Bryce Courtenay is the bestselling author of The Power of One, Tandia, April Fool’s Day, The Potato Factory, Tommo & Hawk, Jessica, Solomon’s Song, A Recipe for Dreaming, The Family Frying Pan, The Night Country, Smoky Joe’s Café, Four Fires, Matthew Flinders’ Cat, Brother Fish, Whitethorn, Sylvia, The Persimmon Tree and Fishing for Stars.

The Power of One is also available in an edition for younger readers, and Jessica has been made into an award-winning television miniseries.

BOOKS BY BRYCE COURTENAY

The Power of One

Tandia

April Fool’s Day

A Recipe for Dreaming

The Family Frying Pan

The Night Country

Jessica

Smoky Joe’s Café

Four Fires

Matthew Flinders’ Cat

Brother Fish

Whitethorn

Sylvia

The Persimmon Tree

Fishing for Stars

THE AUSTRALIAN TRILOGY

The Potato Factory

Tommo & Hawk

Solomon’s Song

Also available in one volume, as The Australian Trilogy

Bryce Courtenay

Penguin Group (Australia) 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Group (Canada) 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, ON M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Ireland 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ) 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

One of the advantages of being older is that one has had the good fortune to meet a lot of people who are experts on a great many topics. I never cease to be amazed and gratified by friends and acquaintances who so willingly part with their hard-earned knowledge.

Quite often a younger person, having read one or another of my books, says to me, ‘How do you know all those things, Bryce?’ Well, of course, I don’t. My friends do. Authors steal stuff, most of us have ‘news-stand’ minds, we accommodate knowledge for very short periods.

Here now are some of the generous people from whom I ‘borrowed’ information and who allowed me to appropriate the wisdom I don’t have. I have also included at the end of the book a bibliography of those writers without whose books it would have been impossible to write this one (see A Note on Sources).

To Margaret Gee, my line editor, proofreader, confidante and often fearless critic, my heartfelt thanks for being at my shoulder when I needed help and quiet as a mouse when I didn’t.

To Benita Courtenay, who reads each chapter while it is still warm from my desktop printer and is never afraid to comment usefully, I am, as always, grateful to you.

My admiration and gratitude go to two great professionals, Bruce Gee, who is best described as a polymath, and John Arnold, Deputy Director, National Key Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University, who, assisted by David Green and Robin Lucas, became the mainstay of my research.

It has always been my contention that the historical facts in a work of fiction must be accurate and that readers should be able to rely on them to obtain a knowledge of the times in which the narrative takes place. In this regard Bruce and John and my editor Kay Ronai have done me proud.

I have a special debt of gratitude to Bill Fogarty, Senior Curator – Photographs, Sound and Film at the Australian War Memorial. Bill was with me at Gallipoli and together we covered the battlegrounds where, in a true sense, Australia forged many of those unique elements which make us who we are as a nation today. For the many bottles of cheap and utterly atrocious local red wine shared as we pondered over maps and explanations, for reading and correcting the military detail in this book and for the willingness to help at high speed, I shall be forever grateful to you, Bill, and also to those of your colleagues who worked with you.

There may be some who will disagree with my perspective of Gallipoli and France, but I would be very surprised if Bill Fogarty, Ashley Ekins, Historian, Official History Unit, and Graeme Beveridge, Education Unit, all of the Australian War Memorial, who supplied material and painstakingly detailed my narrative, have got any of the hard facts wrong.

And now for those who helped in a hundred different ways: John Waller, Managing Director of Boronia Travel Centre in Melbourne, who generously allowed me at the last minute to accompany his official tour to Gallipoli. Essie Moses, of Woollahra Library, who never fails me in matters Jewish and others. Owen Denmeade, Dr Irwin Light, Christine Lenton, Sylvia Manning, Sardine, Ethna Gallagher, Alex and Brenda Hamill, Tony Crosby, Danny Persky, Cheryl Bockman, John Robson, Robbee Spadafora for help with jacket designs, Alan Jacobs of Consensus Research, Harry Griffiths for further material and for the good companionship on the Gallipoli tour. To Peter Darnell, who generously allowed me the use of personal family papers and letters concerning his granduncle, Major Aubrey Darnell, who was killed in France in 1918. ETT Imprint, for their kind permission to reproduce Mary Gilmore’s poem ‘Gallipoli’ from Selected Poems (Sydney, 1999). Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘Arms and the Boy’ from War Poems and Others (Random House) was first published by Chatto & Windus. The epigraph to Chapter Seventeen is Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Common Form’, from ‘Epitaphs of the War, 1914–18’. The poem ‘Gallipoli’ on page 573 is by W. S. Pakenham-Walsh, 1916.

Then there are the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, and the State Library of Victoria, two of the most splendid, resourceful and co-operative institutions in the land, without which this book could not possibly have been contemplated. I thank you for your scholarship, dedication and the many examples of the best possible library practice.

My thanks to my old friends Sir William and Lady Dulcie Keys, who will launch Solomon’s Song and, I know, will do so with great aplomb.

At Penguin Books I thank the staff who support me so generously and those backroom people who quietly make things happen, in particular my gratitude to Ali Watts, Senior Editor, Beverley Waldron, Production Manager, Leonie Stott, Design Manager, and her people in the Design Studio, Ellie Exarchos, designer, you were all inspired.

To Peter Field, Peter Blake and Gabrielle Coyne who are responsible for the marketing and publicity, I know of no publishing house that does it better.

Then there are the Penguins who boss me around, my publishers, Bob Sessions, Julie Gibbs and Clare Forster, with Clare in the hot seat responsible for this book, you have all been patient, supporting and, as always, a delight with whom to work. Clare, I simply couldn’t hope for a better working publisher.

As always, the best is left for last, my editor Kay Ronai. Kay, will you please edit my next book with me? You are simply the best. Absaloodle!

BRYCE COURTENAY

ARMS AND THE BOY

BOOK ONE

Chapter One

WHAT HAPPENED TO TOMMO

On a dull early morning with the cumulus clouds over the Heads threatening rain, roiling and climbing, changing patterns and darkening at the centres, the incoming tide washes a body onto Camp Cove, a small inner-harbour beach within Port Jackson which is becoming increasingly known as Sydney Harbour.

Paddy Doyle, the shipping telegraph operator stationed at South Head, out with his dog hears its persistent and, what seems to his ear, urgent barking coming from the beach below him. He makes his way down the pathway onto the small jetty to see his black mongrel yapping beside what, even at a distance, is plainly a human body lying high up on the wet sand.

Doyle, a stout man not given to exertion, hesitates a moment, then jumps the eighteen inches from the jetty onto the sand and breaks into a clumsy trot, the sand squeaking and giving way under his boots. Commonsense tells him no amount of hurrying will make a difference, but death has a haste that ignores the good sense of walking slowly on a sultry morning. He is puffing heavily by the time he arrives at the wet bundle of wool and limbs from which trail several long ribbons of translucent iodine-coloured seaweed.

Immediately he sees that those parts of the body not protected by clothing are badly decomposed and much pecked about by gulls, crabs, sea lice and other scavengers of the deep. But not until he comes right up to it does he realise the body is missing a head.

The neck of the dead man protrudes from a dark woollen coat, a grotesque stump, ragged at the edges, torn about by the popping mouths of countless small fish. It is an aperture made less grisly by the cleansing effect of the salt water but more macabre by its bloodless appearance. It looks like the gape of some prehensile sea plant designed to trap and feed on small fish and tiny molluscs rather than something made of human flesh and blood.

Paddy, an ex-convict, brought to New South Wales on the barque, Eden, the last transport of convicts to Sydney in November 1840, thinks of himself as a hard man. But twenty years of half-decent living have increased the size of his girth and heightened his sensibilities and he vomits into the sand.

After a fair endurance of spitting and gagging he rinses his mouth in the salt wash and stands erect again, kicking the sand with the toe of his right boot to cover the mess he’s made at his feet.

The sun has broken through a break in the clouds and almost immediately blowflies buzz around the corpse. A sickly stench starts to rise from the body, but with his belly emptied of his breakfast gruel, Doyle is now better able to withstand the smell and he squats down to make a more thorough examination.

A narrow leather thong around the base of the headless neck cuts deep into the swollen flesh and disappears inside the neck of a woollen vest. Doyle, reverting to his darker instincts, tugs tentatively at the cord. At first there is some resistance, then a small malachite amulet, a Maori Tiki, is revealed.

