Every day, he was closer to New Caledonia. And this time he didn’t hide. He sat at the front of the cargo ship where he could see the horizon, his big hands overlapping his knees. He hardened himself so that each muscle in his body was rigid and strained. He spoke to no one. He sat in silence, waiting.

Mundic had his Panama hat and sunglasses and wrote in his notebook about the weather, what he ate, and the things he saw, like the fish. Sometimes he watched other people, just so he could collect their names and put them in his Book of Miss Benson. He heard their voices and the splintering of the waves against the ship’s sides, and sometimes he got the oily whiff from the engine room or a rancid smell of half-dry coconuts, but he let it wash over him as if it was all part of the same thing. There was a berth below but the men were Dutch, in the sandalwood trade, so Mundic stayed on deck, and at night he coiled himself under a bench and slept there.

One of the crew came out every morning to read a letter. He would take it out of his pocket, read it, and wipe his eyes. Then he would fold it carefully and put it back in his jacket.

Watching him, Mundic remembered the faces of the lads in the camp when a Red Cross parcel got through and they read their letters from home. They’d talk about a sweetheart, or a wife, or their kiddies. Mundic had been glad he had no letters. Everything about Britain had seemed off the point when you spent your nights in a hut, not even with a proper roof on it, rats running over your head and men crowded all round you, like cattle, and dying.

And sometimes one of the deckhands would sit and play his harmonica and that would get Mundic remembering the camps, too. In his mind, he’d see the blokes who had tried to keep themselves educated. Playing music and reading books, like they were clever. But it didn’t matter how clever you were if a Jap was beating you with a stick.

And then Mundic would get so lost in remembering, the old thing would happen again, and he couldn’t tell. He couldn’t tell if he was on a boat or if he was back at the camp and dreaming about a boat. He couldn’t tell if the men laughing were Japs or the Dutchmen in the sandalwood trade. And he’d have to knock his head and take out his passport and say to himself, “I am a free man. I am a free man,” before the flame blew up inside him and he lashed out.

Now he sat very still on the boat, waiting for the memories to pass. He didn’t write them down. He wrote only the facts. He put that the sea was blue and he could see a white bird. He would be okay, so long as he stayed in the present.