Wind from Danyari

Wind from Danyari

Laurel Lamperd

Wind from Danyari is the first book in the fictional saga of the Hennessey family who live on Walara, a sheep station in the Gascoyne district of Western Australia.

The book begins in 1712 when the Dutch East Indiaman, the Zuytdorp, is wrecked on the Gascoyne coast and dips into the fictional lives of the Aboriginal people who lived there.

It follows the fortunes of Joe Hennessey who took up the Walara lease and built it into one of the finest properties in the Gascoyne district, and Joe’s son and grandsons to the beginning of World War Two.

Wind from Danyari cover designed by Wendy Laharnar from a photograph by Dawn Lamperd

Copyright 2011 Laurel Lamperd

Novels by Laurel Lamperd

Crossroads at Isca

Murder Among the Roses

Battle of Boodicuttup Creek [children's]

Substitute Bride

The Japanese Grandmother [poetry & short stories. Download only]

Laurel Lamperd lives and writes on the south coast of Western Australia. She has lived on a farm nearly all her married life with her farmer husband. They have since retired to a small town nearby.

Her websites are

www.authorsden.com/laurellamperd

http://laurellamperdwriter.weebly.com

http://aussieauthorsatwork.blogspot.com

Besides writing novels, she is a poet and short story writer. Many of her poems and short stories have been published.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Chapter 1

1712

As night came on, the Dutch East Indiaman, Zuytdorp, on its voyage to the Dutch East Indies port of Batavia, ran into an unexpected storm. It was one of those squally things: a threatening cloud mass bearing down on them with frightening speed as the ship ran under short sail before a north-westerly gale.

Jan Bakker, a burly man in his late twenties and the first mate, worried they might be too near Eendrachtsland, the great south land. He hated this blind sailing when he didn't know what lay ahead. You couldn't rely on dead reckoning. If he were Marinus, the captain, he'd turn north now and make a run to the Sundra Straits.

He watched the storm approaching. The dark clouds spread across the horizon, blotting out the setting sun. The wind caught the sails before they had time to haul them down and the sea turned into a raging animal. Hugh swells swept across the deck of the ship, taking everything not battened down.

Jan held to the rigging to stop from being washed overboard. Rain whipped his face and hands. He ducked his head when lightning struck the topmast. A wind gust, stronger than any before, drove the Zuytdorp forward.

Willem, the sixteen-year-old cabin boy who held onto the rigging near Jan, shouted over the noise of the flapping sails, It's damn different to what it was a couple of hours ago. It's been sunny with a fine breeze all week then we ran into this.

Jan barely heard Willem's voice above the storm's din.

Look forward. Willem yelled as lightning flashed around them.

Out of the rain and darkness loomed cliffs more than twenty times higher than the Zuytdorp then they were lost in a veil of rain and spray. Jan thought he'd imagined them, then the lightning flashed and the cliffs were there again.The lookout had seen them too. He shouted a warning to the captain.

Marinus bawled orders to tack.

Men sprang into action as they tried to turn the Zuytdorp from smashing against the cliffs.

We should have turned north before the storm hit, Jan thought, as he strained on the ropes, feeling as if he was nearly pulling his heart out. These big square-riggers couldn't tack effectively before a gale. When he thought the Zuytdorp would smash head on against the cliffs, the ship swung aside. Thank God, we've escaped, he muttered as he held on to the rigging and tried to get his breath.

The sound of grating came over the piecing noise of wind and driving rain. The men in the rigging stared in horror at each other.

The deck tilted as the Zuytdorp ripped her bottom out on the rocky platform and left her lead ballast on the sea floor. The surf swept over the angled deck as the rising sea drove the ship sideways towards the cliffs. The hull crashed onto the reef with each monstrous wave. Cannon broke loose and hurtled across the deck. A mast snapped and fell in a tangle of rigging and sails.

Those who weren't injured, killed or swept overboard in the first minutes of the disaster, clung to whatever they could.

Jan hung on through the night, enduring the biting wind and teeming rain. Before dawn, the wind dropped and the rain eased as the sun came up.

Cold and exhausted the survivors stared at the calamity surrounding them. The flooded ship had heeled over on its side against the reef as the surging sea continued to push it towards the rocky shoreline.

Willem fought his way along the sloping deck to reach Jan. We'll have to get to shore. The ship will break up on the reef. As he spoke a huge wave emerged from nowhere and beat over the Zuytdorp's deck in boiling white foam.

