Now, crouching down, Mathinna opened the basket. She pulled out one of the shell necklaces and draped it around her neck, then lifted Waluka onto her lap. With his milky skin, pink nose, and long talons he did look a bit like a rat, she supposed. In her lap he was limp, motionless, but she could feel his tiny heart skittering as she stroked his chest with the back of a finger.

“I’m surprised they let ye bring that mangy thing,” the captain said.

She ran a protective hand down Waluka’s back. “Mr. Robinson said I could.”

“Ever eaten possum?”

She shook her head.

“Not bad,” the captain said. “Tastes like eucalyptus.”

She couldn’t tell if he was joking.

The sky was as gray as the flat stones in the cove. Waves glinted like shale. Spreading out his tattered map, the captain beckoned Mathinna over. He traced the coastline of a large landmass with his forefinger until he reached a narrow passage near the bottom. Tapping it, he said, “This is where we’re headed. Ten days’ journey.”

It looked like nothing to her: jagged lines on a piece of paper. But as she examined the map, sounding out the names of towns and regions, she moved her own finger up the coastline, the reverse of their journey. Past Port Arthur, around tiny Maria Island, through Four Mile Creek and around Cape Barren Island, and finally back to Flinders, a speck in the ocean above the bulk of Van Diemen’s Land.

Running a finger along the shells of her necklace, Mathinna remembered her mother placing it in her hands. “Every person you’ve ever cared about, and every place you’ve ever loved, is one of these shells. You’re the thread that ties them together,” she’d said, touching Mathinna’s cheek. “You carry the people and places you cherish with you. Remember that and you will never be lonely, child.”

Mathinna wanted to believe it. She wasn’t sure it was true.

The captain slept in fits and starts; at the slightest dip or flap of the sail he’d startle awake. She pretended not to notice when he moved behind a barrel to use the chamber pot or wash his armpits in a bucket. He was probably only in his midthirties, but to Mathinna he seemed ancient. He was coarse, but not unkind. His only task, he told her, was to deliver her safely to the governor, and by hook or by crook he would do that. Mainly he left her alone. When he wasn’t tending the mainsail or charting their course, he sat on one side of the boat, whittling naked women out of wood with a small curved knife, and she sat on the other, fingering the tiny green shells around her neck and playing with Waluka.

Each morning the captain performed a checklist of tasks: recording barometer readings in a notebook, checking the sail for rips and tears, nailing down loose boards, splicing rope. He trailed a lure behind the boat and pulled in red-striped perch and jack mackerel and the occasional salmon. He’d stun the flopping fish before gutting it quickly with his carving knife, then make a fire in the cook box, a metal contraption with three sides on four sturdy legs, with a tray in the bottom for the fire and a grate on top.