He stopped when he reached us, placed the box on the ground and bowed before me, then shook Beckwith’s hand. In a deep voice—an educated voice—he said that it was he who had booked the berth being advertised on the vessel bound for Bass’s Strait. His name, he said, was Dr Gideon. ‘Doctor Henry Fisk Gideon.’ He explained that the box contained a microscope, that he was a doctor of medicine in private practice with a specialty in the teeth, and an amateur naturalist: that he wished to study and catalogue the creatures of the sea and its inshore littorals. He said all of these things in the easiest of tones, with the fluid warmth of a salesman.

Beckwith introduced me and explained that I too was to be a passenger, a private guest of the owner. The doctor seemed suitably impressed: he shook my hand, and for once a man’s eyes looked down into mine, rather than up. Then the harbourmaster suggested we go below together and inspect the vessel, given that the doctor and I would be travelling companions.

So it was that I set foot on the Moonbird for the very first time.

Across the smooth deck that softly radiated the sun’s warmth, through a hatch and down a short set of steps we entered the galley. I bumped my head on the low sill, as I would do almost daily in the coming weeks. The doctor saw my clumsiness and wove gracefully under with a smile.

‘You could’ve warned me,’ I muttered, but the smile did not falter.

The galley was small, freshly painted and functional, everything in its place. Every edge rounded, every hinge and screw-head recessed. No object sat on an open surface: each shelf was protected by a timber strip that would hold its contents in a swell. A tiny coal-burning stove occupied one corner with a vent to the outside air, the scorching of past meals carefully scrubbed away from the bulkhead behind.

A table hinged out from the wall and the harbourmaster lowered it and secured a retractable leg beneath it. Gesturing for us to sit, he began opening and closing a series of small overhead cupboards until, with a little satisfied ah! he produced a bottle of brandy and three heavy earthenware cups. I tried briefly to demur: I was an unmarried woman below decks with two men I barely knew. But the doctor would have none of it: with a broad smile he placed a hand over mine on the table and urged me to take a drink, since we would shortly be shipmates. The liberty of that warm hand was a shock.

‘You must prepare your body for the rigours of life at sea,’ he smiled.

‘And must I leave common sense on the wharf?’ I raised an eyebrow. A reflex of mine, to be cynical.