I look down to Ah Sam's bare feet, k.n.o.bbly in the dirt. He mutters something else under his breath. But when I ask what it was he said, he just grabs the basket near the door and trots away to check for eggs.

I step inside to make sure Ferrier is still sleeping, then shuffle out to the cookhouse to light the fire. The bread dough that I've rested in a warm corner has risen. I punch it down, then reach up to the shelf for my baking pans. My hand touches the second sh.e.l.l, a spider, that Porter gave me just before he left six months ago. I lift it down. Finger each of its seven calcified tentacles. I hold the striped pattern up so that it catches the light: stewed apricots streaked with cream.

'The animal inside this one doesn't feel the need to hide,' he told me, 'even though it's vulnerable. You often see them in the shallows.'

He was looking at my hair when he said it. The one thing pregnancy had done for my looks was to make my hair both softer and more curly. He pulled a piece of paper from the sh.e.l.l's cavity and handed it to me. It was an address, nothing more.

'For my sister and brother-in-law, in Umina,' he said. 'If you need me, contact them. They'll know where to find me.'

'Can't you stay?'

We were in the house, saying our goodbyes. Sadness welling up in me. Bob's voice booming up from the beach. It was time for Porter to go.

'My contract's finished,' he said simply, then picked up his swag and turned to face me at the door. 'I don't care what you've done, Mary. Or what you intend to do. Remember, if you need me ...'

And then the doorway gaped without him.

I caution myself to stop daydreaming, and put the sh.e.l.l back, but not before I rub the surface so that it might pick up some warmth from my hand. I put it up to my ear. Porter's still gone. The sh.e.l.l's still ice-box cold. But I can hear the sea calling.

And the address he gave me is tucked away safely in my locked box under the bed.

49.

Busy hands are like opium to a nervous housewife.

From the secret diary of Mary Watson 15TH AUGUST 1881.

After dinner, in the rocking chair, the rhythm of my fingers orchestrating needles and wool soothes me. The gentle push of my foot on the base of the cradle keeps time. Like a slower, smoother version of working the piano pedals at Charley's.

Bob's sitting on a box, re-sewing the frame onto a landing net with twine and a large needle. He misses and jabs his finger. 'f.e.c.k it to h.e.l.l!' He throws the net in his temper. It lands in a puddle in the middle of the floor.

'You'll wake the baby.'

'I'll wake the bairn if I've a mind to. Ye would forget who gave him to ye?'

Oh, I'm not forgetting, Bob. Not for an instant.

'Well, carry on then. You can put him to sleep again, after he wakes.' I finish the row I'm working on. 'What will you do now the slugs have dried up. Will you try some other ground?"

He runs a splayed hand through his thinning hair. 'Aye.'

He stands, wanders over to the shelf and looks straight through it. His hand finds his pocket. The clinking doesn't seem to bother Ferrier. He's asleep on his back, a white wrap tucked in tightly around him, under the mosquito net. A bird shrieks outside. I can hear palm fronds tickle the darkening sky.

'We must start a new station.' He turns around with a pepper shaker in hand. 'Night Island's about two hundred miles north. We have to sail up and see if it's suitable.'

My mind is jarred into action. If Bob is far away at the time of the drop next month, well and good. But if Percy is going with him ...

'Who is we?' I ask.

'I can't work both boats. I'll take all the men.'

'When are you going?'

'Fuller thinks the end of August, start of September.'

He doesn't normally listen to Percy.

'Why September?' I keep my voice light, concentrate on my knitting.

'We will have taken all the slugs we can get by then. Ye and the wee bairn will come with us. Or ye could go to Cooktown till we get back.'

My palms feel sweaty on the wool. Oh, how careless I've been, even negligent these last months. I should have seen this coming but I was distracted by the baby. I can't go to Cooktown in September and I can't go north with the men. I won't allow Percy even the hint of an excuse to use Ah Leung to signal the next drop. This is unexpected, and it shouldn't be. The signs were there and I ignored them.

I bite my bottom lip, juggling possibilities. If there's one thing I've learned about Bob's stubbornness, it's that I must sound deferential or else I won't have the faintest hope of getting my way.

'It's your decision of course,' I say. 'And you know best. But don't you think it would be better if Ferrier and I stayed here on the Lizard? It's only an exploratory trip. How awkward would it be caring for an infant on Isabella? In all weathers? And you know how seasick I get.'

