"Would you undertake a journey for me? To New York?"

Habit made me hide my eagerness. "As you wish," I said.

"You don't mind then?" he said. I could not tell what changed his eyes, whether it was the awful stink of arrack or one of those peculiar niceties which seem to trouble the noble mind. "I would have you find me a good edition of a French play. It seems you might know books."

"Tell me what you want and how much you wish to spend."

It was such a simple thing to say I could not understand why he was so long about it. On and on he went. "You will see your wife?" he asked finally.

I thought, Frig me. What's this? "With your permission."

"She is a good woman?" he asked.

I thought, Why is he looking like that? His eyes down his long thin nose, those two red marks on each pale cheek. We finished our drinks and set off back to our lodgings. I thought, I will kill any man who hurts her name or body.

ARRACK TASTES like mothballs, castor oil, coffin wood, eats your throat and burns your brain, but-speaking of the Indian variety, delivered to Port Jackson on the Amity from Bombay -it has a more-ish quality that cannot be denied. Indeed, when Colonel Paterson allowed the captain of the Amity to sell his stuff, the entire colony became insane and I was hidden in the ceiling by his wife.

Of the American variety I have no right to talk-from what living plant or creature it has been fermented and distilled I do not know-but I will relate its effect on Lord Comte Nez Pointu, who seemed sober as a Quaker when we returned to our lodgings from the pub.

After not too many minutes he was pacing back and forth above my head, and then he was up and down the stairs like old Mrs. Hobbs attending to her dying master.

So-clippedy-cloppedy. Pillow held across the Parrot head.

Then it began to rain and I was imagining that bleak Crooked Billet dock in tomorrow morning's darkness, and the passengers on the Phoenix huddled like wet poultry beneath the awning. The rain lashed my bedroom windows, pebbles by the fistful so it seemed. My bed had been made to fit a dwarf. Where was my beloved in the lonely foreign rain?

Comte Nez Pointu paced above my head. I could have killed the builder who had set the floor joists at four-foot centers. On the basis of no more than the creaks and groans I could have drawn you the whole, in plan and elevation, and was severely critical of all America for doing something I would never undertake in New South Wales.

The rain increased. I slept. I was woken as the front door slammed then blessed silence reigned.

I awoke to find a phantom with a lantern, dripping water on my face.

"Christ, what gives?"

He held up a new bottle of arrack, swinging it above me like a pendulum. This was an aspect of the noble Garmont I did not wish to see.

"What is the hour?"

"Not late," he said, but was made a liar by the church bell. I dressed and joined him in the kitchen where every chair was a punishment, the bones of my arse already saying sorry to the oak.

"Now John," says he.

John? I was never called John except by a magistrate.

He poured two spilling glasses, and drank without expression.

"I think John," said he, "you may understand the importance of your task tomorrow." His cheeks and lips were cherry red in the charcoal of the night. "You know who the book is for?"

For God's sake let me sleep.

I had seen the girl in public, drinking in every word he said. She was alive, alight, haughty to me but wet for him, one of those luminous maidens you see beyond the glass, bone china, do not touch. He did not need a book to court her. He could have thrown her on her back and done her in the rain.

I sipped in silence.

"How extremely interesting," he said, "to learn of your association with the Marquis de Tilbot. I have known him all my life, but I have no idea either of his character or general occupation. Perhaps you will one day tell me what type of man he is?"

I thought, Be very bloody careful, my Parrot.

I allowed a little arrack to wet my lips. It was foul, a dirty brew, and the rain pelted at the window and I could hear a slow drip in the hall. The roof was leaking but it was not mine. My own property I lost on account of Monsieur. He said he would buy me another house. He said this first in 1814, then again in 1830. A house costs as much as a cow, he told me. And what of a wife and child? Could he replace these too?

I have dreamed of murdering him, driving a screwdriver through his eye. Carrying my own coffin, always, in the end.

"One last drink," I said, and swallowed what remained. I stood.

"And you are content," the Comte Nez Pointu asked, "in your life?"

His brown eyes caught the light of his lantern, his chin dimpled, his brow furrowed. Did he really imagine I would trust him with my heart?

"Good night, sir. Thank you for the drink."

Five hours later I boarded the Phoenix in the dark. By then the wind had fallen and the dark houses along the Delaware were all crisp and straight and new against the fresh-washed sky. Who would guess their groans and cries?

The main deck of the Phoenix was today enclosed on all sides, stacked with casks and sacks like a Shanghai godown. I ascended to the hurricane deck. Up here you could see the engine churning, the connecting rod, caged in a strong and lofty frame, thrusting and turning like a bull. Here I came across two young fellows, no more than twenty, both dressed to the nines in waistcoats and tall top hats, busy with the task of strangling pigeons which they removed one by one from a wire cage before adding a new limp body to the pile between them on the deck. The other passengers being congregated below, the boys were undisturbed in their grim task.

I stood awhile and watched them and remembered the Jew aboard the Havre. I thought, I must get money.

The boys were busy but careful with their work, yet as their quick glances soon made clear, they wished to explain themselves. Clearly, I thought, they are on their way to market. They were both tall and lanky, fair-haired, red-cheeked, with low foreheads and high noses. In spite of which you might also call them handsome. They had been Dutch or German once, but now they were Americans.

"Off to Franklin Street?" I asked.

"Tell him," said one.

"You tell him," said the other.

They were on their way to the state of Georgia where they had bought two lots of land, which had recently been the territory of Creek Indians. Thanks to President Jackson these were now offered to settlers in a lottery. Or was it thanks to Jefferson the Creeks would leave the land? In any case-not being natives of Georgia they could not enter the lottery but they had got two lots from an agent, one of forty acres in Cass County which was said to be pretty rich in gold, and cost twenty dollars, and the other lot in Paulding County was two hundred acres, and they had a picture of a house they would build upon it and plenty of money to buy slaves and stock.

The taller one was named Dirk. He said he would have six children. He said there was no better place on earth than the you-knighted states, and he knew that because his ancestors had been poor men until now.

This did nothing to explain the pigeons, whose warm carcasses continued to pile up in the salty air, their poor black eyes containing no hope of the hereafter. I asked what they were up to with the birds.

Dirk said they had made a killing.

If he meant to make a joke, his face did not show it. He explained they had made damn near one thousand dollars and asked me to guess how they had done it.

I looked at their light bright eyes, their wet lower lips, their long raw hands, and could not imagine how, not for the life of me.