Barney and the Secret of the Whales Read online

  I looked up to find Elsie staring at me, her expression hard to read. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Elsie nodded towards the dining room, then at me, then shook her head emphatically.

  Most times I could work out what Elsie meant, but not now.

  And then it was time to start the washing-up.

  CHAPTER 2

  An Offer

  Captain Melvill hadn’t left by the time the washing-up was finished and the kitchen wiped down and the dining room swept to Sally’s satisfaction. I smelled pipe tobacco, out the back near the well.

  Snake!

  I scooted out the back door. ‘Sir!’ I yelled.

  ‘What is it, boy?’

  I looked around. No snake. ‘There was a snake near where you’re sitting, just before dinner. Big brown one.’

  ‘They’re poisonous?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Did you chase it away?’

  ‘No, sir. You don’t chase brown snakes. I just stood still so it couldn’t see me. Snakes can only see you properly if you move. Then Sally shouted and startled it. But it could come back.’

  ‘I think I’ll risk it,’ said Captain Melvill, puffing on his pipe. It was a big black one, and put out great puffs of blue smoke. Some of the convict men and older women puffed on pipes, but not as many as back in England. Tobacco grew here all right, but the stores master said the leaves didn’t dry well enough to smoke it. ‘You got good eyesight, boy?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ I had too. Lots of convicts here didn’t see well at all, nor Ma either, which was why she had got that cut from an oyster shell that she’d died from.

  ‘Can you count the ships in the harbour from here?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ I glanced back onto the bouncing blue below us. ‘Eleven.’

  ‘And do you see any difference between the ships, boy?’

  I squinted down at the harbour. ‘The Britannia and four of the others are whiter, sir,’ I said at last. The Britannia looked almost like a skeleton of a ship it was so pale, but I didn’t want to say that to its captain.

  ‘Aye. That’s from the scrubbing. Whale oil is slippery, so the ship must be scrubbed, and the ash from the whale hide itself is the best soapstone of all. A few years of that and the wood is bleached white as you see it here. So you can see well enough to read her name, eh? Do you see aught else about her?’

  I grinned at him. ‘Not unless I climb the tree to get a better view, sir.’ Most of the trees in the colony had been cut down for their timber, but Mrs Johnson had made sure one big beauty had been left near our back door, so she could teach her classes there in the shade in summer.

  Captain Melvill looked at the tree, and then at me. It had a trunk that went up thirty feet or more before it spread out its branches. ‘You’d need to grow a bit, lad, before you could reach those branches. Or fetch a ladder.’

  I’d been hoping he’d think that. I found the first foothold in the trunk, then gripped it with my knees and arms, the way Birrung had taught me, and inched my way up. There were handholds if you knew where to find them. Captain Melvill was sure to be impressed.

  I grabbed hold of the first branch and hoisted myself up onto it. ‘See, sir?’ I called down. ‘Easy.’

  He laughed. ‘I’ve seen monkeys that can’t climb that well. What can you see now you’re up there?’

  ‘A platform thing on deck, sir.’ I squinted again. ‘It almost looks like bricks. And two things like big iron mouths.’

  ‘Ah, you do have good eyesight. Bricks it is: five feet of brick and mortar supported by great timbers underneath. You have to boil a whale down to get its oil. What would happen if you lit a fire like that on an ordinary craft?’

  ‘The ship would burn, sir,’ I said promptly, then thought about the Indian women’s fires in their canoes. But those were small fires, on green wet grass.

  ‘So our ship has a platform that doesn’t burn. That’s the tryworks. And those openings that you called mouths are mouths indeed: mouths for the whale skin. Those mouths are our furnaces and whale skin is what we burn. No ship can carry enough wood to boil down a whale. We carry a little to get the blaze started, but after that the whale itself provides the fuel for the process.’

  He gazed out at his ship just like Mr Johnson looked at Mrs Johnson sometimes: a look of love that hurt your heart a bit. ‘I’ll tell you what you can’t see, lad. Timbers with whale teeth instead of wooden pins to hold them fast. A captain’s chair up on that quarterdeck carved from one great whale’s jawbone — and its roof is made from whalebone too. Even the boat’s tillers are made from whalebone. And down in the cabins there’ll be harpoonists shaving before they come ashore. Do you know what they will be shaving with?’

