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and in any case the major was an efficient but not a cruel man. In Port Macquarie, he had found an expression for both attributes together, as humane treatment tended to lead to better returns from the plantations and the timber parties.
    He was even-handed in his punishments and knew that his future career, in this place, in this colony or in some other far-flung wing of the British world, depended exactly on that, on his calm reports and his willingness to obey the precedents of colonial punishment. But an absconder was an absconder, and there were far too many of them for a place which had been touted as providing excellent natural security. Examples must be made.
    Spring’s report had been compiled in haste that month, to clear some time for the audit. It noted quantities of beef, pork, flour, rice, butter, maize, wheat, tea, sugar, wine and spirits, these last two kept in a locked room at the back of the stores, and reserved for the use of the officers. Alcohol was forbidden to convicts (there was humanity, and then there was stupidity), in spite of which a great many of them seemed able to get drunk. Spring gave an account of the amounts of fish brought in by the coxswain and his crew on the days they went trawling, and rum produced from the locally grown sugar cane lived with its imported cousins in the locked room.
    Gonville reported on sicknesses in the settlement – catarrh, now that winter was here, one case of pneumonia, a doomed caseof consumption amongst the women. This was all nicely tabulated according to the practice of the British Civil Service, lists of illnesses, records of pregnancies and deliveries – a child had been born to an unmarried woman named Lawson – and deaths, of which there had been a balancing one, as though to keep the scales of both worlds equal.
    The dead man was an old lag who had been allowed for some years to sit by the hospital in a wicker chair whenever the weather was good. He was quite mad and would have thick-accented conversations with passers-by in the belief that he was still living in a village outside Manchester and had much to report about it – men smashing weaving shuttle machines and such. After he related the tale he always said, ‘And more force to their arms. Those boys know the way the world is going.’ Now Port Macquarie had been relieved of this one demented voice, and it was replaced by an infant yelling for the milk of its bonded mama.
    The superintendent of convicts had left a note for the major’s perusal on his return. The treadmill installed at the granary was working well, he said. This contraption served as a punishment in place of lashes, having the advantage of grinding grain using the power of the legs of those sentenced to a few hours’ service upon it. The superintendent reported on the number of men in chained and unchained gangs, those in cedar parties, those making bricks from the red earth, those employed at Settlement Farm and Rolland’s Plains, and those on the lime-burners’ gang.
    This last was the worst job in the settlement, Monsarrat felt, and was only given to those not fit for other work. The lime-burners collected oyster shells and burned them to extract the lime, which was used to hold together the settlement’s bricks. With the construction of the first church underway, and ships from Sydney under instructions to backload with as much lime as possible, their services were in demand, but the lime exacted a terrible toll. It was caustic and bestowed red eyes on those who worked with it, often eating away at their flesh into the bargain.
    Now Monsarrat began copying the major’s dispatches. They generally reported tranquillity and progress. The sugar cane growingon the allocated area near the river was flourishing (and being used to produce decent rum), as were the crops at Rolland’s Plains nearby. The dairy cattle were fat from the fertile mud plain pastures and were giving good