The Runaway Settlers (2 page)

To reach Berrima, there was first their own track and then the side road, which was scarcely any smoother. The hand-cart had to be dragged over ruts and roots, uphill and downhill, through patches of bush and above the river, with Emma and Jim both riding on top. Jack could help a little with his good arm; but nearly all the effort must come from Bill, Mary Ann and Archie. Mrs Small did not speak of her own bruises, but the children guessed at the reason why she, usually so strong, did not offer to lend a hand.

Emma broke into the high-pitched, droning song that showed she was happy. This was too much for Mary Ann, who felt anything but joyful. She had been up all night, cleaning and packing; and she was haunted by a fear that at any moment their father might appear and confront them. Every knot of trees and every shoulder of a hill was a dangerous spot. To keep from stumbling on the rough road in her high-buttoned boots and long skirts, she kept her gaze downwards. Across her vision the trousered legs of her brothers moved steadily to and fro.

‘Mother,’ she cried in envy, ‘why weren’t we born boys!’

‘We, Mary Ann? And if I’d been born a boy, you wouldn’t have been born at all!’

‘Then we should all wear trousers, like the Japanese.’

‘Chinese,’ said Mrs Small.

‘How could you wear trousers?’ scoffed Jack. ‘You’d be worse than the blacks!’

Archie and Bill laughed at this, for the aborigine women wore scarcely anything at all. As for their babies, they were quite naked as they peeped over their mothers’ shoulders to watch the Small family go by. Two of their men had gone to help Stephen Small with the cattle, and now here was a curious thing—the white woman and all her children going walkabout! But they asked no questions, and nobody stopped to explain.

Tears welled up in Mary Ann’s eyes. She was weary and frightened, but more than that she was ignorant. She hadn’t known the difference between Japanese and Chinese! She had learned to read and write at the kitchen table when the day’s work was done, but there were never any new books to read. Perhaps where they were going there would be a library at least? Oh, they must hurry, and be sure to reach Berrima in time for the coach!

At this thought she began to stride out so strongly that Archie protested—he couldn’t keep up! So Mrs Small began to sing in her clear, strong voice:

‘In Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty,

I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone,’

and they all joined in:

‘She wheeled her wheelbarrow, through the streets broad and narrow,

Crying cockles, and mussels, alive, alive-O.’

It was as good as a band, for marching along.

Although Berrima was one of the oldest inland settlements in Australia, the homesteads were scattered and there were few people to ask where the Smalls were going. When they did, Mrs Small had a simple answer. They were taking Jim to Sydney to see the doctor. Poor little fellow, he’d had a fall, and who could tell what that might lead to? If anybody wondered why the doctor in Berrima was not good enough, or why they needed to take the boxes and bags, or why Bill and Mary Ann weren’t left to care for the house and the animals, nobody really asked such questions. Stephen Small was well known for his drunken rages, and it might be best not to know too much if his wife and children took a journey during his absence.

At Berrima the hand-cart was unloaded and left standing empty. Outside the Surveyor’s Rest Hotel, the coach was waiting—a splendid sight that sent Emma off on another bout of her droning song. The four horses, three brown and one grey, allowed Archie to stroke their noses and leaned over for more. The seven Smalls almost filled the seats of the coach. The other places were taken by a gentleman in a top hat and gloves and a lady in a blue silk dress and paisley shawl, too fine to speak to this farm woman with the workworn hands or her daughter in a bonnet completely out of fashion.

For their part, the Smalls were too excited to notice anything but the changing countryside; and jubilant too, for they were fast moving in the opposite direction from their father. In truth, every jolt of the iron wheels against the stones of the road sent spasms of pain through the sore bodies of Jack and his mother, although Jim, with his eyes closed, did not seem to wake sufficiently to feel anything. But physical pain was not enough to dampen the excitement of the journey. Mary Ann called out with joy whenever she recognised a scene she
remembered from the out-coming journey, ten years before, after sailing from England. There were forests and townships and still more forests, until they came through Parramatta and its deep cutting and on to a hill with the great city spread out before them, and the shining blue harbour.

