The girls’ voices were jubilant when we left Port Dougal Pier in Gadlehead Harbour, accompanied by a brass band on the jetty. But as the SS St Rognvald steamed further from shore, the choir became thin and raggedy. And by the time the shadow of Gadlehead had dissolved into horizon, only one person was left on their feet. Me.

Too shy, I was, to join in the singing. But it’s a funny thing, I became surer of myself the further to sea we got, because I discovered that I am a good sailor. Imagine that, lambsie! The red-haired quinie forbidden even to come within sight of the Lily Maud, to taint the fishermen on their way to the flighty sea, and here I was, standing on deck, while most of the others were lying wherever they could find space, groaning, crying, no mind to the Arctic winds whipping them into a freeze.

Some looked like a strange breed of animal, with a brown paper feeder over their faces. When we had our names checked off a list in Gadlehead, we’d each been given a paper bag, the kind that I’d seen the market sellers by the pier filling with hot, oily chestnuts and selling for a penny ha’penny. What was it for? I slit mine apart with my thumb and felt about inside but it was empty and flat as a griddle cake. I folded the edges into a diamond and tried it on my head, nervous but clowning. Kitta laughed, snorting like a horse, and some of the Highland girls giggled softly behind their long fingers. They glanced at each other but they didn’t smile at me, no. I shrank a little and quickly pulled the bag off. Foolish quinie, said a voice in my head.

Clementina Slater set me straight. It’s for pukin’, quinie. For the great return. Just ye wait till we leave the coast behind, then ye’ll know what the sea thinks of 300 lassies runnin’ away to the fish. And when we get to the Roost, ye’ll dip your head an’ pray for sea monsters, hurricanes, the very Witch herself to take your miserable wee body to the bottom, just to make it stop.

Well.