Pvt. Henry Coulson survived Rorke's Drift on the night of 22 January 1879. One hundred and fifty men held the mission station against four thousand. He killed seventeen, by his own count. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded the next morning.

He received a small pension. He received a great quiet that would not leave his head.

Eight years he tried Birmingham. He tried to be a porter, a baker, a husband. The assegais kept coming in his sleep. The Hospital Block kept burning. His wife went in 1885. His employer, the same year.

By autumn 1886 he was sleeping in a Liverpool doss-house and looking for any berth that would take him far enough from England that the dreams might lose his address.

A man at the Adelphi spoke of the British North Borneo Company. They wanted Europeans with discipline and a strong stomach. Overseers, not labourers — the crews were Chinese coolies on contract, with conscripted local men beside them. The European carried the rifle.

Liverpool to Singapore by P&O. Singapore to Sandakan in a Company steamer. Six weeks, weather holding.

The land needed clearing. There were animals in the trees, the man said, who did not understand they were no longer the proprietors. The work was steady. The pay was good. The forest, he was told, was nothing like Africa.

British North Borneo. Summer 1887.

He has been issued a Martini-Henry, two boxes of cartridges, and a list of names the foreman calls specimens. The names are not English. He does not know who gave them names. He does not know who is meant to remember them.

The forest is dipterocarp, four canopies deep. Hornbills calling from a height he cannot see. Leeches in the boot-tops. The peat smokes when the crews burn it. It is wetter than Africa. It is greener. Otherwise, he finds, it is exactly the same.

The trees begin to move.