Cry of the Curlew: The Frontier Series 1 (31 page)

TO TOUCH
THE FACE
OF THE
DREAMING

1867

TWENTY-NINE

T
he
Osprey
tacked between the great jagged walls of coral whose stone-hard fingers promised to rip and shred any ship foolish enough to come within its reach.

On either side of the Macintosh barque, the massive rolling waves of the Pacific Ocean crashed onto the jutting coral heads with loud booming smacks that carried to the tense black-skinned sailors. The ship’s timbers creaked ominously as she wallowed for a short gut-wrenching moment in an eddy in the fast-running waters of the channel leading from the deepwater seas surrounding the flat and tiny jungle-covered island.

With an almost human sigh, the tough little ship was swept safely forward into the calmer waters of the island’s lagoon where, with a rattle of her anchors dropping over the bow and stern, she floated serenely in crystal-clear waters gently lapping at her teak hull, and drifted off a white sandy beach of finely ground coral particles. Her presence in the lagoon was as ominous as that of a predator sea-eagle.

Captain Morrison Mort stood beside his first mate, Jack Horton, and watched with morose interest the born-to-the-ocean islanders scuttle nimbly in the rigging of his ship and scramble with the self-assuredness of their immortality to furl the sails. Mort fiddled with the hilt of his sword at his side, as was his habit whenever he contemplated a forthcoming action.

Four years had passed since he had been given command of the converted barque and the four years had been good to the former officer of the Queensland Native Mounted Police. His long blond hair was swept back from his face and tied in a ponytail which reached down to the stiff collar of his serge blue frockcoat. Years of exposure to the tropical sun had tanned his face to an almost golden hue like his hair. Age did not seem to be a factor in his life as he had the youthful look of a man ten years younger than his mid-thirties. It was a handsome face, almost aristocratic, and it was a face set off by the pale blue eyes that burned with an intensity of their own . . . or that of the devil. A man of spartan diet, his slim body under the unsuitable frockcoat was whiplash taut with an abundance of nervous energy and his demeanour unmistakably that of a man used to command.

The Macintosh shipping company had paid him generously for the cargoes he had delivered consistently to the markets in Brisbane Town and the former policeman had been able to accumulate a modest amount stashed in a bank account in Sydney. In another five years, he calculated that he would be able to shift his accumulated savings into an investment in a small property at the outer-Sydney village of Penrith. Maybe an innkeeper’s licence to sustain him into retirement when that day came. Maybe even more for a prosperous farm to provide him with a certain degree of respectability, in the snobbish social circles of colonial Sydney. Perhaps he could find a wealthy widow who would be smitten by his charm and maintain him in the genteel style that he aspired to. Women were such foolish creatures, easily swayed with a few choice words of flattery . . .

‘Launch the boats,’ he ordered quietly to Horton, who passed on his captain’s command in the pidgin English of the South Pacific. The nine dark-skinned crew from the Loyalty Islands, picked for the raiding party, responded with eagerness for what they knew was to come.

The two longboats splashed into the placid waters, scattering tiny silver-scaled fish that had gathered in shoals around the
Osprey
’s stern, as the red ball of the sun was disappearing behind the watery horizon to the west. And, as the sun was swallowed by the ocean, the beach now marked a line between the ominous dark jungle and the lagoon. The rapidly approaching tropical night promised to be balmy. The ocean breezes would then waft onshore, through the lush verdant jungles, bringing relief from the shimmering glare of the day.

‘You can distribute the arms now, Mister Horton,’ Mort said, leaving to join the Loyalty Islanders who were gathering on the deck in their prearranged teams ready to board the boats. He could see that Horton had anticipated his routine by organising to have the sea chest hauled on deck. The excited Islanders were like children laughing and chattering among themselves as they bustled around the big wood plank chest bound with iron hoops and secured with a huge padlock.

Horton took a key from the broad leather belt around his waist and with a flourish opened the lid of the big chest. Eager hands snatched an assigned weapon: a single-shot rifle that chambered a combustible cartridge or a short-handled steel axe.

