I saw extensive timber buildings, strange ones that were built low against the wind and spread randomly as though they had been added one room and one pen at a time. I saw livestock: pigs and fowl and goats, so many goats that parts of the hillsides seemed to be moving about. Their bleating reached us on the wind, a high-pitched staccato multiplied hundreds of times over. Fences made of rocks and timbers gave the place a sense of order: squares and straight lines in a world of curves and points. Further away, on a rise in the land, I could see more of the same. The dwelling—if that is what it was—directly in front of us had an air of prominence about it, as though it occupied prized ground. Behind it there were fruit trees, December greenery in sharp affront to the muted colours of the islands. Rows of green corn stretched away to the west: more than it would take to feed this tiny settlement. These people were traders.

I told my father all these things, but he seemed impatient. Perhaps he wanted something from the rocks that would answer his decades of longing. He had parcelled his sorrows in a faraway place, and now that place was in front of him.

A dog barked over the goat chorus.

A man stood on the beach, watching us. From our anchorage a hundred yards offshore, I could see that he was well on in years, short of stature and dressed in clothes faded to colourlessness. He stood dead still, arms extended at right angles from his sides. Strange thoughts were coming easily to me now: I thought he’d been crucified. It took me some time to understand that he carried a pole slung over his shoulders with a dark mass hanging from each end. When he saw we were slow launching the boat, he walked to a boulder and carefully placed his burden there, as though he did not want it in the sand he stood upon. Now he squatted on his haunches and stirred a hand through the glittering shallows.

Campbell stood high on top of the windlass and called through cupped hands: ‘Munro!’

He looked up sharply, appeared to squint. We were close enough now that I could see a large dog, muscular and narrowing to its tail. It leapt about, barking excitedly but tethered somehow.

‘That you, Campbell?’

Campbell waved and nodded.

‘Good, sir,’ called the man named Munro. He had the wind behind him and did not trouble to raise his voice. He waved some sort of assent and sat down, ignoring the dog, which jerked furiously at the rope that held it to a peg in the sand.

By the time we launched, the sky was dark with threat and Munro was looking up at it, then at Argyle, who stood in the boat as Connolly rowed with his eyes on me.