Your heart lifts. You crawl and stagger your way towards the ladder, as the ship pitches beneath you.
Up on deck, Amal gives you his arm. You are drenched to the skin in the short time it takes you both to hobble across the deck and into the stable hold.
The air in the hold is even thicker than usual with the stench of sweat and urine-soaked hay. Betty’s eyes are flashing and her nostrils are flaring. You stand at her side in her pen, trying to reassure her as the floor tilts violently underneath you. Amal directs you to help him unclip the hammock around Betty’s body so that she can lie down to deliver her foal.
As you get the hammock away, Betty’s hooves clatter, and suddenly her full weight falls against you. With an oof, you brace yourself against the wall behind you and help to ease her down to the floor. Her terrified neighs stop then, and she begins huffing and straining. Amal wipes down Betty’s body with a damp cloth.
‘What kind of fool horse has her baby in a storm, now?’ you murmur to her, but you mean it lovingly. ‘This baby didn’t want to wait till a sensible time, did it? It’s all right, it’s all right, Betty, my dear.’
Her furry ears swivel towards you. You keep talking, as it seems to soothe her. You kneel beside her and brace yourself against her sweaty flanks as you ride out the rise and plunge of the waves.
‘What kind of horse will this be, now?’ you ask her. ‘Not an English horse; and not an Australian horse, either. It must be … a seahorse! Let’s meet this lovely little seahorse. Come on, now, you can do it …’
Betty’s huffs continue, mingling with the sound of waves crashing against the hull. Gradually, something slippery and purple emerges from her.
You take hold of two slimy hooves while Amal supports the foal’s head, and then you pull until, suddenly, the foal gushes out onto the straw. It is covered in a sack of wrinkly white film, like the skin that forms on the top of hot milk. It is so floppy that it looks dead.
Amal starts working frantically to clear the little foal’s airways. A lump rises in your throat. Please let it live – please!
The storm continues to rage. Betty doesn’t get up. She has closed her eyes. She seems to be losing a lot of blood.
‘Take the cloth!’ shouts Amal. ‘Betty maybe die! Please, you take and stop blood hard!’
He is holding a wad of cloth out towards you. You press it against Betty, under her tail where the foal came out. Her blood is running along your arm, soaking your dress. You feel like you might faint, but you tell yourself to pull it together.
You press harder. The bleeding slows. You let out a slow, shaky breath. You croon to Betty, steadily, gently, struggling all the while to keep your balance. Betty opens her eyes and looks at you.
Amal is doing well with the foal. It lifts its head and blinks its eyes. He manages, on his knees, to gently bring the gooey, gangly thing up towards Betty’s head, and she starts to lick it.
Amal is laughing and nearly sobbing at the same time. ‘This horse want to kill everybody,’ he laughs. ‘Storm and baby together, so much trouble!’
He looks at you intently.
‘Tonight, we pray very hard for this. You pray Jesus, I pray Allah. We say, “Thank you. We live, mother live, baby live.”’
He takes the cloth from you and checks the bleeding. It has stopped.
‘Very good.’
Betty and her foal are alive because of you and Amal. Whatever bad choices I’ve made up until now, you think, my life has been worth it, because of this. I count for something. It’s the first time in a long time that you can remember feeling this way.
THREE MONTHS LATER, the foal – who you and Amal have agreed to call Baraka, meaning ‘blessed’ in Amal’s language – is standing and walking happily, eating as much hay as he can get and feeding greedily from Betty.
You are down in the hold, petting Baraka, when you hear a whoop of excitement from passengers on the deck. You rush up the stairs to see a blue stripe on the horizon: Van Diemen’s Land, your final port.
Your stomach lurches as you suddenly realise you may not see Betty, Baraka or Amal ever again once your ship lands. Amal will sail off on his next voyage. Betty and Baraka will go, hopefully, to a green pasture with a kind master.
You remember the day you promised Sarah that, when you made your new life in Van Diemen’s Land, you’d live together as sisters. Your heart grows heavy as you realise it’s probably an impossible promise to keep. You’ll each be assigned to different masters, most likely, and be put to hard toil, possibly hundreds of miles apart. Gaining your ticket of leave might not be easy – especially for Sarah. How will you find each other after all that time?
Your throat clenches. The voyage has been tough – at times hellish – but right now, you can’t bear for it to end.
Three hours later, you and Sarah sit together on your bunk, holding hands, listening to the thumps and thuds of the ship docking.
‘We’ll be together again soon enough,’ she murmurs.
You bite your lip and rub a tear away with your shoulder. ‘Right you are,’ you tell her. ‘We crossed the world together – nothing can break our bond.’
In this matter you have no choice. Go to scene 21.
Although you have now arrived at Hobart Town, you are held on board the ship for a further four days. Government officials come to interview you about your skills and your
