‘Anihinihi ke ola.

       (Life is in a precarious position.)

      —Ancient Hawaiian saying

      Contents

      Epigraph

      Prologue

      1791

      August 21

      Present Day

      August 22

      August 23

      August 24

      September 3

      September 4

      September 5

      September 7

      September 10

      September 15

      September 16

      September 17

      September 18

      Acknowledgments

      About the Author

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      Prologue

      When the American Association for the Advancement of Science met in Anaheim, California in 1999 to discuss an urgent report on the impact of alien species, the scientists gathered weren’t discussing species from another planet–their report referred to species imported to the United States from other parts of this planet.

      Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel and graduate students Lori Lach, Doug Morrison, and Rodolfo Zuniga estimated the cost to the United States economy from alien species at approximately $123 billion annually–roughly the gross national product of Thailand.

      By 2005, a report called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment revealed that biological invasions had reached epidemic proportions. At least 170 alien species inhabited the Great Lakes, a single species of American jellyfish had wiped out twenty-six species of commercial fish in the Black Sea, and the Baltic Sea now hosted over a hundred alien invaders.

      It is on islands, in particular, that these battles of attrition, which usually take place outside the human timescale, come into sharpest focus. On islands, the battles are swift, and the annihilations total and dominant species with no competition often proliferate to create multiple new species. Of the two thousand species of fruit fly around the world, about a quarter of them are found on the Hawaiian Islands.

      In 1826, the H.M.S. Wellington accidentally introduced mosquitoes to the island of Maui. The mosquitoes carried avian malaria. Entire populations of native birds, which had no immunity to the disease, were wiped out or driven to higher altitudes. Feral pigs exacerbated the problem by rooting around the forest undergrowth and creating breeding pools of standing water for the mosquitoes. As a result, twenty-nine of the island’s sixty-eight native bird species have vanished forever.

      As David Pimentel told the scientists attending the AAAS convention after presenting his findings, ‘it doesn’t take many trouble-makers to cause tremendous damage’.

      No one could have imagined that island species could turn the tables on mainland ecologies. No one had even heard of Henders Island.

      Elinor Duckworth Ph.D., Foreword,

       Almost Destiny (excerpted with permission)

      August 21

      5:27 P.M.

      ‘Captain, Mister Grafton is attempting to put a man ashore, sir.’

      ‘Which man, Mister Eaton?’

      Three hundred yards off the island’s sheer wall, H.M.S. Retribution rolled on a ten-foot swell setting away from the shore. The corvette was hove to, her gray sails billowing in opposite directions to hold her position on the sea as the sailing master kept an eye on a growing bank of cloud to the north.

      Watching from the decks in silence, some of the men were praying as a boat approached the cliff. Lit pale orange by the setting sun, the palisade was bisected by a blue-shadowed crevasse that streaked seven hundred feet up its face.

      The Retribution was a captured French ship previously called the Atrios. For the past ten months, her crew had been relentlessly hunting H.M.S. Bounty. While the British admiralty did not object to stealing ships from other navies, they had a long memory for any ship that had been stolen from theirs. It had been five years since the mutineers had absconded with the Bounty, and still the hunt continued.

      Lieutenant Eaton steadied the captain’s telescope and twisted the brass drawtube to focus the image: nine men were positioning the rowboat under the crack in the cliff. Eaton noticed that the seaman reaching up toward the fissure wore a scarlet cap. ‘It looks like Frears, Captain,’ he reported.

      The dark crack started about fifteen feet above the bottom of the swell and zigzagged hundreds of feet across the face of jagged rock like a bolt of lightning. The British sailors had nearly circled the two-mile-wide island before finding this one chink in its armor.

      Though the captain insisted that they thoroughly investigate all islands for signs of the Bounty’s crew, a more pressing matter concerned the men of the Retribution now. After five weeks with no rain, they were praying for fresh water, not signs of mutineers. As they pretended to attend their duties, 317 men stole furtive, hopeful looks at the landing party.

      The boat rose and fell in the spray as the nine men staved off the cliff with oars. At the top of one swell the man wearing the red cap grabbed the bottom edge of the fissure: he dangled there as the boat receded.

      ‘He’s got a purchase, Captain!’

      A tentative cheer went up from the crew.

      Eaton saw the men in the boat hurling small barrels up to Frears. ‘Sir, the men are throwing him some barrecoes to fill!’

      ‘Providence has smiled on us, Captain,’ said Mr Dunn, the ruddy chaplain, who had taken passage aboard Retribution on his way to Australia. ‘We were surely meant to find this island! Else, why would the Lord have put it here, so far away from everything?’

      ‘Aye, Mister Dunn. Keep a close counsel with the Lord,’ replied the captain as he slitted his eyes and watched the boat. ‘How’s our man, Mister Eaton?’

      ‘He’s gone in.’ After an agonizing length of time, Eaton saw the scarlet-capped man finally emerge from the shadow. ‘Frears’s signaling…He’s found fresh water, Captain! He’s throwing down the barrecoe!’

      Eaton looked at the captain wearily, then smiled as a cheer broke over the decks.

      The captain cracked a smile. ‘Ready four landing boats for provisioning, Mister Eaton. Let’s rig a ladder and fill our barrels.’

      ‘It’s Providence, Captain,’ cried the chaplain over the answering cheer of the men. ‘’Tis the good Lord who led us here!’

      Eaton put the spyglass to his eye and saw Frears toss another small barrel from the fissure into the sea. The men in the longboat hauled it alongside.

      ‘He’s thrown down another!’ Eaton shouted.

      The men cheered again. They were now moving about and laughing as barrels were hauled up from the hold.

      ‘The Lord keeps us.’ The chaplain nodded on the ample cushion of fat under his chin.

      The captain smiled in the chaplain’s direction, knowing that he’d had the shock of his life these past months observing life aboard a working ship in the King’s navy.

      With a face as freckled as the Milky Way, Captain Ambrose Spencer Henders resembled a redheaded Nelson, the