A Far Country Read online

  I twist my neck and stare downwards. Six feet below, perhaps eight, a bush grows out of a rock. If I let myself drop … How securely is it rooted? If, as I suspect, Edward did the same it may prove strong enough, although Edward and I, of course, are not the same. I am not a heavy woman but heavier, I am sure, than a fourteen-year-old boy. Commit myself to the drop and there is no way back if the roots turn out to be insecure after all. Bush and human will fall helplessly together.

  The sea surges, blue ringed with circles of white.

  I doubt I have the strength to pull myself up. I open my fingers and let myself fall.

  The rock face strips skin from my elbows, my knees. Branches score my legs with fire. I snatch, lose my grip, snatch again. The bush sways alarmingly. I cling, tight as a limpet. I can sense the strain my weight imparts to the roots: it is not a tree or even a very large bush. I doubt it will hold me for long. A foot away a shallow horizontal gash crosses the surface of the rock. I must not miss. I open my hands. As my body begins to fall I lunge at the gash. My fingers lock into the crevice. My body is a river of sweat but I do not care. I am safe.

  Below the bush is a slope of earth. It is steep and treacherous, loose stones falling in a cascade as my feet touch them, but after the rock face it is nothing. I scramble down the last few yards and reach the lush carpet of grass at the foot of the cliff. I lie full length on my back on the moist cool grass. Far overhead the cliff top draws its stark line against the sky. My body is wracked with tremors. Slowly my breath eases.

  After ten minutes I am strong enough to get to my feet. I walk to the edge of the grass and look down at the water. It surges below my feet, close enough to spatter me with the occasional gout of spray. It is not more than eight feet down to the strip of grey sand strewn with shells and pebbles that is rhythmically covered and uncovered by the falling tide.

  The water must be only a few inches deep.

  I look more closely. The sea has been working here. Over the centuries, the pounding waves have scoured the cliff into a deep curving wall. It is smooth, without cracks or crevices of any kind. There are no bushes, no vegetation. From the sand it will present a curving overhang, eight feet in height. As long as the tide is out anyone on that patch of beach will be safe. Once it turns, the only ways of escape will be up the cliff or out through the narrow entrance into the waters of the gulf. I watch the waves breaking heavily in the entrance. No-one could live in them, and the smooth rock overhang, eight feet above the sand, would be out of the reach of a fourteen-year-old boy.

  I never warned him. I had been here before yet I never thought to say anything to him.

  We fjord children were brought up by the water. It held few terrors for us but we learned early to treat it with the respect the sea demands. I must have been more or less the same age as Edward. With my father so often away, I grew up with greater freedom than most. I used to explore by myself. There was a cliff, dark, high and frowning, at its base the same curving inlet, the same circular overhang rubbed smooth by the sea. I had jumped down to the wet sand before I realised there was no way back. I would have drowned in the frigid water had a fishing boat not found me.

  I have been here before.

  I look at the surf thundering in the entrance, behind my back I feel the cliff looming high overhead, the sun-bright water is blurred by my tears.

  I kneel, eyes screwed tight, clasped hands raised to the breaking waves. I hear their voice beyond the darkness of my closed eyelids, taste the mist of spray on my lips, feel the rock tremble beneath my knees at the relentless hammer-blows of the sea.

  The sea has taken him, the child I loved. I am of the sea. I look to it for recompense.

  BOOK ONE

  PETREL

  Petrels form an extensive family of seabirds common to the Southern Ocean. Individual birds are occasionally beached after storms along the South Australian coast.

  ONE

  Left hand clasping a tin pannikin brimming with hot rum, Jason Hallam came out from the shelter of the deck house and hurried aft, staggering and lurching against the wild movement of the hull. The gale sank its claws in him. Far above his head the three mast tops swung violently against the black clouds that drove in endlessly from the west. The few scraps of sail that remained unfurled strained full-bellied in the wind. Even from the deck Jason could hear the triumphant yell of the storm in the spider’s web of rigging. The wind blew the tops off the waves and flung them over the rail in solid sheets of water, cold, salt and dangerous. They fell heavily on him. At once he was soaked, as he had been soaked so often since they had left Hobart Town five days before. Van Diemen’s Land and his whole past life behind him, the unknown and his whole future ahead of him. If he had a future. If the Kitty survived.

