Chapter 3
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. 1835
The convict lay on his stomach with arms outstretched, and tried to remain as motionless as possible. The slightest movement agitated the inflamed gashes on his back and caused them to throb in waves of indescribable agony. Despite the fact that the temperature was one hundred degrees in the shade, Jack Finch insisted on keeping his body covered with a grimy sheet. The thought of flies laying eggs in his open wounds was almost as harrowing as the actual pain. He wished he could lapse once more into unconsciousness, but his brain refused to cooperate.
His memory was determined to play, over and over again, all the memories which it had accumulated during the last few weeks. Since leaving England, he felt that he had embarked on a journey to hell. If he'd known how bad it was going to be —
No, he refused to even consider that he had had an option. If he had stayed in England — well, there was every chance that he would have been driven to end his life. The disgrace, the shame — it would have been more than he could bear. A lacerated back, on the other hand, would soon heal.
'It is therefore ordered and adjudged by this court, that you be transported upon the seas, beyond the seas,' the judge had said. And what was his crime? He had stolen a pocket handkerchief worth one shilling. Correction: two pocket handkerchiefs. Well, that was the crime for which he had been sentenced, but it was petty in comparison with the crime of which he was really guilty.
The 12000 mile voyage to the colony of New South Wales, a journey which lasted 105 days, had been so much a nightmare that he had almost prayed that the ship would perish.
Confined for much of the voyage to the dark, airless and cramped hold — rubbing shoulders with people with whom he had nothing in common, listening to their cries of despair, unable to offer any words of comfort — it had been worse than a nightmare. For the whole journey he had been obsessed by the thought of fresh water — hardly surprising when the daily allowance of the putrid and warm liquid was only two pints. Most of his fellow companions, having never ventured outside their home villages, were so bewildered by what was happening to them that they acted like crazed animals. The occasional excursions onto the deck for exercise did nothing to console them for, when they saw the ocean stretching in every direction, they knew for certain that they would be very unlikely to ever see their homes and loved ones again.
Jack Finch, a seasoned traveller, fared little better — for the type of travel to which he was accustomed was worlds away from the wretched conditions of the convict ship. The only time he smiled during the whole voyage was when he thought how his fellow companions would brand him a madman if he told them how he had last made this trip. This wasn't quite true for he also managed a grim smile when he thought how his wife would have reacted if she had known that the usual way of removing lice from bedding was to leave blankets soaking in the urine tubs all night. She would have died of shame if she'd been on board.
Jack Finch and his fellow companions-in-misery saw nothing of the breath-takingly beautiful bay into which their ship sailed upon arrival in Australia. Captain Arthur Phillip, commander of the First Fleet which sailed from England in 1788, had described it as one of the finest harbours in the world. The convicts, however, even if they had been permitted an opportunity to scan the panoramic view, would have shown little interest. Their sole concern was how they would be treated in the penal settlement of Sydney. And if the voyage had been an introduction to what they could expect, they feared the worst.
For Jack Finch, the horror had begun almost immediately he stepped onto Australian soil (or squelched onto Australian muck, as he grimly thought at the time). Shortly after the ship berthed, the convicts quickly disembarked — their haste inhibited by stiff joints resulting from lack of exercise and cramped conditions, but encouraged by a generous helping of clouts, kicks and curses from the waiting soldiers. Although they had been accustomed to weeks of breathing foul air on board ship, their nostrils were assailed by an unbearable stench from the open sewers and filthy, closely-packed cottages which lined the narrow streets through which they were forced to walk, their legs still shackled by irons. Even those convicts who had come from the worst parts of London were horrified by what they saw in the Rocks, the area bordering the harbour. As they shuffled past a gallows and, a bit further on, another gallows, they wondered if any convict ever lived long enough to receive a Certificate of Freedom. Near the gallows were the triangles. If the convicts wondered as to their purpose, they were soon to find out.
