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of her arms and lit by the shine of her oven door. Nights of being squeezed around the hearth, scrapping and boasting in a parlour the size of a thimble.
    After leaving Mrs Hewtson he went round to his brothers, one cuffing his ears, another pulling his hair, a third booting him in the backside or, as he worded it, ‘giving him instruction on how every fat must sit on his own bottom.’
    It was his launching into the world, where he believed there was nothing to hurt him unless he procured it for himself—though he was a little pained by the ease and convenience with which his Pa and Mrs Hewtson now let him go. Just as he had been marked for a trader in his Pa’s eyes, now in this turnaround he was marked for the sea.
    â€˜When you get your ship,’ boomed his Pa, ‘then I believe there will be no stopping you.’ He turned to Mrs Hewtson, pinching her cheeks to cheer her up. ‘Why, my little butter-churn, our boy shall one day have his own ship to command—our boy shall be Nelson, Drake and Dampier, all three in one.’ When Covington’s Pa boomed praise he was heard for a mile around, and ’twas often said of him as a horse butcher, that he was a great hoarse as well.

 

It was the hottest time of the year, a month after Christmas at latitude thirty-five degrees south. All down the New South Wales coast columns of smoke rose from fires burning inland. The unchecked flames shot their smoke in the air forming anvil-heads of cinders. At night the fires burned low to the ground in a lurking, underhand fashion, bothered by sea-mists. Next day they flared tree-high again, greedy, fed by hot winds from the parched inland. The fires had the sniff of rage about them. The sea was the only barrier to their eating a man’s face off. Sparks flew out over surf as tongues of flame advanced onto headlands. Ash fell in the water and darkened the white beaches.
    At Tathra, in the far south of the colony, Mr Syms Covington embarked for the port of Sydney, as was his custom every six-month, on the schooner Skate from Twofold Bay. The voyage of two days was done in a haze of burning. Covington had a good stomach for the sea but was unable to sleep. He experienced cold sweats and a discomfort that pierced a sword to his belly. He stood on the deck of the Skate watching worms of fire in the hinterland and knowing there was something wrong with him that a swig of gripe water and a good hard belch would never fix. He crouched in a chair, pulling his knees tight against him, and then stood clinging to the rails. He lay down on thedeck and was no better. The captain prodded him with the toe of his shoe. His condition made him afraid. They sailed north, pitching and rolling. His battered, broken-nosed face turned square to the wind had the look of an old prize-fighter’s coming up to a bout.
    Entering the Heads of Port Jackson just after dawn, the captain found Covington utterly stricken. His eyes were open, watchful, but he uttered not a word. With sails slack and the schooner steady on the tide the sufferer was offloaded forthwith and rowed to a Dr MacCracken’s cottage in an arm of the harbour at Watson’s Bay.
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    As MacCracken first saw Covington he was the colour of a ripe plum, barrel-chested, massive in thigh and limb, and silent as the grave in his agony. Covington was then forty-two years of age. His impressive head rested on a folded coat. One fist was clenched, and when MacCracken prised it open he found a small cone-shaped shell with four valves at the top. It was a common barnacle and he threw it away.
    â€˜Get him to the house. And hurry.’
    Men carried Covington on planks to MacCracken’s library and he prepared his knives. He learned that Covington had been ill for three days before embarking on the schooner, information that aided in his diagnosis, making five days of shocking discomfort over all. ‘Get sheets,’ he yelled, ‘and spread them