We walked back the way we had come, back down the short path to the beach.

The woman’s last gesture on the island was to pick up a log splitter that was leaning on a boulder near a pile of split firewood. She carried it ten yards to where the two timber skiffs were propped up, and placing the gun on the ground—within her reach and not ours—she smashed the bottoms out of both boats. When she’d finished she was slightly breathless. She dropped the axe and picked up the gun.

‘Babies,’ she sneered. ‘Can’t swim. So that’s them done.’

On the row out to the Moonbird, she chose to stand at the stern. She did not once relax her stance, nor lower the weapon. Her every muscle screamed fury. The Brown Bess took up most of the space. As we approached our boat, Connolly leaned over the bulwark to watch our approach. He seemed baffled by what he saw, which was reasonable, I suppose.

‘Let her aboard,’ Argyle called calmly up to him. A brief discussion ensued between Argyle and Connolly. The master pointed out that the wind had come around ninety degrees while we had been away. The convict had set a stern anchor to prevent us swinging too close to the rocks, but the result was that the Moonbird now stood beam-on to the wind.

None of this mattered a great deal, but for the fact that her shoreward side was being slapped by an irritable chop. Connolly suggested we go round the bow and board her from the seaward side. The woman followed all of this without a word. Argyle took a look over his shoulder and altered his course so that he headed for the Moonbird’s bow. The doctor had seated himself in the bow facing us, with a glance, seemingly amused, for me. Gulls lifted lazily off the rigging as we approached.

We came under the bow, a part of the Moonbird I’d never seen from this angle. I knew there was a figurehead there at the top of the raked stem, a figure of a man. But I’d never looked closely at it.

Now I was looking at the doctor, who was looking up. No amusement now: he was staring at the figurehead in shock, his expression turning to something like nausea.

The carved figure was indeed a man, slightly smaller than life-size, naked and twisting at the hips. He was rendered as muscular, bearded, classical. His face mirrored the doctor’s somehow, though the blank eyes, being carved of plain wood, revealed less. The figure was not squared to the line of the bow but twisted around, as though the man was writhing. One strong arm crossed his chest, the hand resting on the opposite shoulder. The other hand reached back and down, stretching towards something in particular.

We were in shadow now, under the sweep of the bow. It was suddenly cold.