Part II
THE LAND OF BONDAGE
CHAPTER XXI
AS ASSIGNED SERVANT
The capital sentence on the convict Erichsen having been commuted to one of transportation for life, he was transported to New South Wales, where he arrived, in the official phrase, per Seahorse, in the early morning of Tuesday, 5th December, 1837.
Some nineteen weeks before, still earlier in the morning, his draft had been chained together in gangs of six, and marched from Millbank across the road and down the stone steps to the tug, which conveyed them to the convict-ship then lying at the Nore.
The voyage was not the worst of Tom’s experiences. The first few days they were all in chains, and his leg became excoriated through dragging the cruel harness in and out of his hammock. But presently the chains were struck off, and Tom did not earn a second dose of them. He distinguished himself in no way on board; in the usual attempt to seize the ship he bore no part, nor was it Tom who betrayed the ringleaders and saved so many lives. Yet he was fortunate enough to win the fancy of the Surgeon Superintendent, who employed him privately during a great part of the passage. This officer was in absolute command of the convicts, and to Tom he was very kind indeed. So much so that at the very end of the voyage Tom asked the other to take his word between themselves that he was innocent. He never asked this of any man again. And the lovely harbour with the vernal shores said no more to his stinging soul than to that of the most hardened felon in the ship.
The exiles were landed and marched to Hyde Park Barracks, two hundred strong. It was quite early in the forenoon, yet the heat of the ground struck through their shoes, and the hot land-smell scorched their nostrils, as the ungainly detachment proceeded along the streets, all roving eyes and lurching sea-legs. Suddenly the air filled with a jingle as of inharmonious bells; and round a corner came a team of twenty men in grey and yellow patchwork, yoked to a waggon filled with stone and gravel; they had their chains to drag as well, and these made the mournful music wherever they went. One of the soldiers in charge of the newly landed draft chanced to catch Tom’s eye flashing misery and defiance. “Don’t you trouble your head about them,” cried he; “it’ll be your own fault, young fellow, if ever you come to that; there’s none on you need.”
Tom said nothing, but a convict near him called out, “I believe you, general! We’ve come out here to enjoy ourselves, and that’s what we mean to do.”
“And will, too!” said the soldier. “There’s plenty of us chaps would change shoes with you if we could,” he added below his breath; “assigned servants is more in demand than ever, and a good ’un gets wages just the same as a free man. You’ll all be snapped up before you’ve been in barracks a day. No, this ain’t them; this is the ’orspital; them’s the barracks, round the corner to the left.”
A high wall enclosed the sombre pile, which looked the more sinister against that sky of unfathomable blue. Immoderate sunshine and the tantalising proximity of the Governor’s pleasure-grounds put a point to the ominous contrast; and there were misgivings among those bold spirits that had looked forward to New South Wales as a land of exclusive cakes and ale.
“If they’re going to shut us up in there,” said one to another, “we might as well have stayed where we was in blessed old Noogit!”
“I tell you they won’t keep you above a day,” resumed the soldier. “And you’ll never see the place again unless you plays the fool and gets turned into Gov’ment. Them as does that comes back, of course, and has a bad time of it too. Hear that! Hear that!”
Over the wall, as the newcomers marched down one side of it, there came from the other a series of shrill screams; and ere they reached the gate, it was flung open, and out marched four men, carrying a fifth—screaming still—shoulder-high between them. The white face was turned to the sky, the naked trunk writhing in agony; and the blood was running out of the man’s boots as though he had been wading ankle-deep in it, while his leg-irons hung clanking from his legs.
“Aha!” said the soldier. “That’s a Tom-fool who’s got turned into Gov’ment, you see! They’re carrying ‘im across to the ’orspital, ’cause the cat’s been scratching of ’im.”
“The cat?” cried Tom, who was trembling all over.
“Ay, my lad; the one with nine tails; ’tis the commonest breed out here!”
Tom never knew how his legs carried him through the barrack gates, and when the draft were drawn up within, and formally addressed there by the Deputy-Governor, he caught but little of the harangue. He felt deadly sick; his heart ached like a tooth; and for hours to come those piercing screams pursued his tingling ears. However, he supposed the punishment must have been timed expressly as a salutary warning for the newcomers; devoutly he hoped so; but he soon knew better. Next morning there were two floggings, and one again the morning after. It was, in fact, a daily detail at the Hyde Park Barracks, which were, on the other hand, the headquarters of several hundreds of the most desperate felons in New South Wales. Tom and his draft were only to remain there until assigned into private service, but the rest had all been “turned into Government” as unmanageable by their masters, and were in barracks for re-punishment. Their days were spent in road-gangs or in other organised labour about the town; and not a few of their nights in depredations winked at by the barrack officers.—
For the corruption of the place was as flagrant as the discipline was harsh. The very first night, when Tom was driven from his hammock by the fetid heat of the overcrowded dormitory, he witnessed an instructive incident from the window. It was the return of such a depredator, and the division of his spoil with the officer on duty. Tom soon learnt that burglaries and highway robberies were nightly occurrences in Sydney, and as often the work of convicts under nominal lock and key as that of the assigned servants who infested the streets after dark.
