'Mister Green boss. He kill goat.' He holds his arms wide to show me just how big the goat is.

'Fresh meat at last!' I say.

Charley licks his lips and nods enthusiastically.

'How about you help me with the goat, Charley? Maybe you and Darby can have some.'

'Yes, missis.' He rubs his stomach. 'Fill belly up.'

'Well, I don't know if we can quite manage that. Pleasant chatting with you, Ah Leung,' I say casually, over my shoulder.

He hasn't moved.

Charley and I walk towards the house together. I pull the sling of my ap.r.o.n tighter around the corn and cabbage.

'Charley, what do you think of Ah Leung?' I tilt my head backwards towards the farm.

'Him sour bloke. I like other one more better.'

'I like Ah Sam better too.' I think of something else I've been meaning to ask our black boys. 'Are you worried about the mainland natives coming over in their canoes?'

This. .h.i.ts a rawer nerve. 'They spear Darby and me.'

'Not just you two, probably. We'll just have to make sure that they don't come too close.'

He doesn't look rea.s.sured. We reach the beach, and he points southwest. 'Wild black that way. Not far.'

It looks like he's pointing to the southern tip of Lizard Island. Or something beyond it.

'Now?'

Charley nods.

'But Bob said there's no blacks on the island.'

He doesn't want to contradict the boss, but his mouth is set.

'What do they want, do you know? Why do they come to the Lizard?'

But he either doesn't understand me, or won't say.

34.

All men in the far north carry a knife.

The trick is knowing how to use it.

From the secret diary of Mary Watson 3RD JULY 1880.

An afternoon in Gehenna. Stripped, hacked and portioned. A hot red smell in my nose. Grease under my fingernails.

The blade flashes in Porter's hand as he bends over the dead goat, holding one of its horns. He flenses the skin from the body in economical tearing motions, aided by the wedge of the knife, until there is just a ribbed bag of shadowy organs, rivers of crimson veins just under the surface.

The intestines stream into the dirt when he runs the blade up from pelvis to rib, the muscle in his thin arm flexing like a ball squeezed then released. The black boys know the routine in a way that I don't. They run to grab as much as they can of the slippery mess and then stand back waiting for the rest.

Porter turns the carca.s.s over, makes an incision to expose the kidneys, cuts the ties that hold them like coin purses to a belt, then flicks them towards Charley and Darby. I step back to avoid a splash of blood, and hold my nose.

'Thanks, boss.' Charley's still expectant.

'Shoo now,' Porter says.

The boys move to a spot three feet away and look hungry there, instead.

The Kanakas have slipped silently into the background.

Porter glances up at me, his forehead shining. His fingers are dripping. There's a strange, almost indifferent l.u.s.t in his eyes.

'You have to give them all some,' he tells me. 'It's good policy to keep the workers happy.'

I motion with my head to the Islander men. They move closer. Porter portions the meat and I hand out the pieces, each with its garnish of flies. Charley leers at the collapsed purple pouches of lungs in the cavity.

'All right, take them, you little guts,' Porter says with a grin, deftly cutting the organs free and tossing them over. 'One day I swear you'll eat so much you'll explode.'

Back in the cookhouse, Ah Sam and I begin our preparations. Even in winter, fresh meat won't last longer than two days. From under the tub, he drags out a small tin safe with a flyproof insert of wire netting. We work as a team. I cut slits into the surface of each portion. He ma.s.sages salt thickly into each cut, then places the pieces on a wooden slatted rack. He sets a dish beneath it so the brine can drain away.

'What now?' I ask, washing my hands in a few inches of brackish water.

He points to the salt pig. 'Tomorrow more salt.' He straightens up. Presses a fist into the base of his spine. 'Next day, more salt. Three days altogether. Then store in tub.'

He helps me chop up some of the fresh meat that's left for stew. The corn and cabbage I collected from Ah Leung go into the pot. Soon, a savoury steam rises up. Ah Sam asks if I want potato. I tell him the ones in the house have sprouted and are green all the way through when cut. I'll give them back to Ah Leung for planting.

'Just boil some more water for rice,' I say.

He raises an eyebrow, but obeys.

I wonder what's so controversial about rice. It's not long before I find out.

The sun's gone down, b.l.o.o.d.y as the goat. It's dinnertime. Bob greets his plate of food with a scowl and that old argumentative glint in his tight eye. He pokes the rice with his fork.

'I'm not going to eat that muck. I've not sunk so low.'

Porter's watchful, his eyes moving from Bob to me. He forks in a mouthful of stew and chews slowly. Percy looks up with a spark in his gaze, as though sensing the night's entertainment's about to unfold.