Jan stared at the rocky platform between the Zuytdorp and the land as the sea rose and crashed over it. It will be risky getting to shore. A man could be dashed to death against the rocks.

We can't stay here. Willem's gaze followed Jan's. We don't know how long the ship will hold together.

Waves taller than houses crashed over the decks. The wind might have died but the sea didn't seem as if it was ever going to calm.

I'll tie a rope around my waist and make a dash across the ledge, Willem said.

How like the resilience of youth to think he'll succeed, Jan thought. A rope won't save him if the sea smashes him against the rocks but he knew if anyone could make it, it would be an agile young man like Willem.

From the fallen mast, Willem cut a length of rope and tied it to him. Does it look secure enough? he asked as he pulled at the knot to make sure it was tight.

Jan tested the knot. It's as secure as you'll get it. Whether you reach shore will be in the hands of the gods.

In luck, you mean. Willem gave the other end of the rope to Jan before he climbed over the side of the boat. He stood on the ledge as the water surged to his waist and tried to keep his balance. Before he could steady himself, a wave washed over him and knocked him down.

For a moment, Jan feared Willem would be crushed between the Zuytdorp and the ledge but the boy clambered to his feet and struggled through the boiling surf.

Jan held to the rope, ready to pull him back if he was swept into the sea. He glanced at the other twenty or so crew who stared over the ship's side, watching, their expressions dazed as if they couldn't comprehend what had happened. He took in their identities. Marinus wasn't amongst them. He hadn't seen the ship's captain since he'd heard him screaming orders last night to the crew before the ship hit the reef. There were ten or more bodies floating in the sea. He wondered if the captain was one of them.

He watched Willem negotiate the slippery rocks in spite of the waves crashing against him. Once he slipped and fell under the raging water. When the water receded, Willem regained his feet and stumbled the few paces to shore. Undoing the rope from his waist, he looped it around a boulder and tied it as taut as he could. He waved his arms and shouted to Jan but the words were lost in the surf's roar.

A wave crashed across the disabled rigging. Too much of that and she wouldn't stay in one piece long, Jan thought, as the rush of water receded. Lucky Willem to have reached the shore before that monster arrived. It would have dragged him into the fury of surf and rocks and smashed his body to a pulp. The rope wouldn't have saved him.

Jan made his end of the rope secure to the deck then said to the survivors, Who will go next? When no one spoke, he continued, We'll die if we stay on the Zuytdorp. The ship will break up.

The men stared at him. They looked too traumatized to make a move. Jan knew he had to show leadership by example now Marinus was dead. Okay. I'll go. When I reach the shore, one of you follow.

He climbed over the ship's side and grasped the rope. Placing one foot after the other on the slippery rock surface, he struggled across the rock bridge between the stricken Zuytdorp and the shore. When he was within arm's length of Willem, a wave bigger than any of the others crashed against him and swept his feet from under him. He clung to the rope as the undertow tried to drag him into the sea.

Willem stepped into the water and pulled him to safety through the foaming water and up onto the rocks out of rech of the raging waves.

Dripping wet, Jan scrambled to his feet. His head bled from a gash on his forehead and his hands and feet were torn and cut from the sharp rocks. He stared at the Zuytdorp askew against the ledge. From here it was worse seeing the ship he loved and been proud to sail in pounded to pieces. It was a bad dream, a nightmare he'd wake from.

He waved to the men left on the ship. As he watched, one slipped over the side and began the perilous journey across the ledge.

Willem returned twice to the Zuytdorp to help a shocked survivor reach shore. By late afternoon, everyone stood on the cliff top, watching the stricken ship.

Jan counted twenty-nine survivors. We are all there's left of a crew of two hundred souls, he thought in anguish.

During the days that followed, the men built a bonfire of branches, which they dragged from the bush. They talked about the Kochenge, the faster Zuytdorp had left behind a day out from the Cape. The Kochenge would see the bonfire and send a boat to rescue them. Their other hope was the Belvliet, scheduled to leave the Cape soon after the Zuytdorp. Following her, three more Company ships were expected to depart. Everyone agreed they wouldn't have long to wait before they were rescued. Jan shaded his eyes in the bright sunshine. Please God, please don't let the ships pass by in the night.