  ‘Razors, sir?’

  ‘Harpoons and lances. Longer than a man and sharper than any knife in this colony. And each of them dearer to the man who wields it than his family. Those lances strike into the heart of a whale, but they hold the heart of the man who throws them too. There is no battle like that between man and the sea and the whale, lad. None.’ He beckoned. ‘Come on down now.’

  I shinned down the tree quicker than going up. Captain Melvill made room for me on the seat. He puffed on his pipe for a bit, then turned to me again. ‘You should see us boiling down a whale, boy. It’s something no landsman could even dream about. Two great fires like the flames of hell, the smoke a black mist about the ship. And with every puff of smoke you know there’s another barrel of oil being filled to make us rich.’

  ‘Are you rich, sir?’

  I thought I might get a cuff on the ear for that. But he just laughed. ‘I will be when this voyage is through. There are more whales in the Southern Ocean than we’ve ever seen up north. And no one knows they are even there, except a few of us who’ve made the voyage here or talked to someone who has. Those are the world’s greatest whaling grounds, just there for the harvest. Every man who sails on the Britannia is going to go home rich.’

  ‘Every single one, sir?’

  He nodded. ‘The ship owner takes his third, and I get a goodly portion too, and the harpooners. But there’s wealth enough for us all, once we sail back to England with our hold full of barrels of oil. Whale oil, the best and cleanest fuel there is; rich man’s oil, so his lamps don’t smoke. And of course the whalebone — there’s money in that too, though not near as much as in the oil.’

  He looked out at the harbour again. ‘But it’s not just the money, boy,’ he said softly. ‘There’s no life like it. You know who gets to breathe the winds first? Not the King of England. Us, out at sea. Men pitting themselves against the great beasts of the ocean and the great waves too.’

  I could almost see it. The great whale rearing up, about to chew up the ship, men with swords and spears pursuing it, till the monster lay still, defeated.

  ‘Well, boy? Are you coming with us?’

  ‘Me, sir?’

  He laughed again. ‘Why not? I’m offering you the best chance of your life to get rich. Probably your only chance. You sail for three years with us and you can stock that farm of yours. Build a big house.’

  Be a gentleman, I thought. Me, Barney Bean, a gentleman. Mr and Mrs Johnson had taught me my manners and to speak properly and to read. All I needed now was money and I could be a gentleman.

  ‘I’m thinking that Governor Phillip will give grand land grants to those who’ve been whaling,’ he said softly. ‘My business is going to make this colony wealthy.’

  ‘Wealthy? Sydney Town?’ I looked at the huddled huts below us. Most were collapsing already, the cabbage-tree roofs rotting and the bark walls too. The colony wasn’t starving, but we hadn’t been far off it for a while. Most convicts still lived on gruel made from their rations. A colony of rags and pannikins the bloke next to you would steal soon as look at you.

  ‘Aye, rich. Whaling ships need food.’ He waved at the vegetable garden behind me, the goats on their tethers beyond the orchard. ‘In a few years your sheep and cows and goats will multiply. And ou
r whaling ships will buy your meat, and at good prices too. And your corn, and timber. Down there?’ He gestured at the straggle of huts along the harbour. ‘Within ten years there’ll be quays and piers and merchants and ship chandlers supplying everything a whaling ship needs. But just for now,’ he grinned, ‘the southern whaling grounds are secret. It will just be the Britannia and the four other ships that’ll be harvesting their whales this year and the next. What do you say, boy? Are you sailing with us? Going to feel the green waves galloping like horses? Challenge the winds and the sea and creatures that make every building in this colony look puny? Will you make your fortune too?’

  CHAPTER 3

  Rich?

  I tossed in bed that night, for all it was the best bed I’d ever slept in. Me, Barney Bean, sleeping in a clean bed with sheets and a patchwork quilt!

