Bitter Eden (58 page)

From the docks guns reported, the guards aiming into the darkness of the river. Along the shore and on the docks, torches flared, lines of them moving in march time toward the shore boats.

Once more Tom thought of the tidy sum he could expect if somehow he could manage to bring Peter home—even his body. "Send down a ladder."

The mate looked at him as if he'd lost his senses. "What for? He's gone."

"I gave you an order, Mister. Send a ladder over the side and make damn sure you keep an eye out for that

man. If he's dead, haul his body aboard. One way or another, I want him."

The mate grumbled under his breath. 'They'll stop the ship. Think they'll let him sail out of here?"

"You keep him on that ladder till we're clear and they'll never know."

The mate laughed. "You don't know the Limeys, Captain. They don't let nobody go. Onliest countiy I know will chase one escaped man 'round the worl' if they have to jus' so's they can watch him hang on English soil."

"Send over the ladder. They're about to lose one."

The mate smirked. "Aye, aye, sir; anything you say, sir."

Peter swam behind the ship, the frigid coldness of the river enveloping him. The choppy water heaved against his chest making a mockery of each stroke he swam. The ship remained a huge mass in the darkness ahead, his efforts never seeming to make the slightest difference in the distance. He ignored the rifle fire. He neither cared nor thought about it. He thought of nothing. His mind was frozen in fear of the water, and his eyes saw nothing but the ship's bulk. Slowly he began to gain a little on it, but his arms and legs were beginning to ache with the cold. His arms were leaden and his legs were cramping, otherwise he wouldn't have known they were there, for the cold was numbing him. He knew then he'd never reach the ship. He pushed himself harder, and thought he had come closer to it, but he couldn't keep swimming. He could hardly breathe, his chest hurt, and he was so frightened he was no longer sure where the ship was. Behind him the rifle fire began anew, and he heard a more ominous sound: the count of the oarsmen. The

guards already had the longboats in the water coming after him.

Peter put his head down, his arms and legs moving leadenly. He wouldn't be taken back. No one would ever return him to Hobart Town or Sarah Island to labor or to hang. Water rushed into his mouth, choking him. As he coughed and swallowed more water, he had the insane desire to laugh. It was finally over. He felt a painful wrenching across his chest. He hurt and then he felt nothing more.

From the shore the guards shouted at the Hudson Lady, ordering her to drop anchor. Tom speculated that if he disobeyed, he'd never be able to bring Hudson Lady into Hobart again. He wanted no part of this, and his inclination was to run; but he shouted orders to drop anchor and prepare to aid a boarding party. Then he shouted for his first mate. "Did you get him?"

"He's danglin at the end of a line off the stern."

"Alive?"

"Can't tell . . . don't look it"

"Get him aboard ... we got no more than ten or fifteen minutes."

This time the man obeyed immediately without question or comment. Peter was dragged aboard. Three seamen picked up his dead weight and hauled him down the companionway to the hold of the ship. He was stuffed into one of the empty sperm oil barrels. With more men working now, the barrel in which he was hidden was put to the back of those barrels already filled with oil.

Tom greeted the captain of the guards and offered him free run of the ship in his search. Ten of the soldiers spread out over the vessel, opening hatches, tear-

ing apart rolled canvas, searching the galley and the captain's quarters, opening sea trunks, poking into bunk rolls. They searched the hold, insisting that several barrels be opened, and all supposedly empty barrels be proven empty. Two hours later they left the ship, satisfied that Peter Berean was not aboard the Hudson Lady.

Tom headed the Hudson Lady out to sea, his attention on his charts because of the dangerous water ahead of them for the next hours. He felt a sense of satisfaction. Stephen Berean would have his brother, or what was left of him, and Tom would have his money and no trouble from a convict passenger.

Peter came to inside the barrel. He was cramped and twisted inside the vile-smelling container. His last memory was of a wrenching pain across his chest as he sank beneath the cold water. He choked, spitting out river water; then he tried to move. He began screaming at the darkness and the hard confines of his new world. Death could not be the same as living in the Grummet Rock cave. Insane with the horror of it, the hideous trickery that this could also be death as well as life, he thrashed, beating himself against the immobile walls of the secured barrel. He could see nothing. He knew nothing except that he was drowning and he couldn't find release from it. It went on and on and yet he didn't feel dead. He had to find an end to it. Somehow it had to stop. He continued to scream and beat against the hard blackness, the taste of blood flooding his mouth and choking him.