A few days later the men awoke to find the sea calm. They could scarcely believe it after the raging waters of the past week. There was hardly a whitecap to be seen. The remains of the Zuytdorp rose above the flat sea, awash with the little waves running onto the rocky ledge and back into the sea.

The men made their way across the platform to the Zuytdorp. When they reached the ship, they worked fast to salvage what they could. They suspected this gentle lull would unlikely last.

By late afternoon, the sea had come up again. Waves that would knock a man off his feet and sweep him into the sea, smashed in vengeance against the ship and the rocky shoreline.

The men had rescued enough barrels of food from the ship to last for months but drinking water would be a problem. Now water lay in pools in the limestone gullies but Jan knew they would have to find other sources of water.

They brought wine and spirits from the wreck. The heap of empty green bottles grew. Jan stepped around two men wrestling on the ground, too drunk to hurt themselves. They were fools who had forgotten their plight. Wine and spirits were the masters now. With the captain dead, he, as first mate had tried to take command but they ignored him.

I can see a sail, a voice shouted from the cliff top.

Jan scrambled up the cliff face to hear the sailor who held the telescope say, It was only a mirage of clouds.

The men drifted away. One stopped to gaze at a pile of green bottles. Many were smashed when thrown onto the heap.

Jan sat on a limestone block at the head of the steep track everyone used to climb down to the Zuytdorp. One of the ship's masts still stood upright. The surf had driven the hull into the shallow water beside the rock platform. The tears ran down his cheeks. He'd sailed in her through many an ocean storm but now ill luck and incompetence had doomed her. Images of Tanneke, his little daughter, named for his mother, overwhelmed him. Dear little Tanny. And Els, his wife. He wiped the tears from his eyes. Poor Els wouldn't know of his shipwreck on this desolate coast.

Willem joined him. They watched Dirk and Leon, the only two soldiers who had survived the wreck, struggle to remove one of the cannon from the Zuytdorp. Why do they want to bring cannon ashore? Willem asked.

They'll never do it in this surf. Jan thought of the wild North Sea out of Rotterdam. It was never as constantly rough as this treacherous sun-drenched coast. Why do they worry about the inhabitants attacking us? He watched Dirk and Leon scramble defeated across the rock ledge. The land and the sun are our greatest enemies, not the inhabitants of this country.

Willem shaded his eyes against the harsh glare and peered seawards. Is that a sail? He grabbed the telescope from the wooden box weighed down with stones for safety. It is a sail, he cried.

Jan snatched the telescope. Against the vivid blue of the sky, he saw the topsails of a ship. It was a ship! He tried to keep calm but his excitement overwhelmed him. He grabbed Willem's shoulder. It's a ship. We're going to be rescued.

I knew we would be. I didn't doubt it for a moment. Willem ran to the gully where the men had gathered to smoke their clay pipes out of the wind, shouting, There's a ship. There's a ship.

As one the men rushed to the cliff top. A man whipped the telescope from Jan and held it to his eye. I knew we'd be rescued.

Light the bonfire. Light the bonfire, the men cried as they milled around on the cliff top.

Someone struck a spark from a flint against a bundle of dry grass. Another man knelt beside him and blew on the little wavering flame. Not too hard, warned the man who held the flint. You'll blow it out.

The grass leapt into flame. They thrust on more bundles of grass and leaves until the stack of wood flamed into the sky. They're sure to see it, a man cried as they flung on wooden chests and broken planks washed ashore from the Zuytdorp.

It's too late to send a boat tonight. They'll wait until morning, they assured each other. They kept the fire burning all night. When morning came, there was only the turbulent green sea, the pitiless blue sky and the sun.

Chapter Two

During the weeks following the shipwreck, the Zuytdorp survivors explored the surrounding countryside looking for water.

Jan stared at a pool in a limestone gully, topped up by the storm which went through last night.

Willem stood beside him. Do you think it's a permanent supply?

Jan shook his head. I doubt if it will last the summer. By the look of the bush around here, the summers are hot and dry.

Perhaps we can dig a well?

Maybe. If it's limestone, it will probably be too porous to hold water.

We'll be rescued before summer, won't we? Willem sounded plaintive.

Jan shrugged. Hopefully, but it's better to plan in case we're not. He took one end of the water barrel. Perhaps there's a better place inland to dig a well. Help me carry this.