  Jason worked his way along the slippery deck, free hand snatching at handholds—stanchions, shrouds, the windward rail—all running with water. It was lunacy to be on deck at all in this weather. No matter. Captain Hughes expected a prompt and unfailing response to all his orders and one of them had been to have the cabin boy deliver one pannikin of hot rum every half-hour to the captain’s station beside the helmsman. The cabin boy: meaning Jason, aged fifteen. It was typical of Captain Hughes that he should call him by his function and not by his name, as it was typical to issue such an order at all, disregarding the near impossibility of getting the rum to him in such weather without losing most of it over the side. He demanded it and expected it. Failure would be the cabin boy’s failure, to be punished when the opportunity for punishment occurred.

  The weather had been unremittingly foul since the Kitty had put to sea and Jason had therefore had plenty of practice in delivering the precious container of rum. By now he had mastered the art to the point where he spilt hardly any of it and, if Captain Hughes did not praise him, at least he no longer gave him the crack around the head that had greeted his earlier and less successful efforts.

  The great world was proving every bit as harsh a place as his brother Tom, slow-witted but five years older and vastly more experienced, had warned him it would be.

  Not that Jason cared. He had been hungry for the chance to go with his brother, had warned him that if he did not take him on the Kitty’s next voyage he would stow away anyway.

  Cheeky bastard, Tom had called him, but had gone to see the master, all the same. Hadn’t had much choice, really, not with Jason alone in the world. He could have abandoned him, of course, plenty of brothers would have done that and thought nothing of it, but Tom had never been that sort: although Jason, big for his age and with a mind of his own, would no doubt have managed well enough.

  It had happened so suddenly: their mother struck down with fever in Hobart Town and dead within a week; his father, liver destroyed by booze, disintegrating before Jason’s eyes.

  Tom had been a deck hand on the Kitty for three years. The last voyage had been a long one: up the coast to Sydney and then several times north to Moreton Bay with supplies for the settlers who had been pouring into the area since it had first been opened up three years earlier in 1842. It had been almost a year before the Kitty had re-entered the Derwent River. Tom had returned to find his mother dead, his father dying and Jason on the verge of being alone in the world.

  ‘Be sure to mind your lip,’ Tom warned him. ‘You always was too smart for your own good, as I recall. Try anything on with the Cap’n, he’ll put you over the side.’

  Jason and discipline had never got along. ‘Maybe I won’t come at all, then.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  Wild horses wouldn’t have kept him. Home was a tar paper shack in a confusion of other tar paper shacks. Both parents had been transported. Neither had had the energy, ambition or intelligence to rise above their miserable beginnings. All Jason had known had been a confusion of alleyways and mud-filled courts with sewage running in open channels down the middle, the stench of filth, poverty and despair.

  It might have been enough for his parents but Jason wanted more from life.
If this was home you could keep it.

  ‘What’s the captain like?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘He’s all right.’ Tom rubbed his chin. ‘Won’t stand no sass, mind. You jump when he says jump, you’ll be right. Watch out for Lew Bone, though.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Bosun. Big bastard. Bit of a punch artist. Did some prize fighting in Sydney and never lets anyone forget it. Captain Hughes’ll give you a clip round the head but it don’t mean nothing. More for show, see? Lew Bone hits to hurt.’

  ‘He don’t scare me none,’ Jason boasted.

  Tom looked at him scornfully. ‘You don’ know you’re pupped. Lew Bone will eat you for breakfast. You keep out of his way.’

  Tom had spoken to Captain Hughes, a man with his own way of looking at things and God help you if you crossed him; at heart a fair enough man, nonetheless.