Meanwhile he was himself assigned to a resident in urgent quest of a “special,” or “gentleman convict,” as such as Tom were termed. The applicant was a genial greybeard, with a philosophic eye, which looked Tom well up and down at their interview.
“What I want,” said he, “is a tutor for my son. I hear you are a University man. May I ask what makes you stare?”
“I a tutor!”
“Well?”
“You can’t know what I was transported for.”
“Oh, yes, I do. I could wish it had been for something else, certainly; but that doesn’t make you any the less a University man. And the other specials seem to be a poor lot, and I mean to give you a trial. But we’ll drop that name of yours, which I’m afraid may be known in my house, and you shall start fair. In half an hour then, Jones, I shall call for you in my chaise.”
And Tom actually found himself quite a privileged member of a decent household before he had time to realise his good fortune. The other servants were ordered to treat him with respect. His pupil was put entirely in his charge. He had his meals with the family, and had revelled for one night in a deliciously clean bed and bedroom, when the master of the house came to him in the morning with a very wry face.
“It’s all up, Jones,” said that philosopher, with the blunt intimacy which had made Tom like him from the first. “My good wife has discovered who you are, and she refuses to leave her bed while you remain in the house. She has read of you in the English papers, confound them, and she simply won’t have you on the premises! It seems unreasonable when you consider that our cook was a bloodthirsty baby-farmer, our coachman a professional burglar, and so on right through the staff—habitual criminals every one—which I don’t think you are. Still there’s another side to it: there’s the boy to be considered, and though I think you’re the very man for him, a mother’s feelings must be studied in such matters. You see I like you well enough to be perfectly frank about the matter; but the fact is, the chaise is waiting for us outside.”
So ended that chapter, and Tom was back at barracks in time to hear the clank of the chain-gangs shuffling painfully out to work, and the swish and whistle of the morning lash. Those two instruments supplied the street-music of the convict city; there were few days and few hours when you might not hear their melancholy duet. To Tom the sound of it was still physical torture, the more unbearable after this cruel taste of better things. Nearly all his shipmates had been assigned and taken away in his absence. Only one other “special” was left, a London clerk transported for fraud. Tom’s late master (a friend of the Superintendent) was allowed to carry him off in Tom’s stead, and long afterwards the latter heard the curious sequel of his own misfortune: so thoroughly did his successor teach what he knew that both tutor and pupil were presently transported to Van Diemen’s Land for life.
The incident was sufficiently disheartening at the time, and yet it had its hopeful side. It revealed the possibilities of the assignment system, or rather its better possibilities, from the convict’s point of view. As a punishment it must needs prove a farce in a community which preferred to estimate convicts by their capacity as colonists, rather than by their crimes as felons. Such was Tom’s comforting reflection; for not yet did he realise how entirely the condition of the convict was dependent upon the character of the master; but having had one good master, though for so brief a period, he looked cheerfully for another.
The other, however, was slow to come. His false start seemed to tell against Tom with the authorities. They were in no hurry to assign him again, and presently he found himself the last man of his draft in the barracks, with his hammock the only one a-swing between the stanchions of the great dormitory upstairs. Then one morning he heard a row in the yard, and there was a very over-dressed, thick-set and thick-spoken young man abusing the officers because there were no convicts left.
“I tell you we applied for three, and I’ve come down expressly for them,” he spluttered out. “Over a hundred blessed miles I’ve come, from Castle Sullivan near the Hunter River, for two farm labourers and a groom, all properly applied for in lots of time. And just because I get a touch of the sun, and can’t come on the right day, I’m to go back empty-handed, am I? We’ll see about that. I’ll complain to the Board!”
“That won’t do no good. We’ve only one man left, and the Board can’t split ’im into three.”
“Oh, you have one, have you? Haul him out and let’s have a look at the lubber.”
So Tom was produced to receive the unsteady scrutiny of a swimming blue eye that told a tale; and was informed with an oath that he was a “special,” and they wanted none of that kidney at Castle Sullivan.