One of the seamen, sent below to check the fastenings of the cargo, walked down the lines of barrels. He stopped short, drawing in his breath as he heard the sounds. Young and morbidly superstitious, he ran wide-eyed for the mate.

"The barrels . . . sir . . . they're screamin\ They are, sir. I swear it. Oh, Jesus. It's the spirit of one of them animals ... it is, sir .. . it's screamm!"

The mate shouted to the night watch to follow him as he leaped down the rungs of the companionway. Hastily they broke the fastenings that held the barrels in place, thrusting aside one heavy container after another until they reached the one in which Peter had been hidden.

The mate pried the lid off the container. Peter threw himself against the side of the barrel, turning it over. He looked like a specter from the depths of Hades. He was covered with blood, his hair still wet and streaked with red. His eyes were tortured, swollen, red globes in his face. The mate dropped the crowbar and moved back, hesitating in horrified fascination as Peter clawed his way out of the barrel and gained his feet, staggering with his arms flailing madly. He ran erratically like a madman around the hold, leaping onto barrels and falling to scramble up again and jump from one to another.

The mate sent one of the crew to get the captain.

Tom Baker came into the hold, looked at Peter, and let out a stream of expletives that left no doubt as to his feelings about convicts in general and this man in particular. "Get him and lash the goddamned bastard to the mast. I thought you said he was dead," he shouted at the mate.

"Sir, I thought he was."

"You should have made damned sure!"

"But, sir, you didn't say—"

"I said get the son of a bitch, gag him, and lash him to the mast!"

Tom kept Peter lashed to the mast throughout the night. In the morning, he ordered him released and brought to Tom's cabin.

Peter hadn't been able to comprehend where he was. His confusion was so complete, little penetrated his mind. He hadn't yet figured out if he was alive or dead. Only the pain made him think of life; nothing else was familiar or made sense to him.

He was taken to the captain's cabin and thrust through the door. Tom jumped up from his chair, shaking his fist as he came at Peter. "What the hell was the meaning of that last night? Didn't I tell you I'd stand for none o' your friggin convict tricks on this ship!"

Peter flinched at the burly fist bobbing about so near to his face; then he moved forward, his arms moving of their own accord, knocking away the fist, and his hands closed around Tom's thick neck.

Burly as Tom Baker was, he was no match for the terror-stricken power of Peter Berean. Tom bent backwards under Peter's onslaught. He brought his knee up into Peter's groin, breaking his hold long enough for Tom to shout for his mate.

Rubbing his neck, Tom, in a rage, ordered Peter thrown back into the hold until he could decide what to do with him. Livid with hate, Tom decided, as had so many before him, to flog Peter until he learned to respect and obey his betters.

Already close to senseless, Peter Berean was once again lashed to a mast and flogged. When it was over and he was cut free, he fell to the deck unconscious. Still not satisfied, Tom had him hung in the rigging to bake and bleed in the hot sun without water or food. He gained a modicum of appeasement when he heard Peter, barely able to talk, beg for water.

But Tom Baker wasn't finished with that man. He watched him hanging on the rigging, and felt a mystical sense of vengeance. That man had brutally killed his wife. He had tried to kill Tom. And being guilty of

those sins, he had to pay. It was merely an accident of fate that it should be Tom Baker to whom it fell to extract that payment.

The crew looked on the proceedings with hard faces. They had experienced Tom Baker's discipline before. There were several men aboard who had spent their time lashed to the riggings. Most seamen had. The sea was not a tender mistress, and the men who lived their lives upon her back were not gentle men. They were hard and cruel, and expected their time spent here to be harsh.

