An historic novel threaded with love, truth and innocence lost. An adventure story depicting the fate of women on the tall ships of the 19th Century. Sailing from Queensland to Melanesia in 1903, 17 year-old Hilda Kofke accompanies her beloved father, Gustave, a government officer on his final labour recruiting voyage through the South Seas. Far from the pacifist and champion of Pacific islanders' rights she believed him to be, Hilda learns that her father was once 'the butcher of New Guinea' who believed in the perfect logic of the pre-emptive strike.