On Monday mornings, like clockwork, a black carriage arrived at Government House carrying John Montagu, the Colonial Secretary, and his dog. A balding man with a perpetually smug expression, Montagu wore a double-breasted jacket over a tight-fitting waistcoat, a high-collared shirt, and a floppy black tie. His dog, a muscular beast with an attenuated snout and short, floppy ears, was unfriendly to everyone except its master, who seemed to delight in its twitchy aggression. “Jip can overpower a kangaroo in four paces,” Montagu would brag to anyone who’d listen. It was rumored that he brought the dog with him to Government House to impress, or possibly intimidate, Sir John, with whom he had a simmering rivalry.

During the hour that the two men met each week, the dog roamed the courtyard. One Monday a convict maid, hanging laundry in the yard, was attacked by the dog. It grabbed her skirt and yanked her to the ground, breaking her arm. “It’s a pity,” Montagu said when he learned of it. “But I did warn those prison wenches to stay out of Jip’s way.”

On Flinders, Mathinna had often gone to bed hungry. The Palawa had been accustomed to hunting and foraging from the coast to the highlands on Van Diemen’s Land, but the smaller island was largely barren, and the missionaries did not share their food. Here there was plenty to eat, though much of it tasted strange in her mouth. Mutton chops and mushy peas, cold toast that stood upright in a silver server, small white kernels of rice she first mistook for grubs. The Franklins drank bitter herbs steeped in boiling water at every meal, redeemed only by the sugar that Mathinna soon discovered made everything taste better.

One Sunday afternoon Mathinna was invited to join the Franklins at a luncheon in the dining room for a visiting English bishop and his wife and young daughter. Over cold pheasant pie and calves’ brains in aspic, the bishop asked Mathinna what natives liked to eat. She told him about hunting muttonbirds, how they’d pull the bird out of a hole, snap its neck, and toss it into a fire. She demonstrated how they’d pluck most of the feathers and spit out the rest as they bit into the skin.

“Mathinna!” Eleanor gasped.

Sir John chuckled. “She’s quite right, you know. Why consume some birds and not others? Many an explorer has perished from unnecessary scruples about what he’s willing to put in his mouth.”

The rest of the table was silent. The bishop wore an expression of disgust. Lady Franklin looked aghast. Mathinna was annoyed at herself. For a brief moment she’d forgotten how peculiar these people were. She wished she hadn’t said anything.

“It’s not true,” she said quickly. “I made it up.”

After a moment, the bishop laughed. “What a peculiar creature!” he exclaimed, turning to Sir John. “I might believe anything she tells me about her people, so remote is their experience from ours.”

“Perhaps it’s time for the girls to leave the table,” Lady Franklin said. “Sarah, will you take them outside for some fresh air?”