Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [134]
Leaving Charlotte lying on a mat on the deck, Mary went over to the rail to look. It was cheering to see Cape Town again, for she had good memories of Charlotte’s christening here. Of course she had hope then, to be a pioneer in New South Wales had seemed more of a huge adventure than a punishment.
But the thirst for adventure was long gone. All she hoped for now was that Charlotte would recover, and to be treated kindly on the last leg of the voyage home.
Yet despite her jaundiced views, she couldn’t help but feel some emotion at seeing an English ship. The Gorgon was graceful, its deck scrubbed almost white, rope neatly coiled and brass gleaming in the sunshine. She reminded Mary of similar ships she had admired in Plymouth – foreign vessels never seemed to be so spruce and polished. With Table Mountain as its backdrop, she couldn’t imagine a prettier sight. Yet however lovely the Gorgon looked, the chances were she would have to endure hardships aboard just as great as those she’d experienced on the way here.
She did see Will buried, and heard a prayer said over him, even if it was a communal grave and the prayer in Dutch, so she couldn’t understand it. But just as she was putting her few remaining possessions together and thinking of escape again, the guards appeared. They chained her, right there in the hospital, and took her and Charlotte to the guard ship where the other men were being held.
Mary’s grief at Emmanuel’s death, which she supposed she’d contained while she nursed Will, erupted as soon as she was locked up again. James and the other men were distraught at the death of Emmanuel, but they had no such sympathy for Will. To be imprisoned with them again, in stifling conditions, for almost a month, with water rationed to only a couple of pints a day and hearing them constantly blaming Will for their predicament, was too much to bear. She got so low that she even wished for death.
She rallied a little when she heard that she and Charlotte were to go on the Horssen to Cape Town, along with the crew of the Pandora. James and the other men, along with Captain Edwards and the mutineers from the Bounty, were to go on the Hoornwey. Despite the strong bonds she had with her friends, she was relieved that she and Charlotte would at least be alone together, away from the men’s bitterness.
But fever had slunk aboard the ships, along with the provisions for the journey, and it showed no distinction between prisoners, officers, their wives and children, or crew. Almost daily Mary heard that yet another man, woman or child had gone down with it. It wasn’t long before both she and Charlotte became ill too.
Fortunately for Mary, the captain of the Horssen was humane, and brave enough to defy Captain Edwards’s orders that all prisoners were to be shackled and kept below for the entire voyage. When he was told that Mary and Charlotte were sick, he had Mary released from her chains so she could take care of her child.
It was only then, touched by this act of kindness, that Mary began to worry about how her friends were faring on their ship. All of them had looked appalling back in the guard ship and it was some wonder, after being kept below for weeks in fetid conditions, that they hadn’t already succumbed to the fever. She knew Captain Edwards wouldn’t show any of them mercy, and she was desperately afraid that not all of their number would survive to see Cape Town.
‘You’ll be going home with your mates,’ Jim said cheerfully. ‘So buck up now, and let’s see that pretty smile.’
Mary wondered what this pint-sized sailor with red hair had between his ears, for however kindly he was, he appeared not to see the gravity of her situation. Charlotte was very sick with fever, and they were going home to England for Mary to be hanged and Charlotte orphaned. Could he really believe she ought to see the last leg of the journey as some kind of party?
‘Are you always so jolly?’ she asked, hoping he wouldn’t note the sarcasm in her tone.
‘Jolly Jim,