Argyle looked dubious. ‘They had working guns. I’d say someone’s put em ashore from another vessel. An uprising or such. Sickness goin through em, by the look. But they been at those antics for a time now.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Two o’ them timbers on the rocks were inner sternposts, and you only get one o’ them on each ship. The doorway up higher? That was a keelson too big for both posts. So there’s three boats at least weren’t as lucky as us.’

As the others moved away, I leaned in close to my father. His face responded instinctively to my proximity. ‘Father, that might be what you’re looking for. A gang wrecking vessels. Should we not go back?’

His smile was gently scornful. ‘You don’t scare easily, do you? We’re too far north, my love. And the man we’re seeking, he’s not so stupid as that lot.’

SEABIRDS AND SEALS

SEABIRDS AND SEALS

The master told us he would make a wide arc to the south-east, from Rodondo out to Hummock. It was open water, only a scatter of minor islands to the east of the route which he and my father had concluded were not worth investigating. No sealers, he said, and my father nodded judiciously. We would sweep down to the Furneaux group, eighty nautical miles, and begin again there.

The early morning had a faint drizzle in it. Tiny specks, a day that meant itself to be fine but had somehow leaked. This contributed to the damp over everything, which the master said was characteristic of the Tasman Sea to our east, and not of the Strait. As he told me this, he was removing the furred mantle he wore against the morning chill. The Strait carried dry air, he said, even when it was forced through by a cold westerly. I tried to imagine dry air between raindrops and could not.

The humidity clung to my skin and slicked the sails with damp. The flies were huge and heavy and they droned in the air, trapped themselves in the close spaces below decks, where they would buzz aimlessly until swatted by a fractious hand. Rarely, but with great ceremony, huge flying ants would appear: the lost queens of some faraway hive, their drones searching frantically for them, not knowing the boat had carried them away.

Land masses in the distance appeared to float in the warm mist that clouded the horizons. Mountaintops hung in weird suspension. The sea darkened to slate blue. There could have been a storm in the far-off miles, the sky loaded with subterfuge, vague enough to hide a thunderhead.