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into a state of exhaustion and gone to bed, and with luck he wouldn’t need to face them in the morning. He would leave a note and be gone.
    He’d given the pearl to Hope and asked her to put it somewhere safe, and to tell no one.
    ‘Evidence?’ she said.
    ‘I suppose so.’
    He reached out and held her hand with both of his.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
    ‘When I come back,’ he heard himself say, ‘will you marry me?’
    She pulled her hand away and put it to her mouth. He was alarmed when tears began to wash down hercheeks. She put her other hand over her eyes then, as if trying to hide her entire face, and he didn’t think she’d ever stop sobbing.
    He hadn’t planned it at all, any of it. He wanted to tell her this, to say he was sorry, but he had to ask again to be sure.
    ‘Will you marry me?’
    Then she nodded, and let him kiss her so that his face was as wet as hers.
    Now, he sat half asleep in the saddle, wrapped in the tropical night and wondered if it was a dream. He stared down the silver road and tasted her tears on his lips.

CHAPTER 3
Thursday Island, Tuesday 28 February 1899
    Aboard the Admiral , Maggie Porter watched a pink crescent of light at the world’s rim become a thin line before vanishing, as if a lid had closed over her. One by one the boats in Port Kennedy raised their masthead lamps, a small town lighting up on a black, liquid plain.
    Chinese lanterns were being placed along the length of the jetty; the colours bounced gaily in the water. And there was a breeze.
    She looked up at the Residence, a mile away, and saw no light yet in the windows. For all his complaining about caves, her father might have been a bat. She felt deeply sorry for him, alone up there, no doubt looking down from the verandah.
    He’d accompanied her down to the wharf that afternoon, of course, and they said a rather stiff goodbye, Alice in her arms tugging the old man’s beard.
    ‘Hope will be here within a fortnight,’ Maggie had said as brightly as she could, but Douglas had shaken his head and stamped his cane with distress.
    It had seemed a fine plan until she watched her father walk away, looking so much older, and frail—not the solid, towering figure she had known all her life. It broke her heart, watching him, but she was fetching Hope home for his sake. When he knew her reasons fully, he would be grateful.
    He had left her with a letter for her husband, an admonishment no doubt to keep his wife and child safe.
    There was shouting as the ropes were cast off. With Alice on her hip, Maggie now watched the coloured lights sway as the ebbing tide sucked the schooner away from the wharf and into the channel and the currents that swept from one side of the world to the other. The schooner’s sails flapped as she found the breeze.
    The lanterns paraded past, a small constellation at the dark edge of the universe.
    A few notes from a concertina drifted to her from the forward deck, cutting through the rush of water and chorus of creaking ropes. At that moment, it all seemed quite beautiful.
    The effect, though, was spoilt when Poor Tommy de Lange appeared by her elbow and said, ‘God’s truth, Mrs Porter, isn’t this the end of the earth.’
    He leant on the railing, smoking like a boy, flicking his cigarette nervously as the concertina started in earnest, a tune Maggie couldn’t catch.
    Poor Tommy was her husband’s supercargo. He had earlier explained that he had been ordered back to Thursday Island by Mr James Clark to oversee theprovisioning of the Admiral , which was to be the fleet’s tender. The fleet had left in such a rush that some supplies had been overlooked, Tommy had said.
    The concertina played on. Maggie now caught the tune, but couldn’t find the name.
    ‘ A sailor I’ve been for twenty years or more, Sailing the deep blue sea ,’ sang Tommy, neither a sailor nor a singer. ‘ To mates and captains always true …I wonder, Mrs Porter,’ he broke off, ‘how much shell