The Lieutenant

Silk, Willstead, Rooke, and Warungin sit together by the fire quietly while the 30 privates throw a party around a bonfire across the clearing. Rooke watches Silk fish in his pack for his journal and tries to help, but accidentally grabs the bottom of the pack instead of the flap. The pack dumps over and spills out a hatchet and several canvas bags. Rooke jokingly asks Silk if he was planning to cut firewood. Silk isn't amused and grabs for the hatchet and bags. Rooke looks to Willstead, who seems to know something about the hatchet.

Rooke asks Silk if Surgeon Weymark asked him to bring back trophies to paint, or if he's planning on illustrating his narrative. Willstead glances at Warungin and excitedly says that Rooke isn't far off from the truth, but Silk shushes him. As Rooke looks at Silk's dark face, he realizes something sinister is happening. He asks Silk for a private word, and Silk follows Rooke into the darkness.

Rooke asks for an explanation of the hatchet and bags. Silk explains that if capturing the natives proved impossible, the governor ordered him to kill six natives and bring the heads back to the settlement. He says that the governor thinks that they must act harshly in this one instance so they won't have to again. When Rooke asks why Silk didn't share this with him, Silk insists that they were never going to actually capture anyone, and nobody will be killed.

Rooke looks back to Willstead and Warungin at the fire, trying to talk about something. He wonders how you cut off a man's head and thinks through the process in gruesome detail. He thinks that someone would have to carry the bag back to the settlement and fend off flies the entire way. Finally, Rooke wonders if he could carry a bag and not think about the fact that a face and a soul were inside it. Rooke gasps, and Warungin looks at him with concern. Rooke stumbles into the bushes and vomits.

When Rooke is finished vomiting, he walks down to the beach and watches the waves. Rooke thinks that he never realized that the way people divide up the oceans is arbitrary, since all the oceans are the same body of water. Rooke undresses and wades into the water, feeling as though he can smell his own disgust. He floats for a while and then scrubs himself in the shallows. When he's clean, he walks up onto the beach and sits on the cool sand.

Rooke looks at the sky and sees the constellation Sirius. He thinks that the natives probably have their own name for it, even though the stars themselves are the same. He thinks that the stars are indifferent to his troubles. As Rooke thinks, he realizes that although he accused the governor and Silk of using faulty logic in coming up with this punitive expedition, he himself had used poor logic when he decided that there was no harm in joining the expedition if it was guaranteed to fail. Rooke realizes that if an action is wrong, it doesn't matter whether it succeeds or fails. Being part of it makes a person wrong and guilty, even if that person doesn't actively promote the wrongness.

Rooke thinks that the man he was when he first arrived on the shore in New South Wales two years ago is gone now. He can no longer think of the natives as strangers. He thinks of Tagaran asleep by a fire somewhere, and thinks that he doesn't know how to describe how he feels for her. He realizes that she showed him who he could be. That man is more than just a lieutenant in the marines. That man knows how to listen and feel, and has nothing to do with muskets and hatchets. Rooke realizes that by remaining with the expedition, he is rejecting the man he has become. 

Rooke remembers the man who hung in Antigua, and the two others who were humiliated and turned out. As Rooke thinks, he realizes that what he's feeling isn't rational—it's a reflex. He says out loud that he cannot be part of this, and decides that he's ready to take this path.

When Rooke returns to the campsite, he rolls himself into his blanket like the others. He waits until he hears Silk's breathing even out and Willstead start snoring, and then gathers his pack. He starts walking towards Sydney. He reaches the settlement at dawn and sees Gilbert and Major Wyatt walking. When they notice Rooke, they run to him and ask about the rest of the party's wellbeing.

Rooke spent the night rehearsing what he would say to the governor, but now all he can think of is conjugating verbs. The governor asks impatiently if the party captured or killed any natives, and Rooke explains that the natives eluded them. He continues that it was a failure, and remembers how Warungin sat relaxed by the fire while Silk smiled about the hatchet. Rooke says that the mission didn't go well, and the plan was evil. He continues that he's sorry he complied with the order, and he won't again obey orders like that. The governor is astonished, but Rooke feels only relief.

Wyatt snaps at Rooke to stop talking like that. Rooke realizes that Wyatt is trying to push Rooke back into line to avoid catastrophe, but Rooke only says again that the orders were evil. The governor seems not to hear and asks how many natives the party killed. This makes Rooke suddenly angry. He snaps that no natives died, but that's beside the point: the intention was evil. He says that God will only see the evil, though he feels that mentioning God is a cheap trick.

The governor reprimands Rooke and asks him to come see him at noon. He and Major Wyatt stride away. Rooke thinks that he'll go to his hut, brew tea, and wait for the ships to arrive from England. He could have weeks or months until the machine of the British military sweeps him away, tries him, and sentences him to a death of some sort. As he walks, the sky gets lighter. Rooke can't see the stars, but he thinks about the fact that they're still there, and that the earth will keep turning forever.