The Book of the Bush | Page 9

they could deal with him in any way prudence might
require, and they did not mean to run any unnecessary risks.
They went to the house on deck, and Secker called the mate, informing
him that the captain had lost his balance, and had fallen overboard, and
that it was his duty to take charge of the 'Industry', and navigate her to
Hokianga. But the mate had been thoroughly frightened, and was loth
to leave his entrenchment. He could not tell what might happen if he
opened his cabin door: he might find himself in the sea in another
minute. The men who had thrown the master overboard would not have
much scruple about sending an inferior officer after him. If the mate

resolved to show fight, it would be necessary for him to kill every man
on board, even the cook, before he could feel safe; and then he would
be left alone in mid-ocean with nobody to help him to navigate the
vessel--a master and crew under one hat, at the mercy of the winds and
the waves, with six murdered men on his conscience; and he had a
conscience, too, as was soon to be proved.
The seamen swore most solemnly that they did not intend to do him the
least harm, and at last the mate opened his door. While in his cabin, he
had been spending what he believed to be the last minutes of his life in
preparing for death; he did his best to make peace with heaven, and
tried to pray. But his mouth was dry with fear, his tongue clave to the
roof of his mouth, his memory of sacred things failed him, and he could
not pray for want of practice. He could remember only one short prayer,
and he was unable to utter even that audibly. And how could a prayer
ever reach heaven in time to be of any use to him, when he could not
make it heard outside the deck-house? In his desperate straits he took a
piece of chalk and began to write it; so when at last he opened the door
of his cabin, the four seamen observed that he had nearly covered the
boards with writing. It looked like a litany, but it was a litany of only
three words--"Lord, have mercy"--which were repeated in lines one
above the other.
That litany was never erased or touched by any man who subsequently
sailed on board the 'Industry'. She was the first vessel that was piloted
up the channel to Port Albert in Gippsland, to take in a cargo of fat
cattle, and when she arrived there on August 3rd, 1842, the litany of the
mate was still distinctly legible.
Nothing exalts a man so quickly in the estimation of his fellow
creatures as killing them. Emperors and kings court the alliance of the
conquering hero returning from fields of slaughter. Ladies in
Melbourne forgot for a time the demands of fashion in their struggles to
obtain an ecstatic glimpse of our modern Bluebeard, Deeming; and no
one was prouder than the belle of the ball when she danced down the
middle with the man who shot Sandy M'Gee.
And the reverence of the mate for his murdering crew was

unfathomable. Their lightest word was a law to him. He wrote up the
log in their presence, stating that Captain Blogg had been washed into
the sea in a sudden squall on a dark night; vessel hove to, boat lowered,
searched for captain all night, could see nothing of him; mate took
charge, and bore away for Hokianga next morning. When these
untruthful particulars had been entered and read over to the four
seamen, they were satisfied for the present. They would settle among
the Maoris, and lead a free and happy life. They could do what they
liked with the schooner and her cargo, having disposed of the master
and owner; and as for the mate, they would dispose of him, too, if he
made himself in any way troublesome. What a wonderful piece of good
luck it was that they were going to a new country in which there was no
government!
The 'Industry' arrived off the bar at Hokianga on November 30th, 1835,
and was boarded by a Captain Young, who had settled seven miles up
the estuary, at One Tree Point, and acted as pilot of the nascent port. He
inquired how much water the schooner drew, noted the state of the tide,
and said he would remain on board all night, and go over the bar next
morning with the first flood.
The mate had a secret and wanted to get rid of it. While looking round
at the shore, and apparently talking about indifferent subjects, he said
to the pilot: