Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [71]
This was borne out just a few days later when six Marines were hanged for stealing from the stores. It seemed they had been doing it for months, having made keys for the locks, and when one of them was on guard duty he let his friends get in to plunder.
Most of the convicts were delighted that Captain Phillip was coming down on his men just as hard as on the convicts. But to Mary it suggested that Phillip was panicking because he knew the stored food wasn’t going to last until more came from England.
As usual when a punishment took place, everyone had to be there. As Mary watched the rope put round each man’s neck, and heard the sound of the gallows floor pulled away beneath him, leaving him dangling in space, she had never felt so desperate and afraid.
To her there was nothing good about this place – corrupt guards, women getting thirty lashes just for fighting, and all the time they were slowly being starved to death. It seemed to Mary that she was trapped in hell with several hundred lunatics.
In April, however, things looked up slightly for Mary and Will, as Captain Phillip was forced by food shortages to let Will go back to the fishing, under supervision. Mary smiled grimly to herself for she had been right, they couldn’t manage without him. The catches had been tiny without his skill, and although Will very much resented being watched over, at least he had proved he was indispensable, and they got their old hut back.
Whatever the epidemic was which killed half the native population around the bay, it didn’t spread to the new colony. Only one white man died, a sailor on the Supply. Surgeon White seemed to be of the opinion it was smallpox, but how it had come was a mystery. If they had brought it with them on the ships, it would have shown up far earlier.
Then in early May the gloom in the whole colony was lifted for a while by the arrival of the Sirius from Cape Town. Although she was mainly carrying flour, not substantial provisions like meat, she brought good news that other ships were on their way, and long-awaited mail for those lucky enough to have friends and family who could write.
Yet the sight of the ship anchored out in the bay seemed to have a bad effect on Will. Mary found him on the shore on many an afternoon before he went out fishing, just staring out at the Sirius. When she tried to speak of it he snapped at her, and when he wasn’t working he didn’t come looking for her and Charlotte as he once did.
One day, early in the afternoon, Mary was taking the clean washing back to the barracks, having left Charlotte playing with another child, when she heard Will’s loud voice coming from James Martin’s hut. Mary guessed they’d managed to get some rum from somewhere.
Mary had conflicting opinions about James, the Irish horse thief. She had been delighted to see him again, and Sam Bird too, for the friendships formed on the Dunkirk were the basis of a kind of family here. James was a very amusing and charming man, intelligent and articulate, and able to read and write. But he was a devil for the drink, and women.
Mary recognized him as the sort who led others into trouble but usually managed to wriggle or charm his way out of any blame. He wasn’t bound by loyalty; James Martin looked after himself first and foremost. She felt he was a bad influence on Will.
Mary wasn’t by nature a snoop, but Will worried her when he drank, as he became boastful and often quite belligerent. She also wanted to find out how he and James had acquired the drink; if he was stealing fish to get it she wanted to know in advance.
There wasn’t anyone else around, so Mary crept round the back of James’s hut. If anyone came by she would make out she had just come out of the bushes after relieving herself.
James was talking