Outback Station Read online

  Outback Station

  Aaron Fletcher

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  A LEISURE BOOK®

  Published by

  Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  276 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10001

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  Copyright © 1991 by Aaron Fletcher All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  The name "Leisure Books" and the stylized "L" with design are trademarks of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Does the road wind uphill all the way?

  Yes, to the very end.

  Will the day's journey

  take the whole long day?

  From morn to night, my friend.

  Christina Georgina Rossetti, 1830 1894

  PART I

  Chapter One

  When he heard the first loud crack of a thick beam in the mine ceiling behind him, David Kerrick reacted instinctively. Dropping the heavy hammer he was using to pound a steel drill into the coal to break loose slabs of it, he picked up the lantern at his feet. "Follow me!" he shouted at the two convicts who were shoveling up the loose coal, then he stepped quickly to the side of the mine.

  The two men were slow-witted, as well as lethargic from the grueling labor. Remaining where they were, one of them called out in surprise as they were left in darkness, "What the bloody hell . . ."

  His voice and the metallic clatter of other convicts' picks were suddenly drowned in the deafening roar of supporting timbers splintering and huge rocks falling. The cave-in, some forty feet away, was at the junction of the main tunnel and the branch where David and the others were working. He stood beside the framework of supporting beams at the side of the mine, holding the smoky oil lantern close and sheltering its flame with his body.

  The dark, low cavern quaked violently as its roof at the junction with the main tunnel collapsed, and swirling air currents from the tons of falling rock snuffed out the other lanterns. In the total, oppressive darkness, the air was thick with choking coal dust. The supports beside David groaned and sagged under the stress, but they held. Nothing larger than pebbles rained down on him.

  As the rumble of falling rocks faded away, two men, pinned under the debris, screamed in agony. The other convicts, terror-stricken, stumbled about in the darkness, shrieking that they were doomed. In contrast to their panic, David had a detached, impassive attitude. Having escaped the near-brush with instant death, he saw that his lifesuch as it waswould continue.

  Turning away from the side of the tunnel, he lifted the lantern, its light reaching only a few feet through the thick dust in the air. One of the men charging wildly about in the darkness rushed to the light, clawing frantically at the lantern. "Give that here!" he bellowed. "I'm going to find a way out of"

  He broke off as David hit him, driving a fist solidly into his face. As he reeled back and fell, Kerrick turned to the dim shadows of the others in the darkness. "Get yourselves in hand!" he shouted. "We'll never get out of here unless you keep your wits about you!"

  "We won't in any event!" a man wailed in fright. "We're trapped like bloody rats, and we'll meet our end in this bloody coal pit!"

  The man started to continue, then fell silent and cringed, when David lifted a fist and moved toward him. As another convict brushed past him, David seized the man and hurled him toward the others who were still rushing about. He collided with several of the men who in turn stumbled against those near them, sprawling in a tangle of flailing limbs.

  "Now settle yourselves," David ordered, walking toward them as they climbed to their feet. "The more you move about, the sooner you'll use up the air in here." He pointed to one of the men. "You, find another lantern and a pick. The rest of you sit down. I'll have a look and see how we can get out, and I'll call you if you're needed."

  The man David had pointed to disappeared into the darkness toward the coal seam, and the others quietly sat down. Well over six feet and two hundred pounds, David towered above most of them, and he had the assurance of an intelligent, well-educated man. Through painful experience, some of the men knew it was unwise to cross him, and they were wary of him for yet another reason. While they had been transported to Australia for minor crimes, David Kerrick had been sent to the penal colony for having committed murder.

  David lifted the lantern higher, moving toward the cave-in. Two men, now moaning and whimpering in pain, had been carrying out full hods of coal when the ceiling had collapsed. They were partially buried in the pile of rocks and dirt that blocked the front of the tunnel, and three other men pulled at rocks near them.

  "Leave that," David told the men. "Get the rocks off those two there and pull them back with the others."

  "You look after them," one of the men replied. "I'm getting my arse out of here, and everyone else can go to . . ."

  His voice faded into a yelp of surprise and pain as David seized his shirt and flung him back from the debris. "Get the rocks off those two," David repeated quietly, "and take them over to the others."

  The man grumbled resentfully, climbing to his feet,

  then joined the other two in moving the debris off the buried men. The dust started to settle, but David still saw very little in the weak light from his lantern. Then the man who had gone to the other end of the tunnel stepped up beside him with a lantern and a pick. David lit the wick in the lantern with his, then held up both of them.

  In the brighter light, he saw that the situation was perilous. The crossbeams supporting the ceiling were cracked and sagging, the ceiling itself bulging downward. The stones blocking the tunnel were too large to move, and the rest of the ceiling would collapse if they were. David looked at the smaller stones near the ceiling on one side of the pile, then extinguished a lantern. He climbed up on the debris with the pick and began cautiously moving the stones.

