The Potato Factory (88 page)

'Year!' Esmeralda called.

'What is it then?' Sam Goodhead asked.

Mary told him that she needed someone who wouldn't talk about it to take her as far as it was possible to go up the Kermandie River and thereafter to give her, if possible, some directions which would take her to the high mountains. 'That's all, a boatman what will keep his gob shut and some directions possibly.'

Sam Goodhead whistled. 'And you'll give us what?'

'The whole consignment o' beer I brought,' Mary said.

Sam Goodhead sighed. 'I'm sorely tempted, lass.'

Esmeralda turned from her pots. 'You'll do no such thing, Sam!' she shouted.

Sam Goodhead shrugged. 'If I did that, Mary, it be the same as killin' you. Ya can't take such a journey all alone. Ya can't even take a journey like that with a platoon o' troopers. I'm sorry, lass, it be suicide!'

Mary picked up an empty bottle of Tomahawk and read from the back label. Then she told them about the abduction of Tommo and Hawk and the news that Hawk, at least, had been captured by a wild man and had been seen by some Aboriginals in the region of the Hartz Mountains.

'Them blacks are a lyin', thievin' bunch. Most be now locked away, thank Gawd, but there still be a few 'round 'ere. Ya can't trust 'em though,' Sam said. His pipe had gone dead and he now set about scraping the spent tobacco from the top of the bowl and relighting what was left.

'Sam, I'm going anyway, all you can do is make it easier!' Mary cried.

Eventually she convinced Sam Goodhead that nothing would keep her from looking for Hawk.

'We've a lad works fer me at the pub, he 'as a boat and will keep 'is gob shut if I tells 'im,' the publican said. 'You'd best leave at first light, that way the town won't known yer gorn.' He puffed at his pipe. 'Though it won't take long before the bloody timber getters know!' He sighed. 'Gawd 'elp ya, Mary Abacus, yer a brave woman, and if I didn't know better, I'd say a very foolish one! If ya gets back alive I'll take yer beer as bonus. If ya doesn't, which be more than likely, we'll use the money fer a tombstone, though I'll vouch yer body won't be lyin' beneath it!'

Mary was surprised to see that Esmeralda was quietly weeping in the corner.

*

A heavy mist lay over the water as Mary stood on the shore waiting for a lad she knew only as Tom. She heard the slow splash of oars through the fog and soon the outline of a small, flat-bottomed boat appeared through the swirling vapour. Behind it was a second boat, a smaller dinghy, attached by a rope to the boat the boy was rowing. The boy shipped the oars and Mary pulled the boat onto the shore and stepped into it. The young lad standing midships took her canvas bag and stowed it in the bow, and held his hand out to steady her as she seated herself in the stern. Then, without saying a word, he pushed the boat back into deeper water, pulled it around with one oar until the boat pointed upstream, and began to row.

The Kermandie was a slow-flowing river, but rowing against the current with another skiff in tow was not an easy matter, and every half hour Tom beached the little boats and, his chest puffing violently, was forced to rest. About nine of the clock the mist lifted and the huge trees, which had appeared simply as shadowy outlines in the misted landscape, now showed clearly on either shore. Mary found herself locked into a narrow ribbon of water walled as surely and steeply by the giant eucalypts as if the trees had been sheer cliffs of solid rock. A flock of yellow-tailed black cockatoos flew over at one point, their tinny screeching the only sound they'd heard since leaving but for the lap of the oars in the water and once the flap of a flock of chestnut teal as they rose in alarm from the water. The sun was now well up and Mary worked herself out of her coat. They passed a black cormorant on a dead branch, its wings spread to the new sun, and soon after a white-faced heron stood on the shore, its long neck and sharp-beaked head moving in slow jerks, made curious by the slap of the oars. Though the trees on either side of the river still looked cold and dark, the glare from the water and the sun overhead made Mary feel uncomfortably hot. Tom's shirt was dark with sweat and his long, lank hair lay flat against his head. Mary saw beads of perspiration cutting thin streaks down his dirty neck.

