Free Lieutenant by Kate Grenville Page B

His ambition was too naked on his lean face, his ingratiating smile too much a matter of mechanics. Silk had justas much ambition, but did not seem to care, and when the governor turned on his thwart to comment on some point of interest, it was always to Silk that he spoke.
    Behind Rooke sat two privates on either side of a big bearded prisoner: the governor’s shooter, Silk had told Rooke, brought along to bag them their suppers. He was like a haunch of beef himself, Rooke thought, his massive shoulders all of a piece with his powerful neck. He met the man’s eyes: shrewd, knowing, sceptical.
    Lieutenant Gardiner of Sirius was in charge of the boat. He balanced himself in the stern while the sailors laboured over the oars, steering them up the harbour. On the northern shore, high dark prows of headlands hung over the water, the sombre woods pressing down into their own reflections. To the south the land was lower, each bay and promontory shining with the glossy leaves of mangroves. Now and then between them a crescent of yellow sand was like a punctuation mark. Gulls bobbing on the water turned their heads to watch the boat pass, pelicans seemed to smile to themselves. The tide was behind the boat, sweeping it around bend after bend, the banks narrowing until what had been a harbour became a river.
    They rounded a long low promontory and found themselves sliding past a slope of grass on which four or five natives sat around a fire, staring at the boat. They were like a tableau being dragged across a stage. And of course, from the point of viewof the natives, the boatful of staring strangers must be a tableau sliding through their field of view.
    ‘Turn in, Lieutenant,’ the governor called along the boat to Gardiner. ‘Back oars and bring us in to them.’
    He stood up in the bow as the boat drew closer, took off his hat and waved it.
    ‘Good morning!’ he shouted. ‘Good morning, friends!’
    The natives did not wave back. As Rooke watched, the tableau moved and a woman rose from beside the fire, scooping up a child against her breast, and walked away into the bushes. One by one the others got up and followed her. They did not seem to be hurrying but, by the time the boat was close enough to land, the clearing was empty.
    ‘Shall I jump ashore, sir?’ Willstead asked. ‘I could jump ashore, sir, and go after them.’
    But there was something about Willstead’s voice that the governor could not seem to hear.
    ‘Row on, Lieutenant Gardiner,’ he called, an edge in his voice. ‘We will not waste time here.’
    The river narrowed to a stream winding between deep banks and finally their way was blocked by flat slabs of rock piled up in shelves down which water tinkled and shone.
    ‘Terminus, gentlemen!’ Gardiner called, and backed the boat in to where one of the slabs of rock fell away into deep water.
    Willstead and Silk got out and turned to help the governor,but he was getting his angles and joints out over the gunwale with considerable dexterity.
    ‘Thank you, gentlemen, but as you see, I am already here.’
    He looked up at the steep banks on either side, scoured to bare rock in places by past floods, and was already setting off while he gave orders over his shoulder.
    ‘Thank you, Lieutenant Gardiner, I will expect you at this spot in three days’ time. Now Captain Silk, come alongside me if you please, we will lead the way. Lieutenant Willstead, will you be good enough to come after us. Lieutenant Rooke, be so kind as to bring up the rear and record our line of march. Sergeant, you and the privates will march with the gamekeeper.’
    Rooke laughed, thinking the governor had made one of his rare witticisms, but he turned in his angled way and fixed him with a cold eye. Rooke coughed into his hand.
    Gamekeeper! The word suggested the society that Lancelot Percival James had boasted of at the Academy: pheasants and deer in a park artfully planted to enhance the prospect, cheerful peasantry tipping their