  ‘God save us,’ he had growled ferociously. ‘Fifteen years, ye say? Next thing ye’ll be wanting me to take babbies out of the cradle.’ But the captain found Jason a berth, all the same. ‘No cheek, mind. Understand me, lad? No cheek, no smart answers. One false step and ye’re beached.’ A bloodshot eye had scoured Jason’s face suspiciously, looking for cheek. ‘One false step, that’s all it takes.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  His father had been a week in his grave when the Kitty put to sea. Jason stood at the stern and watched as the barque cleared the Derwent and headed westwards under a sky black with the threat of storm. The land fell back. Jason turned to face the dark sea, the heavy rollers shod with foam. The strengthening wind blew the black hair back from his face.

  A gateway to the future, a door closing on the past.

  As for Lew Bone … Jason was the sort who had to learn everything the hard way. Half an hour after the Kitty entered the Southern Ocean the ex-fighter found him.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  Lew Bone stood in the forecastle entrance and stared at Jason out of eyes encircled with scar tissue. He was a big bastard, as Tom had said. His cheeks were hard with muscle and his back and shoulders were as broad as the deck but Jason had grown up as rough as any and wasn’t the sort to be intimidated.

  ‘New cabin boy. Who are you?’

  Jason never saw the blow, just felt it explode in a scarlet burst of pain on his left ear. His feet left the ground. He crashed backwards into the bulkhead and slithered stunned to the deck.

  Through hazed eyes, ear ringing like Hobart church tower, he saw Lew Bone glaring down at him. ‘I’m the bloke what’ll punch yore lights out, you give me any smart-arse talk,’ he said, ‘an’ don’ you forget it.’

  ‘I warned you,’ Tom told him later but made no attempt to interfere. In this world, as in the one he had left, Jason would have to fight his own battles.

  I’ll fix him, he promised himself but after five days the opportunity had still not arisen.

  Staggering and slipping, half-running, Jason scooted down the deck, following the tilt of the hull, and almost collided with the captain as he stood with the mate at the helmsman’s side.

  ‘Steady, boy, dern you!’ Hughes growled. Rum safe in his freckled paw, he took a half-hearted swipe at Jason’s ear and missed; his mind was on other things. Water streaming from his collar, Hughes craned his head upwards. For the first time Jason realised there were men clinging to the crazily swinging yards as they tried to see through the tumult of rain and spray that lay ahead of the plunging vessel.

  ‘What d’you see?’

  The captain’s bellow was swept away by the wind: but not altogether, it seemed. A moment’s silence, then from one of the tiny figures far above their heads came a faint answering hail.

  ‘Nothing …’

  Steam wreathed the captain’s face as he took a deep swig of hot rum. ‘I don’t like it, mister,’ he confided to the mate. ‘By my reckoning we should be well into the gulf by now.’

  ‘Maybe we are.’

  Hughes shook his head impatiently. ‘Talk sense, mister! How can we be in the gulf when the derned wind be still blawin’ our heads off? A west wind, mister! We was in the gulf, we’d be sheltered by the peninsula, isn’t that so?’

  ‘Where are we, then?’

  ‘That’s what I don’t know!’ Without apparent regard for the movement of the hull beneath his feet, the captain stamped up the steeply inclined deck, seized the windward rail and stared out for a minute at the confusion of storm-lashed water before returning once again to the wheel.

  ‘See that?’ he asked the mate.

  ‘See what?’

  ‘The waves is running every which way. No pattern to them at all. The land’s not far off, that’s certain.’ He shook his head, water streaming off his red face. ‘But where, eh? That’s the question. Where?’ He glared angrily at the mate as though it were somehow his fault they were lost. ‘Tell ya something, mister. I got a mortal hatred of standing into the land when I don’t know where I am! Dangerous, see? Especially in thick weather.’ His eyes lit on Jason. ‘You, boy!’

  ‘Yessir?’

  ‘Ye should have sharp enough ears, your age. Get for’ard, see if ye can hear anything!’

  ‘Hear what, sir?’ Not knowing what he should be listening for.

  ‘God save us! Breakers, boy! Breakers! Hear anything, give us a yell, right? And hang on tight. Go over the side, we shan’t be coming back for ye.’

