8

‘Not long sick,’ Louis called in Badtjala. ‘Better soon.’

Dorondera held her stomach and did not try to hide her discomfort. Hilda smiled reassuringly before looking again at her father, who appeared almost as unfamiliar as the crew in his buttoned shirt and trousers. On the island he had done away with a shirt, except when there were visitors: other scientists, or government officials, or the missionaries who often arrived two by two like the animals of the Ark. Then he would even don his jacket – his cloak of civilisation, Christel had jokingly called it – and take a comb to his hair. At night, the clothes would all come off again and Hilda remembered the times she saw, through the slatted wall, both of her parents naked. She supposed they waited until they thought she was asleep to perform their secret dance, the stories of which she was left to piece together from the rhythmic shadows their bodies made, clearest when the moon was full and bright. Did all couples find so much enjoyment in one another? Her mother had died before she could ask her. Dorondera had shared with Hilda what she knew, but Hilda doubted her accounts, at least as they may have related to her own parents or would relate one day to her.

The wind blew hard, the ship groaned and, as much as Hilda tried to distract Dorondera, it was clear the young Badtjala woman was sensitive to seasickness. Even in the gale, the seas here were not large, and the vessel was advancing cautiously as it navigated its way through the northern part of the strait. Hilda worried how Dorondera would fare once they were in the open ocean.

‘Papa?’

He lowered his telescope and winked, asking her to trust him.

Hilda faced their friends: Jurano, his wide jaw clenched as he comforted his niece; Bonny, his brow still creased in a determined and proud frown; and Dorondera, any trace of her earlier excitement and modest poise gone. Hilda hoped her father knew what he was doing.

Dorondera moaned. She held her mouth as she retched, vomiting over the ship’s side and staring back at Hilda for an explanation.

‘It’s sea sickness,’ Hilda said, cobbling together the two normally unrelated Badtjala words. She rippled her hand up and down to indicate waves. ‘Don’t worry. It won’t last.’ She again tried to smile.

But Dorondera was far from convinced, and Hilda caught in her expression a look of suspicion that she had been lied to. Dorondera crouched and vomited again, this time straight onto the deck, the remnants of a breakfast of damper and tea. She held herself, her eyes shut and her head tucked between her knees, blocking the roar of the ocean. Hilda lifted her own skirts as she crouched beside her best friend. She rested her hand lightly across Dorondera’s back, curved forwards with another spasm.

‘Hilda is right. The sickness finish soon,’ Louis said again in Badtjala. He lowered the telescope he had been using to look out for sandbars and reefs, and set his jaw, giving the appearance of confidence.

But what if it didn’t pass? A pregnant woman who had been sick on the journey to Australia had died from dehydration, Hilda remembered. Her own stomach turned at the smell of the vomit, but the overriding sensation was a tight ache in her chest. It had been the same when her mother was ill: a mixture of panic, impending grief and helplessness. Hilda’s heart began to race.

‘It’s not too late, Papa,’ she suddenly announced. ‘We could still take them back. I’m worried it won’t suit them, this voyage. A woman died on our passage here. Remember?’ Hilda was conscious of several crew watching.

Louis took her by the arm and brought her to standing with a firmness that shocked her; his fingers pressed deeply into her flesh. Hilda saw in his eyes that he was as nervous as she, but it was no excuse. She looked at his hand on her arm and, as if aware of his mistake, her father tried to draw her into an embrace, but she resisted, insistent that he answer her.

‘You must stay strong, Hilda,’ he whispered. ‘This journey … it’s for their own good.’ He looked at their Aboriginal companions. ‘You will see.’

He released her arm and glanced in the captain’s direction. How quickly he was again concerned for his reputation, Hilda thought, dismayed and disappointed. This was her father, the man she trusted over everyone else, the man who was supposed to care about not just her welfare but that of their friends, yet he did little to comfort Dorondera and worried only that she, Hilda, had embarrassed him. She searched his face as he spoke again.

‘Sometimes we must endure discomfort, hardship even, to achieve great –’

A sudden commotion and a flash of movement drew Hilda’s attention. A cry, then a distant splash. To Hilda’s horror, Dorondera was overboard.

‘Nein!’ Hilda screamed. ‘Papa!’

‘Dorondera!’ Jurano called. He leaned over the rails, grasping the air, then pointed at his niece’s shawl, a frail skin on the water’s surface.

Hilda’s father raised his telescope. ‘Kapitän!’ he shouted, less composed. ‘The girl is overboard!’

Dorondera surfaced, gasping for air beside the mammoth vessel. Hilda feared her friend would be sucked underneath, but Dorondera lunged strongly away and, quickly removing the long and cumbersome dress, swam hard for shore.

‘Do something, Papa!’ Hilda yelled without taking her eyes from Dorondera.

Her attention was drawn to movement beside her on the rail. Bare feet. Black.

‘Nein!’ Hilda screamed again, reaching for Bonny’s right leg as he launched himself clear of the ship. She grasped his ankle but it was torn from her grip.

Taking hold of her father’s telescope and looking through it, she saw Bonny swimming in Dorondera’s direction, the waves propelling them as they swam shoreward, Bonny soon just a body-length from Dorondera. When their limbs broke the water’s surface they shone like shipwrecked lengths of varnished wood.

‘Stop!’ Jurano shouted to the pair in Badtjala, and Louis pulled him forcefully back as if fearing he might also jump.

Louis reclaimed the telescope as the ship surged onwards. Bonny and Dorondera were fading specks, rising and falling from the crest of waves. Louis faced the captain, arms in the air. He called to the first mate.

‘Slow the vessel!’

Hilda breathed quickly into her cupped hands. Men around her were shouting. The square sails had not yet been hoisted, the blue-eyed sailor was saying, so perhaps it was possible.

‘Let them go, Papa,’ Hilda said, finally. They were both good swimmers and capable of swimming the few miles to shore. ‘We made a mistake.’ There was more shouting, and Hilda turned to see Johann arguing with the captain.

She set her hands atop her head as she looked back in the direction of Dorondera and Bonny. Hilda remembered Bonny rescuing her when she misread the surf on the eastern side of the island and was dragged out to sea.

‘Or is he trying to save Dorondera, Jurano? What should we do? Rescue them? What do they want?’ Hilda appealed in Badtjala, her arms out beside her.

Jurano was looking to the east. To Beeral.

‘They’ll drown if we leave them,’ Louis said emphatically. ‘Or be taken.’

He looked through the telescope to the surrounding sea and translated the last three words into Badtjala, adding the local word for sharks. Jurano nodded gravely.

‘Kapitän!’ Louis shouted again, waving the telescope to get the man’s attention. The ship’s course had neither altered nor slowed.

The captain looked at his fob watch and the sky.

‘But, Papa …’ Hilda did not persist, the fear of sharks, the subject of multiple Badtjala legends, now monstrous in her mind.

Louis looked about him for an ally. Hilda supposed the scientists her father had mentioned were still sheltering below decks, out of the gale.

The captain barked the command to slow the ship and launch the longboat, and the crew relayed the order, sending thick hemp lines flying. Johann had already begun untying the boat with Jurano’s help.

Hilda saw Jurano looking up at a bird, a seagull. In Badtjala, he asked it to pass a message to Beeral that Bonangera and Dorondera needed his help.