Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [78]
But that was what he dwelt on. He imagined Mary blossoming again with good food, lying in his arms each night in a feather bed. When he got to that point of his fantasy he would find himself aroused, imagining himself kissing those small breasts he’d so often glimpsed as she suckled Charlotte.
Tench broke off abruptly from this reverie when he saw the flag had been struck on the flag pole. This signified a ship was either anchored in the cove, or had been spotted out at sea.
In great excitement he ran to the observatory where an astronomical telescope had been erected and hastily trained it on the flag pole. He could see only one man strolling by the pole and to his intense disappointment he knew it couldn’t be a ship from England, or there would be more frantic activity. It had to be the Sirius returning from Norfolk before making her trip to China.
He ran all the way back to find Captain Phillip to report it, and when the Governor said he would take his boat out to meet the ship, Tench begged to be allowed to accompany him, for at least it was a diversion from the normal routine and thinking about Mary.
They were about half-way to the Heads when they saw the longboat from the Supply being rowed towards them. Tench recognized Captain Ball making frantic gestures with his hands and his heart sank.
‘Sir,’ he said, turning to Captain Phillip, ‘prepare yourself for bad news!’
Will came haring along the beach to where Mary was washing some clothes. She looked up from her task anxiously at the sound of his pounding feet. ‘What is it?’ she yelled, hoping against hope it was news of a ship carrying provisions.
‘The Sirius has been shipwrecked,’ he shouted back.
It was some time before Will regained enough breath to explain what he’d heard down at the harbour. The Sirius had just lowered its boats loaded with provisions in Sydney Bay at Norfolk Island, when the ship drifted on to sunken rocks. Captain Hunter tried to avert a disaster by dropping the anchor, but he was too late. Before the anchor chain had tightened, she struck the coral reef that ran parallel to the shore. As the sea tore into the holds, the crew cut away the masts to lighten the ship, so she might float free, but by then there was little hope of this.
‘They sent out lines to get the men ashore,’ Will gasped out. ‘Worked till it was too dark to see any more, so I heard. Next morning they got the rest off.’
Mary was deeply shocked. Losing the Sirius was a mortal wound to the colony. How would they get provisions from China now?
‘Is everyone safe?’ she asked. Some of the women and children who had been sent there were people she’d come to care for.
Will nodded. ‘Thank God for that small mercy.’ His face broke into a smile then. ‘Some of the convicts were sent out to the ship to get the remaining animals off. They found some grog, so they lit fires and settled down for a party.’
‘Oh, Will,’ Mary sighed. ‘That’s not funny!’
‘We have to laugh otherwise we’d go under,’ he retorted indignantly. ‘And there’s another funny story too. Lieutenant Clark got knocked off the raft by a convict falling in. The convict couldn’t swim so Clark rescued him and brought him safely to shore. Then Clark beat him with a stick for jeopardizing his safety.’
Mary giggled. That to her mind was typical of Lieutenant Ralph Clark, whom she had never liked. He was a mean-spirited hypocrite who had spent most of the first year here calling all the female prisoners whores, and boring Tench and the other officers to death with tales of his wonderful wife Betsy back home. But then he’d had the nerve to take a lag wife, after all he’d said about the convict women! He was even absurd enough to name the child borne of that union Betsy, after his beloved wife.