Read Online Bring Larks and Heroes by Thomas Keneally - Free Book Online

said he was; to deny was not within his duty, though he knew that His Excellency meant to purge Daker from office, while the gentlemen meant to bolster him.
    Partridge sent a Marine to get his coat out of the shade at the top of the beach. He took from it a letter marked ‘Of Great Importance’. Whatever was a threat in the letters from Government House, this of Partridge’s was the antidote. While brash Rowley, His Excellency’s aide-de-camp ,stood by without blinking.
    â€˜You’ll deliver this one with it. You won’t forget?’
    The surgeon watched Halloran pocket it, Halloran feeling smeared by the meanness and discontent of all the officers.
    â€˜Good!’ said the surgeon, and took no more notice of him.
    â€˜Ah, Ewers,’ Partridge called then. ‘Ewers, old fellow. Come up here! I’ve something amazing to show you.’
    Ewers left the boat and came up the beach stooping. Whether it was petulance or humility or petulant humility, no one could have told. He murmured good-mornings and bowed to both gentlemen.
    â€˜Ewers, I’ve done what armed detachments have failed to do.’
    â€˜You have, sir?’ Ewers paused. ‘What particular thing is it which armed detachments have blundered in yet you’ve brought off?’
    â€˜Ha,’ said Partridge, clipping Ewers’ ear and grinning, ‘these gentlemen-convicts, Rowley. They’re bastards!’ He slapped Ewers a second time. ‘Bastards!’
    Ewers bowed his head. From where Halloran stood, the forger’s nasal, mortified breathing could be heard.
    â€˜Come on, Ewers!’ The surgeon grabbed the man’s coat-sleeve and moved him towards the long-boat. Without a glance from Rowley, Halloran was left ridiculously at attention in the midst of the beach. But even in this barren situation, he knew it would be deadly to dismiss himself or stand easy. He did not enjoy, however, being a monument without import, straight on to nothing, overlooking and flanking nothing, in line only with some mystery of pride and idiocy in that lily of a boy’s mind.
    Near the boat, Ewers was coughing; for he could tell there was some pungent rot in the bows and dreaded to be brought abruptly upon any monstrosity.
    â€˜In the tarpaulin there,’ said Partridge.
    It seemed that an immense baby had been wrapped in canvas, with a peak for its head. The surgeon pulled the peak aside. Ewers saw two native heads nodding.They were blind with the blind, mouthing purposelessness of snails. Their faces had the same marks as Mr Calverley’s savage, and their hair was fibrous with muck and hung in ropes. Days before, before the smallpox found them, they had corded strips of raw fish around their foreheads, and the sun had fried them, and the runnels of fish oil had caked them against insects. Surgeon Partridge now saw fit to lean down and cut these cords away with a pocket-knife, saying, ‘It’s the sting of death that’s the only sting they’ll be worried by now.’
    â€˜What do you want them for, sir?’ asked Ewers. He tried not to voice his numb incomprehension, not wanting to be cuffed again for his sensibilities. The man of talent, if that was what he was, stood and waited for an answer as for a crust.
    â€˜I’ll attempt to cure the poor fellows,’ the surgeon said. ‘Then we’ll civilize them. His Excellency intends to ship two fully genteel natives home to England when the fleet comes in. These could be the lucky two, Ewers.’
    He frowned. The frown was for whether they could be cured. About the civilizing part of the project he was quite blithe.
    Halloran, hearing this, wanted to spit and slap his thigh. But his mouth was, of course, dry with heat and conflicts and his own and Ewers’ humiliation. Working as orderly of a day made a man soft to humiliation. Still he remained, without making a demonstration, athis skew-whiff sentry