  Except I couldn’t sleep. At last I lit the wick of the slush lamp. It stank of mutton fat, not like the expensive oil Captain Melvill and his sailors would bring back from whaling, that people said had no smell or smoke at all. I tiptoed down the stairs and out onto the hill above the house. I sat on the big wooden bench Mr Johnson had made, with his own hands, just like he wasn’t a gentleman.

  It was cold enough that the snake would be asleep. Maybe it had caught a rat and would lie digesting it for weeks. Birrung said the best time to catch a snake was when it was sleeping in winter or lying satisfied, full of rat.

  The moon rode high above me, like it was a sailing ship too, making its way across the stars. I could see the darker blobs of the two headlands that guarded our harbour. They were green and pretty in daytime, but now they looked like prison bars keeping us here in New South Wales.

  Funny, I’d felt free ever since I’d been in the colony. But I was no more free than any convict working on the road gang. I might be legally allowed to leave, but how could I? There weren’t no roads to take, no carriages to ride in. Birrung and the Indians knew how to live in the bush around us, but I didn’t, just the things she’d taught me. The only way to be truly free was to sail out between those headlands into the ocean. And the only way Barney Bean was going to do that was on a whaling ship.

  Go back to England? Not me.

  But to see the world . . .

  I’d been nine months at sea, but nearly all I’d seen was black ooze and water below. We were never allowed on deck when the ship was in port, in case we tried to escape. But those days when we were allowed up on deck at sea! You never knew what colour the ocean would be, nor the sky neither. If I went with Captain Melvill, I’d be able to see how the sea changed colour and the sky too. Watch land appear on the horizon all small, and grow closer and closer, just like the few times I’d glimpsed it coming here.

  And whales!

  The only animals I’d known back in England were rats, and the cats that caught them sometimes, and the ratter’s dog that would eat your ankle for breakfast and spit out the bones. I felt a thrill shiver my spine every time I saw a new kind of animal here.

  And Birrung wasn’t coming back, or not to stay. I had to stop gazing down the track, hoping I’d see her, dark as a morning shadow. Had to stop gazing out at the canoes on the harbour and the women fishing, wondering if one of them was her.

  Another slush lamp flickered in the kitchen then out the door. Elsie always knew when I was bothered. She settled herself on the seat beside me. Her little white face looked up at me, inquiringly.

  ‘I want to go whaling,’ I said. I hadn’t realised I’d made my mind up till then. But I had, right back when I’d first heard Captain Melvill talk about the hunt. What was I doing digging potatoes here when I could be chasing whales and making my fortune? And out at sea, said a whisper in my mind, I wouldn’t keep watching the track, hoping Birrung might come down it, yet knowing in my heart she wouldn’t.

  Elsie made a little noise beside me.

  ‘Elsie! What are you crying for?’

  She turned her head away.

  Suddenly I understood. ‘I ain’t leaving for good, you goose!’

  She looked back at me, her dark eyes wide.

  ‘I’ll come back with gold coins in my pocket. Don’t you see? You can get rich whaling! Rich enough to stock a farm. Soon as I’m old enough I’ll ask Governor Phillip to give me a land grant, and convicts and tools to work it. Don’t need money to build a house, or for seeds for the garden. But sheep and cows cost money.’ I grinned at her. ‘And saucepans for your kitchen too.’

  I felt her sag a little beside me. I stared at her in the darkness. ‘It’s you and me together, Elsie. Always has been. But we need money if we’re to get a proper place of our own, not just a hut of mud and sticks.’

  And I’ll get to see the world too, I thought. In a cabin of my own, not crammed in wooden bunks down in the hold. I could stand on deck as long as I wanted and see the sky and strange ports like Cape Town and those islands where the girls danced with no clothes on. I didn’t tell Elsie that.

  ‘I’d always come back here,’ I said.

  Elsie’s hand crept into mine. I squeezed it. We sat there, watching the moon sail across the starry ocean of the sky.

  CHAPTER 4

  Permission

  ‘May I go, sir?’

  Mr Johnson looked at me seriously over the table where he was writing his sermon. It was piled with books and more books, mostly faded and stained now after more than three years of lending them to convicts with dirty fingers in leaky huts. ‘You are free to go where you wish, Barney. But life at sea isn’t just the grand adventure Captain Melvill described.’