The further they travelled the more dense the trees became. Giant prehistoric tree ferns, some of them forty feet high, grew at the water's edge, and occasionally they'd hear the splash of an unseen creature plop into the water from the riverbank. At one stage Mary, intimidated by her surroundings, whispered to Tom simply so that she might make some sort of human contact. But he held a finger to his lips. Once, about an hour out from the settlement, they heard the sound of an axe striking. Sharp, regular echoes seemed to bounce off the trees, though from somewhere much deeper into the forest. Mary was not sure whether the sound was frightening or comforting, but Tom shipped oars for a few moments and listened while the boat drifted backwards in the current. Then, Tom taking great care with his strokes, they moved on again.

After four hours with regular rests they came to a waterfall and Tom pulled the boats into shore.

'This be it, missus, we can't go further,' he shouted, his voice almost lost in the crash and tumble of water over rock.

Mary stepped onto the shore and Tom pulled the boat fully into the little pebbled beach, untied the smaller dinghy and dragged it also onto the safety of the river-bank. Then, straining mightily, he pulled the first dinghy into a clump of reeds and fern, piling the branches of dead trees over it until it was impossible to see. He placed three rocks close to each other, two together and one pointing to where the boat was hidden.

'I'll be back for the boat in ten days!' he shouted, pointing to the fern and reeds where it lay concealed.

Mary nodded and handed the lad a pound. He grinned, his work well rewarded. 'Thank 'ee, ma'am, Gawd bless 'ee now!' he shouted, touching the forelock of damp hair. Then he pushed the smaller dinghy back into the water. The tiny boat turned in the churning current at the foot of the falls, then the oars dug in and he steadied it, waved briefly and began to row away.

Mary watched as he disappeared around a bend in the river, rowing lazily in the firm current now driven faster by the falls. Then she rolled up her coat and strapped it with the blankets resting on top of her canvas bag, slipping her arms through its straps so that it sat firmly on her slim back. She stood for a moment and held the Waterloo medal in her hand, half praying that a pair of green rosellas might suddenly fly over as a sign, but nothing disturbed the bright blue cloudless sky overhead.

She had a map which Sam Goodhead had drawn, or perhaps obtained from elsewhere, and it showed a path leading directly from the waterfall in a direction due west. It took Mary some time to find the path, for it was much overgrown with bracken and fern. She soon stopped to take the axe from her pack, and her going was tediously slow. Though it was not past ten in the morning the forest was dark as though already deep into the afternoon, and as she travelled further into the giant trees she began to feel the weight of the journey on her mind.

For the first time Mary realised that she had no idea what she was doing or how she would find Hawk. Above her the trees towered two hundred feet into the air and the wind in the high canopy gave off the sound of endless waves beating against a lonely shore. At noon she stopped beside a small stream, ate a little of her biscuit and drank from the mountain water. The straps of her canvas bag had cut into her shoulders, she was already badly scratched about the hands and face, and her bonnet was saturated with perspiration.

At nightfall Mary was still within the forest and the track had become almost impossible to find, so she halted beside a small stream some twenty yards distance from the path, marking several trees with the blade of the axe so that she might find her way back in the morning. She ate a little more of the hard biscuit and some dried meat, lit a small fire and boiled tea in her billy. The night became bitterly cold but Mary could not take the chance of going to sleep with a fire. She doused the fire, wrapped herself in both blankets and still wearing her coat she fell into a fitful sleep. She was exhausted, and the night sounds did not unduly disturb her for they were no different to those she had heard so often on her own mountain.

Mary woke up with the sun cutting through the misted trees and lay for a moment, all her senses suddenly alert for she could hear a most familiar sound. It was friendly to her ear until a moment later she realised where she was. She'd heard the sawing of Peter De-graves' timber cutters a thousand times on the mountain, a cross-cut saw being worked in a sawing pit. But now she realised it was coming from close by. Had she continued on another five minutes along the path the previous night, she would have stumbled right into a timber getters' camp.

