His brother looked up from his cards. ‘No way what?’

‘Sailing the high seas.’

Joseph laughed. ‘You will be soon, but. You’ll be sailing your arse off.’

‘That’s different.’

‘How?’

‘Well, it’s a big bloody iron boat with no sails and they know where they’re going an’ I just have to sit there, right?’ Wilson O’Farrell grabbed his foot, rubbed it and wiggled his long, bony toes. The muster for the front was the day after next.

‘Still the same high seas,’ his brother said, flipping cards.

HANDCUFFS AND LEG IRONS

They finished the tea and the whisky, too. The fire was blazing. Joseph O’Farrell found a second bottle.

‘Show him the cuffs,’ Wilson said.

‘Want to see them?’

‘Sure,’ Tait said.

Joseph went to the shelves stacked with crates and pulled one out and put it on the floor. ‘The very ones they clamped on the poor bastard.’

Tait sat up now and moved to the edge of his chair. He watched Joseph take a few things out of the crate and then reach deep into it, his hand rummaging until there was the sound of metal scraping on the thin wood. He pulled his arm out and held up a rusty set of handcuffs.

‘Nasty things,’ Joseph said. ‘The English type with the ratchet arms, makes them really tight.’ He handed them to Tait.

‘Try ’em on,’ Wilson said.

‘No thanks.’

‘Don’t you want to know what it was like?’ Wilson checked his socks in front of the fire, turned them over.

Tait stared down at the cuffs in his hands, thinking of John Myer. Thinking, this lonely hut.

‘We used to play bushrangers with them,’ Joseph said. ‘The thing you don’t think of is how hard it is to run with your hands cuffed behind your back.’

‘You’d fall over all the time,’ Wilson said.

‘Wils was always the law; I had to try and escape,’ Joseph said. He pointed at the cuffs. ‘One time the ratchet arms got stuck and we couldn’t get ’em off. Had to wear the bloody things for a day and a bit.’

Wilson laughed. ‘I had to pull his trousers down so he could take a leak.’

‘And give me something to eat.’

‘Bread and water.’

‘And the time you put the leg irons on me.’

‘Barefoot, like they used to do.’

‘Took the skin right off my ankles.’

‘Then I had to bash the things with a hammer to slip the rivets.’

‘Big toe went black and blue.’

‘Ha!’

‘Yeah,’ Joseph said. ‘Swelled up so I couldn’t walk. Real funny.’

‘Go on,’ Wilson said to Tait. ‘Try ’em on. You can use it in your story.’

‘GREENSLEEVES’

Gabriel Tait knew that Evie would love the music box. It had cost him a week’s wages. She’d love it, and then most probably she’d hate it.