Ah Sam is carving out a plot just up from the beach, where the soil is loose.

Carrie's pale and quiet. Bob's pacing up and down, wearing a goat track into the dirt.

'Black b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,' he spits. 'They'll not get away with it, I swear.'

'You didn't care so much when my pup was killed,' I say.

I should know better than to stir him when he's already angry. But I know enough not to taunt him over his mistaken belief that there are no blacks on the island.

'It's only to scare us, Bob.'

He shoots me a wild look. 'Ye think I'm a fool and don't know that, woman!'

'Why are they trying to scare us?' Carrie's voice is high and thin. 'What do they want?'

Porter comes up behind us and looks down at the dog. 'I think they just want us off the island. They want us to go away.'

Bob swings his head around, glaring. 'They'll not make me run like a frightened rabbit.'

Porter chews the inside of one cheek. 'Maybe it's time to call in some help from the mainland. Jocelyn Brooke. Or Harvey Fitzgerald.'

I feel a flash of disquiet at this. Police, albeit incompetent ones, would call the wrong sort of attention to the Lizard. Roberts would be unhappy. And it would certainly compromise my position.

'What would we tell them?' I ask, trying to sound reasonable. 'That two dogs have been killed and we've seen fires over the hill? It sounds like an average night outside the Steam Packet.'

'Aye,' Bob says, rubbing his nose roughly. 'We have to take care of this mess ourselves.'

Porter frowns. The wrinkles running from mouth to chin deepen. 'You read that last lot of papers from Cooktown. Other fishermen have seen blacks' fires at South Direction, Eagle and Barrow. What if it's a concerted effort and not just hit-and-miss scare tactics? Maybe they want to claim all the islands in the area.'

I look up. 'Can they really organise themselves to that extent?'

Percy's opinion that the blacks come to the Lizard because of a personal vendetta against Bob is still in the back of my mind.

'It depends how badly they want something,' Porter says to me, then turns to Bob. 'Come on, man. No use wearing a trench in the sand. We'll think on it. Meanwhile, those cleats on Isabella won't replace themselves.'

I'm left alone with Ah Sam, Carrie and the dead Neeps. Ah Sam has the hole already three-quarters dug, and not in the amateurish fashion that I would have accomplished it. Neat, vertical incisions of the spade. Symmetrical. No movement wasted.

'You look like you've done that job before,' I comment.

He looks up briefly. 'I dig many graves, Thursday Island ... missy.'

'You were a gravedigger?'

It occurs to me how little I know about him. About any of the Chinese here in Australia. In some ways, they're as mysterious as the blacks. Springing from nowhere, and returning to nowhere when their work is done.

'You must have wished for lots of people to die,' I say.

A smile plays around his lips. The shovel digs in again, the dirt parts like pumpernickel under a bread knife. He tells me that the Catholics were most stubborn, refusing to keel over and make work for him. But the Anglicans and Chinese made up for it. Sometimes they even obliged by kicking off on a Sunday, which meant an extra bob.

Half an hour later, the job is done. The hole filled in. We walk back through the already sinking afternoon. For no particular reason, I decide that Ah Sam won't betray me.

41.

Reason rules by day,

but devils roam the night.

From the secret diary of Mary Watson 10TH SEPTEMBER 1880.

The men went fishing again this morning. Both luggers expected back by dark. But, come seven o'clock, when the reddish sun's already going down in the bishop's-purple sky, there's no sign of the boats. No flag when I scan the water with the looking gla.s.s.

There's some comfort in habit. Particularly on a night that stretches endlessly ahead. We've eaten our dinner of fresh-caught reef fish and boiled potatoes. I'm emptying the dirty inch of washing-up water on the ground outside the door.

Ah Sam comes up beside me. He doesn't speak, but shifts his weight from one foot to the other, as uneasy as I am.

'They said they'd be back. Why would they stay out? Could something have happened?'

He shakes his head. 'No flag.'

We both look across the ocean again. No flag. No emergency. Just a good patch of slugs both boats are unwilling to relinquish. Nice to know how little my and Carrie's safety counts for. Only Porter would be pacing the deck, trying to cajole Bob into hastening home.

Ah Sam walks towards his hut. I turn to the house. Carrie's sorting through a jar of old b.u.t.tons for a match to one she's lost off a blouse. I pick up my mending and sit in the rocking chair Bob usually claims as his own, with a lamp at my elbow.

At nine o'clock, I step back outside. The ocean's wrapped in the cobweb of the moon. Stars wink like light shone through pinp.r.i.c.ks in a dark cloth. But there's no whip crack of pale sail tacking towards the island.

I hear the commonplace bark of one of the two remaining dogs. The usual feathery jostle of the chickens.

'Mary, where are the corn plasters? I won't be able to get my boot on tomorrow if I don't do something.' Carrie stands barefoot in the doorway, wearing her nightdress.

'In the first-aid box, on the shelf.'

I turn to go back into the yellow light, glancing sideways into the washhouse as I pa.s.s. The fire under the cooking pot has burned down to embers. I can hear their bony clicks and pops.

'I can't find them.' She's rummaging around where the pans are.

'Wrong shelf. Oh, for heaven's sake, let me look before you make a mess.'