Great was Tom’s relief, for a coarser face he had seldom seen; but at this the officials remarked that it was a “special” or nothing; and the bleared eyes were on him once more.
“Come from the country?”
“Yes.”
“Saddle a horse?”
“Yes.”
“And ride him after?”
“Better try me.”
“Well, so I will! You be ready in an hour and a horse’ll be ready for you. I’ll go back with a groom if with nothing else!”
“Wait!” said Tom.
“What’s up now?”
“I’m supposed to have committed a murder,” said Tom through his teeth. “In one family they wouldn’t keep me—”
The other drowned his words with a bellowing laugh.
“You wont be the only one at Castle Sullivan!” cried he. “We don’t mind what you’ve done, bless you, so long as you don’t try it on again up there! If you do—” and he jerked a great close-cropped head in the direction of the barrack triangles, while a bloated lower lip stuck out like a tongue between his short fair beard and moustache. “There never yet was the lag that bested Nat Sullivan,” he added with another of his oaths; “and you don’t look the fool to try it on. So be ready in an hour sharp, or you look out!”
“Is he Nat Sullivan?” said Tom to the officers as the stout young man staggered off.
“Ay, ay,” said they; “that’s the celebrated Mr. Nat!”
“Celebrated?”
“They’re all that, you’ll find, are the Sullivans of Castle Sullivan. You wait and see. I sha’n’t say nothing to set you agen ’em. But I wish you joy of each other; don’t you, Bill?”
Bill laughed, and Tom troubled them with no more questions.
Mr. Nat did not come in an hour; he came in three, swaying in his saddle, but still managing to lead a pack-horse and a horse for Tom. His blue eyes were now half-closed, and Tom understood him to curse the sun and to mutter something about a fresh touch that morning. They rode off, however, and were near the outskirts of Sydney when Mr. Nat rolled quietly out of his saddle and lay insensible in the middle of Brickfield Hill.
Tom was at his side in an instant. No bones were broken; he was simply fast asleep. Tom shook him up, and managed to get him to the nearest inn, where he again fell asleep, anathematising the sun, and so never stirred for hours.
And the convict-servant stood over the grunting carcass of his free master, and now he marvelled at the system which sought to accomplish the amelioration of the felon by trusting him in such hands as these. The thing had not even the excuse of an irregularity. There was a brand-new Government document sticking out of a pocket of the loud check coat, within a few inches of the bloated face, and Tom guessed rightly that it referred to himself. Then there had been more preliminaries than he had thought; but that only made matters worse, since what was a scandal in itself was immeasurably more scandalous as part and parcel of a System.
Evening came, and Mr. Nat still lay snoring with his swollen lips wide apart. Tom had not left him yet, being partly occupied with his own thoughts and partly taken up with the various sounds of the inn. Some of these sounds were sinister, as when stealthy steps came along the passage, and an unseen hand tried the bedroom door, which Tom had locked. He did not care to leave the room, not knowing what the other might have in his pockets; but at last he did so, after turning the key behind him and putting it in his pocket.
He went first to the stables, where he was surprised to find the horses saddled and bridled in their stalls. He had unsaddled them himself after engaging the room for Mr. Nat. There was nobody about, however, to afford an explanation, and it occurred to Tom that the sooner they did get away the better. So he left the horses as they were, but looked into the tap-room on his way upstairs, when all he heard and saw confirmed his impression not only of that particular inn but of the widespread corruption of the convict town. A cattle-stealer was drinking with a constable, and openly boasting before the latter of his exploits; as Tom listened, however, he heard something else that interested him more. It was the sound of hoofs in the yard behind the inn. He darted out and met a man riding his master’s horse and coolly leading the other two.
“What are you doing with those horses?”
“What’s that to you? Hands off, or I’ll brain ye!”
“They’re my master’s. Come out of that saddle. Ah! you would, would you?”
And Tom, receiving the loaded whip on his forearm, sprang at the rider’s neck and brought him heavily to earth among a dozen hoofs. Then he caught and tethered all three animals, and returned to his man as the latter was sitting up and rubbing his eyes in the moonlight. He was a little horsy bowlegs, and Tom dragged him all the way into the tap-room in the sitting posture, only relinquishing him at the constable’s feet.
“Here’s something for you!” he cried. “Caught him in the act of riding off with my master’s horses!”
“Why, it’s my ostler!” roared the landlord.
“I was only fetching of ’em round to the door, ’cos I thought they was goin’!” whined bowlegs.
“It’s you that’ll get run in, I’m thinking,” remarked the constable severely to Tom.
