Balfour gazed at his friend across the table, only half-listening as the statesman, talking animatedly, made his case in defence of the ship-of-the-line—holding up his two palms as main and mizzen, and making use of the salt cellar as the fore. It was an argument that Balfour would ordinarily find engrossing, but the expression on the shipping agent’s face was anxious and detached. He was tapping the base of his glass against the table, and shifting in his seat, and, every few minutes, reaching up to pull hard on his nose. For he knew that with all this talk of ships, their conversation would turn, before long, to the subject of the Virtue, and to the cargo that she had been charged to carry to the Coast.

The crate containing Alistair Lauderback’s trunk had arrived in Hokitika on the morning of the 12th of January, two days before Lauderback himself. Balfour saw that the shipment was cleared, and gave instructions for the crate to be transferred from the quay into his warehouse. To the best of his knowledge, these instructions were obeyed. But by an unhappy twist of fate (so much unhappier, that Lauderback stood so high in Balfour’s esteem), the shipping crate then vanished altogether.

Balfour, upon discovering the crate was missing, was horrified. He applied himself to the project of its recovery—walking up and down the quay, inquiring at every door, and registering queries with every stevedore, porter, mariner, and customs officer—but his effort was to no avail. The crate was gone.

Lauderback had not yet spent two nights together in the suite of rooms on the upper floor of the Palace Hotel. He had spent the past fortnight making his introductions at camps and settlements up and down the Coast, a preliminary tour of duty from which he had only been released that very morning. Thus preoccupied, and believing the Virtue to be still in transit from Dunedin, he had not yet asked after his shipment—but Balfour knew that the question was coming, and once it did, he would have to tell the other man the truth. He swallowed a mouthful of wine.

On the table between them lay the remains of their ‘elevenses’, a term Lauderback used to refer to any meal or dish taken at an irregular hour, whether morning or night. He had eaten his fill, and had pressed Balfour to do likewise, but the shipping agent had repeatedly declined the invitation—he was not hungry, most especially for pickled onions and lamb’s fry, two dishes whose smell never failed to curl his tongue. As a compromise to his host, out of whose pocket he was dining, he had drunk an entire pitcher of wine, and a mug of beer besides—Dutch courage, he might have called it, but the spirits had done little to conquer his trepidation, and now he was feeling very sick.

‘Just one more piece of liver,’ said Lauderback.

‘Excellent stuff,’ Balfour mumbled. ‘Excellent—but I’m quite satisfied—my constitution—quite satisfied, thank you.’

‘It’s Canterbury lamb,’ said Lauderback.

‘Canterbury—yes—very fine.’

‘Caviar of the highlands, Tom.’

‘Quite satisfied, thank you.’

Lauderback looked down at the liver a moment. ‘I might have driven a flock myself,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Up and over the pass. Five pounds a head, ten pounds a head—why, I’d have made a fortune, selling up. You might have told me that every piece of meat in this town is salt or smoked: I’d have brought a month of dinners with me. With a pair of dogs I might have done it very easily.’

‘Nothing easy about it,’ said Balfour.

‘Made myself a killing,’ said Lauderback.

‘Saving every sheep that breaks its neck in the rapids,’ said Balfour, ‘and every one that’s lost, and every one that won’t be driven. And all the miserable hours you’d spend counting them—rounding them up—chasing them down. I wouldn’t fancy it.’

‘No profit without risk,’ returned the politician, ‘and the journey was miserable enough; I might at least have made some money at the end of it. Heaven knows it might have improved my welcome.’

‘Cows, perhaps,’ said Balfour. ‘A herd of cows behaves itself.’

‘Still going begging,’ said Lauderback, pushing the plate of liver towards Balfour.

‘Couldn’t do it,’ said Balfour. ‘Couldn’t possibly.’

‘You take the rest of it then, Jock, old man,’ said Lauderback, turning to his aide. (He addressed his two attendants by their Christian names, for the reason that they shared the surname Smith. There was an amusing asymmetry to their Christian names: one was Jock, the other, Augustus.) ‘Stop your mouth with an onion, and we shall not have to hear any more tripe about your blessed brigantines—eh, Tom? Stop his mouth?’

And, smiling, he bent his head back towards Balfour.

Balfour pulled again at his nose. This was very like Lauderback, he thought; he encouraged agreement on the most trivial of points; he angled for consensus when a consensus was not due—and before one knew it, one was on his side, and campaigning.

‘Yes—an onion,’ he said, and then, to get the conversation away from ships, ‘Mention in the Times yesterday about your girl in the road.’

‘Hardly my girl!’ Lauderback said. ‘And it was hardly a mention, for that matter.’

‘The author had a fair bit of nerve,’ Balfour went on. ‘Making out as if all the town deserved a reprimand on the girl’s account—as if every fellow was at fault.’

‘Who’s to credit his opinion?’ Lauderback waved his hand dismissively. ‘A two-bit clerk from the petty courts, airing his peeves!’

(The clerk to whom Lauderback so ungenerously alluded was of course Aubert Gascoigne, whose short sermon in the West Coast Times would also capture Walter Moody’s attention, some ten hours later.)

Balfour shook his head. ‘Making out as if it was our error—collectively. As if we all should have known better.’

‘A two-bit clerk,’ Lauderback said again. ‘Spends his days writing cheques in another man’s name. Full of opinions that no one wants to hear.’

‘All the same—’

‘All the same, nothing. It was a trifling mention, and a poor argument; there’s no need to dwell on it.’ Lauderback rapped his knuckles on the table, as a judge raps his gavel to show that his patience has been spent; Balfour, desperate to prevent a revival of their previous topic of conversation, spoke again before the politician had a chance. He said, ‘But have you seen her?’

Lauderback frowned. ‘Who—the girl in the road? The whore? No: not since that evening. Though I did hear that she revived. You think I ought to have paid a call upon her. That’s why you asked.’

‘No, no,’ said Balfour.

‘A man of my station cannot afford—’

‘Oh, no; you can’t afford—of course—’

‘Which brings us back to the sermon, I suppose,’ Lauderback said, in a newly reflective tone. ‘That was the clerk’s precise point. Until certain measures are in place—almshouses and so forth, convents—then who’s accountable in a situation like that? Who’s responsible for a girl like her—someone who has no one—in a place like this?’

This was intended as a rhetorical question, but Balfour, to keep the conversation moving, answered it. ‘No one’s accountable,’ he said.

‘No one!’ Lauderback looked surprised. ‘Where’s the Christian spirit in you?’

‘Anna tried to take her life—to end her life, you know! No one’s accountable for that except herself.’

‘You call her Anna!’ Lauderback said reprovingly. ‘You are on first-name terms with the girl; I’d say you have a share of responsibility in caring for her!’

‘First-name terms didn’t light her pipe.’

‘You would shut your door to her—because she is an inebriate?’

‘I’m not shutting any doors. If I’d found her in the thoroughfare I’d have done just as you did. Exactly as you did.’

‘Saved her life?’

‘Turned her in!’

Lauderback waved this correction aside. ‘But then what?’ he said. ‘A night in the gaol-house—and then what? Who’s there to protect her, when she lights her pipe all over again?’