But Argyle was fixed with a new worry: our pursuers would only need to sail about four miles south, he said, down between Penguin and Passage, before they would round the southern tip of Passage and we would be in their view again. He studied the coastline through the glass, considered the chart. He told us there were three large bays on this side of Cape Barren: the first of them had a sharp nook in it. We could not outrun the larger vessel, but we could hide.

He steered us along a straight white beach, with the dull silver-green grasses and low bush behind it. Nothing out there: not a hut, not a stray timber in the tideline. At the far end I could see where the granite resumed, forming a short point that jutted into the sea. We came in close to it and followed the rocks, and very briefly I saw the gap: a cleft in the rock, a hundred yards or less in width. Argyle seemed determined to cram us into ever-tighter spaces.

The boulders on the point were bare: the ocean when raised to anger must wash over their extremities. But all was quiet on this morning; just the brush of the breeze behind us, ruffling the surface. At the mouth of the cleft, Argyle raced among the rigging, flicking cleats and releasing line through pulleys so that the sails dumped their burdens of air and we lost all power. When he was done and the Moonbird had swung into the wind, Declan Connolly took the long boathook, the one they’d used to retrieve my father, and pushed the clew of one of the foresails out so that it drew the other way. His voice barely above a whisper now, the master ordered him to prepare anchors fore and aft. I watched Argyle watching the foresail. It was now billowing backwards, reversing us gently into the gap. My God, the genius of it.

‘Hold,’ he called to Connolly, who waited with the windlass brake in his hands. There was a soft crunch as the rudder touched sand at our stern. The master had judged it within inches.

‘Yes,’ he said softly, and the convict released the anchor. He ran then to the stern and set the smaller one just wide to the starboard. We were pinned into the rocky cove with only yards to spare either side.

‘Get all the sail down, everything off deck,’ said Argyle. ‘Everything.’

We did as he said, throwing bundles of spare sail into the hold while Tarenorerer went aloft with Connolly and tightly furled each of the sails. I began to understand the brilliance of what he’d done: we were a dun-coloured pile of timber set against rock and grass, with the morning sun low, directly behind us in the east. Only the sharpest eye could find us.