The young men ambled off. My father was seated by the fire, drinking tea someone had made for him. Other than that simple courtesy, he was afforded neither company nor conversation. We were lepers now, bringers of a plague called Gideon. Or perhaps Figge, if my father wasn’t delusional after all.

There was little that could be done in the hours that followed. Argyle, who had rowed himself out to check on the Moonbird, was not allowed to bring the jolly-boat back ashore and had been compelled to wait until a rower was available to bring him in in the single island boat that remained in use. All of the other boats now crowded the bay, tied together in twos and fours at every mooring. The missionaries’ brig was listing: its hull must have been resting on the shallow bottom. Somehow, with the draining tide, a lassitude had risen that affected all of us. We were in a world bereft of energy.

Parish’s men remained outside as the evening began to descend. They lit lamps, made a fire and ate quartered kangaroo meat and shellfish that Smith took out to them. He did not offer them the hospitality of the house. He knew their business; he might not be able to undermine it but it was plain that he did not intend to make it easier.

Around dark the sealers began to file in, dejected. Some were damp from wading around the shore and through swamps. Others were sandy or covered in grass seeds. They had seen nothing, not a sign of Gideon. Smith had occupied his time up till then drawing a large map of the island in charcoal on a hide: as each party came in, he asked them where they had been and marked it off on the map.

‘He in’t gone,’ he said to several of them. ‘Hasn’t taken a boat. He’s ’ere, and he cannot keep this up.’

The night wore on. This time no one drank, not even my father. He had not spoken for hours and his appearance worried me. The colour had leached from his eyes and from his skin: where previously shades came and went across his cheeks, now that skin only wrapped his bones and did so without variance: his skin was tired of him. The whites of his eyes were dirty like riverbed sand. The broken veins of his nose and cheeks led to them and gave up. He lay around in ways that should have been uncomfortable but appeared not to trouble him. This apathy of his was more distressing to me than the occasions of his rage.

The fire burned low in the hearth. We put down blankets and lay on the floor near to it. Conversations came and went and left confusing footprints in my mind: snatches of argument, reminiscences. Some of the fragments must have been dreams but I could not tell, I was so weary.