Hazel discovered that Alice had liked to stand on deck and watch the moon rise above the deep. She had felt delight, after many days at sea, when the vessel had come level with the island of Madeira and she had seen cattle walking about on the hillside, like little lead toys on baize. The shadows of the clouds had scudded over the grass, darkening it in patches. The fourth mate had taken a particular shine to George and entertained him with tricks: making a coin disappear from behind the boy’s ear; magicking a peppermint from thin air. They had been accompanied for a time by porpoises, threading in and out of the swell like great needles through pleats of velvet; the child had almost wriggled out from his mother’s grasp, so eager had he been to watch them. Sailing through the tropics, the Captain had told her to ‘listen for the hissing sound when the sun sinks into the water, for it will appear so fiery’. Three weeks afterwards, having been, as she put it, ‘on the brink of roasting alive’, she was astonished one morning to see ‘coming down thick and fast snowflakes, something I did not imagine I should ever see on this side of the world’. A huge storm had frightened even the strongest among the passengers and left the iron door down to the cabins and sleeping decks ‘bent and broken like a piece of tin’. On Sundays they had sung hymns on deck: after the great storm they gathered to sing ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save’ and many had had tears of gratitude rolling down their cheeks, that Providence had spared them their lives.

At last, after fifty-two days at sea, one of the mates had come and told Alice he could smell green leaves. All the ladies had disappeared below as soon as the rumour spread, to dress in their best clothes and neaten their hair, for arrival. Children who had assumed the appearance of ragamuffins these past weeks had their faces rubbed with their mamas’ moistened linen handkerchiefs. Soon a throng gathered at the forerails ‘as lively as crickets’, craning for the first sight of the new land. When a pilot from Sandridge Pier came to guide them into port, he was cheered on board. An atmosphere of gaiety and expectation spread through the steamer, as infectious as laughter.