She folded the blankets and packed her bag and, with her heart beating fiercely, she drank from the stream and then regained the path. She crept along until she saw the camp ahead, four bark huts in a forest clearing. She could see several children playing and a pig tied to a stake and once a woman came out of one of the huts and yelled at the brats to come in and eat. And all through this Mary could hear the saw. Though she could not see the pit, she knew exactly what it would be like. The log would be placed longitudinally over the pit on wooden cross pieces, whereupon sawing lines would be drawn along it with chalk or charcoal. One man descended into the pit while the other stood on the log. The man in the pit pulled down to make the cutting stroke, the one above pulled the saw up clear of the wood and guided the cut along the line. It seemed such a normal and friendly occupation, and while she knew it was most strenuous work which built up bulging muscles if the body received sufficient nourishment, Mary had never before associated the sound with danger.

The path led directly to the clearing. Mary, hoping that the sound of the saw would cover her escape through the undergrowth, moved in a wide circle around the camp. She kept the sound of the saw in her ears so that she might find herself back on the path but on the other side of the timber getters' camp. Almost an hour later she regained the path with the sound of the cutting now well behind her.

But soon after Mary left the camp she had a sense of being watched. At first she told herself that her alarmed senses were a delayed reaction from having so nearly stumbled into the camp. But the feeling persisted and she could not be rid of it. Once she looked up to find a large, pitch-black, crow-like bird with burning ruby eyes looking at her. After the initial shock, she laughed quietly to herself. She was becoming frightened of shadows. At noon she stopped and moved off the path some distance and boiled a billy. She used only the driest, smallest twigs and built the fire against the trunk of a huge red gum so that any smoke she created would be sucked upwards against the trunk and dispersed unseen through the forest canopy.

It was then that she was attacked. From a hole in the tree she had disturbed a hive of wasps and they descended upon her in an angry storm. Mary had the presence of mind to grab her canvas bag and pluck the billy from the fire and run. She rushed headlong through the undergrowth, not caring about any sound she should make, the wasps stinging her furiously as she ran. She fell once and cut her arm and then got up and ran again until the wasps seemed no longer to torment her. Finally she stumbled to a halt and began to weep, her flesh covered in hundreds of stings so that she felt she could not possibly bear the pain.

She had stopped beside one of the numerous mossy banked streams that cut through the forest and in desperation threw down her canvas bag and ripped off her clothes. The wasps had penetrated through the material of her dress and her body and arms were covered in stings which hurt well beyond the lashes she had received on the
Destiny II.
Hysterical with the pain, Mary lay down naked in the stream. The icy water flowing over her body brought some relief, for her flesh soon grew numb. Her poor crippled hands were swollen to twice their normal size and her right hand was burned when she'd plucked the billy from the flames. Though her bonnet had protected her head and she had no stings in her hair, her neck and face were badly stung and her lips were so swollen that she could not open her mouth.

Mary was soon chilled to the bone and was forced to rise from the stream and cover herself with the blankets. As soon as she warmed again the terrible pain returned and she seemed close to losing her senses. Her body had grown quite stiff as though it were paralysed and she could not move, though she was shuddering violently as if in great shock. Then she lost consciousness. Several times she seemed to see the crow with its ruby eyes and long, sharp beak, as though it were seeking to pluck out her eyes. Then a dog-like creature sat and watched her from a short distance, its green eyes sharp as lights in the night, and sometimes she caught flashes of a dark face hovering above her. She tried to scream but no sound came from her lips which seemed, in her delirium, to cover her entire face, enveloping her nose and puffing up her eyes.

How long she remained in this state Mary had not the least idea, but when she awoke it was morning, though whether of the next day or several days after, she could not tell. Her body and face were covered in a sticky balm, as though the wasp stings had themselves suppurated, but miraculously the pain was gone, and the swelling had abated and did not hurt to the touch. Mary washed in the stream until the sticky substance was removed from her body, hands and face and then she dressed, distressed to find that her garments were torn in several places from her flight through the undergrowth.