Free The Gold Seekers by William Stuart Long Page B

his increasing wealth and influence had wrought a change. The passing years had seen the end of convict transportation and, with it, an end to the sharp divisions in the colony’s society. Emancipated convicts and their Australian-born offspring owned land, often held commissions in the British armed forces, or, like himself, successfully engaged in trade, and the gulf that had once existed had been bridged. New South Wales was a state, with its own elected Legislative Council—largely thanks to the untiring efforts of William Charles Wentworth, who was now campaigning for a still greater measure of self-government. Its population had risen to more than 190,000, and its export trade, particularly in wool, had never been more prosperous.
    Successive governors, with the curtailment of their autocratic powers, had been less rigid in their social attitudes, and indeed, Claus reflected, the divisions, where they existed, were between the large landowners and the middle-class traders and townsfolk, with the women they married chiefly responsible for the barriers erected between them.
    He himself had never married, because at the time when he might have taken a wife, the social climate had not been right. He was in his thirty-eighth year, an age at which most men would have had sons working for them and. daughters ready for marriage or even already married, with grandchildren in imminent prospect. Looking back over the years, he sought for reasons for his solitary state and sighed. In his case, of course, the choice had been limited; but apart from that, he had never met a woman with whom he had wanted to share his life—save one.
    His expression softened. He had been barely twelve, an unhappy, friendless boy, when Alice Fairweather had entered the Van Buren household—as lost and friendless as he —and he had solemnly declared it his intention to wed her when he should become a man. But Alice had been a woman grown already, and she had married long before he had been old enough to make good his promise. All he had been able to do was endow the school of which her husband, the Reverend Nathan Cox, was principal, and— Claus repeated his sigh. And become one of their pupils, forever in their debt for all that they had taught him of letters and the arts and of their own Christian beliefs.
    For the rest … His smile returned as he again met old Saleh’s searching eyes. He cherished his freedom. With no ties to hold him, he could roam the oceans, and his ports of call held women in plenty, ready and willing to satisfy his need for their company and then to let him go, with no more regret than he felt himself.
    If he loved, it was the sea and his ships that held his heart.
    And now, in the Dolphin, he had a vessel to surpass all others —a magnificent topsail clipper schooner, built of the best oak, white pine, and hackmatack, and sheathed with Taunton copper. With her sharply raked bow, her great length, and her towering expanse of sail, she was truly a tribute to the genius of her builder, the man they called the blue nose, Donald McKay.
    McKay was both an artist and a craftsman; he designed every vessel built in his yard and personally supervised every detail of her construction. When Claus had originally contracted for construction of the Dolphin, nearly three years ago, McKay had wanted to build a three-masted, square-rigged clipper ship instead of the schooner Claus had specified; but much as he had been tempted to concur with McKay’s initial plan, practical considerations had compelled him to reject it. He wanted speed, certainly, but not at the expense of his new vessel’s carrying capacity, and the Dolphin’s fore-and-aft rig ensured that she could be worked by a smaller crew than a square-rigger would require. Because of her hull design, she could not carry as much cargo as the old Lydia, but Donald McKay had used her length brilliantly and with much ingenuity, and his insistence on fitting her with three masts was,