Pearce makes a run for it. He jumps into the boat and before he can gauge the magnitude of his actions, he has seven willing companions—seven men who have entwined their fate with his—seven men leaping like fish into the safety of the boat. With the popping of muskets and the scent of powder heavy in the air, the men quickly row, the shouts of the overseers lost in the pounding blood of the first moments of freedom. Soon the smoke signals wind into the sky. Men have escaped. Hunt them down.
The convicts, now at a safe distance, sink the boat and head into the heart of island, where the clock of time has wound and wound so tightly that it has stopped altogether. The trees poke into the very fabric of the sky—trees sprouted at the time of Julius Caesar. The melancholy cawing of the magpies, the flutter of fallen leaves as a snake slides into hiding, the rattle of gum nuts shaken high above by a springing possum, the buzz of the great yellow sun, these are the only sounds heard over the grunt and heave of men walking at quick pace, walking inward, backward, nowhere.
Who are these men?
Little Brown. Robert Kennelly. William Dalton. Thomas Bodenham. John Mather. Mathew Travers. Robert Greenhill. And Alexander Pearce. They have only one weapon, an ax, which is in Greenhill’s possession.
What is their plan?
To survive. To this end, they must travel first to the center, then manage eastward to Hobart. There, on the good days, they will find passage on a ship, maybe on a Dutch freighter going to the Spice Islands; they will spend their years weighed down by native women, whose soft black hair smells of nutmeg and saffron. On the bad days, they will arms themselves and retreat into the bush, where the aborigines and Irishmen (after all, aren’t they the same to the British?) pick off sheep at the fringe, occasionally stopping a carriage or man on horseback with a hearty, “Bail up.” But the food is now gone and the terrain has shifted. Jagged toothy peaks drain their energy, bottomless gorges swallow them whole. Of the voluptuous women of the Spice Islands, all that is left is the scent of nutmeg, and wouldn’t that be better coming off a plum duff?
One of the men, Little Brown, is weak with dysentery. How long will he last? How long will any of them, with no food? Robert Kennelly heaves a deep breath and looks at the land before him—wall after wall, divide after divide—and states: “I am so weak that I could eat a piece of man.” Is this a joke? This is not a time for joking. Is this a thought mistakenly uttered, better left unsaid, because as the words escape his mouth he sees the eyes of all the others swing toward him. He sees the light dying in Little Brown’s eyes. He sees the keen blue eyes of Alexander Pearce calmly appraising him, those icy eyes sitting in Pearce’s pocked, creased face.
Someone will not survive the night.
Days later the authorities find Robert Kennelly and Little Brown trying to escape back to Macquarie. They are hysterical, babbling, doomed. “We fell back,” says Kenelly. “They tried to catch us, but we hid. There was no food.” “Then what is this?” asks the constable, holding forth the small sack of meat. “That is not food,” says Kennelly. “That is William Dalton.” William Dalton, believed to be a flogger, although the records do not bear this out. Eaten for his supposed cruelty, cut down with Greenhill’s ax. They sliced off Dalton’s head, eviscerated him, hung him up to bleed, and dined first on the heart and liver. In the following week Kennelly and Brown both die, unable to heal from the deprivations faced in their weeks of freedom.
The other convicts continue east to the Loddon Plains. Thomas Bodenham is the next victual. His bones are found years later, by a surveyor hoping to be the first white man to travel the region.
Four men continue onward. All are so thin that they offer little food and although each slaughter reduces the mouths by one, it is still necessary to choose a new meal every few days. Now, the men have fallen into factions: Greenhill and Travers, Pearce and Mather. The two pairs stagger on, in sight of each other, but at a distance. Pearce considers his fate. He does not want to be so far that if another meal presents itself, he cannot partake. He does not want to be so near as to present himself as a meal. He looks at Mather. Mather has more flesh to him than Pearce, and height. Pearce is only five feet four inches. Also, Pearce has had a bout of smallpox and his pitted appearance, he thinks, makes him look less appetizing. Greenhill will most likely go for Mather, because Pearce is known for his ferocity. If he was smart, Greenhill would cut down Travers, who is weak from a snakebite, even though they have some sort of friendship. What kind? Who can say? The most unholy of affections spring up around convicts and, Pearce wryly notes, cannibalism and sodomy both dwell outside the perimeters of civilization, which is exactly where they’re standing. Pearce staggers onward, his mind unable to free itself of thoughts of meat and man, and man and meat, and which is what and why not.
He hears Mather suddenly, a few feet behind him, call out in pain and panic. Pearce turns to see the struggle. Where does Mather find the strength and he unarmed, and Greenhill already having cut him, the blood spewing forth from his head? Pearce and Travers manage to calm Mather down. Maybe he is weak with blood loss, because it seems strange that any words, particularly from these companions, could calm a man in such a predicament. Greenhill is feeling generous. “Give him half an hour to say his prayers.”
Half an hour? thinks Pearce. And why? I’m hungry now. If he’s so anxious to have words with his maker, we could send him forthwith, and the two could have a face-to-face. How much value can thirty minutes of painful blood-loss and mental agony have for a man? Pearce sits in the grass listening to the pained entreaties of Mather. He looks over at Travers, who’s looking at him. It will be Travers next, affection or not, because Greenhill will still be shaken up over Mather’s resistance. Much like pork is what Greenhill had said about the meat, and much like pork Pearce has found it. No. Travers will be next. And after that? Greenhill has the ax. Pearce will deal with that obstacle when he comes to it.
“How much time has passed?” shouts Greenhill.
“Do I have a bloody watch?” says Pearce. “Time enough. We’ve got to get moving.”
And Greenhill finishes the job.
Travers weakens further. He begs Greenhill and Pearce to leave him behind to die, to have his body rot unmolested. Surely they can make it to Hobart on what they’ve managed to cut from Mather. Travers wakens from a moment’s nap to hear Greenhill and Pearce deciding his fate. The land is now lush and green, sweet little pudding-hills, a landscape not so alien, could be Ireland. Could be England, but for those little hopping beasts always out of reach, looking from side to side of their wise pointy faces, never close enough to kill. But here’s Travers stretched out in final agony. No need to hunt. The only thing that would make this more convenient is if Travers could skin and dress himself. If Travers could say, “What for you, Alexander? Fancy a piece of thigh, or maybe some of the upper arm?”
Pearce. Greenhill.
Two men, feeble with their strange diet, exhausted by heat, struggle toward Hobart. The land is now flat. A blanket of tall grass whips in the steady breeze. Pearce and Greenhill, although they do not know it, are an easy two days’ travel to Hobart. The immediate enemy is sleep, which is threatening them both. Their eyelids droop, then flicker up again. Greenhill’s joints are stiff, his arms and legs feel deadened with fatigue. An ax is small comfort against sleep, when out there in the tall grass is Alexander Pearce, whose sharp eyes dart out across his snub nose, out across the plain, waiting. This is a contest that Pearce knows he has already won. Across the grass, Greenhill, with his eyes now closed, cradles the ax in his hands as if it is a doll.