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over him. Only a gentle sway was required and it would be as if he were still aboard the Elfgin , soothed by the lap of water on her hull, buoyed by each passing day as he worked for his passage to the new country.
    A little before dawn, Hamish rubbed crusted sleep from his eyes and stoked up the fire as a streak of muted pink smudged the horizon. From a hessian bag he pulled free a lump of meat and, with a curved blade, cut it into two large pieces. The billy can, already wedged above the fire, sizzled steadily, small bubbles forming and reforming on the surface of the water. He threw together flour and water and knocked it into a rough loaf, which he then sat in the coals.
    Six months they had been on the fields. The winter, a harsh one even by Scottish standards, took many lives. Sickness came as fast and unbidden as a rich deposit and disappeared just as unexpectedly. Charlie remained touched by one such malady. Trust the lad, Hamish thought gloomily, to have the sickly disposition of a girl. As if aware of his thoughts, his younger brother struggled through the flap of the tent. Gaunt and yellow-eyed, he stooped to splash dawn-chilled water on his face from a cast-iron bucket.
    â€˜I’ve been thinking, lad, we’ll leave in two months.’ Hamish passed his brother a mug of tea, before tossing a lump of lard into a cast-iron fry pan on the fire and then the two pieces of meat. He prodded fiercely at the lumps of sizzling, salted mutton. Meat for breakfast was an indulgence. This lot, brokered from a new arrival in exchange for a small pick, was the last of it and was near past eating.
    Burning his tongue on the boiling liquid, Charlie squatted heavily on an upturned cooking pot. ‘And why are ye up and changing our plans? Always it’s been a year.’
    Hamish hunched his shoulders, turning the coal-covered bread with his knife. He was damn hungry this morning, his ribs were sticking to his noisy gut and convoluted talk was not something he needed.
    Charlie let out a cough, a long, racking procedure that shook the length of his sinewy body. When the convulsion relented he sent a green globule of spittle into the dirt behind him. ‘It’s me? But winter’s near over, and Lee will be back today with more herbs.’
    â€˜Aye, he will be,’ Hamish agreed. If one person could be relied upon it was Lee. Having finally relented to the Chinaman’s endless pestering to help the two brothers with their washing, cooking and other chores, Hamish now gave Lee his protection. In return he cared and cooked for them, while the herbs he boiled made a bitter drink that eased the lad’s cough. Lee was bound to a headman in Southern China and had travelled from some obscure village in a cargo hold along with seven hundred countrymen, to work on the fields to repay debts in his homeland. Perhaps that was the reason Hamish felt so protective of the Chinaman. He had made that journey alone.
    Spring was with them now, yet Hamish doubted the warming of the land would ease his brother’s ailments or cure him of his whining. It was definitely near their time to be bidding the goldfields goodbye. Besides, the thought of panning and digging and fighting and near starving had lost its appeal to him.
    â€˜So we’ll stay?’
    â€˜You’ve been bickering since the first month, Charlie. First it was the seasickness, then Melbourne you didn’t take to. You pushed hard to get here and then complain is all you’ve done. Now I say we are to leave and you disagree. You should not have come.’
    â€˜You should not have left, for what was I to do?’ He screwed his face tightly.
    Always their arguments returned in a circle to the beginning of their adventure. ‘Made your own life,’ Hamish said tightly as fat spurted out from the pan to burn the back of his hand.
    â€˜Who with? They were all dead, Hamish,’ Charlie stated sadly. ‘Five piles of stone on the edge of