‘You think about it.’ She lowered her voice, as though someone had pointed us out, reminded her that we lay in the room. ‘You lot live on an island far away from any white man, an when someone come after these ones to find out what happened, it’ll be long enough from now, an by then you take the fucking boat out an you sink it someplace deep, an you’ll have them fancy men burned and buried and the grass grown over and it’ll be just wind an clouds an a greener place in the grass and you gonna say no, they never come here mister.

‘An stop this talk about hidin an do not think for a minute of co-operatin because they lie and they cheat an they got no hope in their hearts for you: they are waiting for you all to die like you was never here. An if you give em that satisfaction then you deserve to go.’

There was a silence. Then one of them asked the very question I was dreading: and what about these ones? In the darkness I could feel a finger pointed at us there on the floor.

More silence, sounds of discomfort, then lowered voices, almost whispers.

‘Done nothin, those ones,’ Tarenorerer said. ‘They’s not missionaries.’

‘Brought the Devil, that fella out there,’ came the reply.

‘Didn’t know.’

‘Makes no difference.’

‘That ole man’s just about finished anyways.’

A dog padded through the gathering and slumped itself beside me. The weight of its flank pressed warm through the blankets on the cold side, away from the fire.

‘They come here thinkin we wrecked the boat.’

‘What boat?’

‘Howrah, innit? Where that pianner come off, an some o’ them timbers. Ol Munro had the letterbox on waytakupana. Had more stuff ’n what we do.’

‘Not our fault.’

‘What about all them people out back?’

‘Same. Wasn’t our fault. Just the decent thing to do.’

‘Yeah, but they go home thinkin it was our fault, dun matter what we say.’

Other voices crowded in now, and the dispute rolled and tumbled between them. They would do us no violence. They figured we had our own battles to fight now, ones that were not their concern, any more than the waiting missionaries were ours.