I had looked hours earlier at the master’s chart. Each island bore its own curious shape: the only similarity was how jagged they were, none remotely circular. They grew and shrank back and added and lost their adornments as the sea rose and fell through the day. Goose was a long, tapering spiral like a whelk. Long Island reminded me of the sea dragon the doctor had shown me, but with tail and snout severed. An idle mind might spend hours making shapes out of their profiles, in much the same way one contemplated clouds.

The tussocks on Long were greened by a soak just near the seaward rocks, and as the dusk deepened Connolly took himself ashore in the jolly-boat with a cask to get water. He asked politely if I wished to come for the row, but I declined.

I had begun to think there were no people out here at all. None of the chaos and disorder we had been warned about: just rocks and grass, seals and birds and the moody sea that separated them. Maybe the Howrah had foundered through some careless error caused by sheer boredom. It would not have been the first time mariners had fallen victim to torpor.

After an hour or so Connolly came back and the master helped him winch the cask aboard.

The doctor glanced at them, preoccupied with some fixation of his, and made no movement to assist. Connolly was hauling line through a block to get the heavy cask up and onto the deck when he stopped suddenly and flicked the line through a cleat to hold it. He turned to look at the doctor and said a most unexpected thing.

‘Eh doctor, would it kill ye to dirty yer precious hands wi’ some work?’

There was a brief instant in which no one reacted, but I saw the doctor’s face flicker through shock and fury before it relaxed into a wide smile. The master told Connolly sharply to control his tongue, and Connolly settled for glaring at the doctor with unconcealed hatred. The spiteful moment took a long time to pass.

The night came, and took up its regular rhythm: the master on his lonely watch, the doctor in his cabin, Connolly sleeping before his shift on deck. The clock was divided by one fewer, of course, with the loss of Angus, and the master had asked me, finally, to cover some of the watches. It did not trouble me. Restless thoughts kept me awake at odd hours, and it was a relief to turn those hours to something useful.

The sea turned perfectly calm; I could hear fishes breaking the surface. Yes, the anarchists and ship-wreckers of the strait were figments of an under-occupied press in Sydney: human carelessness was the disappointing answer to the mystery. Despite the late hour, I decided I would take the thought to my father. Perhaps it would prove an antidote to his fever for a mythical nemesis.