Lieutenant by Kate Grenville Read Free Book Online Page A

population was assembled for the commodore to address it.
    He was given a sea-chest to stand on in the shade of a sprawling tree and the prisoners were herded onto the rocky ground in front of him. They shuffled and muttered, indifferent to the significance of the moment. The redcoats made a ragged circle around them. In round numbers, eight hundred prisoners, two hundred marines. Now that they were off the ships, it seemed to Rooke that the mathematics of control were precarious.
    Major Wyatt, his thrust-out jaw making him look somewhat like a carp, stood in a blaze of gold braid. His face was tilted up towards the commodore beside him on the chest, but Rooke could see his eyes flicking, watching the prisoners. He had distributed the three captains of marines at equal distances around the perimeter of the crowd. Rooke saw Silk, somehow contriving to stand at attention while looking as relaxed as a man about to step into a dance. Rooke had not met Captain Gosden until they landed in New South Wales, but he thought the man should never have been accepted for the expedition. His face was pouchy, pale but for hectic spots high on his cheeks, and it cost him a visible effort to hold himself straight. As usual he had his handkerchief in his hand and the preoccupied gaze of a man trying not to cough. Silk had amused Rooke bydescribing the third captain, Lennox, as a human string bean. Lennox and his musket stood together, two long thin military machines waiting to do their duty.
    Rooke sweated into his red jacket. The humid air held the heat and the blue sky beat down headachy light. He could feel his eyes squinting against it, envied Gilbert in his patch of shade.
    Barton and Gardiner and the other naval officers had come ashore in their best blue coats for the ceremony and stood watching. They were simply onlookers. They would sail away again before long. For a moment Rooke wished that he were one of them.
    When Wyatt shouted his order Rooke adopted the regulation stance for the salute, musket against his shoulder, left foot forward. As he pulled his finger back against the trigger and braced himself for the noise, he had a moment’s nausea.
    The volley of shots rang out, a little more ragged than Major Wyatt would no doubt have liked. A flock of big white parrots erupted out of a tree nearby. They heeled and flapped over the humans gathered by the stream, making harsh metallic noises somewhat in sympathy with the ringing that the gunfire had awoken in Rooke’s head.
    He lowered the musket and stood it upright beside him. How happy he would be if today, the seventh of February 1788, were the last time he ever fired it.
    The commodore strained himself upright on his box, shouting to make himself heard against the parrots. He readaloud his commission from King George the Third in which, between one word and the next, James Gilbert became monarch by proxy. Like His Majesty, the brand-new governor of New South Wales had been granted the power of life and death over his subjects.
    Every time Governor Gilbert uttered the name of His Majesty, from some anonymous place within the restless mass of prisoners there was the unmistakable sound of a hawk and spit.
    The white parrots flew off and there was silence in the little valley. On behalf of His Majesty, the governor proclaimed sovereignty over the territory called New South Wales, and for the first time it was given a shape and size. North to south it extended between latitude ten degrees thirty-seven minutes and latitude forty-three degrees forty-nine minutes. East to west it contained all the land between where they presently stood and one hundred and thirty-five degrees of longitude east.
    Rooke applied his mind to some interesting mental arithmetic. Thirty-three degrees of latitude was a distance north to south of over two thousand miles. Sixteen degrees of longitude represented about eight hundred miles east to west. At a rough estimate, His Majesty had just acquired a plot double