“She loves you.”

Troubled, Richard said nothing for a while, moved and lost a pawn, essayed a knight. If Lizzie loved him, then her hurt was far greater than he had thought. Remembering what she had said about Lady Penrhyn and the stripping of women’s pride, that was how he had seen the worst aspect of his crime against her—as a public humiliation of unpardonable kind. She had never said she loved him, never indicated that by word or look. . . . He lost his knight.

“How goes it between the Marine Corps and the Navy?” he asked.

“Very touchy. Hunter has never liked Major Ross, but his exile here only serves to enhance his loathing. So far they have managed not to have an actual falling out, but that is definitely coming. Limited to Sirius’s cutter, he can undertake no long sea excursions, so he spends most of his time rowing around his nemesis, Nepean Island—looking, I suspect, for navigational evidence to bolster his defense when he comes to court martial in England. Once he has sounded every inch of the bottom and compiled his chart, he will do the same sort of thing everywhere on these coasts.”

“Why has Johnny half-returned to him, if that is not an intrusion into your private world?”

Shrugging, Stephen turned the corners of his mouth down. “No, I will answer. ’Tis very hard for a seaman to resist the authority of the captain unless he is of mutinous make, and that Johnny is not. Johnny is Royal Navy and Hunter next to God.”

“I also heard that Lieutenant William Bradley, Royal Navy, has quit the naval officers’ quarters and moved himself out along the road to Ball Bay.”

“Ye deduced that, no doubt, from sawing timber for his new house. Aye, he has gone, and no one mourns the fact. A very strange man, Bradley—talks to himself, which is why he needs no company other than himself. As I understand it, the Major has put him to rough surveying of the interior. A great affront to Hunter, who is adamant that naval persons of any rank ought not to toil on land.”

Ignominiously beaten, Richard rose to kindle a pine knot in Stephen’s fire. “I would like my revenge, but if I do not go now I will be caught out after curfew. D’ye care to walk to the mountain with me tomorrow for another lot of birds?”

“Since we ate all the fish, gladly.”

Stephen waved him off down the vale, trying to imagine the expression on Richard’s face when he entered his house. Sirius’s sail had been released from duty as shelter and had been divided up among the free men for use as mattresses or hammocks; thanks to King’s wheat crop as well as the fact that the settlement owned neither horses nor cattle, there was ample straw for stuffing. To Stephen, officially the captor of the sail, went as much as he wanted, so he had taken enough for his own needs and Richard’s. Long weathering and a few soapy washes in fresh water softened the canvas sufficiently to turn it into reasonable sheets, not to mention stout trowsers. Parties of women skilled with a needle were sewing away to produce new trowsers for the enlisted marines and sailors, who were obliged to give up a pair of old trowsers to a convict in return for a pair of new ones. No one truly appreciated the amount of sail a ship the size of Sirius carried until it was liberated for other uses.

“I cannot thank you enough for the canvas,” Richard said when he met Stephen on the Cascade road at sundown on the following day. “Using blankets as a bottom sheet on one’s bed wears them out in no time. The canvas will last for years.”

“I suspect it may have to.”

They climbed up the farthest path, which was the least popular one as it involved the longest walk, and gathered a half-dozen birds each high on the mountain, where the creatures still thronged in countless numbers. All that was necessary was to reach down and pick one up; a quick wring of its neck, and into the sack. The eggs were laid now, though the amount of birds being caught had not diminished; Clark’s tally was growing into many thousands, and took account only of birds handed over to Government Stores plus whatever he and his fellow officers collected.

On the way back they passed through a vast clearing where the timber was already felled—some acres of it—on the flattish crest of the hills which divided the direction of the streams from those flowing north to Cascade Bay, those flowing east to Ball Bay, and those flowing south to the swamp or what was becoming known as Phillimore’s stream, around the corner from the far beach. Here in this clearing—what was Major Ross’s purpose?—it was possible to look north at the mountain.

Cloudless darkness had fallen, the stars so dense and brilliant that a man could fancy there must be an intensely glowing white layer behind the darkness of the sky, and that God had pricked the heavens to let some of that silver firmament shine through. Where the bulk of the mountain should have loomed as a black shadow, what looked like streamers of darting fireflies flickered in and out of the gloom, shifting and sparkling rivers of flame; the torches of hundreds of men coming down the slopes.

“Beautiful!” breathed Richard, stunned.

“How could a man tire of this place?”

They remained watching until the lights died away and then resumed their walk amid dozens of panting, sack-laden predators, torches all around them.

*    *    *

Winter came, drier and colder than last year’s; the wheat and Indian corn were planted over many more acres than King’s eleven, but were slow to come up until a welcome day of squally rain followed by a day of sun saw the vale and hillsides turn magically from blood-red soil to vividly green grass.

The official tally of Mt. Pitt birds rose to over 170,000—an average of 340 birds per person over 100 days. The island was still under Law Martial; Major Ross cut salt meat entirely from everybody’s rations, aware that the thousands of petrels remaining on the mountain would fly away once their chicks were strong enough to take wing. There had been plenty of heavy floggings administered by Jim Richardson, whom Richard had used as a sawyer until he broke his leg. To wield his assortment of cats put no strain on the afflicted member, and he quite liked this exclusive occupation. The odium in which he was regarded by almost all of his fellows, free as well as felon, worried him not in the slightest.

There had also been some hangings. Not of convicts: of sailors. Captain Hunter’s servants, assisted by Ross’s servant the noble Escott of Sirius fame, pillaged the Major’s scanty supply of rum, drank some of it and sold the rest. In his role of judge, jury and executioner, Lieutenant-Governor Ross hanged three of the offenders, though not Escott and not Hunter’s chief minion, Elliott. Escott’s other punishment was to be stripped of his Sirius valor; Ross gave the official credit for swimming out to the wreck to a convict named John Arscott. Escott and Elliott were let off with 500 lashes from the meanest cat, a punishment which, as the Major had promised in his address at the beginning of Law Martial, laid them bare to the bone from neck to ankles. This total was administered in a series of five floggings of 100 lashes each, 100 lashes being considered the most any man could bear at one time. The flogger started at the shoulders and moved slowly down the body over back, buttocks and thighs to finish at the calves. Murmurs of mutiny arose among the sailors, but in the face of this terrible crime against the free, rum-drinking community Captain Hunter was unable to support his men’s cause, while the furious marines looked only too happy to shoot a mob of sailors down. Thanks to Private Daniel Stanfield their muskets were in excellent condition and they kept their cartridges dry; musket practice under Stephen and Richard still happened on Saturday mornings.