Beckwith was watching me. ‘Shallow draft for island work,’ he said. ‘Gaff rigged. Double skipper’s cabin aft, a front cabin—might be yours, I expect’—his eyes took in my height—‘the bed’s a little longer in there. Er, four singles amidships. There’s a hold…I don’t know if that’s relevant to your needs…’

‘It’s…unusual,’ I breathed. ‘Not like the other ones.’

‘She’s a Danish schooner. Don’t know how the owner came to be in possession of her. Sometimes they’re confiscations, cheap sales. But those timbers, you take a drill or a saw to them, they give off a most glorious aroma, miss. Spruce, pine, I don’t know.’ The recollection of the smell transformed his leathery face.

A man who had been a boy, a manservant from an Indian river port, who’d lost a vessel and who also kept this beautiful one, so deeply European, here in a harbour that the rest of the world considered the farthest edge of the ocean. The Bengali was a knot in strange threads.

‘Do you wish to look her over, madam?’

I did want to, desperately. But some voice inside told me to wait. ‘What is her name?’ I asked, as casually as I could manage.

‘The Moonbird.’

‘Lovely. Very suitable. I only sail on vessels with pretty names, you understand.’

He smiled and agreed, and I was turning to walk back towards Beckwith’s shed when I saw that a man was approaching us along the wharf. He was tall. Not young, but there was a vigour in his stride that projected confidence. Elegantly suited but practically shod, as his footfalls drew an echoing clock from the timbers.

He was lost in his own thoughts, or perhaps short-sighted: he only noticed the harbourmaster and me once he had drawn close enough for me to study his face. A strong face, half-smiling now under hair that remained thick but was more grey than brown, precisely cut. No whiskers, a clean, square jaw and lines that suggested the smile was a habit. My impression was that this man was more physical, his limbs more strung to a frame, than the bookish cut of his suit projected. Not handsome at all. His face seemed bent, somehow—whether by birth or accident I couldn’t tell. Looking back, it is possible that this impression, this sense of an animal’s body disguised, lodged itself deeply in me in that first instant.

Once he saw us, he raised a hand in greeting as if we were old friends. He carried a polished timber box under his other arm, with a brass handle and brass inlays along its edges.