  ‘I know all about the sea, sir!’

  Mr Johnson shook his head. ‘You’ve made one voyage. And it was a lucky one. Only forty-eight people in the whole fleet died. Captain Phillip was the best leader our expedition could have had. Fresh food whenever it could be had, clean ships. Do you know that a quarter of the crew die on most voyages, Barney?’

  ‘Captain Melvill is a good ’un. He ain’t been wrecked yet!’

  ‘Most sailors don’t die in a shipwreck,’ said Mr Johnson gently. ‘They die from scurvy or being washed overboard, from fever from bad food and water, or from falling from the rigging. The conditions on the Britannia are better than elsewhere, and Captain Melvill is said to feed his crew well. But whaling is even more dangerous than most sailing enterprises. Those brave men in tiny boats Captain Melvill talked about — how many of them survive the voyage?’

  He seemed to expect an answer. ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘You’re a good worker, Barney, and strong for your age. But have you wondered why Captain Melvill is so eager for a boy to join the crew?’

  ‘Why, sir?’

  ‘Because whaling ships lose so many men on every voyage they have to take on more crew at each port.’

  And just about every man here is a convict or soldier who isn’t allowed to leave the colony to crew a whaling ship, I thought. Which left me . . . ‘You’re saying I shouldn’t go, sir?’

  Mr Johnson sighed. ‘No, lad. I just want you to know what you’re taking on. Captain Melvill spoke the truth — a man can get good money whaling, better than he’d probably ever get on land. And if there are as many whales in these oceans as he thinks, then he might even be right about it being a chance to get rich. Barney, we need to think about your future. Mrs Johnson and Milbah and I will go home one day, back to England. As soon as I see the church built and a good man to replace me as chaplain, we will go home.’

  I stared at him. ‘Ain’t this your home now?’

  ‘No, Barney. We have friends back in England, family, other work to do. This has been a time of service for us, to lead the convicts, the cast-off and condemned, back to the Light. But when it is over . . .’ he looked me in the eyes ‘. . . Mrs Johnson and I are not wealthy, Barney. We don’t have enough money to pay for your and Elsie’s passages to England. Don’t worry,’ he said quickly, ‘we won’t leave for a few years yet. Elsie will be a fine strong girl by then, and an accomplished cook. Any offi
cer would be glad to employ her, even the governor.’

  ‘And me, sir?’ I said in a small voice.

  ‘I will use all my influence to get a good land grant for you, and convicts to work it. But that is all, Barney.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ I didn’t bother telling him that Elsie wasn’t going to be no officer’s servant. But if I was to make sure that didn’t happen, I needed money.

  And whale hunting was the only way I was going to get it.

  CHAPTER 5

  Memories

  I had a nightmare the night before I left. Maybe more a memory than a nightmare. Me and Ma on those thin planks on the ship bringing us to New South Wales, two to each bunk and so narrow we had to huddle together — at least it was warm. But it was the dark that got to you — month after month of it, allowed up on deck only when it was calm, which wasn’t for weeks sometimes. The stink of the slop bucket. Dark upon dark and no one knew what was at the end of it, just this bay called Botany at the end of the world that no one had even seen for nearly twenty years since Captain Cook and Mr Banks had been there, and Cook was dead so he couldn’t tell no one what it was really like . . .

  In my dream I was back there, the black water in the hold sloshing and slapping beneath our bunk. But it wasn’t just the ship around me: the whole craft was being eaten by a whale, like in the Bible story that Mrs Johnson read us at Sunday school, the whale that swallowed Jonah and was swallowing us too . . .

  The whole world was shivering and shaking, and shaking me.

  Except it was a hand that was shaking me. I opened my eyes. Elsie looked down at me, holding a slush lamp. I tried to grin at her. ‘Thanks,’ I whispered.

  She always seemed to know when I was having nightmares. I don’t think I usually cried out — I hoped I didn’t — because no one else ever seemed to hear me. Elsie and me had both had nightmares, back in those months when we’d been hiding together.