"Sean McMullen - An Empty Wheelhouse" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

eyes. Those details fitted dozens of British convicts, but only Brendan Terrence Hooligan shared the
scars too.
She expected a trip to Australia next, but however much her employers might avoid libraries, they had
no trouble with electronic data. Some sort of scan of databases was done in the time that it took her to
stroll along the Thames Embankment and have a cup of coffee, and by the time she returned to her
rooming house and made an Internet connection they had found a copy of a Ph.D thesis for her to
examine.
It was held in a small collection in the University of London. An Australian student had done his urban
demography thesis on the passenger lists of ships entering Australian ports between 1830 and 1860. The
thesis was a thin book and ten computer diskettes. It took a morning to learn the student's customised
access program, but after that the search was over in seconds.
Among the hundreds of thousands of entries there were three for Brendan Hooligan. He had arrived in
Australia as a convict in 1840, left Sydney in 1849 for San Francisco as a discharged convict, then
arrived in Melbourne aboard the Queen of Tahiti in 1855. He had tried to pass himself off as O'Hallorin
again, but had been caught out. A free text footnote in the database mentioned that he had been
sentenced to nine years hard labour for uttering a false declaration, abusive language, and shooting a
member of Her Majesty's Port Authority in the foot.
She typed in the few lines of research, and the reply appeared within an hour.
RECD: LONDON WORK COMPLETE. FLIGHT TO BOSTON BOOKED. TOMORROW
MORNING. CONTINENTAL. INSTRUCTIONS FOR NEXT STAGE TO FOLLOW...
If Helen loved the work she hated the travel. The flight west had disrupted her sleep patterns, more
because she stayed awake willing the wings and engines not to fall off, than because of the change in time
zones. Perhaps there will be a lot to keep her in Boston, she thought hopefully as she propped herself
against the customs counter.
She had to read through a list of books in various historical society libraries, keeping a watch for
references to Hooligan. After eighteen obscure and indifferently written volumes she came to Sibil J.
Henderson's Impressions of Australis: Travels of a Boston Girl in Australia, 1896 to 1901, published by
herself in 1922. The style of writing annoyed Helen intensely. The author had recorded the details of her
trip in fussy, exact prose, right down to spelling out people's accents. It was excessive, even by
nineteenth-century standards. Unlike Helen, she appeared to have been a born traveller, always happiest
when on the move, never worried about ships sinking or what to say to strangers. On page 122 she
mentioned Hooligan.
Today, April 5, 1897, is a most glorious autumn day, and there could be no finer place on earth
to enjoy it than here, steaming up this broad, magnificent Murray River on a paddle-wheeler. I
have just had tea with Captain McGinty under the bow awning. I am getting quite a strong taste
for tea during my travels in Australia.
Captain McGinty is very formal, and comes from a strict Presbyterian family in Scotland. The
other passengers have been finding him hard to talk to, but I discovered that asking him about his
paddleboat is the way to his heart. He told me that the "Wee Robbie" weighs 200 tons, is 130 feet
long, and has a horizontal high pressure steam engine of 40 horsepower. He gave me a tour of the
engine room, and it was all polished brass and copper, cleaner than the dishes that meals are
served on. I saw from a plaque that it was built right here in Australia.
After that we went back to the bow and sat under the awning while he told me all about the
rivers and riverboats of Australia. Riverboats were very important in opening up the frontier here,
just as they were in America, but I'm afraid that I just let my mind wander when he was talking
about bales of wool and barrels of rum. The water ahead was almost smooth, and the brilliant
blue sky and brown river were separated by a line of olive green eucalyptus trees on the bank.
Black swans were bobbing on the water, and once we passed a strange, tatty little riverboat that
was towing a barge half filled with earth with vegetables growing in it! The captain said that
those people were river gypsies known as Murray Whalers. I asked him if the river had been more