The Highwayman Read online

  THE HIGHWAYMAN

  by F. M. Parker

  The story setting is England and Australia in the mid-1860’s. Patrick Scanlan, an orphan of seven, is sold into slavery at a weaving mill in London. Half starved, and often whipped for refusing to work, he manages to escape from the weaving mill and onto the dangerous London streets with their whores, thugs and thieves. He survives his childhood years by stealing.

  He chances upon Thief Takers, bounty hunters, lying in wait to kill Claude Duvall, a famous highwayman. Warned by Patrick, Duvall fights his way out of the trap. Patrick joins Duvall in his robberies and becomes one of the elite class of thieves, a Two Pops And A Galloper, a mounted highwayman with two pistols, who robs the rich travelers on the highways.

  Thief Takers try to arrest Duvall and Patrick. Patrick shoots the Thief Takers. He is captured and given a sentence of life at hard labor in the penal colony on Van Diemen’s Land, an island off the south coast of Australia.

  Patrick is often flogged with the cat-o-nine-tails for fighting. He organizes a group of convicts into a “Sydney Trip”. Sydney offers a slim opportunity for escape. The cost to the convicts to get to Sydney is for one of them to die and one to hang for the murder.

  In Sydney, Patrick escapes from his guards and steals a small sailing boat and takes to the open sea. For weeks he endures frigid Antarctic storms and starvation. Then more dead than alive he comes upon the ghost ship, The Huntress, and climbs aboard.

  This gripping novel explodes with passion and adventure. Based on the reality of the slavery of orphans in England and the savagery of the prison on Van Diemens Land, the story is an epic of endurance and a shattering journey into the soul of a man.

  About the Author

  F. M. PARKER has worked as a sheepherder, lumberman, sailor, geologist, and as a manager of wild horses, buffalo, and livestock grazing. For several years he was the manager of five million acres of public domain land in eastern Oregon.

  His highly acclaimed novels include Skinner, Coldiron, The Searcher, Shadow of the Wolf, The Shanghaiers, The Highbinders, The Far Battleground, The Shadow Man, and The Slavers.

  "SUPERBLY WRITTEN AND DETAILED... PARKER BRINGS THE WEST TO LIFE."

  Publishers Weekly

  "ABSORBING...SWIFTLY PACED, FILLED WITH ACTION!"

  Library Journal

  "PARKER ALWAYS PRESENTS A LIVELY, CLOSELY PLOTTED STORY."

  Bookmarks

  "REFRESHING, COMBINES A GOOD STORY WITH FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE."

  University of Arizona Library

  "RICH, REWARDING... DESERVES A WIDE GENERAL READERSHIP."

  Booklist

  Also by F.M. Parker

  Novels

  SKINNER

  NIGHTHAWK

  COLDIRON

  THE SEARCHER

  THE SHADOW OF THE WOLF

  THE HIGHBINDERS

  THE SHANGHAIERS

  THE FAR BATTLEGROUND

  THE SHADOW MAN

  THE SLAVERS

  THE ASSASSINS

  THE PREDATORS

  WINTER WOMAN

  THE SEEKERS

  DISTANT THUNDER

  WIFE STEALER

  THE HIGHWAYMAN

  GIRL IN FALLING SNOW

  SOLDIERS OF CONQUEST

  FIREFLY CATCHER

  DREAM HITCHER

  CAPTAIN OF ASSASSINS

  SAND DRUMS

  Screenplays

  WOMEN FOR ZION

  SAND DRUMS

  FIREFLY CATCHER

  DREAM HITCHER

  CAPTAIN OF ASSASSINS

  Foreword

  English convicts were the second group of people to have colonized Australia. They followed by some 46,000 years the arrival of the black aborigines who had brought their frail water craft by paddle and sail across the stormy sea from the east and landed upon the island continent. The white men immediately began to kill the black men and take their land. But that is another story.

  During the eighty years from 1788 to 1868, eight hundred and twenty-five English ships transported one hundred and sixty thousand convicted criminals to that island-continent prison. Male convicts outnumbered women six to one. Children convicts numbered a few thousand. The youngest male was nine years old. The youngest female was thirteen. Each of the youngsters had been sentenced to seven years for stealing minor objects. The girl had stolen a piece of lace cloth.

