Nanberry Read Online Free PDF Page A

— its rope hinges had sagged. Mr Balmain, one of the Assistant Surgeons, stood there.
    â€˜Sir,’ he said to Surgeon White. The word was respectful, but the way he spoke weren’t. Mr Balmain never seemed to realise that Surgeon White was his superior, and a gentleman, and thatMr Balmain was only an Assistant Surgeon and should show respect.
    Surgeon White looked up. ‘What’s so important that it interrupts my breakfast?’
    â€˜Dead natives. Sir.’
    Surgeon White took a bite of soda bread. ‘If they are dead, Mr Balmain, then they do not need my urgent assistance.’
    â€˜It looks like they died of the smallpox.’
    â€˜The smallpox!’ Surgeon White pushed away his food.
    Mr Balmain nodded. ‘Some of the work parties yesterday said they’d seen dead Indians in most of the coves.’
    â€˜How many?’
    â€˜At least twenty, sir. I sent a couple of the men to bring back some bodies.’
    Surgeon White shut his eyes briefly, almost as though he were praying. He stood up. ‘The smallpox. God in Heaven, what will this cursed land send us next? Is anyone sick in the camp?’
    â€˜None reported. Sir,’ he added.
    The Surgeon nodded. ‘Have the bodies put in one of the huts. Tell everyone to stay clear of them — and that means everybody — unless they’ve been inoculated or survived the pox back in England. I want every man in every work party examined for symptoms each night.’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    Surgeon White shook his head.
    Maria watched as he took his coat and hat, and left the hut. She sat down in his chair to finish his breakfast. She wasn’t no thief now. But no point wasting good food.
    The smallpox. She looked at the faint scar on her hand. Gran had said she’d had the smallpox when she were small. The smallpox had killed her parents, and her uncle too, but she’d survived. You only got it once, they said. If it didn’t kill you, then you were safe from it.
    How many would die if the smallpox spread through the colony? A third? A half? Her eyes grew wide, imagining the horror; mothers watching their babies die, babies crying as their mothers lay in the grave.
    Her face hardened. It wouldn’t affect her. She was safe. She was sure Surgeon White would have been inoculated, like all the other doctors. And what if so many convicts and marines did die? All the more rations for the rest of them. She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her jacket. Stupid, stupid tears.
    Maybe so many would die the Indians would attack them, and wipe them out.
    She took up her broom, and began to sweep the hard dirt floor as clean as she could make it. Natives might be lurking, and the smallpox and starvation, but at least she could keep her house clean.

Chapter 5
SURGEON WHITE
    C OCKLE B AY H OSPITAL ; S YDNEY C OVE ; C OCKLE B AY ,
15 A PRIL 1789
    Surgeon White stood in the hut of mud and cabbage-tree trunks. It was one of the scattered buildings of his hospital. Four dead bodies lay on roughly made benches: two men, a woman, a child. Pustules covered their bodies, crusted black with dried blood and still oozing yellow pus.
    Balmain had been right. The smallpox.
    The Surgeon closed his eyes for a second.
    Had the fleet come all this way, survived so much, just for the colony to be wiped out by plague? Even if only a quarter of the wretches in the colony died, could the rest of them survive, perched on the edge of an unknown continent with natives all around?
    â€˜Governor wants you down at the harbour. Now.’ It was Balmain again.
    The Governor would have said: ‘Offer my courtesies to Surgeon White, and ask if he would be able to attend me.’ But rebuking Balmain would only make the man even harder to deal with.
    The Surgeon gathered his medical bag. It wasn’t likely that the Governor wanted him to join one of his expeditions to survey new lands today. He headed down between the convict huts to the