Doyle, like all past convicts, is deeply superstitious and is alarmed by the presence of an amulet known to ward off evil spirits and put a curse on those who harm its wearer. He hurriedly tucks it back under the wet vest, afraid now even to have touched it. Without thinking, he rubs the palm of the offending hand in the wet sand to cleanse it, then crossing himself he mutters, ‘Hail Mary, Mother of God, protect me.’

The body is that of a white male of unusually small stature. The fingers of both his hands are clenched to form puffy, clublike fists. Whether from the sudden heat of the sun or the drying out of the corpse, the right hand begins to open and Doyle observes that the nails have continued to grow after death and are deeply embedded into the fleshy upper part of the dead man’s palm. As the fingers unlock and open there is no sign of blood oozing from the fissures the nails have made. Each finger now wears a hooked talon with the finger pads puckered and raised from the immersion in sea water, so that the skin surface seems to be covered by nests of tiny white worms.

The nails are smooth and clean with no cuts or scars nor is there any permanently ingrained dirt etched into the lines on the palms to indicate a man accustomed to physical work. The skin on his arms is bluish-white from the sea water, but shows no signs of having ever been exposed to the sun. ‘Some sort of toff,’ Doyle thinks, ‘no doubt up to no good and come to a sticky and untimely end, good riddance. Still an’ all, choppin’ off his ‘ead’s goin’ a bit bloody far!’

Later, when he has pulled off his boots and placed them on the stone steps of his hut to dry and dusted the sand from his feet, he telegraphs Sydney to report the headless corpse. Then, in what Paddy thinks is an amusing appendage to his message, he taps out, Best get a move on it don’t take long for them blowflies to lay their maggot eggs.

Two hours later, with the threatening clouds now well out to sea and the sun hot as hades in a clear blue sky, a steam pinnace from the police mooring at Circular Quay with two police constables aboard puffs up to the Camp Cove jetty to claim the body for the Pyrmont morgue.

While searching the corpse, the morgue attendant, observed closely by Senior Detective Darcy O’Reilly of the Darlinghurst Police Station, discovers a small leather wallet inside the jacket. It contains four pounds and several personal calling cards which identify the headless man as Tommo X Solomon.

Detective O’Reilly immediately sends a constable to Tucker & Co. to inform Hawk Solomon that he is required at the city morgue to identify what may be the remains of his brother.

Hawk, at Mary’s instigation, had reported Tommo missing in case any of Mr Sparrow’s lads might have seen him entering his lodgings on the night of Maggie’s death and declared his presence to the police.

A further search of the victim’s clothing reveals a deck of DeLarue cards, the kind generally used by professional gamblers of a superior status. Finally, a gold hunter watch, with the ace of spades enamelled on its outer lid and a sovereign hanging from its fob chain, is discovered in a buttoned-down pocket of his weskit. It has stopped at twenty minutes past ten o’clock. Senior Detective O’Reilly writes this down as the presumed time of death and then pockets the watch. The corpse is left clothed for the pathologist to examine and is lifted onto the zinc dissecting table in preparation for the autopsy by the Chief Government Medical Officer, William McCrea M.D., who will closely examine the clothes before removal, noting any tears or stains that may help to define the method of death.

Conscious of the corpse’s advanced state of decomposition Dr McCrea loses no time presenting his findings to the coroner, Mr Manning Turnbull Noyes, known in the magistrates courts as M. T. Noyes and by the hoi polloi as ‘Empty Noise’.

The hearing and its immediate aftermath is best summed up by the following day’s Sydney Morning Herald report on the murder by its popular senior crime reporter, Samuel Cook. Although Mr Cook’s name is not used in the paper his style is easily recognised by his many readers who know him for his fearless reportage. He enjoys their respect for his ability to ask awkward questions which have a habit of greatly embarrassing nobs and government officials of every rank. Cook has even been known to take on the governor when a wealthy merchant of dubious reputation was included in the Queen’s Honours List. There are some who believe he wouldn’t back down to the young Queen Victoria herself.

