Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [74]
‘Don’t take on so, Mary,’ Will said, trying to comfort her. ‘He’ll be out of the way there.’
‘But there’s children there too,’ she reminded him. ‘Including little Henrietta, Jane’s baby. You explain to me why you can be flogged just for insolence, but hurting a little girl isn’t thought a real crime.’
‘I don’t know,’ Will said, shaking his head. ‘Any more than I don’t know why they still keep sending a couple of men out to watch me fish. If they weren’t there, I’d sail right out the bay and get a better catch.’
‘We have to think again about escape,’ Mary said fiercely.
‘How can we do that with a little ’un on the way?’ he replied, tenderly patting her belly.
‘Because of this little ’un,’ she retorted. ‘Don’t you want something better for him?’
In November the whole colony buzzed with the news that Lieutenant Bradley and Captain Keltie of the Sirius had captured two natives on Captain Phillip’s instructions.
The captured men were called Bennelong and Colbee, and it was discovered they had no wives or children. Lieutenant Bradley, the officer responsible for their capture, got an orphaned native boy who had been taken in by Surgeon White to explain to the men that they weren’t going to be harmed.
Mary watched the whole proceeding with amazement. She had always thought that abducting anyone against their will amounted to harm. She was also sure that the two natives would be even more alarmed when they were subjected to being washed, shaved, dressed in clothes and shackled to prevent their escape.
Just a few days later, news got round that both men had managed to free themselves from their shackles. Colbee got clean away, but Bennelong was caught. The majority of the prisoners found all this highly amusing. They didn’t consider Bennelong to be a person with feelings, more an animal which had to be caged. But Mary was sickened by it – there was something about the tall, well-built black man that touched her. She could imagine his confusion at the peculiar world he’d been dragged into. His people weren’t confined in any way. Home was the temporary shelter of a cave or a mud and bark ‘humpie’. They didn’t have kings or princes in their tribes, every man was equal to the next, so how could he possibly understand the white man’s class distinctions, or his lust for wealth, power and possessions?
Mary saw Bennelong as being in a very similar position to herself, and as such they could be allies. It struck her that if she could show him ways to use his captivity to his advantage, in return he might be persuaded to help her and Will escape.
The weeks went slowly by, and with each one Mary felt more desperate. There were no extra rations here for pregnant women as on the Charlotte, and she was so hungry that she often went searching for the grubs and insects the natives had shown her. During December and January it was blazing hot, she would be wakened at dawn by the sun beating down on the hut’s roof, and there was no respite all day until sunset.
Only the relationship she was forming with Bennelong gave her a little hope. With words of his language she learned from the children she had befriended, she was able to suggest to him that if he played along with Captain Phillip his leg irons would be removed and he could become important to the white man. Bennelong seemed to understand what she meant; on one occasion he showed her half a bottle of rum he’d been given and grinned broadly. He appeared to be happy to stay in the settlement as long as more of it was forthcoming.
Mary knew it was too soon to attempt to enrol his help in any escape plan. Besides, it was impossible when she was so heavily pregnant. There was no possibility of collecting and storing food either, and anyway there were no ships in the harbour. Both the Sirius and the Supply had gone, taking ninety-six male and twenty-five female convicts, as well as twenty-five children, to Norfolk Island in an effort to eke out the rations a little longer. The Sirius was then going on to China to try to get desperately