The Settlers (The Australians Book 3) by Vivian Stuart

Author:Vivian Stuart [Stuart, Vivian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skinnbok
Published: 2022-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

6

Justin’s second birthday fell on the first day of the year 1794, and for his mother, Jenny Taggart, it was the most heartbreaking day she could remember since her exile had begun.

The wheat crop—which she had toiled so obstinately to sow in the land bordering the creek—had failed, its final ruin brought about by an unseasonal thunderstorm and a week of torrential rain at the end of October. Her harvesting had been delayed because the young ne’er-do-well assigned to her in Watt Sparrow’s place had run off and taken to the woods, and the storm battered sheaves had yielded barely enough to pay for the labour she had been compelled to employ to cut and thresh them. The maize and root crops had done better but ... Looking down at Justin’s sleeping face as the day drew to its close, Jenny knew that she was facing defeat.

Because the government store at Parramatta was full, she had had to sell stock in order to meet the charges for transporting her produce by boat to Sydney. The old hoy, Sydney built and known, almost affectionately now, as the Lump, had failed the Parramatta settlers at last. Her bottom boards, eaten away by barnacles and river worms, had to be replaced, and she had been taken out of service, leaving the enterprising boat owners who plied for public hire to demand what prices they pleased. And their prices were high. Most of them—like the labouring convicts—insisted that payment be made in spirits ... Jenny bit back a tired sigh. Even the cheapest American rum cost more than twenty shillings a gallon and Jamaica half as much again. The officers of the New South Wales Corps had formed a syndicate to purchase all the available supplies, and they kept the price high so that they could sell it at a profit, but her wheat had realised only ten shillings a bushel, the maize less than seven shillings.

She was in debt; worse still, she had not been able to deliver her full quota of grain, as the law of the colony required, in exchange for the rations she drew. Even if she were assigned another labourer in place of the absent Rick Lowe, she would, she knew, be hard put to it to feed him.

She studied her work worn hands, with their torn nails and the scars left by cuts and blisters, and then glanced again, pityingly, at Justin’s thin little face. He was a good child; he could be safely left to his own devices while she worked, he seldom cried or complained even if he had to go hungry, and he gave her a wealth of affection that she thought bitterly, she did little to merit. But it was no life for him; she had no time to teach or train him, no energy left at the end of the day, even to play with him.

He missed Watt, of course—as, indeed, she did herself. Watt had somehow always managed to make time for Justin, to romp with him, to answer his childish questions and quell his fears.

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