Under normal circumstances the weapons were kept secured in Mort’s cabin, as he did not trust his crew. Close to their home islands, the natives tended to grow restless and the idea of a sudden and violent mutiny was never far from their minds. The blackbirder carried items more valuable than gold to the Islanders: tobacco, cloth and, of course, the new Westley Richards carbines. The breech-loading rifles, with their capacity for rapid fire, were a vast improvement over the slower rate of the ancient muzzle-loaders previously carried by earlier island traders. The possession of such rapid-firing weapons could easily make their owner a master of the perennial inter-island warfare that had plagued the South Pacific for centuries.

But the
Osprey
was not a trading ship in the strict sense. She was now one of the infamous blackbirders that scoured the South Pacific in search of strong black bodies to toil in the sugar and cotton plantations of Queensland.

Since Captain Robert Towns had landed the first cargo of South Pacific labourers at Brisbane the trade for indentured labour had brought out the ruthless and tough South Sea adventurers – Americans from the Marianas and Australians from all ports on the east coast of the continent. Tough men of dubious reputation, with varied and colourful backgrounds, they shared the common bond of ruthlessness in pursuit of their trade in human bodies.

Recruiting labour from the South Pacific islands varied from wooing aboard recruits with promises of riches in exchange for labour in far-off Queensland to actual kidnapping and, often enough, killing those refusing to leave their island homes. It was a means of terrorising others who might be reluctant to accept the blackbirders’ contracts.

The night’s forthcoming action was in the latter category, as the cursed missionaries had warned the Islanders to stay away from the blackbirders.

Mort had clashed with the resident Presbyterian missionary of the island chain on a previous occasion and the missionary, the Reverend John Macalister, had become a thorn in his side.

Fearless and fiery, Macalister had influential contacts in Sydney who viewed blackbirding as a polite euphemism for slavery. Did not the overseers of the Queensland plantations ride on horses, and carry guns and whips, to ensure that the last drop of sweat was exacted from the black men labouring under the hot sun in the fields? Did not this seem reminiscent of the Southern cotton plantations of America before their bloody Civil War?

Tonight Captain Mort and his raiding party would be in and off the island before the missionary knew they had been there. Mort knew that the missionary was two islands away and news of the raid would reach him well after the
Osprey
was over the horizon.

Tonight’s choice of tactics appealed to Mort, as they were little different from the tactics he had employed when dispersing the Aboriginal tribes of central Queensland years earlier. There would be killing to take native heads as a valuable commodity to use as barter with native tribes on other islands. But they would also take prisoners for sale in Brisbane’s kanaka markets. Raiding the village on the other side of the tiny island would be like throwing a net in the sea for fish. After the raid they would sort out their catch – those who lived and those who died.

When the weapons had been distributed among the crew, Mort issued his final instructions to his hulking first mate, who was the only person the paranoid captain trusted. But it could not be said that either man liked the other as theirs was a mutual respect born out of a knowledge of each other’s inherent violence.

Horton had personally witnessed Mort’s swift and violent temper with any infractions of his rules, which were enforced violently and brutally with the flat of his sword or, on occasions, with its point. Horton preferred to use his fists or a knotted rope knout to enforce discipline. And besides the disciplinary nature of their mutual respect, both men were bound in an unholy pact of torture and murder.

The unholy pact had been made when the first native girl was taken aboard the barque in ’65. Horton had heard her screams coming from Mort’s cabin when they were out to sea. The crew had turned deaf to the young girl’s cries and had cowered on the deck under the fierce gaze of the first mate as none dared interfere in the ‘captain’s pleasure’.

The first mate had been instructed to ensure their silence for a share in the ‘entertainment’ in the cabin. Horton had waited with lustful anticipation for his chance to join Mort. The captain was probably just ‘teasing’ the girl with a hot candle, Horton thought uneasily. Or squeezing her nipples just a little roughly. Nothing really serious.

The agonised screams tapered to a whimpering and Mort had called softly to his first mate to enter the cabin. When he did so, it was not as he had expected.

The young native girl was stripped naked and strapped face down over the old-style whipping bench. Although he was used to inflicting pain on women, he had never expected to see the extent a man could go in extracting pleasure from pain as Mort had perfected.

