They saddled their patient old mares - Ben had nothing to say to straps and buckles: he was a guide and protector of fools for Blaxland's sake, in no way a servant. Indeed, his world did not include the man and-master relation at all, and nothing that they could give him did he want. Mounting, they rode slowly on towards their last river.
Their last river offered neither water nor platypus; they walked across dryshod. But the monotonous plain had been sloping gently down for some hours and now there were many more trees, and better grown, so that the landscape could without very much exaggeration be said to resemble a park, a dull, ill-tended park. Not altogether without cheer however, for in one of the taller trees Ben showed them a truly enormous lizard clinging motionless to the trunk, convinced it could not be seen: he would not let them shoot it, nor would he use one of the half dozen spears he carried. He appeared to say that the reptile was his aunt, though this may have been an error of interpretation; in any event the lizard, having been stared at for twenty minutes, suddenly lost its head, rushed up the tree, fell together with a long strip of loose bark, stood open-mouthed, defying them for a moment, and then raced away over the grass, high on its short legs.
'He was a pleurodont,' said Martin.
'So he was. And he had a forked tongue too: one of the monitory kind, for sure.'
This kept them cheerful for the rest of the afternoon, and the next day, having looked at Banks's Botany Bay, they rode into Sydney. The horses made straight for their stable, the ass with them; and in the more squalid outskirts Ben met a group of fellow tribesmen, some wearing clothes. They walked with him to the hotel, talking away at a great rate; and once there Stephen said 'Mr Riley, Ben here, from Mr Blaxland's, has been with us these ten days: pray give him whatever is right.'
'Rum,' said Ben in a loud harsh voice.
'Do not let him do himself too much harm, Mr Riley,' said Stephen, and taking the ass's bridle he went on, 'This is Mr Blaxland's ass: I shall send him back by a sailor, to be collected when one of his waggons comes down.'
'Good evening, Mr Davidge,' he said as he stepped aboard and saluted the quarterdeck. 'Would you be so good as to have these bundles carried below with the utmost care? Mr Martin, may I beg you to see that the skins, particularly the emus' skins, are laid very gently in the Captain's store-room? The smell will soon go off; he will not mind it. I must go and report our return. And then, Mr Davidge, may I trouble you for a sober, steady, reliable hand - Plaice, for example - to lead this ass back to Riley's?'
'Well, Doctor, I dare say I can find somebody in his right wits, but Plaice is lashed into his hammock for the moment, having been pumped over - you can hear him singing Green-sleeves if you bend your ear forward.'
Stephen could also hear the strong authoritative voice of Captain Aubrey addressing someone in the cabin in formal terms, someone who certainly did not belong to the ship. At the same time he also became aware of the nervous tension aboard - anxious looks, furtive whispering, and the whole ship's company or very nearly so gathered at the stations they would occupy if the frigate were to get under way.
'Tell the gentleman who sent you that this note is improperly addressed, improperly phrased, and cannot be received. Good day to you, sir,' said Captain Aubrey, clear in the still air. Doors opened and closed. An army officer, his face as red as his coat, came out, made an unsmiling return to Davidge's salute and crossed the brow. The moment he touched the land Stephen's ass began a heartbroken shuddering bray and all the Shelmerstonians and some of the less respectful man-of-war's men burst into a rare cackle of laughter, stumping about and clawing one another on the back.
Tom Pullings shot up on deck like a jack-in-the-box and roared out 'Silence fore and aft. Silence, there: d'ye hear me?' with such extreme vehemence and indignation that the cackle stopped dead; and in the silence Stephen made his way to the cabin.
Jack was sitting behind the piles of papers usual in port for a captain who was also his own purser, but his stern expression changed to a smile when the door opened and he said, 'Why, there you are, Stephen How glad I am to see you we had not looked for you until tomorrow. I hope you had a pleasant trip?'
'Very pleasant, I thank you: Blaxland did everything that was kind and hospitable - he desires his best compliments, by the way - and we saw the emu, various kinds of kangaroo, the echidna - good Lord, the echidnal - the small fat grey animal that sleeps high up in gum-trees and that very absurdly claims to be a bear, a great many of the parrot tribe, a nameless monitory lizard, all that we had hoped to see and more, except for the platypus.'
'An agreeable countryside, however, upon the whole?'
'Why, as for that, it is of the first interest to the botanist, and its animals fill one with joy and amazement: the economy of the echidna is scarcely to be believed. But as for countryside, I do not think I have seen anything so dismal or more like my idea of the plains of Purgatory. Perhaps it may improve with rain: at present everything is parched. Even the stream between Botany Bay and here was dry. But Jack, you look angerly.'
'I am angerly. I am in fact so exceedingly out of temper that I can scarcely command my mind and keep it steady to its paper-work,' said Jack, and Stephen, with a sinking heart, saw that he was if anything understating the case. 'When Tom and I were away looking at some timber with Chips a party of soldiers came down with two officers: they said there was an escaped convict aboard and they insisted on looking for him at once, without waiting for my return. They had a magistrate's warrant. Most of our people were on shore-leave or away in the boats, bringing stores: the party was strong, and headed by a captain. West, who was in charge, no longer holds a commission as you know, so what with that and with the likelihood of our being made to look ridiculous if we resisted, he confined himself to making the strongest possible protest, uttered before witnesses, and walked off the ship. They searched her. They had some old Sydney Cove hands with them and they found the man almost at once: they marched him away, sobbing fit to break your heart, said little Reade, who met them as he was coming down from the town. You could recognize the man by the raw bloody places about his ankles, where the irons had been.'
'Was he a friend of some of our people?'
'I am sure he was, but of which there is no telling. No one is going to get himself or his shipmates into trouble, and if you ask questions you will only get that 'Don't know, sir' with a glassy look to one side of your head I have heard aboard every ship I ever served in. But think of it, Stephen - to search a King's ship without her captain's permission: it is monstrous!'
'It is indeed extraordinarily offensive.'
'And then they tried to justify themselves by some miserable quibbling over the Surprise's status; but I told them that they were as ignorant of naval law as they were of good manners, that a ship hired by His Majesty and commanded by one of his officers had all the rights of a man-of-war on the establishment, and I named the