  The other man followed him, holding the lantern and pushing rocks on down the pile as David pried them loose. ''I heard you tell Boggs that the shoring here wasn't safe," the man muttered. "If he'd had to keep his arse in here with ours, he might have listened to you."

  Making no reply to the reference to Cyrus Boggs, the superintendent of the mine, David levered another stone free. An emancipista former convict who had served his timeBoggs was a gruff, stubborn man who was slow to grasp that conditions here were different from the mines he had worked in England. When Boggs had shrugged off the warning, David had dismissed the subject himself. Having nothing to look forward to but endless misery, David merely did what was necessary from day to day, with little concern about when or how it would end.

  Pushing rocks and dirt toward the man behind him, David lay on his stomach and dug a narrow passage into the debris, just under the ceili
ng. The air became thin as the minutes passed, and the dust that he raised in the confined space compounded his difficulty in breathing. The man behind him began panting heavily, his lungs laboring for air.

  At first, it appeared that the path was blocked when David came to two larger stones wedged under the end of a crossbeam. He prised at one of them, levering on one side of it and then on the other with the pick. It finally pulled loose as the thick timber settled an inch, and the exertion of pushing the stone to the man behind him almost exhausted David.

  The light from the lantern was dimmer, its flame tiny in the thin air as David worked at the second stone. The man behind him, having moved the first stone, collapsed and gasped hoarsely. The other convicts, alarmed, complained that they were smothering. Some of them stirred and then sat back down, the effort to move too overwhelming.

  Loosening the stone was almost too much for David, and his lungs burned as he panted breathlessly. His own life purposeless, he was willing to accept fate, but he had an ingrained sense of responsibility toward the other men. Despite his low regard for most of the convicts, he had to do whatever he could to save them.

  The stone shifted as the heavy crossbeam groaned and sagged another inch, but it held. Summoning his strength, David pulled the rock and pushed it to the man at his back. The convict pulled at it feebly, while David slid under the crossbeam and moved loose debris out of the way. Then he stopped, listening closely.

  Over the ringing in his ears and his ragged breathing, he heard tools clanging against the rocks on the other side of the debris. Convicts from other parts of the mine were working hurriedly to clear a path through the rocks and dirt, but they were at the center of the cave-in.

  David rapped the point of his pick against a rock in front of him, stopped to listen, then hammered the rock again. When he paused once more, there was silence on the other side. He struck the rock harder, and a moment later, he heard digging noises straight in front of him. Dropping the pick, he waited as numbness stole over him.

  From what seemed to be a long distance, David heard voices as the scraping of tools and the rumbling of rocks being moved grew louder. At last, the rock in front of him shifted. Fresh air flooded around the stone. David drew in deep breaths, and the light of the lantern brightened. The rock was pulled aside, and lanterns shone through the hole.

  Men with shaggy hair and beards, their eyes wide and staring in their coal-blackened faces, peered at David. One of the convicts turned and shouted over his shoulder, "We've cleared a way through to the men, Mr. Boggs. One of them is right here."

  "Then get out of the way so I can talk to him," Boggs replied brusquely. "Come on, make room there."

  The men moved aside for the irascible Boggs, who was in his forties and had a red, bulbous nose above his thick mustache and beard. Responsible for mine safety and for meeting the coal-production quota, he was worried. "Did anyone in there get killed?" he asked David.

  "No, but two men are injured. I'll have them brought out first."

  "Aye, very well," Boggs said morosely, then turned away and spoke to the other men, "you there, go fetch the surgeon. You four stay and help get the injured men outside, and the rest of you get back to work. This is no reason to stop work and loiter about for the rest of the day."

  The superintendent shouted more orders as David moved back through the narrow passage. The other convicts had gathered at the end of it, eager to get out. "Bring the injured men here," David told them. "The first ones to leave can take those men with them."

  "Somebody else can take them," a man muttered, pushing past David. "I want out of here before the rest of it falls in."

  David pulled the man back, then shoved him onto the pile of rocks and dirt. "Bring the injured men," he repeated impassively.

  Turning away and clambering down the debris, the convicts muttered resentfully among themselves. Moments later they climbed back up, the first ones carrying the two helpless, moaning men. David held up the lantern as two men backed into the passage and pulled the injured men into it. Then the others filed into the opening after them.

  When they were gone, David sat for a few minutes in the silence, needing the privacy. The most tormenting time of his life had been the months of close confinement with hundreds of men in the filth and disease on the ship that had brought him to Australia, and he always took advantage of every opportunity to be alone. Finally, he crawled into the passage.