Samuel Cook is the scourge of the police force, in particular of Senior Detective Darcy O’Reilly. And while every magistrate in New South Wales, given half a chance to nobble him, would cheerfully sentence the Sydney Morning Herald reporter to a ten-year stretch in Darlinghurst, it is Noyes who would call in the hangman. Like O’Reilly, M. T. Noyes is a special target for his remorseless and acerbic pen.

Hawk stops off first at the Hero of Waterloo where Mary has her temporary lodgings, and together they go to the Pyrmont morgue to identify Tommo’s corpse. Here they are made to place a tincture of camphor oil to their nostrils to kill the unmistakeable odour of decaying flesh before they are taken into the morgue’s coldroom to examine the corpse which has been stripped of its clothing but, at the suggestion of Senior Detective O’Reilly, the Tiki remains with its leather thong about the tattered and truncated neck.

A square of canvas has been neatly arranged over the top of the neck to conceal the absence of a head, though the Maori amulet can be clearly seen resting on the exposed chest three inches below the base of the neck. A second square of canvas in the form of a loincloth covers the private parts. Mary scarcely pauses to examine the body before confirming to Senior Detective O’Reilly that it is her adopted son, Tommo.

She notices O’Reilly’s bemused and doubtful countenance at so quick an identification of a corpse, which, after all, lacks a head, the most common method of recognition. She points to a large mole high up on the left shoulder. ‘Born with it, big as sixpence, can’t mistake it, looks like a map of Tasmania,’ she states. Remembering her grief, her voice quavers slightly and she touches the corner of the small lace handkerchief to her right eye and then her left and returns it, perhaps a little too hastily, to cover her nose, for the stench rising from the body has even defeated the efficacy of the camphor oil.

Hawk is hard put to contain his surprise for, almost at once, they have both seen that the naked body isn’t that of Tommo. Hawk’s twin has a small but distinctive birthmark on the calf of his left leg and no such mark can now be seen. Hawk bends down to examine the amulet and immediately sees what he is looking for, a small ‘M’ has been scratched into the surface of the green malachite. ‘The Tiki,’ he points to the amulet. ‘That’s his, my brother’s.’ It was given to his twin by his Maori wife, who died in childbirth, and the ‘M’ scratched onto the surface is for her name ‘Makareta’.

It is a certain sign to Hawk of Tommo’s efforts at deception and his determination to make the murder victim seem to be himself. Tommo would have thought long and hard before parting with the Tiki which he greatly cherished as his talisman, the equivalent in his own mind of Mary’s Waterloo medal. Then Hawk realises that it is a message to him, Tommo’s way of telling him that he is still in the world of the living.

In fact, having received Johnny Terrible’s message that Tommo was going after Mr Sparrow, they have each silently concluded the corpse must belong to Ikey Solomon’s most accomplished graduate from the Methodist Academy of Light Fingers, the infamous Sparrow Fart, alias F. Artie Sparrow, the odious Mr Sparrow.

Tommo has completed what he had vowed to do and avenged the death of Maggie Pye. The sudden tears Senior Detective O’Reilly now sees streaming unabashedly down the tattooed cheeks of the giant black man are not, as he supposes, for the grotesque corpse on the zinc tray, but for Maggie Pye and the love of his twin. They are also tears of relief that Tommo is still alive.

Using the only currency he knows, this headless corpse lying on a slab of ice is Tommo’s payback for all the mongrels who have blighted his life. The ghastly manner of Mr Sparrow’s death is paradoxically also Tommo’s last gift of love to his brother. Hawk cannot help but think that the pressure on Tommo’s brain from the wound to his head has finally driven him insane. For this notion as well, he now weeps.

O’Reilly brings his fist to his lips and clears his throat. ‘Hurrmph, er missus, if you’d be so kind as to turn yer back, a matter o’ some delicacy,’ he says, looking directly at Mary.

Mary turns away from the corpse and the detective lifts the canvas loincloth and nods to Hawk. ‘It’s another common way o’ identification,’ he says abruptly, then supposing Mary can’t hear him, he whispers sotto voce to Hawk, ‘Pricks are like faces, every one’s different.’

Hawk sniffs and nods his head, but does not reply, not wishing to openly commit perjury. O’Reilly sighs and pulls the small canvas square back into place. ‘It’s all right to look now, missus,’ he says to Mary. As if he is anxious to conclude the identification, he casually produces a gold watch from his pocket. Clicking it open so that the ace of spades on its lid can be clearly seen by both Mary and Hawk, he pretends to consult it.