The captain stood naked behind the helpless girl with his body slick with the dying girl’s blood. His eyes glittered with a feverish light, like the lanterns of hell shining out of a grinning skull. When Horton stepped inside the cabin, he sealed forever a perverted and demonic pact with the devil incarnate.

The young girl was beyond even terror. Her eyes rolled back into her head as Mort slowly passed the sharp tip of the blade through the fleshy parts of her thighs. The tightly restrained girl had tensed in a futile effort to resist the blade. Her agonised scream penetrated the gag in her mouth as he withdrew the blade and blood flowed down her leg forming a pool around the base of the bench. Horton could see the girl’s body had been punctured in many places. Mort stepped back with a maniacal smile to admire his work and gestured to Horton to take his pleasure.

The first mate overcame his initial shock to take his turn. He stepped behind the girl and dropped his trousers and gripped the girl by her slim hips. Grunting like a pig, he raped her with brutal thrusts until his back arched and he shuddered violently. He was vaguely aware that he had heard Mort crooning strange words to the victim as he had taken his pleasure. Words about never being able to laugh at little boys when they were hurting and only wanted love. Words of a madman . . .

He pulled his trousers up as Mort took his place with arrogant casualness. The sharp point of his sword slid between the girl’s legs and even the hardened criminal from The Rocks could not restrain the involuntary gasp of sympathy for the girl’s imminent excruciating agony.

With a sudden and powerful thrust, Mort forced the sword into the girl until it was buried to the hilt. She screamed with a final despairing voice for the hell that had come to her on earth. Mercifully the sword ruptured her heart so that she died relatively quickly.

It would not be the last time Horton would witness the hideous ritual. The second time came easier for the first mate and thenceforward he was a devotee of Mort’s twisted and brutal rituals with the young island girls.

The longboats grounded on the coral beach as a huge yellow moon rose into the night sky obliterating the stars with its brilliant glow. The tropical moon was welcomed by the blackbirders who assembled silently on the beach. They were no longer like excited and chattering children. They were now what they had once been in their own lands – warriors stalking an enemy village. Mort had calculated they would be in position well before first light.

He gazed over the calm lagoon at the
Osprey
and could see that she was perfectly silhouetted by the rising moon. Under other circumstances, the silhouette of his ship against the big round yellow moon would have been a beautiful picture worthy of a romantic painting. But the kanaka ship had long lost her soul so that the silhouette took on a black and sinister shape and there was little that was romantic about the intentions of the blackbirding captain and his raiding party.

He then glanced back at the longboats, resting with their bows on the beach, and decided that they did not need concealing in the jungle, which pleased his crew as the longboats were heavy to haul up from the water.

Mort left two of his men with rifles on the beach to guard the boats before leading the remainder of his raiding party into the inky blackness of the tropical rainforest. They would march in single file along a native track through the jungle until they came to the village, where they would halt and fan out into a U-shaped formation for the attack. Then they would sweep through the sleeping village and the U-formation would close to a circle trapping everyone inside.

If all went well, his men would take young men and women as prisoners. Later they would be ‘convinced’, after they were well out to sea, that being indentured was a preferable choice to attempting to swim a hundred miles home through shark-infested waters. Those who resisted at the village were to be slain. Mort’s men carried with their weapons ropes for securing prisoners and axes for taking heads.

From the deck of the barque, Horton had watched the longboats run ashore on the beach. The rising moon had cast a silver path to the shore. He could see the distant landing party form up on the coral sand, then plunge into the jungle. There was little for him to do until their return in the early morning except ensure the watch did not go to sleep and that the small brass cannon at the
Osprey
’s stern was manned at all times.

Precautions were necessary in the waters hostile to blackbirders. The first mate was aware that sandalwood ships, previously visiting the islands, had fallen victim to the swift war canoes of the fierce island warriors. He suspected that the captains of the unfortunate ships had been lax in keeping sentry duty. He had no intention of repeating the mistake, as headhunting and cannibalism were still practised in the islands despite the missionaries’ zealous attempts to stamp out their ancient and traditional ways.