She told them of her plan to use the timber cutters who worked the mountain slopes for Mr Peter Degraves' saw mills. If he should lend his support as she hoped he might, the mountain would be extensively searched before the day was out.

In fact, Mary knew that the mountain could not be thoroughly searched in a week or a month, and if Tommo and Hawk had fallen down a precipice they might never be found.

'You have shown me a great honour,' Mary concluded, 'and I am most touched by your concern. I thank you from the bottom of me heart.'

People among the assembly shouted their encouragement and started to disperse when Ann Gower stood up in the cart. 'Oi!' she shouted, waving her arms to indicate that they should gather around. The crowd soon assembled about her, and waited for her to speak. 'You all knows who I is, and if ya don't, why not?' she bawled out. There was a ripple of laughter and she waited for it to die down. 'But Mary Abacus some 'ere knows only fer the decent beer she sells, but also knows 'er as a good woman. But she be more'n that, and I should know! Mary Abacus be the salt o' the earth, no better woman may be found on this island nor any ovver place I knows of!' Ann Gower paused and looked around her. 'Now we knows 'er brats what's lost ain't 'ers born, and we knows 'ow they come about. But that don't make no difference and even that one be black, that don't matter neiver! What do matter is that she loves 'em, and if we can't 'elp to find 'em because we not the sort to take to mountain climbin', we can pass the 'at around to pay for a few stout lads what knows the mountain and can make a search!'

She opened her handbag and took out ten shillings. 'Two shillin' be a good wage for a day for a timber cutter, so I now pays for five o' the buggers. Who's next?' Ann Gower pointed to Bridget from the Whale Fishery. 'Bridget O'Sullivan take orf ya bonnet and use it as an 'at, there's plenty 'ere what's mean as cat's piss, but they'll 'ave trouble denyin' a pretty girl like you!'

Very soon Bridget had collected a total of three pounds and sevenpence from the crowd. Ann Gower gave it to Mary, who knew well enough not to protest. It was a gesture of respect, and she accepted it for the generosity of spirit it represented.

Mary looked at the crowd with tears in her eyes. 'Thank you all,' she said simply. Turning to Ann Gower she smiled. 'You're a good woman, Ann Gower!'

Ann Gower drew back and looked askance at Mary. 'Don't ya go ruinin' me repitashin, Mary Abacus. I be a real bad woman, but a bloody good whore and ya knows it!' She turned to the crowd. 'C'mon, folks, it be sun-up soon, time to go 'ome to bed!'

Peter Degraves agreed readily to Mary's request but put only sixteen of his men to search the mountain, sensibly pointing out that the boys would only have covered a small section of the mountain to reach the summit and that sixteen men could cover this thoroughly. He accepted that she should pay them their daily wage though he did not ask her for compensation for the two days of sawmill profits he would lose because the men were taken away from their work.

'I'll write it off to good labour relations,' he laughed, Mary's earlier labour reforms at the Cascade Brewery had been maintained, and Degraves knew that he had been repaid a thousand times over by the loyalty and the honesty of the men who worked for him.

After two days the men had thoroughly searched the mountain and had not found the slightest sign of the two boys. Further searching was not practical. The mountain might hide their bodies for years if they had fallen down some deep ravine, but because it was assumed that Tommo and Hawk would have been in the area facing Hobart Town and near the top of the mountain, this was where the search was focused. Eventually Mary conceded that nothing more could be done, though she personally spent the next two weeks alone on the mountain still desperately searching for her children.

Once she found a trap set for wood pigeon typical of the kind the boys might make, and on a thornberry bush adjacent to it she discovered a tiny tuft of opossum fur. Her heart started to beat furiously. After two days of calling out the boys' names her voice had ceased to function, and now she searched grimly and silently, entering small ravines and squeezing through rock formations terrified that at any moment she might come across the broken bodies of her sons. She was badly cut and scratched about and when she returned at night her clothes were often ripped to shreds. She ate little and her eyes became sunken, and her anguished silence made people begin to think she had gone mad.

Ikey and Jessamy Hawkins tried to comfort her, though they, too, were distraught, and the men who worked at the Potato Factory walked about in silent concern when she appeared.

It was during these two weeks on the mountain that Mary slowly became convinced that Tommo and Hawk had been abducted. At first she told herself this notion was absurd. Who would do such a thing and for what purpose? There could be no possible value in the kidnapping of two small boys. The beer barons and spirit manufacturers who had cause to dislike her were a possible explanation but, she knew, a poor one. They would not damage their own reputation with the public by so gratuitous a revenge. Wild men? This seemed more likely but, if so, they would by now have demanded a ransom.

Yet the feeling persisted and by the end of the fortnight, without any logical reason, other than that the bodies of Tommo and Hawk had not been found, Mary was certain that they had been abducted. She stopped searching and started to evolve a plan.

For some months Mary had been working on a new ale. She had tested it on a number of her customers, who found it most pleasing to the palate. Mary now had acceptance of her bottled beer throughout the colony, and she was also shipping it to the new village of Melbourne on the mainland. She now decided to call her new beer Tomahawk. Upon the label she placed two arms, a black and a white, gripped in the manner of arm wrestling and directly under the inverted 'V made by the two arms was a picture of the head of a Red Indian chief. Around the perimeter of the oval-shaped label were the words: * Pale Ale * The Potato Factory * prop. Miss Mary Abacus *

Directly under the Indian chief's head appeared the words: Fifty Pounds Reward! and under this the injunction: (see back). At the back of the bottle Mary placed a second label in the shape of a glass. It contained a crude sketch of two small boys, one black and the other white and the following words in the shape of a wine glass.

KIDNAPPING!!

FIFTY POUNDS REWARD!

For information leading to the recovery of the two boys answering to the names of Tommo amp; Hawk Solomon and who are identified in person by Miss Mary Abacus, or Mr Ikey Solomon as same.

Tommo be small with blue eyes and fair hair. Hawk be black of skin and Negro appearance. Both be 7 years old.

NO QUESTIONS BE ASKED OF PERSONS ASSISTING IN RECOVERY!

Mary hoped that one of two things might happen. That someone might have seen Hawk, a black boy and therefore a curious sight, in the company of Tommo, a white one. Or that the kidnappers might attempt to claim the reward. It was, after all, a fortune, three times the yearly salary of a labourer or farm worker, and would also prove a tremendous incentive to a bounty hunter.

It did not take long for the disappearance of Tommo and Hawk to be known throughout the entire colony, and it was shortly afterwards that Ikey received a letter from his son David in New Norfolk asking him if he would come to the river town on a matter of extreme urgency. Ikey was glad of the excuse to go. Hannah had not contacted him in more than a year, and she had forbidden him to visit her. Her de facto George Madden had greatly prospered in the barley and hops business and Ikey, who was more and more conscious of his mortality, was terrified that she was prepared to wait until he was dead, whereupon she could claim the entire contents of the safe in Whitechapel and eventually find a way to open it.