When he was satisfied with the haul, he tipped it out on the deck and sorted through it, a child among toys, assigning each flapping and crawling creature a fate. Pin this one, fixative, sketch—no, the jars for that. Heterodontus, no, not you as he tossed a small shark overboard. I watched—I tried not to be seen watching—his capable hands gripping the fishes as he studied them. When he was done, the process of anchoring and sail orders was reversed, and we crept towards the domes of Hummock Island as though careful not to disturb it.

We were to land on the western side, in the lee of the easterly breeze, and part ways to survey the island. Now it had come to the practical business of the voyage, I found I had little idea how we would carry out our task, what we would do if we came upon the wreckage of the Howrah or the remains of the souls aboard. What if there were survivors? And what were we to do if we came upon the wreckers? We had proceeded upon assumptions, and now they were firing questions back at us.

And there was a further complication: my father was unwell. At noon he began to vomit. Draped under the cathead, grasping it feebly to steady himself, he brought up a thick white substance streaked with blood. I watched the tips of his fingers as he heaved and retched and saw they were shaking uncontrollably.

I urged him to remain aboard and recover: in part out of concern for him, but also with an eye to the difficulty of managing him onshore. If he had been ill-equipped for vengeance before, now he was a clear liability.

As I expected, he would have none of it. Before we could ship the jolly-boat, he was in it, sitting bolt upright and defiant, staring into the void. God, the obstinacy of the man! I caught Declan Connolly rolling his eyes at his brother, who tried to reciprocate but could manage only a gargoyle face. At least my father had united them on something. Argyle and the doctor agreed to travel north and south respectively along the coast and to survey the whole island from its highest points. My task, along with my father, was to walk a loop through the middle of the island, which formed a low saddle. It remained unsaid, but was understood, that I would not get far with him in tow.

Nonetheless I packed a small bag of necessaries for both of us—warm clothes, a tinderbox and, as an afterthought, the leather satchel that held the Howrah papers Srinivas had given me in Sydney—and we ran the jolly-boat into a narrow cleft in the rocky coast. The waves were lapping high on the boulders, almost to the line where their orange coating commenced. There were no shellfish and no weeds attached any higher than the water: we must have arrived at the peak of the tide. The doctor stepped out with a line to secure us. Argyle helped me to get my father over the side and onto a small patch of sand. As his feet scrunched into the heavy white gravel, he grunted and shuffled our arms off him, his irritation plain to see.