Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [112]
Jamie Cox looked up in astonishment. Bill narrowed his eyes, looking daggers at Will. Sam bristled visibly.
‘I’d say she knows more than all of us,’ James remarked in a languid drawl. ‘But for her we’d be fish food now. But let’s have no more of this. Put it to a vote.’
William Moreton looked at Will, perhaps expecting him to make some kind of speech to regain the loyalty of his former followers. But either Will believed he didn’t need to do that, or he knew the outcome already, for he folded his arms sullenly.
‘All those in favour of going on tomorrow, raise your hand,’ William said.
Only Jamie Cox and Will kept theirs down.
‘Motion carried,’ William said, and smirked with self-importance.
‘Don’t cry to me if the boat don’t make it,’ Will said with a shrug. He then turned to Mary with a look of pure malice. ‘And don’t you blame me, girl, if the babbies die!’
There were times after they left White Bay when Mary was tortured by the memory of Will’s words, for there were many more terrific storms which came on so suddenly they had no chance of getting ashore. Each time she saw her children’s stricken faces and heard their shrieks of pure terror, she asked herself what had possessed her to gamble with their lives.
Yet the need to protect them gave her the strength to fight back when she saw the men weakening. Jamie, Samuel Bird and Nat were the worst. They were all small men, with much less muscle than the others, and they couldn’t swim either, which made them even more frightened. In turn she praised, implored, bullied and goaded them. She swore at them from her position at the tiller, screamed that they were to bail and keep bailing if they didn’t want to die.
But just when she was beginning to think, as the men clearly were, that it was just a matter of time before death claimed them all, they came into calmer waters. On their left was the shore, to their right a huge reef, and the sea between was calm as a mill-pond.
‘Thank the Lord,’ William Moreton shouted in an unexpected display of emotion. ‘I really thought we were done for.’
Yet even this new calm sea wasn’t without hazards, for there were dozens of tiny islands and coral atolls to run aground on. They went ashore on one of the islands, only to find no fresh water, but they cooked up some rice with the remaining water, and when the tide went out set out across the rocks to look for more.
To their astonishment they saw dozens of giant turtles going up on the shore to lay their eggs. The men quickly killed some of them, and as the tide came back in, they hauled them back to their island.
That night they dined well on the first fresh meat they’d eaten since setting out from Sydney. As they fell asleep with full bellies for once, they were rewarded further by the sound of rain filling the upturned shells they’d hopefully left out.
In the days that followed, as James and Will caulked up the boat again with soap, the others caught more turtles and smoked the meat over the fire to take with them.
Bill had done a lot of poaching in his youth, and when he saw a kind of fowl that nested in the ground, he set out to catch them, with Nat as his accomplice. Mary found herself laughing as she watched them, for they certainly made the oddest partnership. Pugnacious, muscular Bill with his bald head glistening in the sun crouched down on the ground making hand signals to pretty boy Nat to drive the birds towards him. But they made a good team, and caught many birds, and Bill taught Nat the art of plucking them too.
Mary found more cabbage leaves, and fruit. She didn’t know what it was, but it tasted wonderful, and the children, who were both in a poor, listless condition, began to revive.
After six days’ rest they took off again, stopping every now and then to search for more turtles. They didn’t find any, but there was shellfish and plenty of fresh water.
Everyone had long ago stopped asking Will when they would come to the end of this gigantic land mass. Where they would make for in England was