I dived for my father again as the violence swelled and then receded. Knees and elbows and whole bodies struck my back amid a chaotic orchestra of sounds: breaking glass, screaming and grunts, the meatslaps of fist on flesh. A chair came down in splinters on me, driving a sharp end into my hip.

And then suddenly I was aware that it was over. When I raised my head I found only confusion and groans of pain, a room unused to violence suddenly ruptured by it. People were spilling out the door of the house and the terrible sounds had stilled.

The fight had ended. The doctor was gone.

CHRIST’S REDEEMING MISSION

CHRIST’S REDEEMING MISSION

The men organised themselves into parties and left to search for the doctor. They took with them a gruesome brace of weapons, tools of harvest turned to bloody purpose. Boathooks, poles, flensing blades, a bayonet. A man with an odd-shaped head was carrying a rock, too big to throw, too small to pummel.

They left in a fury, all trace of their earlier ambivalence burnt away, Tucker and Peterson one way, two men they called Maynard and Slack another. Wallabies darted off at their approach. The women remained, picked up the broken things and began to talk. A man named Mansell, who had told long stories of the islands to my father the night before, stood guard at the door with an iron spike. Some of the women claimed they’d seen it coming: He weren’t right in the eyes. Big Sally wondered if the doctor had reacted as anyone would when set upon by a dozen men, but Bet Smith dismissed this with a snort: ‘Had his chance to talk his way out of it. Man starts throwin punches when he can’t explain hisself.’

My father and I remained among them in the house, but the hospitality had curdled. We were the ones best fitted to explain the situation, but no one wanted to hear from us. My father sat forlorn and silent, having arrived at the inevitable point where he could offer no further assistance to the pursuit. He was all obsession and no means.

The talk became argument, and the argument led them to certain conclusions. A body fresh in the ground was one thing: the mishaps that visited a seafaring society. But to have this man loose and snarling, trapped with them inside the uncompromising circle of the tide line, that was quite another thing. Now they must deal with him.

Peacock’s kindly face was averted. Mansell’s wife, a tiny energetic woman the others called Little Judy, had her mouth pursed in concentrated anger. The men had been gone an hour or more when Mansell appeared in the doorway.

‘Mek yerselves scarce,’ he hissed at the women, and two or three filed down the corridor towards the back of the house and out the door that led to the privy. The rest stood resolute.