“I need to eat,” I said, picking up a stone and tapping it against a ripe fruit, avoiding the irritating hairs. Farthing huffed out a noisy breath, but with the help of her tough claws I ate until I was full. My shoulder was throbbing. I peered behind me and saw my shirt was ripped. There was a gash where the sea lion had struck me, and it was oozing blood that had soaked into my already filthy shirt. Farthing raised her snout and sniffed. Then she ran on.

I blew out a long breath. I couldn’t follow her forever; the red sun was nearly touching the horizon. I needed to get back to the tunnel and shelter until sunrise.

I imagined Mr. Darwin in his cramped cabin on the Beagle, table strewn with papers, eyes shadowed with worry. Captain Fitzroy wouldn’t want a further delay to the voyage; he didn’t think much of the Galapagos and had said he was keen to leave. Tomorrow, I would test the tiny boat.

Any thoughts about navigating? The lizard can’t help you there.

I didn’t reply to that but realized I was blindly following the little lizard yet again.

“Where are you going, Farthing?” I said. She was now heading alongside the shoreline. The ground was flattened and dotted with pale pinkish blotches—hundreds, maybe thousands of them—reaching way into the distance. What were they?

Farthing stopped at the edge of this flatter area and I slipped, smacking down on the seat of my pants into something thick, cool, and slimy.

I sat up straight, afraid of sinking sand or a swamp, and released a squeak of shock. A huge pink bird looked down its crooked black beak at me, like a rose-colored swan whose legs had grown too long. It wasn’t scared of me and stopped to take a delicate sip of water from a pool in the mud before stalking off on its spindly legs, like a lady holding her skirts out of the town filth. And now I saw that the blotches were a giant flock of these birds. I wondered if they were edible. My stomach would love some meat; those prickly pears didn’t satisfy for long. The bird cocked its head as if it had read my mind.

“No fear, Mr. Pink. The knife is back at the tunnel, and I think you’d be safe even if I had it,” I said. We were on a kind of floodplain or salt marsh, stretching out to the sea at a distance. Sally Lightfoot crabs skittered across the surface of the black mud. It reminded me of when Da took me to the Thames Flats to see if the sea air might help his cough. We’d collected cockles on a hot afternoon, cooked them in a pot over a driftwood fire, and eaten them hot and fresh, spicy with vinegar.

I sighed at the memory. Imagine what Da would have made of this place. He’d toured with a band, before I came along, and always said when I was old enough, we’d travel together.