Willem grasped the other end of the barrel. I wonder what the natives are like. We should have seen some by now.

Jan thought they might have too. They seem like our elfish people who hide in the forests and can vanish at will. They show no mercy to us, the unwilling trespassers. He grimaced, allowing his bitterness to show through. If only they would lead us to water. It would give us time to build a boat to sail to Batavia.

Like Pelsaert did?

Jan nodded. Only he already had his boat.

In the early days of the shipwreck, the survivors had trekked towards the fires and smoke they saw spiralling on the horizon against the cloudless sky. They pushed their way through the dense belt of tea-tree scrub that ripped at their already sun-bleached and salt-drenched clothes to the undulating sand plain of low stunted scrub but no one found the fire makers.

One of the men, who went on an exploration expedition, slumped exhausted by the campfire. We headed towards the smoke but we didn't seem to get any closer.

When we arrived where we thought the fire makers were, there was nothing, another man said. We couldn't even find the remains of their fires.

The sailors lit fires to create smoke from the grey green bush in the hope to bring the elusive fire makers to them.

You'd think the natives would be curious about us, Willem said as he and Jan lugged the barrel of water to where they had made a camp on the leeward side of the cliff and dumped it next to the other barrels rescued from the Zuytdorp.

They might be spying on us, Jan said.

The pools in the gullies had dried and the water which the survivors collected in tarpaulins and bucketed into wooden barrels had almost gone

The men carved a track through the dense tea-tree scrub and dug a well further inland but stopped when they hit limestone a few feet down. They tried other places until they were too exhausted to lift a pick. The whole damn place must be made of bloody limestone, one disgruntled digger said.

They had been shipwrecked six months. Jan counted the notches he'd carved on a tree. The last rain had come two months ago and it wasn't enough to fill the water barrels.

Men were dying of dysentery. The others, including Jan and Willem, had given up their futile search for water and spent the days resting from the unrelenting heat and waiting for nightfall when they would have their quota of the little water left.

Surrounded by jagged limestone, Jan lay in a rock pool, listening to the roar of the surf as it beat upon the rock wall. He closed his eyes against the glare of the sun and tried to squash the terrible urge to drink the salt water washing over him.

Look up there on the cliff, Willem whispered, pointing above them. There's someone up there.

Jan sat up and saw a figure outlined against the skyline. As if aware that he was seen, the person vanished over the cliff top.

Willem staggered from the water and clawed his way up the narrow path as fast as his weakened body allowed. His toes dug in, disturbing the loose scree as he scrambled to the top of the cliff.

Jan followed him, his hands grasping the limestone as he dragged himself to the top.

Willem stumbled along the cliff to where they had seen the stranger. There's no one here, he said when Jan reached him. Perhaps I imagined it.

We both saw him, Jan said.

Willem undid the locket his mother had given him from around his neck and placed it on the rock. I'll leave this. If he returns, he might realise we want to be friends.

That night, Jan's tongue felt even more swollen as he tried to sleep. The amount of water they received each day had diminished to a mug each. Not enough to keep a man alive in this burning heat. They should drink what was left of the water in one glorious binge and jump to their deaths from the cliff instead of prolonging this misery of dying, Jan thought.

Jan dozed until dawn brought him awake. Dragging himself to a sitting position, he leant against a jutting rock and waited for the sun to rise. As the sky grew light, the harsh cries of the gulls merged with the waves crashing against the rocks in an unending litany of movement.

Willem rolled off his length of tarpaulin and onto the limestone ground. His tongue protruded from his slack mouth and his lips had split and were bleeding.

Jan doubted whether Willem would last another day. Three men had died yesterday. One jumped off the cliff, his body caught in the rocks until a king wave swept him out to sea.

Willem opened his glazed eyes. I had a dream about my mother. Tears wet his sunburnt cheeks. I have to get my locket. He crawled to a sitting position and rested his head on his knees.

He looked too ill to walk to the rock where he'd left the locket. Stay here, Jan said. I'll get it for you. He thought the boy would be more comfortable dying with his mother's locket in his hands and her gentle face to soothe him.

No, I'll come. Willem rolled on all fours and dragged himself to his feet.

In the east, the sun rose, shafting its rays over them as they crept from the sleeping camp.

Another scorching day, Jan thought. In this heat they wouldn't last long on a mug of water a day. It would be easy to take a few steps and end this nightmare.