”

“I was talking to Bados. He wants to stay here.”

“So let him stay. We don’t need him,” Will boasted, but frowned as he spoke. Mary could tell that he was visualising the next day, thinking that one step ahead, which he rarely did. “Though none’s stronger. Damn lucky he was at the oars when them savages bore down on us.”

Mary scrubbed at the iron pot with a handful of sand, then rinsed the bowls and placed them inside. Over her shoulder she said, “Our chances are better if we stick together.”

Will laughed, bitterly. “Sticking together, are we?

Sure and you’d see it that way, having them all at your beck and call.”

Mary sighed and got up off her knees. She handed Will the cast iron cooking pot to carry back to camp.

He stared at the pot moodily, then bellowed, “Don’t get uppity with me, Madam. I’m not your goddamned manservant!” He flung the pot at her feet and stalked off down the beach.

Again Mary knelt on the beach and, in the darkness, began to search for the wooden bowls which had scattered onto the sand.

Pip came to help her. “You go on back, Miss Mary,” he whispered. “I’ll rinse ‘em off again.”

Mary gave the boy’s shoulder a grateful squeeze, then picked up the heavy pot and trudged back to camp. Tired though she was, she knew that she would have trouble falling asleep, for anger burned within her. It was fed by feelings coming at her from many directions; among them this reminder that her circumstances were such that she could not even give and receive words of kindness unless they were whispered in secret.

It was the first morning on the entire journey that Mary woke not in the grey light of dawn but with morning sun blazing full in her face. She automatically threw out an arm to touch her children, but they had already left the nest. She sat up and looked about. Some of the men were still asleep, which informed her that Will had decided not to sail that day after all; else he would have wakened them early. She saw him down on the beach, checking over the boat. Charlotte was at his side. Pip was a little way off, holding Emanuel by the hand, as the child had begun to toddle.

A fire had been built, waiting, she supposed, for her to make breakfast. Neither James nor Bados were among those still sleeping. She wondered if Bados had acted on his intent to leave the group, and had disappeared into the forest for good.

She rose, poured water into the kettle and, while it came to a boil, cleaned some still-flopping fish which lay nearby in the net that had dragged them in. When the fish were cooked she moved the simple stew off the fire to cool. She picked some broad leaves from a nearby plant and used them to wrap two of the cooled fish. Then she went over a small rise and down to the beach, not where Will and the children were, but further along, where they would not see her go. She had no chance of finding Bados if he chose not to show himself, but she thought that if he saw her walking along the beach, he might come to her.

She stopped frequently to see what shells lay on the sand and what creatures might be in the tide pools. By moving so slowly, Bados, if he saw her, would have time to come out from wherever he might be hiding in the forest. She had walked about a quarter mile along the seaweed-strewn beach when she saw a trail leading into the forest. She was wondering where it might go when she glanced up and saw Bados sitting on a high bluff, staring out to sea. He gave no sign of having seen her, and indeed, was looking off in another direction. She began to climb, supposing that the bluff had been used as a lookout by others and that was where this trail must lead.

She walked slowly, pausing to look about. It was possible to see only a few feet into such dense forest. Remembering the snakes Luke had reported lying up in trees, she paid close attention to her surroundings. She used her ears as well and so knew, before the person behind her appeared, that someone was following.

It was James. He did not speak but, as she turned, he simply reached out his arms to her. And she to him. Standing as he was, a few inches lower than her on the trail, their lips, level with each other, came together naturally. They kissed as if they had done exactly this a thousand times before.

Perhaps James had, in his imagination, but Mary had never allowed herself that secret thrill. In the whole of her life she had been trained, and had trained herself, to not dream of the impossible. She had first supposed James’s love to be impossible by reason of his being better than she. When he denied that and she realised her mistake, she had continued to suppress such fantasies, judging any form of intimacy, even in her imagination, to be too great a danger.

Yet they stood now in just such danger. So passionate was their embrace, and so little attention did they give to anything else, that it might have resulted in death at the hands of their own kind as readily as from the fatal bite of a serpent. However, it was not such a horrible fate that finally parted them, but the act of two wills, accompanied by silent, gasping laughter at their own audacity.

“Did you expect that of me?” Mary asked.

“I did,” James admitted. “Because in my heart I know you.”

