Convict Girl

Chapter 3

I lay dejectedly on the hammock. Sarah whispered sympathetic words to me, but I didn’t want to hear them. I felt too sad. We had sailed all around the world, only to find that the land wasn’t accessible enough. We had all been shoved into the new land, only to be shoved right back to the hold again. Did it matter whether the soil was good enough or not? To the guards and marines, we were just thieves. They didn’t care whether we perished or not. Many had already died, or would soon.

I couldn’t eat that night. Sarah tried to get me to eat my rations but I gave them to her. For the thousandth time, I wished I had never stolen the purse. Sarah was worried that if I didn’t eat I’d become sick. I didn’t care. Nothing mattered. The last wisp of hope had vanished.

°°°

We hadn’t been allowed up on deck for ages. I was yearning for the sun on my skin and the wind in my hair. My head was spinning.

I looked around me. Jeremy? I thought. I was back in England, playing with Jeremy, my three-year-old brother. Suddenly somebody was shaking my arm, and everything went black. Sarah swam into view.

“Sarah?” I croaked, “What are you doing here? Where’s Jeremy?”

“There, there, don’t worry,” mumbled Sarah softly, “You’re on the Lady Penrhyn, remember?”

t all flooded back to me. Jeremy had been killed by scarlet fever. I didn’t even know where we were going since we had left Botany Bay.

“Why did you wake me?” I murmured sleepily.

Sarah’s face didn’t change as she told me, “The boat ‘as stopped movin’ again.”

My heart leapt the news. I couldn’t believe it. I was finally going to set foot on land for the first time in about eight months! I couldn’t wait to be free, or at least, to be off this ship.

When I looked back at Sarah, her face was shadowed and… scared.

“Sarah?” I exclaimed. “What’s the matter?” To my horror, she burst into tears.       

“I’m too old for the ‘ard labour of this land,” she sobbed. “I can’t even lift a pickaxe!”

A feeling of dread and horror came over me as the reality sunk in that for the next seven years, I was a prisoner and worker.

°°°

Days later we still hadn’t been let out of the boat. Sarah told me it was because the men went first to set up the tents. Then I heard the guard’s footsteps stomping across the deck and down the hatch.

“Come on you lot,” yelled one of the guards. “Time for you to start doing some work.” 

Sarah’s hand was visibly trembling as I watched her climb the ladder and stand up on the deck. The first thing I noticed was the heat. The sun hurt my eyes. When I got used to the glare I stared around me in wonder. The sea was turquoise, with little ripples in it. It washed up to a sandy shore with shells here and there. The sand went up the beach until it reached a line of never-ending trees that melted away into the shadows. The trees were very unfamiliar. It almost looked like they were craving for sunlight, for their branches all grew upwards, instead of sideways, like normal trees.

A marine was standing near a rope-ladder that tumbled over the side of the boat. Sarah’s eyes widened.

“I can’t go down that,” she stammered, “I’m afraid of ‘eights!"

We watched in dismay, as a young woman climbed gingerly down the rope-ladder, and flopped into the rowing boat. When the guard lifted her out of the boat, she tried to stand but swayed drunkedly on the spot. I wondered why she hadn’t stood and walked up the beach.