I had no idea what this meant. The women smiled shyly and Tibb, who appeared the youngest, made an approximation of a curtsey.

‘These uns is on a list, you might know. Man named Robinson, damned evangelist, sent his agents to search the islands for the wives. Wants to tak’em off us, make em into Christians, make em European, see. So you’ll forgive me bein prepared.’

‘Why would he take your wife, Mister Munro?’ I asked.

‘Int nobody ben catchem,’ hissed Louisa fiercely.

‘Louisa’s tyereelore,’ said Munro. ‘All of em are. That’s the word they use for themselves. Sealer women, come from Van Diemen’s Land, from all about but mostly the north. Mostly speak South Seas pidgin. Some’s taken by force, see; there’d be no sealing or birding at all in the straits otherwise. I’m pretty sure Sall an Maria were taken. They’s never said exactly.’ He lifted the pot off its hook and poured the water into a tin teapot, his voice constricted with the effort. ‘You go back to the twenties, sealers everywhere here. Hundreds. Come from Africa, America, Poly-nesia. And if you got a woman can swim, can pack skins, grow the food, then you got an advantage. Can even read the weather, some of em.’

He moved about as he spoke, found old china cups here and there. He poured tea from a tin into the pot and swirled it.

‘So some are taken, but not all of em. Louisa here come from Cape Portland, north-east mob. The big men there, see, them bungaras—’

‘Bungunnas,’ Louisa corrected him.

‘—they got plans. Strategy. Givin up their daughters to these islands because they know what’s coming on the mainland, maybe. Wanting to tie themselves more to here.’

Louisa stood listening to his account without comment, tying off an apron that looked to have been stitched from sacking. Her face was unreadable.

Munro poured the tea, began sliding cups across the table to each of us. These comments of his were retorts to arguments nobody had raised.

‘We’re man and wife, just as legal as you two are.’ He was looking directly at me and at the doctor beside me, and I fear I must have blushed.

‘Oh no, I—’

‘Some of em, aye,’ he continued over the top of my protest, ‘come here by force. Kidnapped, sometimes there’s a fight and they kill the husbands. But I tell you serious’—he stopped, apparently staggered by a fresh bout of indignation—‘the man Robinson, the scoundrel, he’s telling people we’re “the African slave trade in miniature”.’ He spat the words, staring at each of us. ‘Does she look like any man’s slave to you?’

Louisa stood glaring, hands on her hips. ‘Specially not Robinson’s,’ she said. ‘He come round here, he won’t make it out o’ the boat…’