We anchored in the evening off the north-eastern side of Cape Barren, away from the cover of the mountain. There had been no further sighting of the sail, and Argyle had come to believe that whoever was pursuing us had been deceived and had now continued north. I prepared a meal in the galley, golden light making shadows of the guano and salt crystals on the panes. The doctor’s fish again, this time one that he called a wrasse. It was heavy flesh, greenish and tended to mush under the knife. But I was able to fry it, and a few onions disguised its poor character. Supplies were running low now—if we didn’t catch more fish soon, we would be down to pemmican. As I handed a plate to the doctor, he leaned in close to me.

‘I am going to operate the Boyle device this evening. Do you wish to come and observe?’

I eyed him sidelong. ‘Will you be inviting all of us?’

‘I was hoping it might just be you,’ he said, his face lit with honest appeal. ‘If you would like?’

~

I waited several hours on my bed, trying to read by lamplight. I closed my eyes awhile and opened them. There was no rush to visit the doctor: he would be working his secret rituals throughout the night, impervious to time and fatigue. I was restless. I went above.

The night was glorious, clear and still. I thought I was alone at first, the lines of the timbers and the rigging making silhouettes against the bright starlit sky. But then I saw that once again Tarenorerer was out there too. She had been assigned poor Angus Connolly’s hammock, but I had never known her to use it: she seemed to live all her hours on deck. She was standing alone in the dark, one hand on the shrouds to steady her, looking up to the heavens.

High beyond the tips of the masts, infinity stretched from horizon to horizon. Aside from the minor rocks that lay dark on the sea, we were suspended between two curving worlds: the stars above and the depths below. The surface was calm enough to reflect the galaxies, so that it looked as though the universe swirled all around us above and below, as if up and down had ceased to exist and only all around remained: the Moonbird was aloft and freed of its own weight.

And directly up there, where Tarenorerer was looking, the Milky Way stretched across the sky, more detailed and vivid and terrifyingly vast than I had ever seen it. I dared not breathe, for fear I might distract her, might break the trance of that moment and its eternal assurance that we and our cares and our tiny boat were nothing, a floating dust mote in the stillness.