Page 4 of Dauntless

After dinner, I did my final rounds before returning to the cottage.The TV reception was terrible again because of the storm rolling in, so I scanned the living room bookshelf instead.I found the familiar book and settled down on the couch to read.

It was a history of Dauntless Island.TheHMS Dauntless—one of many ships to carry the name—had been sent to the Pacific to expand the empire, or intimidate the French, or to claim new territories without asking the people who already lived in them, or whatever it was naval ships did back in 1832.Despite its original orders, at some point it had received new instructions—to attempt to locate any survivors from the wreck of theAntigone, a passenger ship that had been lost en route to New Zealand.The surviving passengers had in fact been located and were in the process of being transported to New South Wales when theDauntlessstruck rocks and foundered off the island that now bore its name.

The descendants of those soldiers, sailors, and civilians had become the residents of Dauntless Island, but those first few years had been bloody.George Hawthorne, the captain of theDauntless, had been overthrown by mutineers led by Josiah Nesmith and, legend had it, hanged on the very spot the lighthouse now stood.

George Hawthorne had been a dictatorial arsehole by all accounts, and by the time another naval ship stopped in a few years later, the islanders were settled very happily into their new home.Two hundred years after that, we were still proud of our mutiny, and of the way we’d thumbed our noses at authority ever since.Dauntless Island was technically a territory of Australia, but a fiercely independent spirit ran through the islanders.We were proud of who we were and where we’d come from, but I sometimes wondered if there was fear behind that pride.Fear that our way of life was dying out now that the world was smaller than ever, and more and more younger people might choose the mainland over the island.

If Dad hadn’t died, if I hadn’t had to come back for Amy, would I have come back at all?I didn’t like to admit it, but sometimes I thought that no, I wouldn’t have.On Dauntless, I was Red Joe Nesmith, but on the mainland I could have been anyone at all, even nobody special.

I flipped through the well-thumbed pages of the book, picking out details I remembered and relearning those I’d forgotten.Familiar names jumped off the page at me: Nesmith, Coldwell, Corporal, Finch, Barnes, Hooper, Harper, Williams, and Dinsmore.Those names were the backbone of the island.Other names weren’t: Hawthorne, who’d been hanged by the mutineers, but also Jessup and Foley and Pritchard, men who’d died of disease or in accidents before they’d had children to continue their lines.Their names were memorialised on a brass plaque in the small island church.

Outside, the storm picked up.The wind howled, and rain pelted against the roof.

Hiccup whined, standing up and staring at me intently.

“What?”I asked her.“You need to go out?In this weather?”

She whined again.

I sighed and set my book aside.I stood, and Hiccup darted into the kitchen and barked at the back door, her hackles up.

My skin prickled with unease.“What?What is it?”

I opened the door and peered out into the darkness.

A sudden crack of lightning illuminated the world, and my heart skipped a beat as I saw the figure looming towards me.And then I saw that red jacket.

“Eddie?”I called out.“Is that you?”

Eddie stumbled towards me.His jacket was unzipped, and he was soaked to the skin and holding one hand to his head.Lightning flashed again, and I saw the blood streaming down the side of his face.

“Jesus!Eddie!”I darted out into the rain to meet him.He must have left his tent for some reason and taken a fall.The steep hillside could be treacherous in the rain.

“Joe!”Eddie staggered towards me.“Help me!”

Then he pitched forward, and I barely caught him before he hit the ground.

Chapter 2

EDDIE

“Go to Dauntless Island,” I muttered to myself as the wind howled, the rain battered my tent, and I slowly died of hypothermia.The temperature was sitting at a level of cold that was frankly unacceptable this far away from Antarctica.“It’ll befun.”

I wished there was someone else I could blame for this, except the person I was mocking right now was Past Eddie.I liked that guy, mostly, but he’d been a short-sighted idiot when it came to Dauntless Island.Firstly, it wascold.Colder than I’d been expecting.When I’d tried on my jacket and beanie at the camping store a month ago, the zip had stuck and I’d almost died of heat exhaustion before I got them off.Oh, Past Eddie had thought airily,this jacket might betoowarm.

Fuck him.

Or fuck me.

Whichever.

That wasn’t the point.Neither was the fact that once again I’d jumped headfirst into something because I’d been carried away with enthusiasm and hadn’t actually planned it very well.If my parents found out about this, they’d mentally file it away with the summer I decided to play Rugby League (concussion and a broken ankle), moving in with my boyfriend three weeks after we started dating (suddenly having nowhere to live after walking in on him balls deep in a theology major), and deciding that I was going to become a historian (I was going to be eating Two Minute Noodles and buying clothes from my local op shop until I died).Still, my history of bad decision making wasn’t the point either.At least, not right now.

The point right now was that I was fucking freezing, and the wind had been slicing through this jacket like razorblades for most of the day.The night and rain made it even worse despite my stupidly expensive tent.Not even thoughts of a hot ginger lighthouse keeper could warm me up right now.

It had been aday.

Well, it had been two of them since I’d arrived on the island, but today had been worse than yesterday by a magnitude of about a billion, and it wasn’t just the weather.When I’d arrived yesterday afternoon, I’d figured I’d find somewhere nice to camp and then wander around for a bit, getting the feel of the place.I’d been poring over maps of Dauntless Island for years now—photographs too—but sometimes you have to be there.You have to stand in the places you’ve read about, to take in how the light falls and the air smells, to make it all fall into place.Theresa, my former history professor and current thesis advisor, liked to say that history was a lot like a jigsaw puzzle.Well, visiting a location was like getting a glimpse of the box and seeing the whole picture instead of just the bits.Usually that felt exciting, but when it came to Dauntless Island, the picture was kind of shit.

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