She began to talk very fast to Leon, lamenting that she had no food, only a pot of sticky rice and a little jar of tuak. Leon consoled her, saying they had no need of food, but Taminah, now anxious at her lack of hospitality, asked him if she should kill and pluck one of the tethered cockerels which strutted around her veranda. Leon told her to let the cockerels live and that if they got hungry, they would eat the rice and be content with that.

It was then that the rain began to fall on the palm-leaf thatching of the longhouse, battering it fiercely, as if with an avalanche of small stones. Whenever a deluge like this one threatened her house, Taminah imagined it as what she called ‘the river turned upside-down’. Sometimes she feared that the rain would bring boulders and crocodiles and broken canoes tumbling down on her head.

Leon had warned his mother that this was ‘muddled thinking’ and that she should try to keep better control of her mind and not let it stray into the madness from which so many of the elderly seemed to suffer. But Taminah had not been moved by this warning. She had said to Leon: ‘Madness is the end to which we all come. Suffering and loss take us there. You will see. In time, you will come to it, too. You will see the river falling from the sky.’

It was only now, seated in Taminah’s house, breathing in the loneliness and poverty in which this woman lived, that Sir Ralph suddenly remembered Edmund. He’d thought that Edmund had been walking just behind him and Leon and had followed them into the longhouse, but now there was no sign of him. The rajah stood up and looked around, as if hoping to find Edmund standing in a corner of the room.

‘Where is Mr Ross?’ he said to Leon.

Leon didn’t hesitate before saying, ‘Oh you very blind, my rajah. Your Jesus boy, he turn back to your house. He say to me, on the path, I am turning back, Leon.’

‘When did he say this?’

‘When we hear the storm. He is cowardly.’

‘But he was interested to see the cannery site.’

‘Except he is weak. And you know he is quite mad. Collectors of butterflies and beetles; such men are very foolish.’

‘No,’ said Sir Ralph. ‘They are not. They are trying to educate people in England about the things they have never seen and never even imagined.’

‘Englung people want to see scorpions and snakes?’

‘Yes. And birds and flowers. Why not? They want to learn about these islands.’

Leon shook his head crossly. ‘Not learn,’ he said. ‘Only steal.’

‘Well, never mind,’ said Sir Ralph. ‘What else did Edmund say to you?’

‘Nothing. Only he is turning back.’

The rajah now went to the door of the house, which opened onto the veranda where the cockerels were tethered. He saw the scrawny birds touchingly huddled together against the storm, their eyes closed, their bright feathers ruffled and beaded by the rain and their tethers lying in a tangle around them. He began calling Edmund’s name.