All night the sea moves restlessly under the jetty. The wind might drop, the swell might fade but the slave-driving moon keeps flogging the tides back and forth. Whenever Ned wakes, the symphony is still playing, sloshing around the pylons, exhaling on the beach, thumping under the boatshed as the incoming tide is whipped up by the northerly wind. The shed creaks and groans around him like a boat at sea.

He listens from the bottom bunk, half expecting the bay to ooze up through the cracks in the floor. His fingers brush the boards just to make sure they’re still dry. Since the shipping channel at the Heads was deepened, the high tide has swallowed whole beaches, and left teeth marks at the base of the cliffs and overhanging ledges poised in the air as if walking the plank.