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.

At the top of the little beach there was a band of hard, dried kelp that crunched underfoot and then we were in among the tussocks, thigh-deep and prickly. I had to stay so close, at times I was under my father’s arm and hefting his weight over obstacles. Birds flushed ahead of us, and slithering tails whipped out of view between grasses. I had grown up on a land carpeted with leaf litter and shaded overhead by sprawling, formless trees. Here, the riot was below the knees. Above was only the wide vault of the sky, met by the slope of the hills.

My father was groaning as he went, and disinclined to talk. When we had covered a hundred yards, we stood on a rise that revealed the great sweep of ocean to the east and west of the long finger of land, back to the Moonbird and away to Great Island. There were no seals to be seen and no sealers either, consequent on their stunning success at slaughter.