‘Goodness, that’s our Tommo’s watch,’ Mary says quick as a flash, for indeed it is Tommo’s. Senior Detective O’Reilly grins, the identification of the headless victim is complete, it’s been a satisfying afternoon’s work all round. He nods. ‘Good.’ He turns and calls over to the morgue assistant who brings him a clipboard to which is attached a form. The assistant also holds a small glass pen and ink stand. Holding the clipboard in one hand and with the pen poised in the other, O’Reilly asks officially, ‘Are you, Hawk Solomon, and you, Mary Abacus, quite certain this is the body of Tommo Solomon?’

‘With me hand on me heart,’ Mary lies, bringing her hand up to cover her left breast. The question is perfunctory, O’Reilly has witnessed a mother’s quick and positive identification and the copious tears of grief still issuing from the giant nigger.

‘You’ll sign here then,’ he says all businesslike, dipping the pen into the open ink bottle and handing it to Hawk. Mary and Hawk sign the paper confirming their identification and the morgue assistant takes the clipboard and departs.

‘When can we take possession of the body of our loved one?’ Mary asks plaintively, her eyes taking on a suitably sad expression. ‘Give it a burial decent folk might attend?’

Hawk is amazed at her assertiveness, her complete presence of mind, she wants the body buried and out of the clutches of the law as soon as possible. ‘It ain’t in a nice state and we wish to preserve the best of our memories, sir,’ she adds, putting the finishing touches to what she hopes O’Reilly will see as a mother’s anxiety and grief.

The corners of the detective’s mouth twitch slightly and Mary reads this as a sign of his sympathy. ‘See what I can do, missus. It’s in the hands o’ the coroner. He don’t like being told his business, though.’

Mary takes a sovereign out of her purse and offers it to him. ‘A small contribution to the Orphans Fund,’ she says in a half-whisper.

O’Reilly now gives her a genuine smile, knowing himself to be the orphan of particular benefit. ‘Might be able to give him a bit of a hurry up, eh?’ he says, taking the gold coin Mary holds out to him.

‘Mother, that were a bribe,’ Hawk says to Mary on their return to the Hero of Waterloo.

The coroner, magistrate M. T. Noyes, is happy enough to oblige and he orders the body’s release from the authorities and also the immediate return of Tommo’s personal effects from the police. Though, unable to resist the temptation to display his infamous wit, and first determining that Mr Cook of the Sydney Morning Herald is not present, the magistrate quips, ‘In making this decision we have lost our head and must quickly bury the evidence or the case will stink to high heaven!’

By sundown every pub in Sydney will be repeating his bon mot. ‘Have you heard the latest from his nibs, Empty Noise?’ they will say gleefully to every newcomer.

Mary, never one to take chances, orders an expensive black basalt tombstone engraved in gold with the words:

TOMMO X SOLOMON

1840–1861

R.I.P.

In a simple ceremony conducted by the Reverend Hannibal Peegsnit, the eccentric Congregationalist, with only Mary and Hawk in attendance, the remains of Mr Sparrow are duly buried.

Ikey’s best pupil, Sparrer Fart, the lightest fingers in London Town, the small boy who never knew his real name, ended the way he’d started his life, unknown, unwanted and unloved, his final epitaph a beak’s joke in bad taste. He will lie headless beneath a tombstone, which, when Satan asks him for a reckoning of his life, he won’t even be able to call his own.

Hawk wishes Mary ‘Long life’, which is what Ikey would have done in the same circumstances.

Mary returns to Hobart after the funeral. Hawk gives Maggie’s two-room home and all her possessions to Flo, Maggie’s little friend, now married to the grocer’s son, Tom. He visits Caleb Soul, who accompanied Tommo and himself to the gold diggings at Lambing Flat and has since become one of Hawk’s dearest friends, to say his farewell. Then, after telling all at Tucker & Co. that he is going home to Hobart, and attending a gathering in the dock area of the entire company where he receives a handsome crystal goblet in gratitude for his services from Captain Tucker, Hawk sets sail for New Zealand.

