‘If you come with me, you get nothing,’ he said. ‘I don’t carry you, you get no food.’ He picked up the bottle of rum. Their eyelids lowered and their mouths tightened to prevent too much smiling. They jumped up to come with us.

Beyond the old man’s shelter, back through the vegetation, was a compacted road just wide enough for a vehicle. It was where a truck would pick up workers – including the mother of the bad boys – in the middle of the night. We took the road, which became no more than a walking track as we made our way further along it, me with my shore bag, the old man with the bottle, and fish on a string.

At a certain point, the old fellow left the boys and me and went inland calling out a name. It was some time before he returned, accompanied by a companion of about his own age who carried the rum and a pair of ancient pliers, which I was happy to see. The two were having a great time in each other’s company. We were to go back down to the beach for the operation.

The two men smoked for a while, we had a few swallows from the bottle and, after I’d removed my shirt and stretched out in the shade, the owner of the pliers began working the tooth out of its socket.

‘How many you want out?’ he asked, and he laughed. In a moment, to great shouts of triumph, there the tooth was waving in front of my eyes in the beak of the pliers.

‘This the right one?’

I took off my trousers and went to wallow in the sea where I rinsed and spat enough blood and poison to attract sharks, though all I came across were little green turtles bubbling.

After that I went to sleep in the trees, waking some time later with the two bad boys looking down at me. I guessed they’d been sent to get me. They took me by the hands and pulled me towards the track. The waves were heaving onto the shore, and in the dusk the white fringes of them drew down their own light.

Outside a small house several people were eating fish. Among them were the fisherman, a woman whom I found out later was his wife – though I guessed she was ten or more years younger than he was – the aunty of the bad boys and her husband, and the dentist with my tooth still in the grip of his pliers. Also there, not saying a word, was a venerable elder, ‘A‘makualenalena.

‘And here comes the rest of him,’ shouted the tooth-puller, waving my fang as I appeared. I soon understood that this tooth of mine had been the topic of conversation throughout the meal.