PROLOGUE
Sample Chapter
THE DESK AT WHICH Henry had laboured for some fourteen months was not a desk at all but an upturned East India Company crate. By day a thin, shifting column of light fell through a slot cut high in the wall, compelling him to frequently rise and reposition the splintering box in its pursuit. By night candles of whale grease provided his only illumination. Not long before, his journals, books and almanacs had constituted a private library that might equal any gentleman's on the island. Now the unbound papers piled about the cell's stone floor amounted to his sole earthly possessions. All else had been snatched away.
Henry had known few better places to write. The gaol walls guaranteed preservation from the temptations beyond. His responsibilities were none and obligations few. Food, clothing and shelter - the necessities that consigned most men to a life of labour below their talents - were provided free of charge. His gift for ingratiation had secured the luxury of a private apartment , free of the inane chatter of some incorrigible cellmate. And his friends in the printing business ensured his inkwell never ran empty and foolscap was in good supply.
The only other place Henry had experienced such freedom was aboard ship, where the sea formed a sort of prison and life itself was suspended in brine until port was reached. Having long before discovered that his proclivity was toward the monastic or the excessive, but nothing in between, he found the imposition of the former condition uncommonly liberating.
CHAPTER ONE - STRANGE CARGO
Sample Chapter
TWO DAYS PRIOR TO his departure from New Zealand, with his passage secured aboard the
SS Mataura, the tramp solicited one final forecast from the world beyond. It did not bode well. He abandoned his duties on deck, cornered the captain and delivered his absurd warning in a Continental slur.
‘I have spoken with the spirits. The ship will be wrecked but all hands will be saved.’
Having signed him on solely for amusement, Charles Milward surveyed the impossibly furrowed face of his new swab with fast-fading interest.
The following day, the captain of the neighbouring SS Waikato, bound for London via the Cape, visited Milward’s quarters to solicit the services of an able man. Milward told him he had none to spare, but less than an hour before the Mataura was to sail, Captain Croucher returned to his friend’s cabin in desperation. He told Milward that the Union, aware he needed a man to complete his crew, had raised the wages a fabulous amount.
‘Give me anything that wears trousers and I’ll make him do.’
Milward pointed to the tramp, at that moment scrubbing his cabin floor.
‘You can take him, if you like.’
Milward told the tramp to pack his bag and go aboard the Waikato.
The tramp continued to scrub without looking up. ‘No,’ he replied.
‘Did you understand me?’ said the captain. ‘You will go home in the Waikato.’
Still the tramp did not move. ‘No.’
He pulled the man up from the floor by the seat of the pants and the nape of the neck, hauled him from the cabin and ran him down the ship’s ladder. A few rungs from the bottom he despatched the tramp’s meatless rump on to the Wellington dock with a final kick. His belongings followed.