Her mouth watered at the thought of steaming oysters plucked from the coals.

By the time she made her way back to the settlement, the rain had stopped. Some of the Palawa and a few missionaries were milling about, but there was no sign of the Franklins. Mathinna’s heart surged with hope. She slipped into the schoolroom, where a few children were learning their lessons. The schoolteacher looked up from his primer. He appeared to take no notice of her wet dress, the soiled wallaby skin, the frightened look in her eyes. He seemed unsurprised that she’d returned.

“Mary,” he said, rising. “Come with me. They’ve been looking for you.”

The Tasman Sea, 1840

When the captain lifted her into the sloop, Mathinna looked back and saw her stepfather standing on the ridge, silhouetted against the sky, shading his eyes with his hand.

“Palle!” she cried, waving.

He raised his arm, his fingers outstretched.

“Palle . . .” His figure blurred through her tears.

“That’s enough, now,” the captain said.

She sobbed quietly as he pulled anchor and readied the sail. Deep in her bones, she felt certain that she would never see her stepfather again. She watched his figure recede into the distance as the boat left its mooring and headed into the open ocean.

Spitting on the deck, the captain said, “I was told to treat ye like a little lady. I’ll do what they say, but ye don’t look like any lady I ever saw.”

Mathinna didn’t answer. She wiped her eyes with her hands.

She’d never been out on the water before. Only the seafarers among the Palawa went out in canoes. She had not known to expect the gliding rises and sudden drops, the salty fizz in her nose, the hard brightness of the sun, the stomach-churning smell of fish innards rotting in a bucket.

Her mouth filled with saliva. Her eyes watered. Before they even lost sight of Flinders, she was vomiting into a pail.

“It’s in your head.” The captain tapped his temple. “Calm yourself.”

When Mathinna had returned to the settlement, three days earlier, she was told that the Franklins were on their way back to Van Diemen’s Land. They’d left behind The Cormorant and its captain from their small fleet for the express purpose of ferrying her to Hobart Town. George Robinson’s wife, Maria, had helped her pack her meager belongings into an old steamer trunk for the trip: two plain, English-style cotton dresses, two sets of pantaloons, a bonnet, a pair of leather shoes. Mathinna made a nest of the wallaby-skin cape for Waluka in a rush basket Palle had woven for her, tucking three shell necklaces her mother had made beneath it.

“Bringing a rodent to the governor’s residence hardly seems advisable,” Robinson said when he saw Waluka.

“It’s a marsupial, George.” His wife pantomimed paws like a kangaroo. “It has a pouch. She raised it from birth; it’s quite tame.”

“It looks like a rat.”

Maria put her hand on his arm. “This child is leaving behind everything she has ever known. What harm is there in letting her keep it?”