  Depending upon the seriousness of his or her crime, a convict received a prison sentence of seven years, or fourteen years, or life. The more docile prisoners were loaned out to farmers, ranchers, and town businessmen as free labor. Life was hell for the convicts, male or female. They were worked from daylight to dark, and whipped unmercifully for the smallest offense. The worst hell of all for the convicts was under the sadistic government officials on Van Diemen’s Land, now named Tasmania. The land is an island of triangular shape and some one hundred and seventy five miles in its longest dimension located one hundred and twenty five miles off the southeast coast of Australia proper. The prison was situated on the Tasman Peninsula, an irregular strip of land thirty miles long jutting out from the east coast of the island. The Indian Ocean borders the peninsula on the west and the Tasman Sea on the east. Eaglehawk Neck, a tiny ribbon of land, connects the peninsula to the island. The narrowest section of the neck was guarded by Marines sentries with dogs to prevent the escape of prisoners to the larger part of the island.

  Male convicts were given seventy five lashes for accidentally breaking a flagstone in the quarry, or singing a song, and fifty lashes for smoking. Female convicts were usually given twenty-five lashes. Sometimes a woman could reduce her punishment if she were pretty and would expose her nakedness to the male convicts and the Marine guards.

  Prisoners could become free upon completion of their sentences. This did not include “lifers”. Most of the freed convicts chose to remain in Australia. A few of those with short sentences built fortunes in sheep, shipbuilding, and land speculation after their release.

  CHAPTER 1

  Winter, 1860. The British Penal Colony on Van Diemen’s Land, Australia.

  The winter wind, blowing half a gale and heavy with the tang of salt water, swept in off the wave tossed Tasman Sea and struck the tall basalt cliffs rimming Van Diemen’s Land. The wind moaned a mournful dirge as it climbed up through the jagged rocks of the cliff face. At the summit and holding aloft a flock of yelping, gliding seagulls, it turned and raced across a broad swath of winter killed grass, bending the slender brown reeds down in moving waves as it had forced waves into the cold water of the sea. Fragile grass stems were torn loose from their grip on the stony earth and went kiting away spinning and tumbling.

  A quarter mile farther along, the wind piled up behind the barracks of the English convicts, six huge, two-story buildings made of hand hewed, gray stone. The windows of the structures were gated with heavy iron bars. The doors were strongly made of two inch thick oak reinforced with wide iron bands. When the convicts became unruly, the doors were locked to confine them inside. The prison had no other walls, nor did it need them for the wild, rugged land and the surrounding sea held the convicts imprisoned better than any barrier man could erect.

  The wind funneled in between the barracks and flooded out onto the heavily trodden, barren earth of the broad prison compound. Here the convicts were mustered each morning and evening for head count. In the center of the compound stood an upright, eight foot triangle made of narrow lengths of iron bolted together. A lone convict, stripped to his waist and with hands and feet chained to the triangle, was being flogged with the cat-o-nine-tails.

  Other than the invisible wind, the only thing that moved on the compound was the Marine wielding the nine tailed lash with a machine-like rhythm; striking, pausing, str
iking, pausing. Four Marines with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets guarded nineteen convicts standing rigidly at attention and watching the punishment of the twentieth. Fifteen pound iron shackles bound the ankles of the nineteen. The convicts were dressed in ragged, dirty yellow shirts and gray pants. They were gaunt, hollow eyed men with long tangled hair and shaggy beards. Their faces showed indifference toward the man being flogged for such punishment was commonplace. Every one of the twenty men was a “lifer”. Not one would ever leave Van Diemen’s Land, not even in death. That was the Crown’s law.

  The eyes of the nineteen remained fixed upon Patrick Scanlan, the man being flogged. To be caught looking away or talking would be punished by receiving a “teaser”, twenty-five well-laid-on lashes with the cat. Scanlan was receiving a “feeler”, one hundred blows with the heavy cat for striking another convict. The blows were being given at “slow time”, which allowed quarter minute intervals between each of them so as to lengthen the punishment and increase the duration of pain.

  Patrick stood stretched tightly against the iron railings of the tall triangle. His wrists were manacled together and hoisted above his head as far as possible without lifting him off the ground, and there chained to the apex of the triangle. An ankle was fastened to each of the base legs of the triangle. He was oriented so that his naked back, dripping blood from dozens of lash cuts, was turned toward a close by wooden platform raised on short pillars.

