ON A

BARBAROUS
COAST
WHAT IF THERE WAS
AN ALTERNATIVE
ENDING TO
CAPTAIN COOK’S STORY?

CRAIG CORMICK
AND
HAROLD LUDWICK

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 First published in 2020

Copyright © 2020 Craig Cormick and Harold Ludwick

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is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational
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given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

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 About eleven, the ship struck upon the rocks, and remained
immoveable. We were, at this period, many thousand leagues
from our native land (which we had left upwards of two years),
and on a barbarous coast, where, if the ship had been wrecked,
and we had escaped the perils of the sea, we should have fallen
into the rapacious hands of savages.

Endeavour journal of artist Sydney Parkinson

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 To all those generations gone, for what might
have been, and to all those generations to come,
who might imagine a different future

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 Contents

Part 1
  1 The wreck 3
  2 First day in this new world 15
  3 An inventory of the dead 24
  4 Garrgiil tells of Wuji the ghost spirit 34
  5 Crossing the river 37
  6 Garrgiil tells of the return of ancestors from the east 49
  7 The last supper 51
  8 Garrgiil tells of Yirambal and the time of creation 58
  9 Those who came and those who left 61
10 Another death 67
11 Garrgiil tells of Gandhaarr 71
12 What type of people we were 74
13 Garrgiil tells of the gaining of knowledge of the land 81
14 Fear of the unknown 83

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 15 Gandhaarr 94
16 Those who arose from the dead 96
17 Garrgiil tells of new spirits crossing the land 102
18 A clear message 106
19 Attacked 112
20 Garrgiil tells how the Bama go to war 116
21 Prisoner or guest?  118
22 Observations 123
23 Dominion 133

Part 2
24 First contact 143
25 Garrgiil sees the spirits 145
26 A hullaballoo 147
27 Gandhaarr 156
28 Reunited with the lost 158
29 Garrgiil tells of the attack on the quartz gatherers 165
30 The serpent 167
31 A close encounter 178
32 Garrgiil tells what the spirits look like up close 182
33 An arrangement 184
34 Feeling my destiny 193
35 Garrgiil tells the correct way to catch turtles 202
36 Stolen hopes 204
37 Spilling blood 212
38 Garrgiil tells of the lore for punishing people who
have desecrated the land 218

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 39 Scant comfort 220
40 Garrgiil tells of meeting Tarheto 224
41 Forlorn hope 227
42 Garrgiil tells of the people who live to the north 235
43 Someone to carry the blame 236
44 The night terror 243
45 Garrgiil tells of the slaying of the evil spirit 248

Part 3
46 The Bama 253
47 Our new lives 260
48 Garrgiil tells of teaching the white men 267
49 Living in an abundant land 269
50 How they died 276
51 How to tell the story 282
52 Garrgiil tells what he learned from the Europeans 287
53 Gandhaarr’s last torment 289
54 The arrival 294
55 The last decision 302
56 Garrgiil views the future 304

Authors’ note 307

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 Part 1

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 1

The wreck

A lesser man would have felt it was his own dreams and ambitions
that struck the reef, and the shuddering blow of it was his future
splintering apart rather than the beams of our ship.
And I, for one, believed we were well and truly fucked—knew it
as a certainty that many of us would be dead before daybreak. But
our great Captain showed not a moment of doubt that he would
save us. As if the strength of his determination alone would hold the
ship together—even if it took three days of pumping and straining
at the anchor ropes and casting our ballast and heavy cargo over-
board. As if he had seen how it would be written, and he would,
through his own strength and determination, hold us afloat to limp
to shore, where our injured vessel could be hauled up onto the
bank to be repaired.
And there are some nights, when the moon is bright across those
reefs and the strong southerly winds swirl together my memories
and my longings, that I almost believe that is exactly how things
played out. We saved every man Jack of the crew and sailed back to