Even Mary Ann was silent at the size of it all. Many ships lay at the wharves, or rode at anchor, or sailed towards the open sea. Tier upon tier the buildings rose up the hills, from tiny cottages to two-storeyed mansions with tower windows; inns and auction-rooms and banks and merchants’ offices, built of stone or brick; churches with tall spires; shops with windows filled with goods, not jumbled all together as in the Berrima store, but each displaying its own specialty of elegant clothes, or saddles and harness, or tools, or jewellery, or toys. When the coach stopped at last a window directly opposite was set out with little dishes of gold, coarse and fine and scaly, and nuggets as big as Emma’s fingers. A notice declared that gold would be bought at the best prices. Diggers went in and out, looking very fine in their town suits of serge, their leather belts and slouched hats, and the gold watch-chains across their waistcoats.

Bill couldn’t stop staring.

‘Mother, the goldfields! Look, that’s where they get their fortunes—that’s where the money is!’

Busy gathering her boxes and bags together, Mrs Small paused as a tall bearded man strode by.

‘He’ll be pawning that watch-chain and the watch too, I shouldn’t wonder, before the year’s out. Easy come, easy go, that’s the way of the diggings, Bill.’

‘They say if you strike it lucky, you make a hundred pounds in a day!’

‘And what if you strike it unlucky and lose the shirt off your back?’

‘I’d start digging somewhere else!’

‘No, Bill. A goldfield’s a place where you plunder the ground, and move on. What we want is a home, a real home. A place to put my foot down.’

‘I’ll bet you don’t know where to find it,’ teased Jack.

‘Somewhere there’s a corner made specially for us.’

‘I wish it could be here!’ said Mary Ann.

A cabriolet with a smart driver wearing kid gloves had just drawn up, and into this stepped the lady and gentleman who had travelled in the coach. It set off down the street at a pace that made the coach look old and clumsy—which, in fact, it was. A still grander carriage swept by in the other direction. There was a glimpse of a fashionable lady and her daughters; and riding on the back was a footman, in braided jacket and silk stockings! And Mary Ann stood there in her plain grey dress and her out-of-date bonnet.

If only we could live in Sydney! she thought. But Father would surely find us in the end.

Mrs Small made arrangements for the boxes to be kept until called for, and helped Jim to ride pick-a-back with Bill. She shook her head when Bill asked if they could take a cab instead; and Jack, sore as he was, agreed it was safest to walk.

‘Father might trace us by the cab. We’d be caught like rats in a hole!’

‘Is there somewhere for us to go?’ whispered Archie, troubled.

‘Yes, Archie,’ said Mrs Small. ‘I’ll tell you now: we have a secret friend.’

‘Secret! Does she know about you?’

‘Yes—she was my friend at school, in London. That’s who the eggs are for. But Father doesn’t know I was sending money, little by little, to be saved until there should be enough for us to come.’

‘It’s all been planned!’ cried Bill, disappointed because he thought it was his idea first, this running away.

‘But we won’t be staying?’ asked Jack.

‘First we’ll go to our secret friend. Then I really will take Jim to a doctor, for I think he’s very sick. Then’—she pointed to the harbour—‘on a ship.’

‘To Victoria!’ Bill said eagerly.

‘No, Bill, not those goldfields either.’

Bill went quiet. His mother would never go to the goldfields, but the time would come when she couldn’t stop him from going, he told himself.

Emma began to sing:

‘A ship, a ship, a ship!’

‘Will we go back to England?’ asked Mary Ann.

‘There’s not enough money for so long a journey. No! We must go where we can. We may count on five days more till your father knows—only five days. Tomorrow, if the doctor says it’s safe for Jim to travel—and I pray that he will—I shall visit the shipping offices. Bill—how are you managing with Jim? Shall we take a rest?’

‘People keep looking at us,’ said Archie.

‘Then we shall rest a little, on the bench outside that inn over there!’

They sat down, and Jack broke the silence.

‘So we don’t know where we’re going!’

‘Today, yes. Next week, let’s say—’

‘We’re going to seek our fortunes.’

‘That’s right, Jack.’

‘Fortoons, fortoons,’ sang Emma, not knowing in the least what it was all about.

They went on, round corners and along winding streets, till they came to the secret friend. Her name was Mrs McCracken and she lived in a long white house with lace curtains, and crocheted counterpanes, and a piano, and gaslight, and windows overlooking the harbour. On the veranda, to the delight of Archie, there swung a cage with a canary singing at the top of its voice.

