Macquarie Street, the sign read just ahead. They trudged up a hill past brown government buildings and a brick church with a black dome and a three-faced clock, women moaning, children pleading, “How much longer? Where are we going?” Ruby, too, was fussing, hungry; Hazel tried to bobble her in the sling. Her own stomach rumbled. They hadn’t been offered anything but hardtack in the darkness before they left. Spoiled by the real food she’d been eating lately, she’d turned up her nose. She regretted it now.

They passed two-story sandstone houses, small neat cottages, lean-to shacks that appeared to have been nailed together in a day. Roses twined up trellises and cherry trees bloomed in shades of pink. The morning air smelled peaty and fresh. Hazel gazed ahead at the high rocky bluffs of the mountain she’d seen from the harbor, the top of it clouding into sky. On either side of the road were trees with pinkish gray bark that reminded her of shorn sheepskin. She was startled to see birdlike creatures in a fenced-in garden that were taller than humans, with skinny legs and oblong bodies, strutting and pecking the dirt.

After some time, the long parade of women descended into a valley. A weak sun slipped from behind the clouds as they made their way past wooden shanties, a sawmill, a brewery. A group of green birds, massed as thickly as mosquitoes, whizzed through the air above their heads. The mud was deeper here, tamped down by the women at the front of the line but squishy nonetheless. It seeped through the seams of Hazel’s shoes. All of this walking felt strange and unnatural after so many months at sea. Her legs ached and her feet were sore. She was thirsty and needed to pee.

Olive tapped Hazel’s arm. “Look at that.”

In a field about a hundred yards away, a cluster of large brown animals with deerlike faces and rabbity ears stood on their hind legs, staring at them. One turned and hopped off and the others followed, bounding after it like balls tipped from a basket.

“What in the world,” Hazel breathed. This place was stranger than she’d dared to imagine.

As they marched forward, she became aware of a murmuring from the front of the line, and then, a few moments later, a terrible smell. She looked down: they were crossing a small bridge over a rivulet filled with sewage. Gray rats scurried in and out of the water.

Olive nudged her from behind. “Look up.”

Straight ahead, in the shadow of the mountain, a windowless fortress rose from the earth. At the front of the line a soldier rapped on the huge wooden gate. When it opened, he barked at the convicts and children to form two lines. Slowly, they began to file inside.

A thin, whiskered man in a blue uniform and a woman in a black dress buttoned to the neck stood near the far end of a desolate courtyard. Behind them, three women in shapeless prison garb swept the gravel. One, a woman with braided white hair, stopped her work and watched the new prisoners file in. When Hazel caught her eye, she put a finger to her lips.