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 ON A BARBAROUS COAST

England, leaving no ruins of fortifications behind us. No footsteps

disappearing away into the wilds. No graves of our dead. No bones
left whitening in the grass.
For he didn’t save us, did he. And to quote the Good Book, and
I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
Perhaps if it had been a clearer night. Or if the winds and seas
had been calmer. If the reef had been a little lower under the choppy
waves. If we had not been dismasted. If our Captain had not been
struck by a falling spar. If his confidence in his destiny had been
tempered a little by caution.
Plainly I was made of a different mettle than our great Captain,
for I could feel it as an immutable truth that our hour of doom was
upon us.
That great floating world of ours of stout beams and strong
wooden pegs, bound with tarred rope and canvas and protected by
tall sides with heavy cannons—it all meant nothing when the reef
effortlessly ripped our bottom out. Sharp rocks and corals splin-
tering the wood with a jolt that ran through the whole ship, and
through every man on board. Each of us felt it was our own bones
that were splintering, our sternums being ripped open and our
hearts exposed to the sharp slashing reef below.
That’s what it felt like. That moment of terror when we knew
what had happened.
Within a moment of striking, every man and youngster aboard
was awake. Those in their hammocks lifting their heads and staring
at each other. What was that? Did I dream that? Was it one of the
many nightmares that haunt every sailor?
There were so many ways to die far from home that could haunt
you. Drowning. Falling from the rigging. Diseases. Wild natives.
Heat stroke. Cold. Just closing your eyes one night and drifting
into an endless sleep. That question on waking seemed to last so

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 THE WRECK

long—though it was really just an instant between the safety of the

old world and the chaos of the new.
Then we heard the shouts of alarm. Heard the ship’s bell ring.
And everyone knew for certain. Before we even tumbled from our
hammocks to find the deck tilting at an unnatural angle beneath us.
Everything out of kilter.
We were fucked. I knew it. I knew the timbers beneath us were
worn and aged. Worm-riddled, probably. I had heard the officers
talking. The ship was not even in a fit state to try to return to
England via the Horn. We were headed to Batavia for a refit.
Another dream now.
I made my way forward from the midshipmen’s sleeping space
outside the officers’ cabins, through the cursing marines and into
the tumble of men and hammocks in the mess deck. Some were
trying to stow their hammocks, some were grabbing gear, others
were trying to push their way through the melee of men to get to
their post.
‘Make way!’ I shouted. As if being a midshipman gave me vast
authority over them. As if anyone was actually listening to me.
Voices and fingers plucked at me as I passed. ‘What has
happened?’ ‘Have we struck?’ ‘Is it serious?’ All questions and no
answers. I made my way through the press of men trying to climb
up onto deck, still calling, ‘Make way.’ To no effect.
I had to fight my way up the ladder onto the deck, and the
first thing I saw was our great Captain, standing on the aft deck
in his nightshirt and taking in the situation, calm and in control.
Surrounded by his lackeys who stared at him in foolish devotion,
who believed that no matter what danger we were in he would save
us all. Like he might still the storm clouds. Like he might part the
waves for us. Like he might walk on water and pull the very ship
free if he chose.

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 ON A BARBAROUS COAST

Lobcocks and idiots!

I could see he knew what needed doing, though. Like he had
played it all out in his mind many times. He would order the junior
officers down to the hold to inspect the damage to the hull, and
to have the anchors readied to be lowered to try to winch us off the
reef if we were not holed too badly. If we had hit on a calm moonlit
night we might have had a chance of doing that, too. But this night
was one of dark fury and terror. Rain and winds screamed at us.
The white tops of the high sea leaped over the ship’s side, like large
watery hands trying to pluck us into the depths.
The Captain turned his head and looked at me, and I saw him
mouth my name. ‘Magra!’ Though I have wished so many times
he hadn’t. It was as if he were teetering on the brink of deciding
once again if I was guilty or innocent, and the slightest wrong
facial twitch on my part would have me in irons. As if this might
somehow be my fault too. As if he might remedy things if he could
just determine my guilt. But at that moment our ship was lifted on
a large swell and dropped back onto the reef. The jolt was tremen-
dous and unseated the mizzen mast.
Our Captain had kept his eyes on me a moment too long. When
he finally turned his head away to the dark heavens it was too late.
I don’t even know if he saw the spar that struck him. He fell to
the deck in a tangle of ropes and canvas. Some of his lackeys were
knocked down as well. All shouting and struggling as others fled to
avoid getting tangled in the falling ropes and spars and sails. Some
made it, some didn’t.
Then we were lifted again, as if those great watery hands were
not yet satisfied with the damage they had wrought and were deter-
mined to break our spine conclusively. We rose up with a dreadful
slowness and were then brought crashing down onto the reef again.
This time our main mast went, and with it any hope of saving