Mrs McCracken came to the door wearing a lace cap. Dimples rippled over her cheeks and chin.

‘Mary Elizabeth Small!’ she cried. ‘Oh, you’ve come at last! Safe and sound! Oh, it’s too much to believe!’

She swung little Emma up in a cosy hug, and welcomed everyone into the house. Then she bustled off to bake an enormous apple pie.

The doctor was cheerful about Jim. Concussion, that was what ailed him: a little more rest would put him right. Within another day Jim’s old impish ways were returning, and it was hard for Mrs McCracken to keep him in bed, even with marvels like picture books and a stereoscope to look through. When a picture was put into the stereoscope, it made people look so tall and near, they seemed to be walking out towards him.

Sydney was exciting and bewildering, with so much to see in the streets. Mrs Small took the boys out to buy new trousers and jackets. ‘We can’t go to another home looking poverty-stricken,’ she said. Cotton print was bought too, and Mary Ann made dresses for Emma and herself, with help from Mrs McCracken on her sewing-machine. Emma watched by the hour and wanted to poke her fingers in the wheel, for she had never seen a sewing-machine before.

But there was no success in the search that really mattered—the search for a ship. True, the harbour was full of ships; but every one of them was tied up for a long time, or privately chartered, or carrying cargo only, or bound for some impossible place like China or Peru. Mrs Small went the rounds of the shipping offices, and Mr McCracken, who worked in a bank, used all his influence; then Bill and Jack were sent to the wharves to ask of the seamen; but there was no passage to be had. And soon there were only three days left before Stephen Small would come home and find them gone! He would saddle
his horse and ride, and even the great city with its hundreds of houses might not be enough to hide his family.

On the fourth day Archie, who hated being kept in the big house even with a canary on the veranda, asked if he might go and find a ship. The others thought this a great joke, as if ships could be found hiding under leaves, like snails or spiders! Archie shrank inside, went silent and ran off without permission. When he did not come back, Bill and Jack were sent to look for him.

Round broad streets and narrow lanes they went asking if anyone had seen a nine-year-old boy with sandy hair and blue eyes; but the people only said no—but surely he was old enough to ask his way home? And for fear that their own father might soon be asking these very questions, they did not like to say they came from the outback.

They had almost decided to go back when Jack stopped short.

‘Listen, Bill! It’s a donkey!’

‘In Sydney? Don’t be daft!’

‘But it is—look there.’

They looked down on an empty section filled with tall grass and weeds, and saw not one donkey, but four of them. The braying came from one grey fellow who was being beaten by two men in a vain effort to make him move. There was a big, dark man in a blue-and-white striped jersey, and another in a sea-jacket. The more they yelled and swore, the more stubborn grew the donkey.

‘Huh!’ said Bill. ‘Archie could do better than that.’

It was a prophecy. From behind a stump overgrown with creepers appeared a familiar figure. He stood beside the smallest donkey, a white one, stroking it and talking softly.
Soon he had it walking quietly. Bill and Jack, moving closer, heard Archie say:

‘Where d’you want them to go, mister?’

The man in the striped jersey swung around.

‘Who in tarnation are you?’

Archie grinned shyly, not knowing what to say. ‘You meddling lamb of Satan!’ shouted the man. ‘Aren’t donkeys devils enough!’ Archie’s grin vanished but he went on stroking the donkey. The man in the sea-jacket stepped in.

‘Whisht, Rabbie! Dinna curse at the lad; we could mebbe let him show what he can dae! Try if ye can move her doon the street there, laddie.’

‘Bill,’ whispered Jack, ‘this looks like fun! Let’s go too.’

Bill nodded. ‘There might be a shilling for us. But take off that sling—it doesn’t look right.’

Jack winced as the arm swung free and dragged at his bruised shoulder, but he said nothing except a quick, ‘We’ll help, mister, we’re his brothers,’ without waiting for an answer. Soon a little procession was moving down the hill. Even the stubborn grey donkey, with the two men urging him, followed on.

‘Where d’you want them to go?’ called Archie.

‘To the wharves,’ answered the man in the striped jersey.

The wharves! With wild excitement leaping inside him, Jack cut in: ‘Are they to go on a ship?’ and Bill and Archie held their breath for the answer.

‘Yes, a ship. Pedigree stock they are—special purchase—for the
Armenian.’

