‘Howard,’ I said.

‘G’day, Howard. Paul.’ He gave me his hand. It didn’t feel like a polyp.

‘And this is Ros.’ I said.

‘G’day, Ros. Paul.’

We stood on the upper deck, with the breeze ruffling our hair. Behind us the islands of the Reef were beginning to lose their distinctness in the pale light of early evening. Dolphins leapt from the water. Reflections of banded snake eels and azure demoiselles still played in Ros’s eyes. I was red from the sun and sleepy. A sudden gust blew spray on us and winnowed Paul’s mustard-coloured moustache. When he asked us why we didn’t stay in Cairns and scuba dive our lives away, as he was doing, I was truly stuck for a rational reply.

The following morning Ros discovered that she had a coral wound on her ankle. Coral wounds can become very quickly infected. The day before, on the way back from Michaelmas Cay, everyone had lined up to have theirs treated; the German girl required iodine dabs over very nearly the entire surface of her body. But Ros had not noticed hers then. We sat out at a street café and, while I read more details about the bizarre dog-eater, she bathed her ankle in Betadine. I could see that she was proud of her injury; that she was feeling good being an Australian again. ‘If this keeps up I’ll have scabs on my ears soon, with a bit of luck,’ she hoped. I noticed that her wound excited the envy of passers-by also. You were no one in Cairns if you couldn’t show that you’d been attacked by a polyp.

I helped her, hobbling like a starlet, to the car. Then we drove out of Cairns northwards along the Cook Highway in the direction of Cooktown. We weren’t leaving Cairns for ever, just for a day or two. Nor did I intend to try for Cooktown itself. There were problems with car ferries and roads, and I was running out of patience for any kind of travel that wasn’t utterly painless. Daintree, where the highway strictly speaking ran out, would do fine. Any adventurous little folderols we’d fight over on the spot.