The Emerald Key - By Christopher Dinsdale Page 0,69
to haul, she’ll almost be as fast as the Carpathia II. We won’t be too far behind her. Perhaps three days, no more.”
“I’m coming with you,” stated Reeves. “I’ll offer the both of you an extra thirty-pound bonus if you can also bring me back the children responsible for this outrage. I want to charge them with so many acts of piracy that they’ll be locked away for the rest of their lives!”
Wilkes felt the weight of his hidden pistol holstered under his jacket. “You need not worry, Mr. Reeves. We’ll make sure those children get what they deserve.”
Huddling with his family under a rain-drenched tarp, Shane Beckett had never felt such utter hopelessness and despair. It had been over a week since he had woken up on his wife Chloë’s lap and found that they and their two children had been forcibly confined to a guarded pier, trapped like condemned dogs, with dozens of other Irish families. With his forehead sporting a huge goose egg and his mind foggy, he had to be reminded by Chloë of what had happened. She told him how they had been attacked on Yonge Street by an angry mob. The weapon-wielding gangs were determined to stop sickness from spreading through Toronto. The gang leaders decided to round up all the Irish they could find and hold them inside a fenced waterside quay like cattle destined for slaughter. It didn’t matter that he was an established watchmaker who owned his own small store on Yonge Street. It didn’t matter that his family had been living in Toronto for over five years.
He still remembered his desperate pleading with the armed guards at the gate to their pen that first day.
“Excuse me, sir! There’s been some kind of mistake! My family and I were attacked as we were walking home on Yonge Street. We’ve been living in Toronto for five years. Look at us! We’re not sick! Keeping us penned up here won’t do anyone any good, and my wife and children are scared. Can you please let us out?”
The man with the loaded rifle ignored him.
Shane felt a touch of panic. “Can’t you hear what I’m saying? My family shouldn’t be in here!”
The guard wheeled around in anger. “I can tell by your accent that you’re bloody Irish. My mother died from cholera last week. We don’t want your kind here no more, and I don’t care whether you’re sick or not. We’re going to keep you locked up until the government sends us a boat to ship you all back to Ireland, back to where you belong! So stop your snivelling. You and your family are not going anywhere!”
Stunned, Shane stepped back from the gate and slowly returned to his family. He broke the horrible news to his wife.
“This is complete madness!” Chloë whispered, as Shane sat down heavily next to her. “They’re trying to ship us all back to Ireland? Doesn’t he realize we’re more Canadian than half the population of Toronto?”
As the days passed by, church groups and other concerned strangers brought the detainees tarps, tents, and food, but the Irish remained locked in their makeshift jail, guarded by the unforgiving pack of vigilantes. A Toronto police force, sympathetic to those who had lost loved ones, simply looked the other way. Everyone waited for the Canadian government to make a decision on the prisoners. With the government still reeling from the burning of their parliament building, a decision regarding the illegal detention centre in Toronto was not about to come anytime soon.
As the days passed, the Beckett family continued to huddle in quiet despair at the far end of the pier, in the corner farthest away from the sick and dying. Already eight people on the pier had died from a combination of exposure and disease. The guards at first had refused to take the first body away. With no choice, Shane had enlisted the help of three other men, who then wrapped the body of the deceased man in an old canvas tarp and lifted it over the fencing. A large splash echoed along the quay as the body hit the water of Toronto Harbour.
The enraged guards screamed at them to stop, claiming the drinking water would get contaminated from the disease, but nevertheless, they refused to open the gates for fear of starting a prisoner stampede. Instead, the guards had to remove the discarded body from the water using a fishing net and a collection of small dinghies. Since then,