On his arrival Hawk makes his way to the stretch of Auckland Harbour where the Maori boats moor and catches a coastal ketch that will take him to the Ngati Haua tribe under Chief Tamihana, in whose household Tommo’s daughter, Hinetitama, is being raised.

Hawk discovers that Tommo is dying from the wound to his head and is in constant pain. Often he sinks into a delirium but even when he is conscious, the pressure on his brain renders him incoherent, so that the words in his mouth twist into gibberish. But sometimes he has brief periods in the early mornings when he is quite lucid.

During one such period he asks Hawk to leave his daughter with the Maori until she comes of age and can decide for herself whether she wants the life of a pakeha or wishes to stay with her people.

‘The Maori be her family now, even if her name be Solomon. Let her choose later, though Gawd knows why she’d want to be one of us.’ In these coherent periods it is the same old sardonic Tommo, ever on the alert for the mongrels.

‘I shall see she never lacks for anything,’ Hawk promises. ‘I will respect your wish, though Mary pleads she would very much like her, as her granddaughter, to be brought up well at home with every privilege and the very best of education.’

‘Tell her then to leave something in her will for my daughter, my share,’ Tommo replies. ‘Although from what I’ve seen of privilege and education it breeds only greed and superiority.’

Hawk protests and Tommo laughs. ‘The Maori have all but lost their land and it has been took from them by educated men, men of the Church, committing a crime in the name of God and the governor himself doing the same in the name of the Queen. These are all educated men, all greedy and superior, all mongrels.’

Hawk, ever the rational one, replies, ‘That is an oversimplification, Tommo, goodness is not replaced by greed when a man becomes educated nor is greed absent in the poor. Man is by his very nature rapacious and wealth has forever been the precursor of power, the need to be seen as superior. Hinetitama must have some learning, you would not want your daughter to be shackled by ignorance and superstition.’

Tommo looks wearily up at Hawk. ‘You are the only good man I know what’s keen on book learnin’. Let my daughter grow up the natural way of her people, she will be taught to read and count and that will be enough.’ Tommo grins, it is near to being the old Tommo grin and Hawk’s heart is filled with love for his dying twin. ‘Unless you can teach her how to handle a pack of cards, eh? You must give her my Tiki.’ He touches the Tiki Hawk has returned to him and his expression grows suddenly serious. ‘Hawk, there is bad blood in me and it will be in my daughter also. If she stays among the Maori it will not come out so soon. Please tell her to wear it always, that the Tiki will protect her.’

‘Your axe? Is this the bad blood you talk of?’ Hawk does not wait for Tommo to reply. ‘Tommo, there is no bad blood there, what you did was for me and in memory of Maggie Pye. It was justice. You are good, Tommo, as good a man as ever had a conscience.’ For the first time the death of Mr Sparrow has been mentioned.

‘Conscience?’ Tommo smiles ruefully. ‘That is the difference between you and me, you would carry the murder on your conscience forever and I have but scarcely thought about it. Mr Sparrow was a mongrel and when I chopped him there was that much less evil in the world.’ Tommo looks up at Hawk. ‘But it takes bad blood to murder a man, any man, even a mongrel. If they should string me up for it, it would be a fair bargain.’

Hawk sighs and then looks at Tommo somewhat apprehensively. ‘Tommo, will you tell about that night?’

It is Tommo’s turn to sigh, ‘Aye, if you wish, but it weren’t a pretty thing to tell of.’

‘Tommo, I grieve for Maggie every day, every hour of my life, it would make it more, yer know ah … complete …’ Hawk shrugs, not knowing how to continue.

Tommo sees his confusion and starts right in. ‘It takes me five or six minutes to run to Kellet’s Wharf from the World Turned Upside Down, the pub where Mr Sparrow stayed. It’s fourteen minutes to nine o’clock with the tide turning at some time shortly after nine when the Kanaka ship, Morning Star, will sail. I have little time left to swim the two hundred yards out to where she’s moored.

‘I’m sweating and panting from the run and I remove me clothes and shoes and using me belt I wraps them around the axe holster and returns it to my back. Then I wades in and starts to swim. I’m still breathing ’ard from the run and me ’ead’s hurting terrible. It’s a calm night and dark with cloud cover, so the moon is lost. The harbour water’s cool and welcoming and I strokes me way to the dark shape o’ the Morning Star, a trading schooner about eighty feet stem to stern. I can see she has her head to the wind, facing the land breeze coming down the harbour and is preparing to sail.

