I touch the silver thistle of my bracelet again. Will there be purple flowers in New Zealand? What will the native people, the Maori, be like? It must be spring there now, halfway around the great curve of the world. How strange that must feel!

And will there be riches, as Auntie Flora says? Those of us who live there in the years ahead — what sorts of treasure will they find? I grow excited again when I think of it. Yet the most precious thing I can think of just now is for all of us to be happy there.

We file up the gangway. ‘Och, Angus,’ Mother murmurs to my father. ‘Never tae walk on our bonnie homeland again!’

I gaze at the wooden planks beneath my feet, and the cold, slapping waves below. Fear stabs me now, along with excitement. The sea is grey, deep and unfriendly. It looks the worst water in the world.

NIALL 1897

Eleven years. Almost eleven years since we left the shores of Scotland, and sailed halfway around the world to New Zealand.

Father was talking at dinner last night, and said, ‘Aye, Helen, it must be near eight years now since we last saw the bonnie purple heather in bloom.’ Mother shook her head. ‘Sure, ’tis no’ that long, Angus. Niall is—’

Aggie broke in, while her hands searched for knife and fork. ‘It’s longer than eight, Ma. I was ten, and Niall had just turned seven. Janet was born the year we arrived here, remember? So it’s nearer eleven.’

My parents were silent. Aggie had hold of knife and fork now, but she and our small sister Janet sat still as well. Mother turned away, to ladle out more stew from the pot hanging above the fire. She is more bent now than when we first came to this land. I gazed at her and suddenly saw how she is older.

And I am now a man, almost eighteen. My friend Haare and I can lift the great sacks of kumara when they are dug. We handle axes and saws almost as well as our fathers. We can dig ditches for an hour without resting.

Sometimes I can milk our cows faster than Father, though I would never say so out loud. He still doesn’t like cows much: ‘Och, I was brought up tae be a shepherd, Niall,’ he told me. ‘Sheep may be puir silly creatures, but they’ve been meat and wool tae our family for generations. Sheep are my life, laddie.’ But he’s had to change his mind.

Cows can eat the shrubs and tree leaves which grow at the bush’s edge. Their calves are too big for hawks and magpies to attack — not like the poor wee lambs that we saw lying dead, with wounds in their side where beaks had torn at them.