  At the mouth of the mine, amid a litter of coal hods, jute bags, and sledges used to haul the coal to the wharf, the surgeon worked over the two injured men. The grimy convicts sat a few feet away while Boggs talked with the commandant, Lieutenant Oliver Bethune. In his early thirties, the lieutenant was a meticulously neat man of average build, a stern, but fair, professional soldier. Frowning in annoyance, he listened as Boggs anxiously tried to explain away the accident.

  David stepped to one side of the mine, which was on a low hill set back from the village of Newcastle. He surveyed the hamlet that was some eighty miles north of Sydney, with its wharfs and main streets on a peninsula flanked by the Hunter River on one side and the ocean on the other. Established in 1804 as an isolated penal outstation for incorrigible convicts, and called Coal Harbor at the time, the village had grown and changed over the years.

  Now in June of 1820, with the crisp chill of late autumn changing into winter, the barracks, cook-house, and other buildings for convicts were only a small cluster of structures at one side of the thriving village. During the past years, emancipists and free immigrants had cleared the dense acacia and eucalyptus trees from the fertile river valley reaching back from the peninsula. Now tidy stone cottages were scattered among pastures dotted with livestock and fields where crops had been gathered.

  Along with coal, Newcastle was a source of wood for furniture and moldings in government buildings, the cedar growing in vast stands far up the Hunter River. As David looked at the village and outlying farms, a raft moved down the river toward Newcastle. The raft was made up of cedar tree trunks some forty feet long and six to eight feet thick, with a hut on it where the convict work party and their military guards had lived during the long trip down the river.

  Bethune walked toward David with Boggs following him. "I understand that you were responsible for getting the men out of there safely," the lieutenant commented. "That was very well done."

  "I can't take full credit, sir," David replied. "The men who dug through the cave-in from the outside did as much or more."

  "Even so," Lieutenant Bethune insisted, "you kept your presence of mind and prevented a cock-up from becoming a disaster. That was highly commendable. Did you happen to observe what caused the cave-in? Mr. Boggs tells me that he's had trouble getting enough suitable timber for shoring, so I suppose the cave-in occurred where it was insufficient."

  The superintendent eyed David worriedly, fearing he would mention his warning about the shoring, then relaxed at David's reply. "There was sufficient timber, but too much of it was used for transverse supports and not enough for bracing. The construction of the shoring is more suitable for the mines in England, where the coal seams are much smaller than they are here."

  Lieutenant Bethune pursed his lips thoughtfully as he took a snuffbox from his waistcoat pocket. He inhaled a pinch of it, then brushed his nose with a handkerchief. "That's right, I remember from your records that you're an engineer," he mused. "From now on, you'll work as a foreman. Your first task is to clean up the cave-in and put that part of the mine back into operation, then you're to inspect and make all necessary improvements to the shoring throughout the mine." He turned to the superintendent. "Assign him a work crew and see to the other details, Mr. Boggs."

  Boggs nodded and replied, touching his hat as the lieutenant walked away. When the officer was out of earshot, Boggs cleared his throat uncomfortably. "I'm grateful that you didn't tell the commandant what you said to me about the shoring a few days ago," he muttered awkwardly.

  "It wouldn't have change
d what happened," David replied, shrugging.

  "Aye, that's true," Boggs agreed cheerfully. "Anyway, all's well that ends well, and you're a foreman now."

  The lieutenant and surgeon went down the path to the village, and the convicts followed them with the injured men on stretchers. David pointed to them. "What did the surgeon say about the men who were hurt?"

  "He said they should recover soon enough. One may be a bit gimpy from now on, but it could have been much worse. Now that you're a foreman, you can go to the storeroom and draw new clothes to replace those canaries you're wearing. Also, a couple of the foremen's huts are empty, so you can move your swag into one of them." He turned away. "You can do that now, and I'll assign you a work crew the first thing tomorrow morning."

  The superintendent went into the mine, and David headed for the village. He saw that the cedar raft had reached the sawmill at the upper end of the hamlet. When it was tied up at the bank in front of the mill, the work crew straggled toward the convict compound, while the guards went into a tavern. Under the present governor, convicts were not guarded constantly and were permitted some latitude when not working.

  But David knew it was latitude only in comparison with the stricter policies of other governors, and the treatment of convicts depended more upon the mood and personality of their overseers than official policies. And for those who tried to flee or rebelled in other ways, there was Norfolk Island with its brutal labor, harsh living conditions, and savage lashingsa cruel, precarious life that few survived.

  Joseph Lycett, a small, sallow man, came out of the village church as David passed it. An artist convicted of forgery, he was an example of the governor's leniency gone awry. He had a frail constitution and had been given a sinecure as a post-office clerk in Sydney. There, with access to a printing press, he had promptly flooded the town with bogus five shilling notes. As punishment, he had been banished to Newcastle, where he was painting a triptych for the church altar.