‘As I reach the port side I can hear the Kanakas starting to sing as they lean into the capstan bars to take up the slack and begin to raise the anchor. I can hear the click of the pawls and if I’m any judge it’s a task that will take anything up to fifteen minutes. It means I can’t climb up the anchor rope as I had supposed. But, ah, there is a God in heaven, as me eyes clear I see they’ve already raised the dinghy but the ship’s ladder has not yet been pulled up. Glory be, it’s a doddle to climb on board up the rope ladder and soon enough I sticks me ’ead up to take a look over the deck. I’m panting hard but there appears to be no one about. They’ve already set the mainsail which is luffing in the light breeze and will cover any sound I might make coming aboard. From where I am at the waist of the schooner the Kanaka standing at the ship’s wheel and the captain on the quarterdeck can’t see me and I can hear the first mate on the quarterdeck urging the men on with the raising of the anchor.

‘I look around, there are a dozen or so barrels lashed to the starboard side and the dark shape of the deckhouse with the dinghy atop is to me left. Then I hear a snuffling sound and I go rigid, somebody’s coming. But it don’t take long to realise, like all Kanaka ships, they’ve taken pigs on board. Island folk, as you well know, don’t like to go to sea without a pig or two. Then I see it, the pig pen, close to the fo’c’sle, Kanakas, the only folk happy to put the pig pen near where they kips down. There’s another shape next to it and o’ course it’s the chicken coop, chickens the second thing them silly buggers like to have on board. All the bleedin’ ’ome comforts. The rest o’ the deck is the usual mess what come about before sailing. It will be to my advantage, nobody moving quickly, plenty of time to see ’em coming and if I has to, use me axe.’

Tommo grins. ‘Nah, just tap him light with the blunt, put him down for a bit. Anyway, it don’t happen. It ain’t necessary. There’s nobody on the main deck and I slips aboard and find good concealment behind the barrels on the starboard side. I’m tucked away so when they tidy the deck there is little chance I’ll be discovered.

‘I can see the deckhouse leading down to the saloon where I figure I’ll find Mr Sparrow. It looks to be a typical trading schooner with the one cabin below decks for a passenger or two and the captain and the first mate in their own quarters aft where it be the most comfortable to sail. From what Johnny Terrible’s told me, Mr Sparrow is on his own and does not wish to be recognised, not even by the captain or the crew, let alone a fellow passenger, so it will be him and me alone, if I can get down to him.

‘I undoes me swag and removes me axe from the shoulder holster so it’s at me side. I’m still bollocky and I starts to shiver again, now me panting’s stopped. As best I can, I wring out me wet clobber and get back into it, me clothes clinging to me skin, feeling ’orrible and me feet squelching in soaked boots. Now it’s waiting time and me ’ead’s hurting real bad.

‘The anchor’s up at last and the ship turns with the outgoing tide with Sydney now, same as me, on the starboard side. I can see a few lights and I thinks of you and Mama and of Johnny Terrible breaking the news o’ Maggie’s death to you and giving you the magpie feathers and I silently hopes that me going after the mongrel what done it will some day be of true comfort to you.’

Hawk’s eyes fill with sudden tears. ‘I thought that I’d lost you too, that of the three people I loved with all my heart, that I had lost two of them on the one night. If it were not for the strength of Mary, our mama, I don’t reckon I’d have wanted to go on living another hour.’ Hawk grins through his tears. ‘She saw how I was and she come right out and says, “Hawk Solomon,” like she’d say when we were little ’uns, stern o’ face, the scar on her cheek pulled down to the corner of her mouth, “I didn’t rescue you from the wild man in the wilderness just so you could snuff it by yer own miserable ’ands! I’ve lost me beloved Tommo and you, your lovely Maggie, but you ain’t gunna do the dirty on me now, so get that inta yer thick nigger ’ead!” She points a crooked finger at me. “Dying is easy, son. It’s living what takes the character. Orright? Now, let’s get on with it.” ’

‘Yeah, that be our I shall never surrender, Mary, that’s our mama,’ Tommo laughs. ‘She’s right, yer know, livin’s what’s the bastard.’

