“By not actually standing on the deck of your ship, I must say you stretched matters a bit.”
“I have no regrets. We all lived in harmony until ship’s carpenter Thomas Cochran and I sailed away.”
“Did you and Cochran not have desire for the women?”
Scaggs’ laughter turned into a brief coughing spell. Carlisle gave him a glass of water. When he recovered, Scaggs said, “Whenever my thoughts became carnal, I envisioned my sweet wife, Lucy. I vowed to her that I would always return from a voyage as chaste as I left.”
“And the carpenter?”
“Cochran, as fate would have it, preferred the company of men.”
It was Carlisle’s turn to laugh. “You picked a strange lot to share your adventures.”
“Before long we had built comfortable shelters out of rock and conquered boredom by constructing many ingenious devices to make our existence more enjoyable. Cochran’s carpentry skill became particularly useful once we found proper woodworking tools.”
“How did this come about?”
“After about fourteen months, a severe gale drove a French naval sloop onto the rocks at the southern end of the island. Despite our efforts to save them, the entire crew perished as the pounding of the breakers broke up their ship around them. When the seas calmed two days later, we recovered fourteen bodies and buried them next to George Pryor and Alfred Reed. Then Dorsett and I, who were the strongest swimmers, launched a diving operation to recover whatever objects from the wreck we might find useful. Within three weeks we had salvaged a small mountain of goods, materials and tools. Cochran and I now possessed the necessary implements to build a boat sturdy enough to carry us to Australia.”
“What of the women? How did Betsy and Marion fare?” queried Carlisle.
Scaggs’ eyes took on a sad look. “Poor Marion, she was kind and true, a modest servant girl who had been convicted of stealing food from her master’s pantry. She died giving birth to a daughter. John Winkleman was horribly distraught. He went mad and tried to kill the baby. We tied him to a tree for four days until he finally got hold of his senses. But he was never quite the same again. He rarely spoke a word from that time until I left the island.”
“And Betsy?”
“Cut from a different cloth, that one. Strong as a coal miner. She carried her weight with any man. Gave birth to two boys in as many years as well as nursing Marion’s child. Dorsett and Betsy were devoted to each other.”
“Why didn’t they come with you?”
“Best they stayed on the island. I offered to plead for their release with the governor, but they didn’t dare take the chance, and rightly so. As soon as they’d have landed in Australia, the penal constables would have grabbed the children and distributed them as orphans. Betsy’s fate was probably to become a wool spinner in the filthy squalor of the female factory at Parramatta, while Jess was sure to end up in the convict barracks at Sydney. They’d likely never have seen their boys and each other again. I promised them that as long as I lived they’d remain forgotten along with the lost souls of the Gladiator.”
“And Winkleman too?”
Scaggs nodded. “He moved to a cave inside the mountain at the north end of the island and lived alone.”
Carlisle sat silent and reflected on the remarkable story Scaggs had related. “All these years you’ve never revealed their existence.”
“I found out later that if I had broken my promise to remain silent, that bastard of a governor in New South Wales would have sent a ship to get them. He had a reputation for moving hell to regain an escaped prisoner.” Scaggs moved his head slightly and stared through the window at the ships in the harbor. “After I returned home, I saw no reason to tell the story of the Gladiator’s raft.”
“You never saw them again after you and Cochran set sail for Sydney?”
Scaggs shook his head. “A tearful good-bye it was, too, Betsy and Jess standing on the beach holding their baby boys and Marion’s daughter, looking for all the world like a happy mother and father. They found a life that wasn’t possible in the civilized world.” He spat out the word “civilized.”
“And Cochran, what was to stop him from speaking out?”
Scaggs’ eyes glimmered faintly. “As I mentioned, he also had a secret he didn’t want known, certainly not if he ever wished to go to sea again. He went down with the Zanzibar when she was lost in the South China Sea back in ’67.”
“Haven’t you ever wondered how they made out?”
“No need to wonder,” Scaggs replied slyly. “I know.”
Carlisle’s eyebrows raised. “I’d be grateful for an explanation.”
“Four years after I departed, an American whaler sighted the island and stood in to fill her water casks. Jess and Betsy met the crew and traded fruits and fresh fish for cloth and cooking pots. They told the captain of the whaler that they were missionaries who were stranded on the island after their ship had been wrecked. Before long, other whalers began stopping by for water and food supplies. One of the ships traded Betsy seeds for hats she’d woven out of palms, and she and Jess began tilling several acres of arable land for vegetables.”
“How do you know all this?”
“They began sending out letters with the whalers.”
“They’re still alive?” asked Carlisle, his interest aroused.
Scaggs’ eyes saddened. “Jess died while fishing six years ago. A sudden squall capsized his boat. Betsy said it looked as if he struck his head and drowned. Her last letter, along with a packet, arrived only two days ago. You’ll find it in the center drawer of my desk. She wrote that she was dying from some sort of disease of the stomach.”
Carlisle rose and crossed the bedroom to a worn captain’s desk that Scaggs had used on all his voyages after the Gladiator went down. He pulled a small packet wrapped in oilskin from the drawer and opened it. Inside he found a leather pouch and a folded letter. He returned to his chair, slipped on his reading glasses and glanced at the words.
“For a girl convicted of theft, she writes very well.”
“Her earlier letters were full of misspellings, but Jess was an educated man, and under his tutelage, Betsy’s grammar showed great improvement.”
Carlisle began reading aloud.
My Dear Captain Scaggs,
I pray you are in good health. This will be my last letter to you as I have a malady of the stomach, or so the doctor aboard the whaling ship Amie & Jason tells me. So I will soon be joining my Jess.
I have a last request that I pray you will honor. In the first week of April of this year, my two sons and Marion’s daughter, Mary, departed the island on board a whaler whose captain was sailing from here to Auckland for badly needed repairs to his hull after a brush with a coral reef. There, the children were to book passage on a ship bound for England and then eventually make their way to you in Aberdeen.
I have written to ask you, dearest friend, to take them under your roof upon their arrival and arrange or their education at the finest schools England has to offer. I would be eternally grateful, and I know Jess would share the same sentiments, rest his dear departed soul, if you will honor my request.
I have included my legacy for your services and whatever cost it takes to see them through school. They are very bright children and will be diligent in their studies.
With deepest respect I wish you a loving farewell.
Betsy Dorsett
One final thought. The serpent sends his regards.
Carlisle peered over his glasses. “‘The serpent sends his regards.’ What nonsense is that?”
“The sea serpent who saved us from the great white shark,” answered Scaggs. “Turned out he lived in the lagoon. I saw him with my own eyes on at least four other occasions during my time on the island.”