I shook my head. I was no longer sure why, but he had pushed too hard. I fought the word that did not want to be said: after a moment, I won.

‘No.’ Too loud. ‘No, doctor, I will not.’

His face darkened. ‘You know, the parties responsible for the Howrah wreck could very well be among this crowd. You endanger yourself by taking a room alone.’

The piano. Damning evidence—but not conclusive. Now was not the time to reveal what I knew.

‘You must excuse me,’ I muttered. ‘Please do not be cross.’

My face must have betrayed something, because two of the women came forward and offered to show me to my quarters. ‘You ben took a bit by the rum,’ said one.

One of the sealers was away resupplying—they did not say where, but I had noticed they referred to the rest of the world as away—and his house was ours for as long as we might need it. They said they extended this generosity to all visitors; someone was always away, and the houses were used alternately.

The house I was taken to was more substantial than the others we had seen among the islands: some of its walls were stone, and its interior was lined and sealed from the wind. A single candle had been left burning on a table in the front room; through an open door I could see a corridor extending further into the darkness.

‘Doors are all on the right,’ said the woman who had escorted me in. ‘First one’s your master’—she looked at me quizzically—‘and the blind man.’

‘My father.’

‘Ah, right. Second one’s for the doctor and the convict lad. Third’s yours. Ye need to go durin the night, keep on further down the passage an there’s a door what goes outside. Privy’s there.’

I thanked her and shuffled down the dark corridor to the door she had indicated. Inside was a plain room walled with lining boards. An iron bed projected from the far wall, beside a window. There were no sheets and blankets in here, but more of the kangaroo hides, laid out in layers upon the flat hessian sack that did for a mattress. Another, larger hide had been nailed over the window and bunched up over a nail to one side. Outside I could make out the shapes of the night but they were elusive, unreliable. My head was spinning. I hurried to undress and climb into the bed, nesting myself deep under the warm pile of skins.

There was the sound of a night bird outside, and some scrabbling creature in the roof, then nothing.

In my sleep I heard a dog bark, and a door closing.

I may have heard footsteps.

I may have added them into my recollection later.

THE UNTHREADING OF THINGS

THE UNTHREADING OF THINGS