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 THE WRECK

the ship. It fell to the larboard side, tipping us over on a sharp angle
that would make freeing the three ship’s boats more than difficult.
That was the moment that everything went to shit.
We were fucked. Did I mention? Even Banks knew we were
fucked. Just a moment before, I’d seen him standing among the
lackeys, harrying his servants to carry all his botanical specimens up
on deck, to get into one of the boats. He was standing there with an
armful of plants and books, preparing to argue with the Captain as
to the importance of saving them.
Then the Captain was gone and I could see Banks standing on
the aft deck alone. The only man there still standing. His face blank.
The screams all around us were full of panic now. There would
be no orders to check the hold. Everyone knew our hull was broken.
Like there would be no orders to put out the anchors in an attempt
to winch us free. I could hear the winds laughing at us. I could hear
men crying to their maker or their mother. I could hear my heart
beating loudly. Pulsing in my ears. I knew this was the moment that
men chose to either breach the rum barrels and drown in a liquid
of their own choosing, or find a way to get free of the sinking ship
and try to get to safety.
I made my way over to the boats and tried to get the men there
to understand me. It was a hard enough business in calm weather to
get the boats lowered over the side of the ship, but in this madness
it would be the devil’s own job. I looked around for an officer. There
was none. So, I took it upon myself to save whom I could.
‘Get the yawl,’ I ordered some sailors. ‘It will be the lightest
and easiest to launch.’ Others could wrestle with the longboat or
pinnace. If we were quick we would be in the water and away before
every drunken sod and his mate were trying to jump in after us.
Sailors knew the score. There would never be enough boats
to take us all off the ship. We had all heard stories of those who

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 ON A BARBAROUS COAST

had survived wrecks and those who had perished. Some clung to a
wooden hatch cover or a mast and made it away alive; others stayed
on board for a week or more while a ship broke up under them.
It all came down to that fear of leaping off the ship into the angry
sea. If you did it, you might drown straightaway, but you might
survive. If you stayed on the ship, you knew at least you would be
alive for a while longer.
The devil’s choice.
I goaded and pushed the men to make haste. Some joined us,
while others gave up and disappeared back down below.
‘Where is the Captain? Where is the Captain?’ I heard one of the
two other officers, Lieutenant Gore, shouting. I left it for someone
else to tell him, ‘He’s gone.’
And word of that was like the sea washing right over us. With
our great Captain gone, some of the men gave up at once. Others
renewed their efforts to get the yawl free. Those who chose to take
their chances with the sea—with the unknown—did so.
Though, if you’d asked me then what chance any of us had of
reaching the distant land alive, I’d have said, ‘Not much fucking
chance at all.’ I thought it more likely we’d all be dead by morning.
Overturned in the waves. Bashed to death against the reef. Food for
the sharks.
But that just goes to show you can’t be right in everything,
doesn’t it. I stepped away then, determined not to waste any more
time struggling with the boats in what now looked like an exercise
in futility. I had another plan to escape that had more certainty to it.

