heathen names: Jason, Hector, Hercules and others I can’t recall, together with the promise that when the offenders had reconciled themselves to the Christian faith they too would be given proper names. I was a child then and baptized as George and this has remained with me. The others never used what they considered their ‘ghost’ names, for they saw white-skinned ones such as your good selves, as ghosts; but as I’ve said Mungkati became known as Hercules for ever more. So I’m George, named after the then reigning monarch and not after himself, even though Jangamuttuk my supposed father had declared: ‘He’s the king of the castle, and he’s a dirty rascal.’ I knew the English words, but being a kid what they were hinting at passed over me as did the laughter when Fada was coupled with ‘black velvet’.
Well, all this naming business happened a year before the King carked it and Her Majesty ascended the throne. God save Victoria, though I cannot help but wonder what I would have been called if I had been born from her, so to speak. Victor or Victoria, or just Albert. He did and still does, that Fada, that Sir George, like the sound of royal names, even storybook ones. Why, he even called my mother, Lalla Rookh, some fabulous queen of oriental splendour, he assured her as he took his pleasure.
Anyway, Mungkati, or Hercules, was a big fellow with a big temper to match and when it overpowered him he hit out with what came to hand. One time, he even did a fellow in with an axe and I’ll tell you why later, but for now just imagine that axe flashing down upon your head. How it strikes with a sodden thud, digging in deep, clefting the skull in twain. Bits of bone and brain flying everywhere. The blood gushing out a regular torrent. Some drops splatter on your face and your tongue darts out to lick the ruby fluid. It tastes of copper with a subtle flavour of rum; but I get beyond myself. I am harmless and it is only the darkness of the night which brings such thoughts to mind, for I did not do the deed, but thickheaded Mungkati/Hercules did with his infernal temper. He split his man and splattered us with the gore of blood guilt for ever more.
Well that was Hercules, so unlike our chief mate, the African. He was a different sort of bloke – one who in his day had seen and had his share of cruelty. You know, he began his life as a baby born in the cramped confines of a slaver ship. He entered this world as his fellows died and rotted about him. Born on that ship, he never had a feeling for the solid earth of a land he could call his own, though perhaps he yearned for it. They sold him in the Americas, but always there was the call of the restless waters in his veins. Now he is out there this night, battling the elements somewheres; but enough of him we called Wadawaka, Seaborn. Let him rest while you fill your mugs to the brim, for the night is long and the grog is there for the drinking, as long as you’ve got something in your poke, for my coin is all done. Here’s to our chief mate, Seaborn. Lift your mugs high in homage and I break my yarn with a song and you settle back.
In these days of old,
When you dig up the gold
And the dust fills up your gob
And you need some grog
To make you believe
You’re a damned lucky sod.
There, there enough of that. Crack-crack, loud enough to wake you and the dead besides eh, these sticks which come from the dead and call the ghoulies down upon us. We need a parson to keep them at bay and we had such a sort on our schooner who had an affinity for such things. Not of your regular sort that dresses in black, his skin was black enough and he was handy with a song and spell when the going got tough and we got scared. Fada named him Orpheus after one of those ancient pagan fellows, but to us he was always Jangamuttuk, Ghost Conqueror. Well, like parsons are meant to do, he gave us strength when strength was needed, singing hymns to the land beyond the sun. He had a magic voice that could call the animals to him and even quieten the storms when they were raging, but like that Orpheus fellow, he suffered a similar fate when he sought out our mate to return his mind to him.
And perhaps you need to know of me, George. I stood next to Wadawaka at the helm and relieved him when he sought his bunk. Wadawaka, our African mate, taught me how to judge the schooner’s ways. She trembled with life, life that turned evil when he named her the Kore and gave her a figurehead. Yes, she was alive and many a time at night when I held the wheel, I felt her timbers twist under the touch of my hands and emit a ghastly groaning as she ripped apart the pellucid, placid sea.
And what and who were the rest, you may want to know. Well, our mob was twenty men and women, all that remained of us poor blackfellows after Fada had got through with his conciliating. Wadawaka it was who taught the men to furl and unfurl the sails and other things which were necessary to keep us on our course. The women, when our shrouds grew tattered and fluttered in the wind like deadmen’s rags, sewed them together again so that they might hold the wind. We kept her going towards the west, and as other voyagers we had adventures along the way, some of which were weird and strange. Now raise your pannikins high and toast all those who put to sea, while I finish off with a song my erstwhile father used to sing:
They made for us
A land to plunder
a land to plunder
Way down under.
CHAPTER TWO
The winds had been favourable when we left our island, blowing constantly from the east. They endured for a number of days, then fell away, replaced by spates of southerly squalls which drove us to the land. After some days when these had blown themselves out, we put to sea on an easterly. Our schooner was in good spirits and we raced to the west until the fickle wind reversed itself to force her back on her wake. Worse, this signalled the change of the season and the westerly came down on us laden with a bitter cold, draping our vessel’s rigging in hoar frost. We fashioned cloaks from our blankets, covering them with the skins of kangaroos and wallabies which Wadawaka had collected when we had had to shelter on the mainland. Before, an adventure had erupted about us, we had filled our time with hunting and this now served us well. Our skin-coated blankets kept us somewhat warm, but as the adverse wind continued and the cold endured, most ·of our mob took refuge below decks, where they huddled miserably in the tiny space and complained bitterly.
There was little that we could do. The wind rose into a gale which blasted us back on our course. Wadawaka let the vessel run before it. She didn’t like it that much and slumped along with her head bent low. Every now and again, the knitting needles she had thrust through her hair bobbed and weaved and we might have ended back where we had begun if the gale had not fallen away to a steady wind. She stopped her pitching and yawing, and the deck stayed horizontal. It was some time after this that a man poked his hairy head out of a hatchway, waited for a while as if he did not believe that the world had indeed settled down, then finding that it had, he pulled his weighty body through and onto the deck. He stood there slightly swaying, staring at the white-capped sea with a scowl of dislike.
Although Wadawaka was a big man, this blackfellow towered over him. It was Hercules, who looked like some bulky bear in his hairy cloak. I was standing beside Wadawaka and watched as the giant bear bent down and pulled out his huge waddy, his constant companion. His beard and hair were unkempt and streamed in the wind as he stood before us, muttering fiercely before bellowing: ‘We have had enough of this pitching and rolling. We need the firm earth beneath our feet and the warmth of a campfire to unfreeze our bones.’
Wadawaka stared into his glowering features, then replied with a shrug. ‘What could I do, when the wind howled in her icy rigging and she turned and scurried east. Well, since the tempest has lessened his fury, we’ll run close to the shore in the hopes of finding sheltered anchorage in the lee of an island, then we’ll go ashore.’
Hercules hefted his club and grimaced at the waves as if he would batter them down. The challenge
