Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [115]
‘Shall I wake the others?’ she asked. ‘Or let them sleep on?’
‘Bloody well wake them,’ he said, his once powerful voice a mere husky croak, a tear running down his whiskered cheek. ‘God knows it’s something worth waking for.’
Chapter fourteen
It was late that same afternoon when Will sailed the cutter into a harbour. None of them knew or even cared if it was Kupang. It had buildings and people, which meant food and water, that was enough.
They were all in a pitiful state. Their clothes were ragged, their skin and hair stiff with salt, their skin peeling from long exposure to the elements. They sagged in their seats, too weak and exhausted even to smile at the prospect of salvation.
Mary’s tongue was swollen from thirst and she barely had the strength to hold Emmanuel in her arms, but when she saw the throng of people gathered on the wharf looking curiously at the unkempt occupants of the cutter, her mind sharpened again.
‘Whatever happens, remember to stick to the story,’ she hissed at the men. ‘If we let the truth slip we’ll be sent back there.’
She didn’t think this could be Kupang, as Detmer had said it was owned by the Dutch. She couldn’t see anyone white, they were all brown-or yellow-skinned, but at least they bore no resemblance to the savage natives back in New South Wales.
‘Water!’ William Moreton called out. ‘Water!’
His cry, whether actually understood or not, had a galvanizing effect on the bystanders. One man came forward with a hooked pole and guided the boat into a berth. A small, half-naked brown man leaped down on to the boat, taking the rope and throwing it back to his companions on the wharf. Then, miraculously, a wooden bucket of water was passed down.
All the men lunged at the bucket, rocking the boat furiously. But Will filled a mug and passed it to Mary. She let Charlotte have the first drink, and she glugged it down so fast that much of it ran down her chest. Emmanuel was almost unconscious, so Mary had to coax him by dipping her fingers in the water and getting him to suck them until he rallied enough to drink. Finally Mary got some, and nothing in her whole life had ever felt so good as the sensation of cool water running over her parched, swollen tongue and throat.
Although she couldn’t understand a word of what the crowd were saying, she sensed by their frantic gesticulating and the tone of their shrill voices that they were in total sympathy with her, her children and the men. She tried to stand but she was so weak she fell back, and from then on everything became disjointed and hazy. She sensed rather than felt arms lifting her. It seemed to her she was laid down on solid ground, and then more water was given to her. Something pungent-smelling was thrust close to her face. She could hear a babble of voices around her, then she was lifted again, to be put down on something softer, and she could no longer see the sky above.
‘Charlotte, Emmanuel,’ she called out in panic.
A brown-faced woman was leaning over her, wiping her face with a cool, damp cloth. She spoke in a foreign tongue, yet whatever the words meant they were as soothing and kindly as the cloth, and Mary felt that at last she was safe enough to sleep.
She woke some time later to find herself lying on a mat, Emmanuel on one side of her, Charlotte on the other. A candle was burning on a low table, and she raised herself slightly to see a woman with glossy dark hair and brown skin asleep on another mat across the room.
Although the candle shed little light, Mary sensed by the peaceful way the children slept that they had been fed and washed. The room appeared to be a hut, larger than the one she and Will had lived in back in Sydney Cove, but similar. Tears of gratitude welled up in her eyes. A stranger had taken them in and cared for them, and she wished she knew this woman’s language to be able to thank her.
The following days were something like being lost in a fog, which now and then cleared enough for Mary to know she was being fed drinks and soft, mushy food. Through the fog she heard