I imagine that every sailor has at some time played out in their
prayers all the possible disasters that might befall them—pleading

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 THE WRECK

to be spared from each. But I had thought it better to rely not on

prayer but on my own resources, and had played out all possible
ways to save my own skin from disaster. So, I tapped the shoulders
of two choice sailors, Archibald Wolfe and Matthew Cox, and
beckoned them to follow me. They barely hesitated. Rogue recog-
nises rogue, after all.
My plan was to go straight to a boat already in the water. For we
had been towing one behind us for some time. Having a boat ready
made it easier to conduct quick inspections of the way ahead, and
for some reason it was Banks’s tiny boat, rather than the larger yawl
or pinnace, that was tied up behind us. It was dismissively called a
coracle by most sailors, and was built for just one or two people—
which was perhaps why no one else had thought of it. Tonight it
would carry three.
The boat being tied at the stern also made it easy to get to
­unobserved. Unless you were trying to do it on a sinking ship in a
storm. That had little to recommend it.
I led the way back down below, thankful that just about
everyone was up on deck and unable to impede us. We made our
way aft towards the midshipmen’s berths, crab-walking under the
low deck ceiling to get there. But we found one of the marines,
Private William Judge, was there, filling his pockets in the darkness.
‘Where might you be going?’ he demanded.
‘Off the ship,’ I said. ‘Come with us.’
Judge was an ugly cove and a brute, and I knew he would rather
escape with us than question me further, so he fell in behind us.
The two sailors were a little hesitant—the marines were specifically
stationed between the mess deck and the junior officers’ cabins to
act as a barrier between the sailors and their masters. ‘Come. Hurry,’
I told them, and they lowered their heads as if ready to knuckle a
forehead to whomever they might meet, and followed.

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 ON A BARBAROUS COAST

The midshipmen slung their hammocks between the officers’

and the gentlemen’s quarters—at the very rear of the ship—where
we now stood. During the day the area was lit by small stern ports
that were usually left open. We could climb out them and down the
hawser rope into Mr Banks’s little boat.
‘In that?’ asked Judge, with a marine’s distrust of small boats. ‘It
would be over-full with two men in it.’
‘Two timid men,’ I said.
Wolfe and Cox nodded. Cox in particular had a furtive rat-like
visage with a desperate edge to it. They recognised an opportunity.
They were up for it. I looked at my three shipmates. A trio of more
untrustworthy and ugly souls you would be unlikely to ever meet.
But I needed men prepared to take a risk with me.
We squeezed our way out of the ports and gained the small boat
soon enough, but it was quite a task to prevent it from being dashed
against the side of the ship in the rough waves. And it took us some
effort to get a safe enough distance away from the Endeavour, by
which time we could see there was no doubt she was mortally
wounded. She was leaning heavily to larboard where the now-fallen
masts and sails sprawled. Heaven help those poor bastards up on the
main deck trying to get the boats free. They would have to launch
them down the higher side of the ship, exposed to the rough seas.
And heaven help us get to shore safely too. We very quickly
understood that four souls really was too many for the small boat
in rough weather. If a wave managed to come over our gunwales we
would certainly founder. But the sailors knew their business and
directed Judge and me where to sit and where to move our weight
to as they took an oar each and turned us towards or away from
each large swell, carrying us safely over.
Yet it soon became apparent that we had turned this way
and that so many times that we had lost track of which direction

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 THE WRECK

land lay. We could see the ship’s lights clear enough and hear the
shouts of the men on board her, but we had lost all sense of which
way we should row from her to reach land.
I, for one, had no intention of rowing all the way back to New
Zealand and so rose unsteadily to look about us.
A part of me wanted to now disregard my instincts to flee the
sinking ship and return to her, convinced I had made the wrong
decision. I was overcome with a sudden fear of drowning. I had a
fearful image in my mind, as strong as a premonition, of the boat
turning over and the four of us trapped beneath it. But I told myself
it was just my fear talking to me. My grandmother in Corsica had
told my fortune before I was even born and proclaimed that I was
destined to live an exceedingly long life.
And her predictions were known to always come true.
Almost always.
‘There,’ I called, pointing into the darkness. ‘I see lights. There
is someone on shore with a lantern.’
Bloody idiot that I was.
Judge turned his head and squinted into the darkness. He could
see it too. The orange flicker of a light. ‘That’s not a lantern,’ he said.
‘It would be a cooking fire of the savages.’
I sat back down promptly at that. He was right. There were no
civilised men but us for hundreds of leagues. Only the dark-skinned
savages we had so infrequently glanced on the shore as we had sailed
up the treacherous coast of this strange land.
There were wild stories told among the sailors on the ship about
them. How they wore the bones of their human victims through
their noses. How they scarred their bodies to mark the number of
people they had killed. How they carried long poisonous spears
they could throw with deadly accuracy. How they would likely be
cannibals, because that was the way of all primitive savages.

