Bryce Courtenay by Tommo & Hawk

Author:Tommo & Hawk [Tommo & Hawk]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-05-23T10:25:49+00:00

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Chapter Fourteen

HAWK

The Tasman Sea

July 1860

We are on board ship, bound for Sydney, and Tommo is in a bad way. When Hammerhead Jack took him in the Maori trading ketch from Auckland, they sailed to the Coromandel. It was here that I met him and we boarded the topsail schooner Black Dog, under the command of Captain Joshua Leuwin.

Of Tommo’s voyage from Auckland he remembers little. Not long after he was taken aboard by Hammerhead Jack he fell into a delirium. His wound had turned bad on the outside and his head was aching beyond endurance. He was soon lost in a fever, murmuring gibberish.

Hammerhead Jack told me of their fearful voyage. The ketch was a decrepit old tub, one of the many derelict vessels replaced in Australia by steam. It was no doubt purchased by some errant Johnny strike-it-rich from Sydney who sailed it in fair weather across the Tasman to sell to the Maori, who can seldom afford a new vessel locally made.

A head wind blew most of the way from Auckland, so that sailing the small ketch with its heavy flaxen sails was most onerous. The wind blew ceaselessly in the wrong direction and the boat punched into the waves, which marched forward in unending grey-green lines flecked with foam. The vessel lurched up and down from trough to crest, constantly leaning at twenty-five degrees away from the wind. The lee rail was often under water, a state of affairs which even for the hardiest man on board creates a great propensity for seasickness. Many lost the contents of their stomachs overboard, though the Maori are good rough-weather sailors.

To all this was added the crew’s fear that Tommo’s illness had been caused by the spirits of the dead. They knew he had run away from the tribe but had no notion of why, and thought that he must be in breach of some commandment. They believed he was being punished by the atua or ghost -the spirit of a dead kinsman which enters one’s body and preys on some vital part. They would not approach him, nor touch anything he used, a dish or spoon or cup, for fear that he was tapu.

Even Hammerhead Jack, who has sailed the seven seas and seen the ways of the world, suggested bringing the priests, the tohunga, to our ship in the Coromandel. He proposed to delay our sailing several days so that they might come to cast out the evil spirit which dwelt in Tommo. He was of the most serious opinion that the spirit residing in my twin’s head may have entered him through the arsehole of the dead soldier, whom Tommo had killed and then lain upon in the swamp.

Though I have become Maori in many ways, I politely declined Jack’s kind offer, saying that I would nurse Tommo myself and seek further help when we reached Australia.

‘Ha, pakeha medicine!’ Hammerhead Jack snorted. ‘Tommo spent much money on O’Hara’s costly sulphur ointment, bought to heal our wounds, but what good did it do us? None!’

I acknowledged his point here.

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