They were trying to get the women away. They were coming in, whispering, pleading. Crying.

What was it? What was it? They were going to send them away: somewhere called Capuchin. There was agreement that this was wise, but no one knew how to defeat the blockade created by the removal of the boats. Then an answer: they would swim. The women were the swimmers, the divers. The men could read the ocean but none of them could swim in it. The women, then: they would swim to the anchored vessels and they would slip away. Parish’s men were complacent because they assumed that the boats were out of everyone’s reach, not just the doctor’s.

My father snored loud enough to wake himself up: the conversation stopped, he choked, embarrassed, and his eyes were startled wide, then he slept again. He could not know any of what was occurring above our heads, around the table. The men were smuggling their own lifeblood. They were desperate, angry. Seemingly defeated but not bereft of ideas.

They waited to ensure he was asleep again and then I heard a woman’s voice, an urgent hiss, asking how they could leave their people behind on Robinson’s brig. The ones they already got. Another in answer, saying they were not her people. ‘Months go by,’ she murmured, ‘maybe years go by, and those ones’ll come back, and our ones too, and life be normal again.’

And I heard Tarenorerer, furious, insisting there were no choices. ‘Nobody make a good pact with the Devil,’ she said. ‘Nobody can trust these men. You can do only one thing. You take all o’ your weapons, get the guns and the knives and the clubs and you surround em because they are lazy and they all sleeping in one place with no watch posted. And you storm em and you crush their skulls and shoot em and stab em and you do not stop until every single one o’ them is dead, because they are not concerned that your children will be orphans, and nor should you worry for them. What’s an orphan to this lot? An opportunity, that’s what it is. An orphan is a little soul for saving. Scrub em up, teach em scriptures. Not your flesh an blood. It’s a little Christian, wiped clean of the stain. Wanna go makin orphans, go outside and make some orphans, I tell you. An I will be right in there with you crackin heads.’

No one spoke in reply. Her speech had stopped all other consideration.