  Seated upon the platform in padded chairs were the three prison officials required by government regulation to witness every flogging. In the center was Fielding, Prison Commandant, a fat tub of a man with his hips sagging off both sides of his chair. On his right was Randall, Major of Marines. On his left was Smythe the prison physician. As prescribed, the three officials were exactly eight yards from the convict and studiously watching the dealing out of punishment. To ward off the brisk, cold wind coming off the sea, Fielding and Smythe were dressed in woolen greatcoats and woolen caps, and Randall in his red winter Marine uniform with heavy overcoat.

  “Seventy-nine,” the Sergeant of Marines counted, his voice holding no more emotion than if he was counting sheep.

  At the call, the flogger swung powerfully with the cat-o-nine-tails. This was the second flogger, the first one had been had been replaced at the end of the first fifty lashes. The cat, its leather tails, soaked in seawater and dried to wire hardness, whistled as they sliced the air. Each tail cut a fresh bloody wound as it struck with a sodden slap upon the bare back.

  Patrick gritted his teeth and stifled his cry of suffering as God-awful pain burst and burned as if molten lead had been thrown upon his back. Every nerve ending screamed and his mind verged on exploding with the agony of it. He pressed his forehead tightly against the rails of the triangle and held every tendon and joint rigid as oak wood so that he wouldn’t flinch at the cut of the cat. There had been a few moments when the pain had brought tears brimming into his eyes. He had always managed to catch them before they could overflow for others to see. He mustn’t weaken and scringe under the cat even if the guards beat him to death. The only dignity left to him was not to show weakness before the Marine guards and the other convicts.

  “Eighty,” the sergeant called out in his flat voice.

  The flogger drew the cat back over his shoulder. He braced his feet in the grooves worn in the earth by his boots as he pivoted to strike with the cat.

  “Lay it on with a will,” the commandant ordered the flogger. He controlled his voice to a noncommittal tone so as not to let show the great pleasure the sight of the torn flesh and blood gave him.

  The nine tails of the cat slashed down onto Patrick’s bleeding body. As the flogger jerked the cat away for the next strike, the rock hard knot tied in every tail tore loose another piece of living, bloody flesh and flung them AWAY in a shower. An expression of delight swept across the commandant’s face as he breathed in the aroma of fresh blood. He squashed the expression quickly. He never questioned why the agony of others pleasured him so greatly. He only knew that it did and therefore it was something to be sought and enjoyed. But not openly.

  He spoke to the Marine major at his side. “I want to see the convict’s backbone with every strike. I’ll teach the bastard not to make trouble.”

  The major nodded an impassive face as if in agreement. He would like to put the commandant under the cat and let him taste the pain. Further he knew Scanlan shouldn’t have been punished. Though Scanlan was quick to fight, he had not started the trouble that brought him to this. The bully of the barracks where Scanlan was housed had made the mistake of aiming his hectoring, domineering way upon the man. For that, Scanlan had given the bully a well-deserved thrashing. Unfortunately a Marine had come upon the fight as Scanlan beat the bully unconscious. As regulations demanded, the Marine had reported the incident. The major had recommended to the commandant that Scanlan be given only a warning. To this the commandant harshly replied that a fight was a fight and the punishment was one hundred lashes.

  Though the major would have decided otherwise about the flogging, he saw a benefit from it. His Marines guarded the convicts, enforced the prison rules and dealt out the punishment. Due to the fact that the convicts outnumbered his Marines by twenty to one, the major maintained but a tenuous control over them. The convicts with life sentences were the most dangerous for they had the least to lose. Should they ever unite in a breakout, the major and his Marines were doomed for they would be the first killed. Fear was the weapon that kept the convicts obedient, fear of the lash and fear of death. The sight of Scanlan’s bloody back would be a fresh warning to them.

  Patrick heard the order to strike hard and twisted his head to look at the commandant. The man’s eyes glistened with a sadistic gleam as he stared back at Patrick. You son-of-a-bitch, thought Patrick, you like to see me bleed. You’d like it even more if I cried out.