  Forward the seas were coming green over the bows, the deck constantly under two feet of swirling water. The wind drove across the port rail with a vicious intensity that made it hard for Jason to open his eyes, never mind see anything. Teeth chattering with cold and fear, he clung to the heavy forestay and did what Captain Hughes had ordered. He listened.

  The groaning, complaining hull. The banshee wailing of the over-stressed rigging. The rhythmic crash, crash, of some heavy object that had broken loose and was now rolling to and fro in the chain locker beneath his feet. The hiss and roar of the waves. Water bursting like hail about him. The fluctuating scream of the wind.

  He listened.

  In a world of sound, nothing.

  He listened.

  Overhead, one of the remaining sails blew out with a clap like thunder.

  He listened. Nothing. Noth … Something.

  A rhythm out of cadence with every other sound about him. A roar. Silence. Roar. Repeated.

  Breakers.

  He turned to scream his warning aft to the captain. Even as he opened his mouth he knew that Hughes would never hear him above the keening of the gale but did the best he could, anyway.

  ‘Breakers! Breakers ahead!’

  He turned again to look forward. Through the maelstrom of driving wind and water he saw them: white teeth in the grey mouth of the sea lying dead ahead and stretching away half a mile at least on either bow. The vessel was driving straight down upon them, upon the rocks or shoals or whatever it was that was causing them.

  Jason tried again to scream his warning to the captain then froze, terror seizing his tongue.

  A huge wave, bigger by far than the rest, appeared from nowhere, rearing halfway up the masts. Its sloping face, green and wreathed in boiling spray, raced upon them. Its crest was crowned with foam and its voice was louder than thunder. Jason wrapped arms and legs around the forestay, clenched his eyes tight shut and hung on for his life. He felt the hull lift as it strove valiantly to ride the crest but it was impossible. The wave was too high, the angle of its face too steep. The hull faltered and skidded sideways in the water. Jason heard and felt the concussion of the sails as the wind took them aback. The monster wave fell upon them. It tore Jason effortlessly from the rigging and flung him into darkness.

  Mura awoke to darkness and the sound of the wind.

  In the language of the Narungga people mura meant hand. Had his mother followed tradition she would have called him Kartemmeru, meaning firstborn; despite living in a world governed by tradition, his mother had always had an independent mind.

  ‘I shall need him to help
me,’ she had said, ‘to give me a hand.’

  And so Mura it had been. Not that it had done her much good. Mura was fourteen now, his mother had been dead eight years and he had little recollection of her. The clan had been kanggallanggalla, or parents, to him.

  It was utterly dark; no stars were visible and Mura knew that the sky was still covered by the dark mass of cloud brought by the wind that for days had been blowing furiously from the sea on the far side of the peninsula.

  He lay without moving, dozing, waking, dozing again. Around him other members of the clan slept.

  When he was awake, Mura listened to the wind. The coastline was only minutes from their camp but the wind blew from the opposite direction and the surf on that side of the peninsula was too far even for Mura’s ears. On this side the wind carried away all sound of the sea but Mura knew it was there even if he could not hear it. He was still too young to have been taught any of the important secrets, but that much he had always known: the presence of the land, the encompassing arms of sea that bordered each side of the clan’s territory.

  The next time he woke a rent had appeared in the invisible clouds. A scattering of stars shone down. Mura watched them as the earth turned imperceptibly towards the sun. Around him others were awake now. Mura heard a thin cough, the murmur of voices. Silence returned. Beyond the shore, beyond the gulf, beyond the land that lay beyond the gulf came a faint softening of the darkness. A glimmer of light rimmed the distance, growing silently. The stars blinked and disappeared as cloud once again covered the sky. Behind the cloud the pearly greyness grew, turning slowly to pink.

  There was a thread of sound now in the silence behind the wind, a voice chanting softly. It was the song of the land. It was so soft it did not disturb the tender dawning. Rather it greeted the returning light, celebrated it, was one with it.