Throughout the remainder of the voyage, Tom Baker watched Peter and brooded over the fact that if he lived to see New York, it would be Tom Baker who had set a murderer free. On occasion he wondered why Peter clung to life, and then decided that that too was a sign of his perversity. So he continued to have Peter flogged or lashed to the riggings for the slightest infraction of the ship's rules noticed or imagined by Tom.

New York and the Hudson River were still two months' voyage away.

Chapter 40

Stephen received Peter s letter from a packet ship about three months after Tom Baker had taken Peter from Van Diemen's Land. Stephen tore it open and read it aloud to Callie, his voice becoming more excited with each line. He read the many passages from the Bible, the references to the May house, and Ho-bart Town, and—significantly placed last—the quotation of the parable of the Prodigal Son. "This is it, Callie! Listen! It's Peter all over!"

Callie laughed and cried. Stephen hugged her, dancing her around the room, laughing uproariously over each pious note in Peter s letter.

Finally Stephen sank down on the sofa, catching his breath. 'Tomorrow morning, first thing, we'll arrange to get him out. I don't believe it, Callie. He's there! He's in Hobart Town.'*

Stephen went the next day to all the places he would normally find Tom Baker. He was told Tom was on a whaling trip, but was expected back any day. In the process of asking questions as to how long it would be before Tom could ready his ship to take it

out again, Stephen learned considerably more about Tom Baker himself.

During the ride home Stephen brooded. Tom Baker was a man who had little respect for the seamen who sailed with him. There were many who would not put out on the Hudson Lady for that reason. Stephen had learned enough about seamen to know they accepted discipline and punishment as part of their lives; but Baker had a reputation as a heavy-handed man who did not permit his crew to imbibe, but was known to drink heavily himself, fortifying an already nasty temperament. Floggings were frequent aboard Hudson Lady. Although Stephen had been assured that this was the case aboard most ships, Baker also practiced such things as keelhauling, lashing a man to the prow of a ship, and lashing him to the rigging. Again Stephen was told that happened on other ships as well, the difference being only the frequency of Tom Baker's punishments and his apparent enjoyment of them.

Stephen was faced with two problems. He needed a ship if he were to get Peter. And he needed a way to control Tom Baker. He had learned enough about Van Diemen's Land by now to know he didn't want to risk Peter's coming home with a ship's captain no better than a penal colony commandant. At least not alone. Stephen considered the one area in which he had the upper hand. It was in Tom Baker's greed, and Stephen was certain that the lust for money would overpower his desire to "discipline" his passenger.

When he told Callie that Tom Baker was somewhere at sea, he quieted her instant cries of disappointment by telling her he was expected daily, then alarmed her further by announcing that he had decided to sail with Tom when he hired his ship to go to Van Diemen's Land. He didn't tell her his true reason for going, but said instead, "I think I can help, Callie.

If they think I am a merchant, I should be able to move through the settlement quite freely. Hobart is always in need of supplies. I can ask many questions on the pretext of finding out what particulars they would like me to bring on the next voyage/*

"You? But you cant."

"I am going, Callie."

"But Stephen, you know nothing about running a ship."

He laughed. "I won't be handling the ship, goose. The crew and Tom Baker will do that. I'll just be the merchant."

Stephen told her of his hastily conceived plan and went over with her the voluminous information he had collected about Van Diemen's Land over the past months. Last, he told her he would be going into New York to attend the dock auctions to bid on a proper cargo for Tom's ship. He wanted all in readiness when Tom returned to port.

"How long will you be in New York?" she asked.

"I'm not sure. Jack will look after things for me at the brewery, and Dick Adams can handle the farm, so you needn't worry about any of that."

"I wasn't."

He looked at her quizzically, then asked, "You're not afraid to be alone, are you?"

"Oh, no."

"Then what's wrong? You have something on your mind."

"There's nothing," she said lightly.

He put his hand under her chin, lifting her face to his. "Don't lie to me, Callie. What's wrong?"

She shrugged her shoulders. How could she explain to Stephen she was frightened. In spite of wanting Peter's freedom, she feared what his return would mean

to her life. "Now that you're going to buy the cargo it all seems so near at hand and real/' she finally said.

He looked hard at her, trying to tell what it was she was not saying. "And what we want. Callie . . ."