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 ON A BARBAROUS COAST

I know sailors are a superstitious and fearful lot and such stories
were likely to be somewhat fanciful, but they were just as likely to
be true. We knew almost nothing of the people here nor the land
on which they lived.
Well, nothing but that it lay ahead of us. And that way was life.
So, we kept rowing.

The rain and wind drove us quickly towards shore, leaving us as

drenched as if we had swum, until we saw the dark outline of land
against the grey clouds. Then we could see a lighter movement of
surf where it was breaking on the shore.
‘Careful now,’ called Wolfe. ‘We’ve not come this far to get
dashed onto rocks.’ Several of the man’s teeth were missing, which
made him look as far from his namesake beast as could be imagined.
These old salts could tell by the sound of the surf whether it
was breaking on sand or rocks, and they steered us safely into a
small bay.
I leaped out of the boat and struggled up through the water
onto the sand, the receding waves pulling at me as if reluctant to let
me go. ‘Lend a hand,’ Private Judge called. I turned to watch the
other men climb out and drag the boat higher up onto the beach,
but I made no move to step back into those treacherous waters to
help them.
I covered my eyes against the rain and tried to see what kind of
land was before us. It seemed all dark cliffs everywhere in front
of us.
‘We must find shelter,’ Judge said.
‘This will be the only shelter we are likely to find tonight,’ Cox
said, and he directed us to turn the boat over. Wolfe dragged over

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 THE WRECK

a driftwood log to prop one side up a little and we all crawled in

under the boat. Fulfilling my premonition.
So we sat there in the darkness, squeezed up close against each
other, shivering and wet and listening to the incessant call of the
wind, the crash of waves and the pelt of rain against our boat. They
were disturbing sounds, to be sure, but they were preferable to
hearing calls for help from the wreck out there.
I wondered again if I had done the right thing. I had foolishly
thought the fear would pass when we reached shore, but there was
a chill in my stomach to match that in my bones.
Then I heard a curious buzz added to the noise about us and I
looked across at Cox. He was asleep. Like any capable sailor, able to
nod off anywhere, even in a perilous situation like this.
I thought I would never sleep, being so cramped and uncomfort-
able and shivering with cold, but I remember suddenly waking to a
voice calling my name. A deep, gravelly voice outside our upturned
boat. I startled and opened my eyes to find Judge close beside me,
his hand tightly gripping my forearm. ‘Magra,’ he said. ‘There is
something out there. Moving around.’
We were all awake now. We could all hear it. A low dragging
sound that seemed to my mind like someone dragging a body past
us over the wet sand, growling with the effort of it.
‘What is it?’ Wolfe asked in a whisper.
‘Some kind of beast,’ Judge said.
‘Or a demon,’ Cox said. ‘I have heard there are many of them
in this land.’
And once that word had been spoken it was impossible for
us to consider it as anything other than some kind of demon out
there. We heard it go fully around us twice, growling as it dragged
the unknown thing with it. Perhaps the body of one of our
shipmates?

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 ON A BARBAROUS COAST

In the dark it could have been anything our imaginations shaped

it to be.
And then it was gone.
We all sat there in the dark, unable to see our own hands in front
of our faces, but clearly seeing the teeth and claws of the creature
that had come to visit us.
None of us slept any more that night. We sat cramped under
the upturned boat, like foolish children hiding under a blanket,
suspecting it might not really keep us safe. Waiting for the light of
day. Knowing that it was harder to be afraid in the daylight. But
wondering what horrors we might find.