“Fetching them round!” cried the latter. “Then why didn’t you say so, and what made you strike at me when I said they were my master’s horses? Oh, I see the kind of place I’m in!” And he rushed upstairs to the room, and nearly trod on something crouching at the door, that fled with a flutter, while a little instrument fell from the key-hole and rang upon the floor. Tom picked it up, unlocked the door, and strode in.
Mr. Nat took some waking, but started up at length with clenched fists and an oath.
“We’re in a den of thieves!” whispered Tom. “Don’t you remember me? Your new groom! We must get out of this as quick as we can!”
“Why, where are we?”
“At an inn: the ‘Bull and Tumbledown.’”
Mr. Nat whistled, and flung his legs over the side of the bed.
“One of the worst houses in Sydney,” said he. “Ring the bell, if there is one.”
There was one, and a woman-servant answered its summons.
“Send up the landlord,” said Sullivan, “and tell him to bring plenty of change. Now, landlord,” he continued when that worthy appeared with a lighted candle, “give me change out of that, and don’t you force me to give you any out of this!”
He presented a sovereign in his left hand, a pistol in his right; but it was the great besotted face at which Tom stood gazing. Besotted it still was, and brutal and low, but one virtue shone out of it in the candle-light. There was plenty of cool courage in the bloodshot blue eyes, and an indomitable determination about the pendulous lower lip.
“Sir!” whispered the landlord, falling back. “There’s a constable in the house. I shall fetch him up. Such an outrage upon a law-abiding citizen—”
“Law-abiding grandmother!” cried Mr. Nat. “I know all about you and your inn; who doesn’t? I never would have set foot inside such a den if it hadn’t been your infernal Sydney sun that bowled me over. You may know my name. I’m Nat Sullivan, of Castle Sullivan, near the Hunter River, and I never was bested by a convict yet, no, nor an emancipist either, my fine fellow! There, keep the rest; but you lead the way straight downstairs and out to my horses, or you may have something else to keep besides.”
In another minute they were in their saddles, and as they rode away Tom put a skeleton key in his master’s hand, saying he had picked it up outside the bedroom door.
“And you give it to me!” cried Mr. Nat. “You don’t keep it to use yourself? Well, well, you’ve not made a bad beginning, Erichsen. You looked after me when I was bowled over, and you saved my horses when most of you chaps would have been the first to take ’em. That landlord’s an old lag himself. I know how to treat the breed. I never was bested by one of you yet, so put that in your pipe and smoke it. But you’re a wonder, you are! Seen the inside of a Sydney pub and come out sober! Well, there’s one like that to every hundred inhabitants, to say nothing of the sly grogshops. It’s a warm place, Sydney, I can tell you. But the Sydney sun, that’s hotter still!”
It was under a brilliant moon, however, that Tom had his last glimpse of the town for several months to come. Nor did he ever see its sad sights again with the same startled eyes, nor hear its sad sounds with the same thrill of horror. It was a different nature—it was another man—that came back to Sydney after many weeks.
The exodus in the meanwhile proved a pleasanter experience than had at first appeared possible. The small adventure at the “Bull and Tumbledown” had established some degree of mutual regard between Mr. Nat and his new groom. Their ride up-country spread over the better part of a week, during which time the master suffered more than once as he had been suffering when the man first met him. But in the intervals he treated Tom with a certain stupid good humour, which, however, never for a moment concealed the capacity for an equally stupid cruelty, and the nearest approach to a quarrel on the way was occasioned by the brutal beating of the pack-horse, in which Tom interfered. They were good friends, however, on the whole, and once or twice Mr. Nat made quite an interesting guide. In Parramatta he pointed out a large building, like a poor-house, and offered to wait outside while Tom went in to choose a wife.
“A wife!” said Tom with a shudder. “What is the place?”
“They call it a factory. It is for the women what Hyde Park Barracks are to you fellows. They go there till they’re assigned, and afterwards when they’re turned into Government. Cut in and take your choice! I’m not joking. I’ve chosen ‘em for our men before today, and you’re the sort that deserves one. Get a lightweight, and we’ll take her up on the pack-horse!”
Tom shook his head, and thought of Claire until they stopped at an inn where a new surprise awaited him. The resplendent landlord started when he saw Tom, and tilted a white top-hat over his eyes, but not before the latter had recognised a fellow-convict per Seahorse. They had parted in the barrack-yard, where Tom had seen the other carried off by a gorgeous female in a nankeen pelisse and bright green veil, to whom he had been assigned. Tom now caught a glimpse of the nankeen pelisse in the bar-parlour, and as they rode away he asked Mr. Nat whether convicts were ever assigned to their wives.