I sit up suddenly in the dark, not sure what's woken me. There's an extra thickness in the air around the bed to my right. A solid shape blocks the stripy dawn light through the coral blocks. A small snap, like a branch splitting. The sound of heavy breathing. Movement. A glint of tooth.

'Who's there?'

No answer.

'How did you get in?'

I drag air into the closed squeezebox of my lungs. I can see the whites of eyes now, with a stale-yellow tinge. I fumble to light the lamp.

It's Darby, swaying on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet. The shadows cast under his cheekbones are gouged holes in a cliff face. His forehead has a snake-skin shine. He shakes his head suddenly and shivers. The last corner of some blanket pulls away from his eyes. Sleepwalking.

With the distraction of Carrie and her plaster, I must have forgotten to barricade the door.

A few bird sounds from outside. The thumping of my heart. I wonder if he's woken Carrie.

'You've been walking in your sleep, Darby.'

I swing my feet over the side of the bed, pick up my boots to check in each for spiders, and, without making any sudden movements, slip my feet into them.

'Debil, debil, missis.'

'What does that mean?' I keep my voice even and reach for my robe.

'Debil, debil.' He's shivering more violently now. 'You leave this place, too right.'

I feel a creeping on the skin of my arms. 'I'll leave soon enough, Darby.'

He shakes his head violently. 'You leave plenty soon.'

And then he's gone, the breeze creaking at the open door.

Later that afternoon, Bob attempts to calm me.

'So ye had a fright? Darby's not a wild black. Ye said yerself ye left the door open.'

'So it's my fault, is it?'

The men came back at ten this morning. Eight bags of slugs have been boiled and staked on the sand to dry.

I can smell the dark sugars of burned bread. I pick up a cloth and go out to the cookhouse. With a long-handled paddle, I scoop the loaf from the open oven, carry it back to the house and dump it with more force than necessary onto the table. Hot yeast, steam and the flaky pitch of charcoal wafts through the room. The sides are black and the bottom is worse.

'Just as well a man's already ate!' Bob's looking at the charred offering with amazement.

I wipe my forehead with my ap.r.o.n. 'Why didn't you run up a flag yesterday afternoon? To let me know you were staying out.'

'Ye would not have seen it. We were the other side of South Direction. Ye've not struck me before as a nervous woman.'

I throw the paddle down on the table to join the bread. 'Two dogs dead. Natives h.e.l.l-bent on scaring us off the island. I think I've a right to be upset when I wake with one of them standing right next to the bed! Luckily Carrie slept through the whole thing. She'd be out of her head by now, otherwise.'

'I told ye, he's not a wild black.' He utters each word with infuriating slowness, as though I were a simpleton.

I go to stand near the open door, lift my cheeks to the breeze. Take a deep breath. Chant the word 'calm' in my head a few times.

'What if your tame boys are in league with them?'

He sits on a chair near the table, plants his dirty, booted feet two inches from the bread. Pulls a sheath knife from his belt and starts picking his teeth with it. 'Ye don't know how it works. Darby and Charley would be first to go. Then John Pigtail. We'll be last. Not enough salt in our flesh ye see.'

Percy looms in the doorway, blocking the light. 'Ah, fresh bread.' His nose twitches uncertainly. 'It might be all right in the middle.'

'Ye always were a greedy b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' Bob says.

'Better than being a dirty one. Get your feet off the table. Burned or not, I'd rather have syrup than toe jam on my slice.'

Bob jostles his medicinal b.a.l.l.s carelessly. After a minute, just long enough for Percy to know he's not being obeyed, he puts his feet on the ground.

Percy pokes at the bread with a finger. 'Next thing you know, the goat milk will sour. You need to look after your wife better, Watson.'

Bob reaches for his knife again, but Percy gets there first. 'Thanks.' He wipes the blade on his trousers, then carves a rough wedge from the loaf. A rush of yeast steam belches out. 'See?' He holds up a slice. 'The middle's all right.'

'Give my f.e.c.king knife back.'

Percy shrugs, puts it down on the table. He's almost out the door when Bob throws it. The blade hits home in the doorframe.

I snap. 'You're mad. You're as mad as your mother.'

He reaches me in three strides. Grabs my hair and pulls my head back. 'Say that again, I'll knock ye senseless.'

I turn my head away from the spittle spraying from his mouth.

'Let her go.' Percy pulls the knife from the wood and steps back into the room. 'Only a worm of a man bullies a woman.' There's a layer of ice in his eyes.

Bob opens his fingers and I step back, rubbing my head.

'Want her for yerself, do ye? Ye can have her. Just don't expect too much, unless ye like hammering a nail in a plank of wood.'

The next few seconds pa.s.s in slow motion.

Percy moves towards Bob, knife in hand. Bob lifts a forearm to deflect the blade. Percy hits him so hard in the face with his other fist that Bob crumples to his knees. He doesn't move for what seems a long time. Then he stands groggily, one hand supporting himself on the table. He gingerly readjusts his jaw, then staggers out of the house.

'Where's your sister?' Percy's breathing harshly.

'On the beach.'

'I'll go and get her, bring her back here. Then you barricade the door and don't let him in until he cools down.'

'What have you done? We can't go on like this.'