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 2

First day in this new world

I’m trying hard to remember what it felt like to emerge into that
first day in this new world. It was like we had fallen through the
cracks of the old world into a new one—presaged by strange calls
and shrieks of creatures waking up about us.
The light seeped into the narrow gap under the boat so slowly, as
if revealing this new land to us at its own pace. The first sound was
a chirp in the semi-darkness, followed by another, deeper call. Then a
lower whistle rising and falling. Then a peculiar skittish cheep. And
a sudden piercing screech that sounded like a warning call. I had
never heard such sounds before and I wondered what kinds of birds
or beasts might make them.
And if they were telling each other something.
Then we were put in no doubt about it. A loud raucous laugh of
a call, followed by another further away. Cox voiced what we were
all no doubt thinking, ‘They is mocking us, ain’t they!’
And how could we suppose anything else? Here we were on
a foreign shore with neither provisions nor arms, with nothing but a

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 ON A BARBAROUS COAST

tiny boat over our heads and damp canvas clothes on our backs—an
untested alliance of rogues and runaways. The one thing that had
united us was our common desire to escape the wreck.
We had achieved that, so what would unite us now?
We climbed out from underneath the boat, like arriving on land
topsy-turvy, and found it hard to stand up straight. Perhaps because
this world was all awry to the one we had known.
We looked about us in wonder. We had seen this land often
enough from the ship, yes, but standing here it looked like some-
thing entirely new. It was a small bay, with thick woods fringing it,
and rough-edged rocky cliffs on each side that looked like they had
been chipped off and detached from the real world.
The sand under our feet stretched many yards to the water’s edge,
which showed low tide, and the sea debris told us that at high tide
the sand would be fully submerged. We also clearly saw the marks in the
damp sand where the night creature had circled us in the darkness. It
had gone around us twice, leaving a low trench, and its feet, we could
see, were clawed, leaving long thin drag marks after each foot fall.
I later knew it to be Gandhaarr the crocodile. That trickster
who loved to tempt people into his realm, forcing them to live with
him. But on that day we could not imagine what type of creature it
might have been.
The tracks led off to a small creek behind us and then disap-
peared into the mangroves there that stank with a stench like rotten
fruit and mud and dead things.
We shivered, despite the sun rising across the horizon. We
looked at one another and then, shading our eyes, we looked out
to sea—and saw nothing. Then we looked again at this land about
us. There was an unspoken question that none of us really wanted
to ask. We had escaped the shipwreck and made it ashore—perhaps
the only four souls who had—but what should we do now?

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 FIRST DAY IN THIS NEW WORLD

‘Fucken hell!’ said Cox. That about summed it up.

We would have to find food and water and shelter. But this
was no Otaheite or New Zealand. We couldn’t believe the locals
would be willing to help us in any way—they had so determinedly
hidden from us on our voyage along the coast of this land—and
we couldn’t hide from the fear that we were the only ones to have
escaped the wreck.
Judge turned to me and said, ‘I hope you have some plan.’
‘I have one,’ I said. ‘Stay alive.’
‘Is that it?’ asked Wolfe.
‘And avoid getting killed,’ I added.
‘What sort of a plan is that?’ Wolfe asked.
‘It sounds like a damn good plan to me,’ said Judge, and stuck
his chin out, as if challenging the sailors to contradict him. And an
ugly chin it was too, like his whole jaw had been knocked off and
reset clumsily out of alignment.
One of the sailors spat on the sand and the other turned back to
stare towards the rising sun.