  Other convicts had talked about how they would kill the commandant should they ever get their hands on him. The methods were many, drown him in the piss bucket, gut him, hang him, on and on. The devil half of Patrick had decided that he wouldn’t kill the man. His vengeance would be something worse. He would gouge the man’s eyes so that he could never again see a prisoner being tortured. It was highly unlikely that opportunity would ever come about because Fielding always kept a pair of Marines armed with muskets and pistols near him when out and about the prison compound.

  The commandant continued to stare back at Patrick and their eyes battled, a silent war with each man striving to dominate the other, to cause him to surrender the field. They fought and grappled as surely as if they had been up close and swung fists at each other.

  To Patrick, the distance between the commandant and himself seemed to shorten. With the seeming closeness, Patrick felt dirtied by the man’s baleful eyes touching his. He gave the commandant a grin that said, I’m hurt, but you haven’t defeated me. However Patrick knew that death waited for him on Van Diemen’s Land. It simply waited for the commandant to call the time for it to make its appearance.

  Patrick looked away from the commandant and stared out between his up-wrenched arms and through the iron rails of the triangle and out across the black cliffs rimming the peninsula to the Tasman Sea, and onward to the cold, wet horizon. A mare’s tail of high cirrus clouds led a huge mass of dark storm cloud from the southwest and told of snow to come. Already the cold, damp frontal wind of the approaching storm was adding its sting to the sting of the cat.

  “Eighty-one,” sounded the call.

  In the ranks of convicts, Popjoy, a small, toothless convict watching the punishment, spoke in a voice barely a shadow of a whisper to Knatchbull, the tall, broad shouldered man on his right. “I’ll wager my supper bread that Scanlan won’t ever make a sound.”

  “I’ll take that wager,” Knatchbull whispered back. “The skinner’s truly layin’ it on and it’d take an iron man to keep shut.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Doctor Smythe extracted his watch from a v
est pocket and checked its hands. It was time to evaluate the condition of the prisoner being flogged. His action would be but a formality for the commandant would not stop the punishment no matter how badly the man was injured. He rose to his feet and pulled his greatcoat more tightly around him for he was much chilled by both the temperature and the sight of the tortured prisoner.

  He moved to the front of the platform and nearer Scanlan whom he had treated after previous floggings, but never with a hundred lashes. The man was two fingers above average height, and thick across the chest. He possessed a well-molded skull with a broad forehead, a long straight nose, and ears lying close to his head. He had sharply penetrating blue eyes set far apart. Those eyes were now bloodshot with pain. His tangled black beard reached to his chest. His long, black hair, dense as a wolf’s pelt, was tied behind his head with a thong and hung to the top of his shoulders. Every angle and length of his bones showed sharply through his skin for the hard labor and meager prison diet allowed no flesh to grow on a man. Though prison records stated his age as twenty two years, his gaunt frame and creased and weathered face, gave him the appearance of being much older.

  The call of eighty-two came and the blow landed upon Scanlan’s back. For an instant as the lash beat aside the flowing blood, the sinews of the man’s back showed as white cords and the bones of his rib cage as ivory bars. Blood quickly welled out of the freshly mutilated flesh and turned the sinews and bones red. Already the streams of blood coursing down the man’s body had soaked his pants and shoes. The doctor suppressed a shiver at the sight of the mangled flesh. He didn’t understand how Scanlan endured the excruciating pain. The doctor wished to God that he had never accepted the position as the prison physician in such a barbarous, hellish place as Van Diemen’s Land.

  He noted Scanlan’s intense stare out across the sea. The man appeared to be concentrating his attention on events on a distant land that others couldn’t see. The doctor looked in the same direction, away from Van Diemen’s Land, that tiny hole in the world no larger than Ireland, that swallowed so many British convicts, men and women, and children both boys and girls. In the years since the settlement of Hobart at the mouth of the Derwent River, four out of every ten of the thousands of convict transportees sent to Australia, ended up on Van Diemen’s Land. Under the harsh heels of the Marines, the convicts had built the early town of Hobart. Then the “lifer’s” had been taken to the Tasman Peninsula of the island where they had constructed the buildings for their own imprisonment. Once the “lifers” arrived on the peninsula, they became a race apart and living in brutality. They labored their miserable lives away under the severest conditions, and in the end died unloving and unloved and were buried in the stony soil of the inhospitable island.