“I don’t know you so well,” Mary conceded, and added longingly, “But I look forward to a time when I can learn.”

“And this is not our time.” He said the words before she could, so she only nodded.

“Then let us continue on the way you were going. To see Bados, were you?”

“To persuade him to stay with us,” Mary acknowledged. “But perhaps it’s better that you go alone.”

James looked doubtful. “How do you propose to persuade him?”

Mary lifted the tobacco pouch containing the compass from where it hung between her breasts. “With this.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I told him that if he would go on as far as Timor, I’d give him the chart and compass, so he can find his way back.”

James looked surprised. “Surely he cannot read?”

“No, but he can learn to read a compass. And perhaps one of us can teach him to read the chart. It’s only a picture of land and water. Even Charlotte understands the representation of a trail in the sand.”

“Why not let him stay? England is not his home, and has treated him more than a little harshly.” James grimaced. “Seven years transported for stealing seven cucumbers!”

“We could,” Mary acknowledged. “But I would like to have him with us till we reach Timor. Which of us might now be dead if he hadn’t spied that enormous crocodile?”

“True,” James admitted. “And to leave him here alone, and with no flint for making fire, no line to make snares, no fishing net, no musket or ammunition, what chance would he have?”

“I have spoken to him of this already, and of how, once we reach the Dutch colony at Kupang, we won’t need these things anymore.” Mary took the compass from the tobacco pouch and laid it in James’s hand. “Go now. Convince him that he can learn how to use it, then bring it back to me. It’s confidence he’s wanting, nothing more. Ah, and this.” She gave him the leaf-wrapped fish. “Two bites of breakfast, one for him and one for you.”

James tucked the fish into one pocket, the compass into the other, and asked, “What about Will? He said we would sail on today.”

“Take your time,” Mary said firmly. “We shall not leave this island until Bados is ready to come with us.”

They kissed again, long and hungrily, hands roving each other’s back and pressing hard to bring their bodies close, then making space for his hand on her breast, hers on his hardness. The clothing between them intensified the ache until at last they pulled apart, both of them hurting as lovers do when parting in advance of a long separation. It went without saying that between now and their arrival in England, the opportunity to be in each other’s arms was not likely to present itself again.

It was as if Will had guessed Mary’s determination to stay until Bados agreed to rejoin them, because he made no mention of sailing that day or the next. The others must have suspected it, too, and were glad for any excuse to stay longer on an island where food was plentiful, and molesting insects were not as bad as they had been in most places. It passed without comment when, late in the afternoon of the second day, Bados appeared and joined the others for supper. No one needed to be told that on the morrow they would leave.

They sailed due west just to the north of Latitude 10° south. Timor, when they sighted it, brought a thunderous cheer. This, their dreamed-of destination, was so beautiful it took their breath away. Rather than the jungle-covered mountains which they had found so fearsome, here were green rolling hills which, had they not been graced with palm trees and fringed with broad golden beaches, would have reminded them of home. Mary picked a distinctive rock outcropping and steered them toward it, having already got Will to agree that they would rest here for another few days before coasting around the tip of Timor to the city of Kupang, which lay on the far side of the island. The reason, she had explained to him, was to give them more time to practice the story James had laid out for them.

Another reason, although she kept it from Will, was her desire to give Bados time to get his bearings. During their three-day rest on the eastern side of Timor, she found an occasion to speak to Bados alone, explaining that he had but to mark this point well. There would be no more to navigating the return than coasting back around to here, then following the compass reading due east until he reached the island where he hoped to settle.

During that final rest stop, and again on the boat as they coasted toward Kupang, they practised the story which James had devised. Time spent on the Charlotte during the voyage to Botany Bay had given all a clear idea of how mariners and officers addressed each other. Prior to that, Matey had crewed on a whaler, and was able to provide details about the workings of such ships, so it was decided to pretend that the ship from which they’d been cast adrift had been a whaler. Each person was assigned a role, which they practised with a diligence that caused Cox to laugh and claim that they were good enough to perform for the King.

“Yes,” James said with serious smile. “But our act must be of longer duration, and, if any should fail, the consequences will be more than boos. It could be as it was in days of old, when those who brought displeasure to their King risked being removed from the stage of life.”