I count to ten in my head, then another ten.

I listen to the bristles of wind outside, painting the sky in wide brush strokes. I try to conjure up some oriental calm.

'The potatoes are green,' I say. 'And rice is the only dry food the insects leave alone. Would you rather have a mouthful of creepy-crawlies?'

Bob raises the eyebrow on the sinister side of his face. 'Aye.' He takes a swallow of rum from his pannikin. 'So long as they're not Chinese creepy-crawlies.'

'You could always cook your own dinner, Watson,' Percy says pleasantly.

'And ye could mind the s.h.i.t coming out of yer gob.'

A knot in my stomach tightens. Porter puts a hand on Bob's arm. Bob shakes him off.

Carrie's already put down her fork, her eyes small, like a wary animal's.

Percy takes a mouthful of rice, exaggerates his pleasure in its chewing. 'Delicious, Mary. I always think rice adds an indefinable something to any meal.'

And then the whole sorry carnival cranks up its routine.

'Come outside and fight like a man. Or don't ye have the mettle to back up the mouth.'

'I'm a lover, not a fighter, Watson. Unlike you with those trollops at Charley's.'

Bob lunges over the table. Plates, food and cups go flying. Percy lands a punch.

I've had enough. I upend the table and, while I'm at it, kick over the sc.r.a.ps bucket. Drag my arm along one of the shelves so that fishing gear, bottles of b.u.t.tons, canisters of food go flying. I doubt they even notice.

'Kill each other. See if I care. I'm not staying around to watch this. Come on, Carrie.'

The door bangs against its frame. I have no firm plan but to head for the moon in the distance. I can hear Porter calling my name from the doorway, but I don't turn. Behind us, there are fading expletives and the fleshy whack of knuckles.

'Where are we going?' Carrie asks. 'I'm cold. I haven't got my shawl.'

I slow down enough for her to catch up and put my arm around her. 'We'll sit on the beach for a while until they cool off.'

'But it's so dark. It's not safe.'

The molten-rush to my head has subsided. The moon's a great, new-minted sovereign in the black silk money-bag of the sky. Its light is eerie, a cold, colourless pall, but it does make everything from here to the swamp visible.

'Nothing can sneak up on us,' I say.

We sit on the sand with our skirts folded beneath us. The ocean whispers. That same moon that can seem so anaemic and out of place on land is in its element over the water: a silver gown laid over a rumpled bed.

'I'm sorry, Carrie. It's a rough life for a young girl.'

'You're a young girl too,' she says.

I turn to see a deep-yellow light bobbing towards us from the direction of the house. It could be any of the men. I watch, but don't stand.

Porter's face, underlit by the lantern, looks old, sagging over its support of bones.

'Are you coming back?' he asks.

Neither of us moves, so he sits down next to Carrie and stares out to sea. White foam creeps up the damp sand, then leaves ribbon trails as it retreats over the pock of pipis, the small quiver of gleaming stones.

'Have you noticed how the ocean smells salty blue by day? But at night it's more a weedy indigo?' I don't know why I've said it.

'Colours don't smell.' He smiles in the dark. 'But I somehow know what you mean. Are you coming back?' Again, that patient tone.

'Is the fight over?'

'Yes,' he says. 'You mustn't get upset about those two. They've been at each other from the beginning: like bucks sparring.'

'They're not young bucks and they should know better.'

'Yes, they should.'

We sit in silence for a bit longer. Carrie rests her head on my shoulder. I absently stroke her hair.

'Have you always been the peacemaker, Porter?'

He shrugs, a bit tightly, as though I've accused him of being boring.

'You're a kind man. This business, this island ... it doesn't seem the place for you.'

He hesitates before speaking. 'Trouble is, I don't know anything else but slug fishing. And the longer a man does work like this, the more time he spends alone, the more he's set in his ways. But ... it gets pretty lonely after a while.' He rubs his mouth. 'I suppose a man, even if he managed to get a girl, wouldn't quite know how to act.'

'Like Bob?' Carrie says. I've almost forgotten she's there. 'He's not very good with Mary, is he?'

'No, not very.'

The words are spoken easily enough, but I sense resentment there too. Not fresh, but old. A burned-on crust. What would he envy Bob for? His business? His ability to find a wife? Something that happened a long time ago that I have no knowledge of?

'She doesn't love him, you know,' Carrie says. 'Maybe that's why Bob is so angry all the time.'

'Carrie. Hush.'

'Tell you that, did she?' Porter pulls his knees a little closer up to his chest.

'No ... I just know.'