Tears of the Moon - Di Morrissey [35]
Olivia sighed. It seemed too big an issue about which she knew very little, but she resolved to learn what she could and wished she could speak the local language. Sitting peacefully in the shade by her child, she watched the men paddle along the shore over the patterns of light on the moving surface of the water. She heard the call of strange birds, felt the humid breeze lift a strand of hair, and absorbed the rhythm of the place while she stoically waited for the return of her husband. She felt no need for anything further in her life at this moment. The sense of oneness was calming and she wondered why she’d never experienced it before in her life.
Some distance north, a small white schooner drew into the sandy shallow water of a tiny island close to the mainland where sandy bays and inlets were a rich trepang hunting ground. The island was two kilometres long and half a kilometre wide but the main beach was a hive of activity. A small fleet of praus from the Dutch East Indies, a scattering of huts and the smoke of many fires along the beach gave the island a settled air. John Tyndall, master of the sailing schooner Shamrock, grinned as he took in the scene and with a practised efficiency lowered the mainsail, then held the bow into the wind. His Malay crew hand, Ahmed, stood by the anchor chain as the boat drifted towards the shore. When it was calculated to be close enough that they could row ashore in a minute at low tide, Ahmed hit the securing pin with a hammer and the anchor chain rattled over the side with a clatter that set the seagulls on the beach shrieking into the air. Tyndall relaxed at the tiller and once again scanned the shore, recognising some of the boats. This was the life, he reflected. A tropical paradise, more or less, and a chance to do a little business. The problem however, was that it was indeed a little business and John Tyndall yearned to do big business.
He found life full of surprises, delighted in its unpredictability and had decided there was no such thing as coincidences in this world. It was all a matter of recognising a passing possibility of a new direction and boldly grabbing it. As soon as you settled on a plan, those so-called coincidences fell into your path. He was told he had the luck of the Irish, he always said it was a matter of ‘jumping off the cliff, knowing without a shadow of a doubt, you’d fly!’
John Tyndall sometimes marvelled at where life had led him with its joys, sadness and adventures. Apprenticed to a Belfast shipwright the sea had always been in his blood. He’d gone to sea on trawlers as a boy. Being a bright lad, he had learned quickly and had graduated to working on windjammers crossing the Atlantic where he earned his Second Mate’s certificate. He was never short of female attention but Tyndall, despite his sea roving life, was shy in his flirtations and hesitant about any serious involvement—which had made him a sitting duck for the ambitions of pretty Amy O’Reilly. She worked as a serving girl in a boarding house and what she lacked in formal education she made up for in streetwise survival tactics and a deep ambition to make something of her life. John Tyndall with his good looks, cheerful disposition and blossoming career presented a chance to break away. She contrived to cross his path and, as she planned, he found her charms and beauty irresistible. Before he knew it, at twenty Tyndall found himself with a pregnant wife who urged him to improve and change their circumstances. He snatched the opportunity to sail to Australia to find what opportunities existed.
Upon his arrival in Sydney, he obtained work immediately with a shipwright in Balmain