Eventually we decided to climb the hill above us and spy out

the land. To see what we could see of the wreck, and what lay to the
south and north of us. To see anything of the world beyond this
little cove we had found ourselves in.
Wolfe and Cox elected to stay behind to ensure nothing
happened to the boat, and Private Judge and I would climb the hill.
‘Youse had better still be here when we get back,’ Judge said.
‘Then youse had better make sure you come back,’ Cox said.
The first cracks were appearing, though I didn’t particularly
notice it at the time. I was busy looking at that grassy hill and

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wondering just what we would see from the top. Endless impenet­
rable mangroves? Thick forests with hidden dangers within? Or a
land we might be able to survive in?
The climb was no more difficult than scaling the ship’s rigging,
and the warmth of the day was softened by a strong wind from the
south-east. Each step towards the summit took us closer to knowing
what our fate in this land would be.
‘What do you expect we’ll see?’ Judge asked. He was an unsightly-
looking thing, with a close-shaven head and the peculiar aspect
of having one eye a different colour to the other. One brown and
one green. But you didn’t notice that for some time after staring at
him and wondering what it was about his face that made you feel
somewhat uncomfortable.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Something unexpected, I imagine.’
‘Do you know what I’d like to see?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘A village. Like in Otaheite. With gardens and fruit trees and
bare-breasted maidens.’
‘Ha,’ I said. ‘That’s more optimism than I dare say we are due.
It will more likely be bare and barren.’
‘Then what will we eat? I’m starting to feel plenty hungry.’
‘Whatever game we find.’
‘With no musket to shoot it?’
We climbed on in silence. The accusation was not fully spoken,
but still I felt the weight of it added to my shoulders as we climbed—
we had fled the ship particularly ill-prepared for life ashore.
After a moment, he asked, ‘So, who should we eat first?’
I turned and gave him a hard stare so he did not mistake my
feelings on it.
‘I’m jesting,’ he said, and laughed.
‘That’s something rarely spoken in jest on a ship,’ I told him.

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‘Well, we ain’t on a ship no more.’

‘You are right in that.’
We continued on, looking for the best paths through the under-
growth, neither of us wanting to give the impression that we were in
the least bit tired, hungry, thirsty and more than a little concerned
about our chances of survival in this land.
Then he spoke again. ‘That’s an odd name, Magra—where is it
from?’
‘I was born in America.’
‘That don’t answer the question. It was widely known on the
ship that you and Lieutenant Gore are from America. Where is your
family name from?’
‘My family comes from the island of Corsica,’ I told him. ‘But
my father left for Ireland before moving to America.’ Then I gave
the answer I felt he was circling around. ‘We are all loyal to the
British King.’
But he didn’t seem concerned at all to hear it. He said, ‘Seems
to me you can’t really put a claim to being from anywhere at all.’
‘Then I come from that small beach in the cove below us,’
I said.
‘A fellow countryman, then,’ he said and laughed again.
We walked on. Then I spoke, ‘I think it more important where
a man is going than where he might be from.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘And we is going up a hill.’ And he laughed
once more. A rough sort of laugh that reminded me of a donkey
braying.
Then he asked, ‘So, why did you join the Navy?’
‘What else was there to do? My two brothers had already joined
the Army, and I had an interest in seeing more of the world than
that.’ Then I asked him, ‘And why did you join the marines?’

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He stopped walking and turned to me and fixed me with a glare

and said, ‘I have a greater calling than being a marine. I feel it in
here.’ And he punched his chest.
I met his gaze and nodded, wondering if I had found a kindred
soul. I might have used those same words to describe how I felt
at times.
‘It occurred to me that if a man was to find an uninhabited
land, where only savages lived, he could make himself king of
them easily enough.’
‘King?’ I asked him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why not? Ever since Otaheite I been thinking
what lengths I might go to, to achieve that.’ Then, ‘You know we
was planning it there. To stay.’
‘To run away with Gibson and Webb?’ They were the two
marines who had deserted the ship in Otaheite, our first major port
of call. Otaheite, then New Zealand, then this land. Not counting
all those small islands in between. Just before we sailed they were
found to have taken off into the mountains of the interior with
their Otaheitian sweethearts. Their plan had been to hide out until
the ship sailed and then remain there for the rest of their days.
But the Navy would not give up men so easily. Nor would our
Captain. He had six local chiefs taken hostage to force the islanders
to help, and Lieutenant Hicks was dispatched with an armed party
and Otaheitian guides to find them.
They had been dragged back to the ship and punished with two
dozen lashes each. Two more men who had no particular love of our
great Captain.
But Private Judge laughed. ‘Not to run away. To steal the ship.’
He doled out the terrible plot in small pieces. To gather those
among the crew they could to their side. To identify those who
would not be with them and throw them over the side. Maybe into

