He let go of my hands and I felt the absence of his fingertips. Then his expression changed again. He was alert now, looking out over the stretch of water that led back towards the beach and Munro’s house. There on the slick pool of the inshore surface: a small rowboat picking its way out towards the Moonbird.

A single rower worked the oars. The hair, lit by the moon: it was Munro’s wife, Louisa. As she neared the hull of the Moonbird she slowed her strokes and called softly to us. I came to the bulwark and called back. She found the rope ladder and climbed up to us. She had slung a large sack over her shoulders, and now she placed it on the deck at our feet.

‘You fella take this,’ she said.

‘What is it?’ asked the doctor.

‘More from that boat, I think,’ she said. ‘My husband got it, same storm ben throw that cabin up on the rocks. Other men from Clarke help him lift the cabin up to the pigpen. Never showed em this.’

She pulled back the cloth that concealed the item, and there stood an Adige sea chest covered in fine patterns. It could only have been the one Srinivas said was mentioned in the letter to the governor.

‘Money in it,’ said Louisa, ‘but my husband no touch it. Papers…you fella make em out.’

‘What do you want us to do with this?’ I asked. The woman stood back from it, as though it might taint her in some way.

‘Nothin to me! Husband done nothin to nobody. Old man say’—she pointed vaguely below decks, indicating my father—‘they find this on im, they think…’ She did not finish.

‘How will you explain its absence?’ asked the doctor.

‘I say nothing, what he think? Think you lot bring em go. Can’t help you that one.’ She crouched, undid the latch that secured the lid. Inside I could make out a stack of papers. Louisa clutched a handful of them, held them up. ‘Lookit,’ she said. ‘Aint bin wet.’

She was right. The papers lay flat in her hand without any sign of crinkling.

‘Who did it belong to?’ I asked her.

‘Shipmaster. Munro read em to me one time: was the master’s mail, belong im, you know. All the papers, manifest…’

The doctor had taken up a handful of the papers and was squinting at them. ‘Letters between the ship’s agents, bills of exchange…nine hundred, eleven hundred…fifteen hundred pounds.’

He put the papers back in the chest. ‘I am worried you will be made to suffer for this.’

Louisa looked defiant under the great tangle of her hair. ‘Not me you worryin bout,’ she said calmly. ‘Go down Gun Carriage, you hit some proper trouble, friends.’