Stumbling along in front of Jack Finch was a young woman who looked as if she had not much time left to live. The lack of fresh food and insanitary conditions on board ship caused the health of most convicts to suffer but, of the survivors, few looked as wretched as this woman. Her skin was deathly pale, her limbs were covered with weeping sores, and her body shook uncontrollably every few seconds. Walking at the side of Jack was a red-uniformed soldier, a member of the party escorting the convicts to wherever it was they were headed. Whether he hated convicts, liked to beat women, or simply enjoyed bullying those who were in no position to defend themselves, Jack Finch neither knew nor cared. But he did care that this sadistic brute was constantly goading the poor wretch in front. He started with his tongue: 'Stir yourself, slut! . . . Get a move on! . . . Pick your feet up you poxy wench!'
Jack could tolerate the verbal abuse but, when the soldier started prodding and pushing the woman, he felt his hackles rise. Like a drug addict craving an ever-bigger fix, the soldier became more and more inhuman in his abuse of the woman. Prods became jabs — pushes became shoves. When he saw the soldier raise his musket to assault his defenceless victim, Jack knew that he was going to do something which he would live to regret. Thinking about it afterwards, Jack wasn't sure whether he'd intentionally set out to divert the soldier's cruelty to his own body, or simply wanted to make a futile attempt to punish the fiend for his savagery. Whatever the reason, the consequence was inevitable. As soon as he threw himself sideways at the soldier he was bludgeoned from behind by another escort.
It was some time later, whilst watching another gang of recently-arrived convicts being led through the Rocks, that Jack realised that he had been the real target. Soldiers frequently provoked a convict into attacking one of their number so that they could enjoy watching a scourger inflict pain on the victim in the form of an official punishment.
Jack was roughly dragged from the file of convicts, beaten to his knees, and hauled across the rough ground to a triangle close to one of the gallows. This was a tripod made from three poles which were lashed together at the top. His wrists were hauled up above his head and manacled to the top of the triangle so that he was barely able to move. Then his shirt was ripped from his back. Although only seconds had passed since Jack had charged at the soldier, a crowd of excited spectators had appeared from nowhere. Jack realised later that they had been waiting for this regular entertainment as they knew how expert the soldiers were at tricking convicts into earning a public flogging.
Jack disappointed the crowd. They wanted to see either a 'sandstone' or a 'pebble'. A sandstone would scream and plead for mercy while he was being taken to the triangle (and make an even greater fuss when the scourger began his work). By contrast, the pebble would take his punishment without blinking an eyelid and then spit on the ground to show his disdain for both the audience and the man who had given him his 'red shirt', as the flogging was often called. The spectators could laugh at the weakness of the former and feel admiration for the toughness of the latter. What they hated was a prisoner like Jack who refused to participate in the game. He provided the blood all right but that was all — the very first lash from the cat-o'- nine-tails making him lose consciousness immediately. As soon as the spectators saw that this would be poor entertainment, they began to drift away. Even the scourger seemed to lose interest and the other twenty four lashes were applied with much less enthusiasm than the first. Despite this, when he had finished his work, the twenty five red stripes of Jack's red shirt were more than enough to forewarn all the other new arrivals of the harshness of the years ahead.
'They'll not hurt me again,' Jack muttered to himself determinedly. 'From now on I'll play their game and follow their rules.'
One of their rules was that Jack should be restricted to bread and water for the seven days' solitary confinement following his punishment. The lack of decent food worried him little as he had no appetite, but the temperature in his small and windowless cell meant that he was constantly thirsty. With some effort, he managed to reach forward and pick up the mug of warm water which was on a rough table near his bed. He tried to restrict his drinking to just a few sips as he didn't want a full bladder — hobbling to the slop bucket in the corner of his cell being excruciatingly painful.
Jack had been told that he would be assigned in a few days' time, once his back had healed sufficiently. He prayed that he would be assigned to a farm where he would work for one of the settlers, but he imagined that his misbehaviour would result in his being assigned to government work. I have a sneaking suspicion, he decided, that I'd be better off working for settlers than for the government. I doubt whether the soldiers who supervise government projects are any less heartless than the ones I've had the misfortune to meet so far.