Bring Larks and Heroes by Thomas Keneally Page B

the sun.
    â€˜Beside him,’ Ewers remarked, aggrieved quite independently of Halloran, ‘is the buffoon of the sciences, Surgeon Partridge.’
    â€˜Might as well take my weapon to show him I know I’ve got desperate men aboard.’
    â€˜My dear God in heaven, you have a desperate man! My God in heaven you have!’
    Carrying a flint-lock, Halloran grunted and stumbled down the middle, through the warm reek of sweat and the leaden smell of half-salt, muddied water. In the shallows, the oyster-gatherers stood up and eyed the boat past as if it bore watching. Lieutenant Rowley eyed it too, waiting in scandalized elegance, back bent as ever with the mere weight of his own grace, above buttocks which seemed opulent enough to support any load.
    â€˜Beach it,’ called Halloran, running up the sand to report in canvas shoes and no gaiters, but the rest of him regimental enough for the circumstances.
    Rowley was nineteen, but he had seventy-year-old grey eyes as a pledge of the Lieutenant-General or chairman of corporation that he would become. He had full lips and jaws born to become the jowls of a dominant old man.
    After Halloran had presented himself, the boy said nothing for a wearing time, waiting, with his mouth characteristically pained, for some arcane malaise to leave him be. Piles ,hoped Halloran. Angry ,he hoped.
    â€˜It is normal,’ the boy said at last, ‘to answer an officer when you are hailed. When I failed to hear you answer me, Corporal, I thought, perhaps there is a ferryman in charge of that boat. Eh?’
    I won ’ t fawn on your ehs ,roared a voice in Halloran’s belly.
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ he said.
    â€˜You have – how many transports in your boat?’
    â€˜Three, sir.’
    The lieutenant tapped Halloran’s flint-lock with his cane.
    â€˜Are you loaded?’
    â€˜No, sir.’
    The pain of this made Rowley close his eyes and nod.
    â€˜Why not?’ A small perilous voice. Just the thing to frighten shit out of Irish yokels. But not out of this one.
    â€˜Begging your pardon, sir, the quartermaster asked us not to use the cartridges. There are only three rounds for every Marine in the garrison.’
    â€˜I know that, Corporal. Yet you have three desperate men and a boat which could, at a pinch, sail to the Dutch East Indies. Sense, Corporal, sense!’
    There was no doubt about it. Halloran’s lack of sense had brought anguish into the corners of Rowley’s eyes, and he would bear it only by calling on his reserves of good-breeding.
    â€˜Load now, please!’
    The eyes remained close if not closed, as Halloran rigmaroled the butt of the flint-lock to the sand and swung his thin legs apart, trying to achieve the rangy indolence of the good driller, of the soldier never flustered. He allowed himself to be rebellious to the extent of not fumbling. When he’d bitten the cartridge and poured the charge down, he took a moment or two to flick grains of powder from the muzzle, reminding himself inevitably of the priest cleaning the paten before the Purification of the Mass. The ironic image stayed in his mind.
    Chins skyward, the men in the opaque river slopped at their industry, but everyone else was quite rapt at the small melodrama. Attending to the priming pan, Halloran thought, Sure to go off before we’re round the next bend, and cure that boatman of his scurvy. He followed the rubrics of getting the weapon to his shoulder and himself to attention.
    â€˜The surgeon here,’ said Rowley immediately, ‘wants a message taken to the Crescent.’
    He took his elegance back a pace. It was a placid elegance now, his back to a hill-side whose cicada-voice roared its indifference at him. Pointlessly, since only Halloran was aware.
    Surgeon Partridge moved in. After Rowley, he seemed studiously affable.
    â€˜You’re carrying some letters to Surgeon Daker, Corporal?’ he asked.
    Halloran