“They have been, often enough,” was the reply; “but it’s being put a stop to now. Why, some of the best shops in Sydney are carried on by convicts assigned to their wives, and on capital which was originally the proceeds of the robbery the husband was lagged for! The wife brings it out and is here to meet him when he lands! At least that used to be the dodge; but Bourke tried hard to put his foot on it, and if you hear of a case just let me know.”—
So Tom said no more.
But the most interesting roadside character was encountered at a contractor’s store much farther on the way, where Mr. Sullivan nudged Tom and made him take note of a portly man in a magnificent waistcoat, who sang a song in the most charming baritone while the travellers were having their supper.
“Do you know who that was?” said Tom’s master when they were once more on their way. “That was Hunt, the accomplice of Thurtell, who murdered a man called Weare. You remember it, do you? Well, that’s the man, and he just bears out what I say: we don’t care a kick what a convict has done in the old country so long as he don’t go doing it again out here. But there, I keep forgetting you’re one yourself; somehow or other you’re not like the rest; and you take my advice, and go on like you’ve begun.” As he paused, the voice of Hunt was wafted to their ears in a new song, that died very sweetly on the soft night air.
The latter stages of the journey were marked by looks of recognition wherever young Sullivan baited his horses, but by never a single look of welcome; and an ominous climax was reached when the little cavalcade passed a stockade and a chain-gang within twenty miles of their destination.—
Here was a long line of heavily ironed men, some eighty in all, strung together like beads on a rosary, and at work with pick and shovel beneath the burning sun and the eyes and muskets of the military. As the riders approached word seemed to go along the line, and face after face was raised with a curse and a howl as the horses passed. Such faces as they were! Tom had not seen the like in Newgate, nor aboard the Seahorse, nor yet, in such a number, in Sydney itself. Those, on the whole, were only on the lower slopes of degradation; but these had reached its lowest depths, and Tom rode by them with an aching heart and averted eyes.
His attention, indeed, became concentrated upon his companion, who had checked his horse instead of urging it forward, and was walking instead of galloping this horrible gauntlet. Tom could see but one sunburnt cheek and one cold blue eye; but the first kept its colour, the second never flinched, and the gross lip, that jutted out between beard and moustache, never quivered once all the way. Nor until he was well past the gang did Mr. Nat put spurs to his horse; but when he did, it was not to draw rein until they reached the next roadside inn; and there he vanished, to reappear next day with running eyes and shaking hands.
“I wouldn’t be assigned to him for something!” said the barman, with whom Tom made friends. “You might as well go to Norfolk Island straight as to Castle Sullivan. Tell you what, mate, I’d give him the go-by to-night, for you’ll never have a better chance. And see here, I’ll come with you, for I’m dead-sick of my job!”
Tom shook his head.
“No, no, my friend; he may be all you say, but he’s treated me well enough so far, and I mean to stick to him.”
“Oh, the young cove’s not the worst. It’s the old cove I was thinking of.”
“What old cove?”
“Dr. Sullivan, this one’s father.”
He had a father, then? Mr. Nat had never mentioned him. And the old man was worse to do with than the son?
Tom put these questions to himself, and then another to his friend the barman, after shortly telling the latter about the behaviour of the iron-gang. “Why was all that?” said Tom.
“Why? Because half them crawlers have worked for the Sullivans in their time. They get you flogged, and flogged, and flogged, till all the work’s flogged out of you: then they get you six months in the crawlers, and like as not that’s the end of you.”
“Why doesn’t somebody put a bullet through them both?”
“Because the coves have got the pluck. That’s their secret. They don’t know what fear is. So there’s seventy strong men up there, and over a hundred in harvest-time, and the whole boiling afraid of them two!”
Tom said no more, neither did he have much to say to Mr. Nat next day in their saddles; neither did Mr. Nat have anything at all to say to him before nightfall, so severe had been his latest “touch of the sun.” But towards evening they left the road; and as the moon was rising in a velvet sky, lights also broke upon them through some trees. Dogs innumerable began to bark. And as young Sullivan stooped to open a gate, he pointed across it to the lights, and said that there was Castle Sullivan at last.
“And hark you here,” he added, savagely, seizing Tom’s bridle on the other side, as though every redeeming trait was now left behind upon the neutral ground that they had traversed together; “hark you to this, and recollect it well! You’ve been right enough on the way, and you’ve the makings of a decent groom. But you won’t find me as easy up here as I could afford to be down the road; and one word about that sunstroke—”
He glared at Erichsen, then let the bridle go without finishing his threat; and without another syllable they rode through the trees towards the lights.