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‘Take them to the boat,’ he ordered.
    One of the rowers shook his head. ‘I ain’t touching no one with the smallpox.’
    The Surgeon sighed. He and the Governor carried the old man to the boat between them. The Surgeon went back and lifted the boy in his arms.
    He was small and light, only eight or nine years old. He muttered something, and nestled closer.
    The Surgeon felt something ache deep in his heart. How long had it been since he had held a child in his arms? There were convict brats here, but none had needed the attentions of the Chief Surgeon. If he had been posted to India, or had a job in England, he might have been married now. He’d have children of his own. Instead he was on a distant beach, holding a native boy dying of the smallpox.
    The Surgeon bit his lip. He carried his small burden back to the rowing boat.

Chapter 6
NANBERRY
    T UMBALONG , THE LAND AND TIME OF SICKNESS
(15 A PRIL 1789)
    The world had been black, but somehow too bright too. Even dreams hurt.
    Someone lifted him. Was it Colbee? They had come back! They would bring sweet water, make the right smoke to send the illness away. Soon he would be well again. Life would be as it had been before …
    Someone said something. At first he thought that it was the sickness that made him not understand. Then he realised.
    They were white-ghost words.
    He opened his eyes. The world swam as though he was underwater. But he could see a boat: not a canoe, or a big ship, but one of the craft the white ghosts could make surge through the water.
    â€˜Has he a chance, Surgeon White?’
    â€˜I can’t tell, sir. Perhaps, if we can get the fever down.’
    The words had no meaning, but the men speaking sounded kind. Suddenly water touched his lips. Cool, wonderful, fresh water.
    He wanted to ask questions. Where was his family? How did the white-ghost paddles make the boat glide across the water? But he was too weak. The hands felt kind, and they had given him fresh water.
    Nanberry let himself sleep.

Chapter 7
MARIA
    S YDNEY C OVE , 15 A PRIL 1789
    Maria trudged along the path to the stores. They were the only brick buildings in the colony, apart from the Governor’s house. The roofs were made of proper tiles of baked clay too, unlike the others, thatched with dried reeds, though the tiles were already crumbling.
    The Governor had ordered everyone in the colony to have the same rations: so much each for a man, a woman, a child. Major Ross and the marines complained, but the Governor had stood firm.
    The marines had shouted even louder when the Governor ordered the rations be reduced again last week: two pounds of salt pork for each man, two and a half pounds of flour — wheat or maize flour, depending on what the stores had most of that week — and two pounds of rice or dried peas and a tiny scoop of rancid butter. Women had two-thirds that amount and children half.
    The flour was bitter with weevils; the sacks of rice quivered with the insects that infested it; and the pork was at least two years old — who knew how old it was when it was loaded on the ships?
    Maria waited in line to get her rations, and the Master’s, trying to avoid the eyes of the men with their thin and filthy faces who’d take a smile as an invitation. Good-for-nothings, she thought. There’s food to gather here, and wood in plenty to cook it and water to wash in.
    But she still wanted her rations. Flour to make soda bread and the peas for a boiled pease pudding flavoured with salt pork meant a taste of home. She’d wipe the sour butter over the eggshells to keep the eggs fresh for when the hens stopped laying in winter.
    There were only a dozen in front of her in the line now; men with shadowed faces, gazing at the Store Master doling out the tiny black lumps of meat, as though they could taste the hard salt pork already; women with thin children clinging to their skirts. She glanced at their hands and then back at