Briggs spoke again. ‘She’s his mother, but she still pine for the darky spirits.’

The woman had been so still that the small waves lapped on her feet and she did not remove them to higher ground. Small birds landed near her and settled. A crab edged from its crevice in the rock, unaware she was coiled there.

Then she exploded into movement.

Without warning she leapt from her hiding place with a length of iron in her left hand: the seal lifted its mighty head and bellowed and she brought the iron down with a wet thump. The shriek it produced was more human than animal: outrage and agony. The seal writhed and darted forward, biting at her like an enraged dog. But she was too quick. She brought the iron down again and again, each blow slowing the seal’s movements, lowering its head. One swing of the iron broke open the arch of bone around its eye—another cracked its snout and the snout was bent down like a hooked beak and the bellows were smaller squeals now, some claim of injustice—why?—in there.

Briggs and I were concealed behind one rock, the others gathered further away.

‘Tha’ one’s a clapmatch,’ he muttered to me. ‘Lady seal. Not so big, but they’s easier to git. Pinnipeds is worth a pound each in Hobart Town.’

‘Ah, pinnipeds,’ I replied. ‘It means they have ears, I understand.’

He looked at me blankly. ‘Means they’s got flippers for feet.’

His wife was working quickly now: blood slicked the rock and stained the water in the shallow pool that had been the seal’s haul-out. Gulls bickered overhead: there would be shreds flicked clear from the carnage. Her arm upraised was a gorgeous thing: a braid of sinews that glowed in the sun. The downswing was its inverse, crushing horror. The head was beaten raw: impacts landing in a cloud of brilliant red around her legs.

Finally, the thuds stopped and we could hear her breathing hard. She bent to examine the seal. Satisfied that it was dead, she turned and looked towards us, smiling.

‘Ken do twenny a day,’ said Briggs proudly.

~

We sailed on, the stiff westerly days cold and persisting behind us.