Hawk, hoping to change the sudden feeling of melancholy, changes tack. ‘You’re on deck, but, with the ship moving down the harbour soon to be out of the Heads, how ever did you think you’d get back to shore?’

Tommo gives a rueful smile. ‘Mate, with me ’ead gone an’ all, I reckoned there weren’t much point to hangin’ around any longer. Just so long as I can get a crack at the miserable mongrel. Tell yer the truth, I didn’t think much about the next part o’ it.’

‘Tommo, you were willing to give your life for me and you tell me you’ve got bad blood. It just isn’t true!’ Hawk protests fiercely.

Hawk can see Tommo is tiring. ‘You sure you want to go on?’ he asks, concerned.

Tommo nods his head and takes up where he left off. ‘It’s getting bloody cold with spring not yet come and me sittin’ shivering in me wet clobber. A couple of Kanakas pass by and I reckon if I coughs I’m a goner, me teeth are chatterin’ that loud I think they must surely hear me loud as a chisel chippin’ stone.

‘But they goes about their work getting the sails up and trimmed and several others come to join them. We’ve passed the Sow and Pigs, them cluster o’ rocks that stand inside the harbour, and we’re just about through the Heads, they’ve got the flying jib going as well as the topsail with the main and staysail up and under way. I reckon the breeze from the land is now moving us about four or five knots, a perfect night for sail, they’ll all be in the fo’c’sle abed not long after we’ve cleared the Heads. You know how it is, yiz pretty knackered after getting under way.

‘Well, it were just like I just said. Bloody ship would sail itself on a night like this. We clears the Heads and turns to port and hugs to the coast to take advantage o’ the shore breeze and the crew turn in prompt as I had supposed.

‘Now it’s only the creaking o’ the ship, the bow waves and the sails luffing that breaks the silence. I reckon the only man left on deck is the helmsman and he’s got the light from the ship’s compass in his eyes, so there’s no way he can see the main deck from the quarter. It’s dark as hell anyway, best you can see clearly is about ten feet. Besides, the deckhouse is cutting off his line o’ sight, so I reckon I am clear to make me move.

‘Then I see him, Mr Sparrow, he’s coming up from below. I watch as he turns, walking towards me. Gawd in heaven, he’s walking straight into a trap I didn’t even know I’d set. But o’ course he sees the barrels and turns to the right, coming up to the starboard rails not six feet from where I’m hiding. Me heart starts to pump. Jesus H. Christ, I can take him right here and now with the axe, throw it and put the blade into the side o’ his skull and he’d be dead ’fore he hit the deck or could even grunt.

‘He’s wearing a long coat just like the one Ikey used to wear, his ’at is pulled down to his eyes and he’s got a woollen scarf wrapped around his phiz so only his eyes are to be seen between his ’at and the scarf. He’s looking out to sea and all you can hear is the wash as the bow cuts through the waves. I’ve got F. Artie Sparrow standing still as a scarecrow, the perfect target, and him no doubt lamenting the good life he’s left behind in Sydney and not knowing the next port o’ call will be the flames o’ hell itself.’

‘Nah, too easy, I want the bastard t’know it was me come after him and that he’s gunna die. No point him being alive one moment and dead the next without him knowing why. I want to see the fear in his miserable mongrel eyes. I want to see it for Maggie, for you, for meself. It’s like he’s all the mongrels that ever were and I want to see how their kind take to dying.’

Hawk can scarcely believe Tommo’s courage. ‘But he could have shouted and alerted the crew as he saw you coming, anything!’

‘Not before I’d a nailed him he couldn’t have.’ Tommo pauses. ‘After that I couldn’t give a shit.’

‘I creep up and lift his ’at and give him a light tap on the skull with the blunt and catch him as he sinks to his knees. He’s about the same size as me, but I know I’m the younger and stronger, so I slips me axe into the holster across me back and lifts him over me shoulder and crosses to the companionway. It’s a bit of a struggle getting him down below and into the saloon. I’m already knackered but I dumps Mr Sparrow on the floor and locks the cabin door and sits down to recover and to await his return to this shitty world. But first I take the precaution of wrapping the woollen scarf tight about his mouth so that he won’t wake with a scream and can still breathe through his nostrils.