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a boat, maybe not. To do away with the officers. Then to sail away to
an unknown island and become pirates. Or burn the ship. Never
to be found again. To live like lords over the natives. Five wives
apiece. And anyone who disobeyed them or betrayed them would
be killed. Cut into tiny pieces and fed to the fish. Or the pigs. Then
they would eat the pigs at a banquet.
I said nothing. For I now realised we were not kindred in any
way and whatever I said would certainly betray me to him.
After a few more steps over rocky ground, grasping tufts of thick
grass to stop from sliding backwards, I felt in control enough to ask,
‘Why do you tell me this? I’m a midshipman, after all.’
‘Was a midshipman,’ he said. ‘The Captain relieved you of that
rank. I figure you will have more against him than many of us
for that.’
He was referring to the incident on board the ship a few weeks
earlier when the Captain’s clerk, Mr Orton, had his clothes and
earlobes cut off one night while drunk. The Captain considered it
an outrage, and I was accused of the crime—as it was well known
I had made threats against the little turd previously.
But because there was no evidence against me, I was only
relieved of my duties on the quarter deck for a time. The Captain
would probably have reinstated me in the next week or so, if there
had still been a quarter deck. It was widely mumbled below decks
that the real culprit had been Patrick Saunders. He was a terrible
brute, his head perpetually tilted a little to one side as if he could
not see the world the same way everyone else saw it. He would have
been my first choice among the men to leave behind on the ship.
Along with Orton himself maybe.
‘You is one of us, lad, but you just didn’t know it until I told
you,’ Private Judge said. ‘Not like those two useless deckhands
down there.’

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 ON A BARBAROUS COAST

‘Perhaps,’ I said noncommittally and turned back towards the

beach. As I looked at Cox and Wolfe—two small figures down
there—I could not help but think they had the easier of the jobs,
to just sit there and avoid being eaten by the creatures that live in
the mangroves.
Which of them might Judge consider eating first, I wondered as
we continued on, knowing it had been no jest at all.
We soon reached the top of the grassy hill and the wind was
now so strong it was like it was trying to blow our very thoughts
away. We looked down to the small cove again and saw that the tide
was coming in at a fair pace. In a couple of hours, there would be
no exposed sand left, and Cox and Wolfe would have to retreat to
the cliffs or the mangroves, or take to the boat.
I imagined this was how God saw them. Saw all of us. Small
figures of no real significance. We then searched the sea for any sign
of the wreck, but low clouds covered the reefs and we couldn’t see
any sign of it. I peered where I imagined it to be until Judge said,
‘Well, bless my soul, we ain’t alone after all.’
I turned to see he was pointing inland. I walked over to where he
stood and it took me a moment to spot it. I had looked at the hills
and the green landscape and the patches of trees and the winding
river snaking its way inland, and then it was like my eyes had found
a coin among the long grass—and once seen you wonder how you
had not seen it before.
Closer to the mouth of the river, half-hidden by some trees, were
people. Not black-skinned natives. White men. Wearing clothes of
red and white and blue. And a boat. A ship’s boat.
There were other survivors!
My first feeling was elation. A feeling of salvation. ‘We can take
the boat around and join them,’ I said.
‘We could,’ Judge said, with no real enthusiasm for it.

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And if I had known all the things I know now, maybe I would
have been a little less enthusiastic too. Maybe I would not have been
so keen to leave that miserable little bay. But the draw of our own
kind was too strong to be denied.

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