He looks scornful. 'Ye'd be alone for six weeks, maybe eight.'

'If we have enough supplies, and you leave the Chinamen, we should be all right. In fact, why don't you take Ah Leung with you? Ah Sam and I can manage quite well. You know how good he is with the baby.'

I cross my mental fingers, hoping he will agree to take the malevolent nuisance away. But he's shaking his head.

'John Pigtail on a lugger's as useless as t.i.ts on a boar.' He thinks a bit longer, rubs his chin. 'All right, ye'll not come with us. But ye have to go to Cooktown.'

I count to five before I speak.

'It's an idea. But, Bob, those last papers you brought back ... there's an influenza epidemic. And diggers returning from New Guinea with suspected typhoid. He's so small, your son. So vulnerable to illness. I'll defer to your judgement, but we're safer here, I'm sure. Perhaps you can leave us some kind of rowboat, just in case there's trouble with the blacks?'

'What would ye do? Paddle to the mainland? Ye wouldn't make it past the first sharp edge of reef. Ye know almost nothing of shoal and deep, tide and counter-current. Ye can't even swim!'

'True.' I hesitate. 'It's a problem, isn't it? We don't have to make the decision right away.'

There's no point continuing. That antagonistic edge will just creep into his voice. It's enough to plant a thought in his head. Hope it germinates. I go quietly back to my knitting and rocking. Let his medicinal b.a.l.l.s think it over.

Five days later at three o'clock. High clouds skitter like furtive thoughts inside the hard blue skull of the sky, though there's no wind on the ground. Not yet. Now, finally, it's Petrel's turn to be scrubbed clean and repainted. The men have been busy doing repairs on board her, these last few weeks. Percy's bent under the stern with a brush and a small tin of tar, applying it in long, slow strokes.

It's cold in the lugger's shade. The sour reek makes me think I've stepped under a bridge to visit an ogre. Which is not too far from the truth.

He doesn't see me approaching, and startles when he notices me only a few yards away. He wears a dark smear on his left cheek. His light hair is dirty in the shadows. Only the green eyes stir in acknowledgement.

'Where's your husband, Mrs Watson? I wouldn't want him to think anything's going on between us.'

'Bob's fixing a hole in the fowlhouse fence. I haven't time to play games with you. You must convince him to leave me and Ferrier here when you sail for Night Island.'

'Yes. I'll get around him. I always do.'

I wasn't expecting him to agree so easily. I'm paying very close attention now. And I won't let his quick acquiescence soften my formal tone.

'How will you receive the signal if you're two hundred miles away?'

He straightens, shakes his wrist back and forth as though it's seized up in the painting position. 'I'll think up some excuse. Tell Watson I want to investigate a good patch of slugs a bit further south. Get here in time to take the signal, then hightail it north again before he smells a rat. I'll be in position, don't you worry.'

This is going way too smoothly. I'm not sure what he's up to, but I charge on.

'Before you return to Night Island, I want you to ferry the baby, Ah Sam and me down the coast. I'll pay for the trip out of my share from the drop.'

'And exactly how do you think I'll explain so long an absence to your old man?'

I feel my mouth twist. 'You'll think up some excuse. Bob's used to your walkabout ways. He'll be angry. But I doubt you'll worry about that after Roberts has paid us out.'

He turns to gaze over the water. The wind's picking up. It tinks one piece of metal against another somewhere on Petrel's deck tilting above us. Blows his words back to me.

'People will see you. They'll know you've done a runner. Watson will come after you. He'll accuse you of stealing his darling baby boy. And what makes you think you can trust Ah Sam not to blab?'

My voice is firm. 'Obviously, I won't be travelling as Mary Watson. And if I don't keep Ah Sam quiet, we'll both face the consequences. Taking him with me is better than leaving him on the Lizard to tell Bob what's happened when he gets back. As for Ah Leung, he's your pet, not mine. If he doesn't keep his mouth shut, you'll have more explaining to do than just my disappearance. I wouldn't leave him at a loose end if I were you. But I tell you one thing, he's not coming with me.'

There's a far-off look in Percy's eyes. 'Oh ... he won't be idle.'

Something tightens in my chest then lets go. I stare at him. He widens his own eyes then covers his tracks.

