The doctor had been fascinated by the killing of the seal: he wrote extensively in his journal about it, reading me passages and asking me my opinion. He thought the way Briggs and his wife killed a full-grown female, there was no way of knowing, until it was dead, whether or not it was in pup. (Gideon was puzzled about this aspect: ‘Maybe they can tell?’ he ruminated at one point.) Even if the mother was killed shortly after having pupped, he reasoned, the consequence was the same: the young ones would perish for want of food. And there was another thing, he said to me. The seals, harassed constantly in their haunts, would begin to abandon them. Perhaps this was why Briggs and his wife were stalking only one solitary female.

Armstrong’s Channel passed under us, foam and blue, while we discussed such things, and I cherished the chance to question him about his ideas.

The passage between Cape Barren in the north and Clarke, lower and lesser, opened into a large bay. The mountains of Cape Barren framed it, vaulted rocks challenging the sky. To our right, the sea appeared open but shallow, and ahead was a low wall of land. I went to the master, his face a mask of concentration at the helm. That finger on the chart: two islands, long and lying side by side like fangs.

‘Penguin and Passage,’ he said, just faintly singsong on the Ps. He wore a patterned smock: little flowers on tawny fabric.

‘Do we need to look?’ I asked, because my father would want to know the same thing.

‘Aye. Old sealer lives on Penguin. Dunno about the other un. It’s just a, a tricky approach. We’ll go round the top.’

‘Going round,’ he yelled to Connolly. The convict responded by taking the main block and tearing line through it. Work for a grieving man.

Penguin Island unfolded, sandy, grassed and dry and not a tree to be seen. Soon the familiar signs of habitation appeared: low roofs made of timbers lying on beams. The pickings, once more, of a society fed by the sea.

Round, further round.

Dunes, patches of brighter green where the freshwater soaks would be. A more extensive roof and a chimney, seeping a little white smoke and, suddenly, a gout of thick black. I saw Argyle’s face change at this, an expression of surprise.

‘Don’t know why ye’d do that,’ he muttered. ‘Close enough you could come out and wave.’

He swung the wheel. Moments later, another belch of black from the chimney.

‘All right,’ he said to himself. Then aloud, to Connolly, ‘Soundings!’