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Back The Burning Island Save as PDF
Chapters (31)
  1. COVER PAGE
  2. TEXT LOGO PAGE
  3. ABOUT THE BOOK
  4. EPIGRAPH
  5. MAP
  6. THE INDIAN
  7. MY FATHER IN THE LEAF LITTER
  8. THE MOONBIRD
  9. EMBARKATION
  10. THE WONDERS OF THE WUNDERKAMMER
  11. RODONDOINTO THE FOG
  12. SEABIRDS AND SEALS
  13. THE NIGHT, GIBBOUS MOON
  14. HUMMOCK AND THE BOTTLE-ACHE
  15. GRASS ELEGY
  16. THE CUTTER
  17. PRESERVATION
  18. ST ANTHONY’S FIRE
  19. THE BOWSPRIT ACHILLES
  20. THE SYMPLEGADES
  21. GUN CARRIAGE
  22. THE UNTHREADING OF THINGS
  23. CHRIST’S REDEEMING MISSION
  24. THE INDIAN RETURNS
  25. THE PINNACLE
  26. EMBERS
  27. FIFTEEN HUNDRED FATHOMS
  28. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  29. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  30. ALSO BY JOCK SERONG
  31. NEW MARKETING PAGE

I was forgotten, momentarily, on a patch of bare ground that was lit by the glow of the blaze. A crowd worked quickly around me, bringing and taking water, shovelling, dragging burning timbers off into the sand. The fire had worked through the back of the house and was now devouring an orchard, and a scattering of pens and sheds, where livestock bellowed and squealed in a chorus of agony.

I rolled onto my front and began crawling further away from the house, wanting only to escape the intensity of the heat. The cleared ground ended in a grassy rising slope, and I crawled further up, seeking darkness. There was dirt and ash stuck in the weeping slick of my arms now, and more of it stuck to my legs.

The foot of a tree, and beyond it a series of short fenceposts.

Fenceposts.

No, not fenceposts. Too short, too wide. Standing boards, only knee-high.

I dragged myself along the ground to the nearest one. There were words inscribed on it. Somehow I knew what they would say before the firelight flared and I read the crude inscription.

To the Memery

7 souls washed up from the founderd bark 1830 AD

Sufer the little childern.

A crucifix, hatched with two blows of an axe. I extended a hand to touch the groove in the timber as my parched lips made names for them: Albert and Florence; Catherine, Jane, Sarah, Violet, Frederick.

There was nothing left to know about this place, or about its people. They had mourned the victims in private. I was tired now and in too much pain to pay heed. It was no one else’s business.

~

I tried walking once or twice but my body would not co-operate. Painfully, slowly, I dragged myself back into the light where the men had gathered.

They’d laid my father on a wide timber beam between large boulders, probably a fish-cleaning bench. I bent to him and dusted the ash from his face.

Through my tears I saw a man approaching and I thought him to be wearing a nightshirt. Then the graven face was lit by the flames of the house and I saw that it was Argyle in a cotton shift.

He was speaking, quiet but firm.

‘They believe it will burn the whole island. We must go, and quickly.’

FIFTEEN HUNDRED FATHOMS

FIFTEEN HUNDRED FATHOMS

image It took an hour or more to get every one of the men off the island. There was only one of the little skiffs left, the others crowded together by their noses around buoys offshore.