'I presume you'll have to eat while we're gone. Ah Leung will tend the farm, as usual. That should keep him out of trouble.'

'Never at a loss, are you, Percy?' I shake my head in amazement.

'Not knowingly, Mrs Watson.'

I can't think about what he's hiding now. I have to finish what I set out to say.

'I'm not fussy about where you set us down. We'll find pa.s.sage on a bullock train south. I thought you might know somewhere appropriate to make landfall for that purpose.'

'I know plenty of places,' he answers noncommittally. 'And so do the blacks.'

But his tone suggests the idea's not untenable. He must have made his own plans for afterwards. Roberts will want us all to evaporate when his business concludes, and Percy would have already considered how that might be achieved.

'I'll have to think on it,' he says, dismissing the debate, and me. It's as though he's bored - or more worryingly - that the whole conversation about my escape from the island has run the limit of an only mildly entertaining supposition.

As I turn to walk away, he adds, 'Speaking of the blacks - they've been spotted over at South Direction. On the move again, evidently. They'll see us leave, you know. It'll be the perfect time for them to attack. You'd better make sure that your pet Chow knows how to shoot.'

'Thanks for the caring advice.'

He puts a sticky hand on my shoulder. 'I did warn you not to get so far into this.'

I brace myself to feel something, anything. But there's just annoyance at the tar he's leaving on my dress. I turn my head; look at his grimy hand until he removes it. Whatever half-baked childish infatuation I may once have had for him is dead. Stone dead.

50.

A father's concern for his son

is touching.

From the secret diary of Mary Watson 22ND AUGUST 1881.

'I think they should come with us,' Bob says.

His back is to me so I can't make out his expression. Percy's considering how much of his hand he should discard and doesn't answer. His face is underlit by lantern light. Shadows pull down the skin beneath his eyes, and age his cheeks with accentuated cracks and folds. This is how he will look as an old man. Better able to disguise his self-interest under deep-cut grooves of apparent wisdom. He's playing his cards well, and not just the ones on the table. If he speaks too eagerly now, he'll arouse Bob's suspicions.

'You could be right,' he says. He nods slowly and falls into silence.

'Ye know Miller's station at Flinders has been attacked.' Bob's back shifts under his shirt as he lays two cards face down and draws another two from the deck. After a moment, I hear the clink of pennies dropping into the pot.

No response for a few seconds. Night noises outside take over: the ocean's phlegmy lungs, the snare-drum hiss of wavelets petering out along the sh.o.r.e. Wind gently shakes the house's shoulders. There's a draught under the door, despite the cloth snake filled with sand that I've laid across it.

Percy raises one eyebrow. 'From what I heard, a few blacks came close to the homestead and took off when they were shot at. Hardly an attack. Miller had just been to Cooktown. They were probably after food and fishhooks.' He lays his cards down. 'Three aces.' The pennies jostle and tinkle on their way to his stack. 'My trick, I think, old boy.' Then, looking thoughtful, he adds, 'Could be more dangerous for them to come north. We don't know the currents or winds, and the reefs near Night are a bit of a mystery to us. Mary can't swim, and the baby would certainly perish if, say, the lugger were swamped. I suppose you'd just have to be particularly careful. Hove to at the first sign of foul weather, for instance, no matter how good the fishing. But it's none of my business. You'll do as you see fit. I'll be on Petrel so it won't be my problem.'

He yawns to emphasise his lack of concern. Downs the last sip of rum in his mug. 'Bedtime for me, I think.' He nods in my direction when he reaches the door, his pocket c.h.i.n.king with pennies.

I don't return the gesture.

I look back to the baby. He must be dreaming. His tiny, almost-transparent eyelids flinch and flutter. I study the intricate tributaries of fine blue veins. For some reason, my own eyelids feel hot and my forehead's aching.

Percy steps out and closes the door, but not before a cold rush of air threatens the flame at my elbow.

Bob turns to glance at me. He's clearly in two minds, and they're paired with the two sides of his face. The light from the lamp throws the ruined skin into relief.

'Do ye think ye could repulse the blacks if they came at the homestead?'

'I know how to shoot.' My teeth are chattering. Sudden pimples rise on my arms. 'There's a draught in here, Bob. I don't know where it's coming from.'