‘The
Armenian!’
The boys had not tramped the wharves for nothing. ‘We’ve seen her—she’s a capital ship—with engines!’

‘Aye,’ said the man in the sea-jacket, ‘but we maun get the beasties aboard, afore those engines’ll be any use at all!’

A bold thought began to grow in Jack’s mind.

Stockmen! They might need stockmen on the ship! The
Armenian
lay alongside the wharf, not at anchor in the harbour as the bigger sailing-ships usually did, because she had this very modern feature: an engine, sixty horsepower, no less! She was square-rigged too, and the wind would carry her much faster than her screws, but the engine made her more easily handled in harbour and for this reason she was given the proud title of steamship. She was well-appointed too, with fine cabins for the gentlemen and ladies, who were all on shore somewhere until near the time for sailing.

Obediently, with Archie and his white donkey still in the lead, the animals went up the gangway and into the pen on the deck. There were large stalls, too, in readiness for larger animals—horses.

And now Robbie and his Scotch companion, whose name was Dugald, found that it was not enough to offer the boys a shilling for their trouble. They all said no—that this was not what they wanted.

‘What would ye be wanting then?’ asked Dugald.

‘To look after the donkeys on the voyage,’ said Bill calmly.

The two men looked at one another as if they didn’t know whether to laugh or not, and the big man winked.

‘Oh! Ye’ll be running away then, will ye?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And the wee laddie too?’

‘I’m not wee. I’m nine,’ said Archie. Dugald ignored him. ‘And yer mither and yer sister, I don’t doot,’ said the sailor sarcastically.

‘Two sisters—’ Jack could not help grinning. ‘And Jim!’ shouted all three boys together.

The gentle rolling of the ship seemed to break into a mad rocking with their burst of laughter. When at last they recovered, Dugald said:

‘Would that be the lot noo? Ye havena’ a father, maybe?’

‘No, mister. We haven’t any father,’ said Bill.

‘Our mother’s a widow. We have to look after her,’ Jack added quickly, thinking this might help. Dugald was at once sympathetic.

‘Ah, puir laddies! But will ye no be scared to travel on a ship with Indians?’

‘Indians!’ They had no idea what an Indian would be like. ‘Are they black men?’

‘Aye, black—or brown maybe.’

‘We’re not scared of blacks. We had them working on the farm—when—when—we had our father.’

‘But is the ship going to India?’ Mrs Small might refuse to go to Victoria but she would like India no better, Bill felt sure. To his relief the men laughed loudly at this one, too.

‘No! Not India. That’s where we’ve come from.’

‘Is Armenia a country?’ asked Archie shyly.

‘Aye, Armenia’s a country, but she won’t be going there neither,’ said Robbie. ‘She’s bound for Lyttelton, New Zealand.’

‘New Zealand! How d’ye like the sound o’ that, laddies?’

Dugald looked keenly to see what impression he had made. He expected that all this nonsense would end with the mention of a country so small and far away, but only Bill showed a flicker of disappointment. Jack said at once:

‘We like it! Where is Lyttelton anyway?’

Seeing the men choke back their laughter, he didn’t wait for an answer but hurried on: ‘We’re very experienced with stock, sir. Donkeys, cattle, horses.’

‘There’ll be horses, fifty-five of ‘em, tomorrow; and then we sail. Well! You’d best ask the boss. He’ll be down soon, I daresay, to see the donkeys are in good shape. They’re wanted for the breeding of mules, for the whole country’s tipped on end with rocks all over the place, and nothing else can get over them. And you’ll best mind your p’s and q’s, for he’s a famous gentleman—a judge that had thousands of lives in the palm of his hand, in the Indian troubles. You’ll touch your cap when you meet Mr John Cracroft Wilson.’

‘I haven’t got a cap,’ said Jack.

‘More’s the pity, for this is him coming now, if I’m not much mistaken.’

The judge, looking perfectly at ease on a splendid Arab horse, rode on to the wharf. As he reined in, a brown-skinned servant wearing a white turban appeared from nowhere and scuttled down the gangway to take the bridle. The three boys looked nervously at one another.

‘We’ll speak for ye, laddies,’ said Dugald kindly. ‘He’ll maybe look for a few white Christians among all those heathen Hindus. And I can tell him truly ye were awful good with those donkeys.’