Cape Barren appeared only a few miles long from north to south, but Argyle told me its girth was greater, that the island stretched further east even than Flinders. The mountains were extraordinary: great sheets of bare rock angled down from their summits, reflecting the sky and glowering with the changes in the light. Shadows and trees grew upon them, the going around of light and shade that was silent and older than time.

The cloud had appeared first in the north-west, but now it built further south, taller and darker. The wind came from there now, and the sea turned. Argyle was engrossed in the chart again, the paper folded over the rail of the quarterdeck.

‘Ten miles,’ he said. ‘We put in at Preservation. Plenty of time.’

PRESERVATION

PRESERVATION

I knew of its fame. I knew of its role in my father’s life, this tiny island that had delivered Srinivas and Clark and the hideous Mr Figge from certain death. I had perhaps expected cliffs and lethal currents and an oil-painting sky. I wanted some great drama to befit its reputation, but it was low and plain.

We sailed down from the north and the west and looped around the bottom corner of the island because my father insisted on visiting the site of the wreck. This suited the master anyway, as he wanted us to moor in the protected waters of the island’s east side, out of the coming weather. He took us around the rocky southern end of Rum Island, barren and exposed. A handful of loose boulders guarded its coast, and Connolly stood alert at the bow with Campbell beside him, making hand signals to the master, who made small adjustments at the helm in response.

Campbell then guided us in, pointing out rocks he appeared to know personally. On the chart, the island comprised two halves: a northern part that was roughly rectangular, stretched out like a cowhide with exaggerated corners, even furred like a hide in windblown grasses. The southern half was a long, irregular peninsula, much lower and coated in dark, stunted scrub.

Once we were around the rocky south end of Rum, the sea floor came into view: green patches of sand through the clear water, broken up by weed. This was what Guy Hamilton had somehow found all those years ago, a desperate man with his boat sinking under him, a fortune in rum and forty-nine lives at stake. I looked all around me at the maze of islands, sandflats and exposed rocks and felt the full weight of that achievement. He had skidded the bow of his dying vessel into a protected corner, perhaps not the most enclosed site in the archipelago, but safe from the brawling westerlies and only a short row from shore in two directions.