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the smell of the port, the more his happiness increased. He walked towards the ship full of controlled excitement.
    Charles’s first task was to find Mr Foulds, the Depot Superintendent, in whose overall care the girls had been since arriving from Ireland. He had been overcome with a moment of despair when he looked at them, now almost ready to board. They looked so wet, he thought. Or cold, maybe cold. And famished. He would have to start without Mr Foulds. Then, under supervision, he commenced his next task—the examination of each girl. This he proceeded to do in a small room to the side of the depot. He became shocked at the temperature of some of them. With a touch of his hand to their forehead he could ascertain that they were both hot and cold, clearly roughed by the boat journey. And he was not too happy with the hair of some. He took meticulous notes, coming to his conclusions silently. He called to Mr Foulds then and told him that no way could some of these dirty and cold girls continue aboard without baths. They were dirty he said because of the conditions of their travel, and cold for the same. He wrote bath prescriptions for most of them—hot baths, be sure—and also ordered a number of haircuts.
    ‘Just haircuts,’ he said. ‘Not scalping.’
    The girls had now noticed him but deferred judgment.
    The baths were readied in a designated room, and their hair was cut. A new heat came into the shed. Charles examined them again, not individually, but as a group. He looked carefully.
    ‘They appear a decent enough set of girls,’ he said, to anyone who was listening.

CHAPTER 7
    The afternoon and evening crept on, the minutes ticking by towards embarkation. There was the occasional flurry of what could be called gusts of hysteria, but they faded quickly and inexplicably, just as fast as they had erupted. These flurries of high-pitched noise sounded as if a flock of birds, noticing autumn, had swooped down and made sharp sudden complaints, then flown away again unexpectedly. Charles went on board first and set about the job of organising sleeping places. In this he knew he would make some mistakes, but altering places would be a last resort. The girls would know that order and certainty were to be the rules here. The inhabitants of each bunk would now know each other, for good or for bad.
    He consulted the list he had made, some of it tentative, allowing him to make occasional snap decisions. He was now as ready as he could be for this voyage. He knew the girls were not, but there was no turning back now, the trajectory of their futures, of their lives, was about to take off. He could hear the voice of a girl carried on the wind. ‘We’re not going in that thing,’ she said, in amazement. She must have been pointing to one of the small boats that brought provisions to the ship.
    ‘No, that’s ours,’ another said, waving a hand at a bigger ship.
    ‘Or so someone told me. It’s not that bad really,’ she said, doubtfully.
    ‘Well, it’s bigger than what we came in this far,’ another girl said, deciding to try out a sprig of optimism.
    The girls gathered together on the deck. When the final whoosh was made—‘That’s the last,’ shouted a sailor—a bewildered silence descended. Charles stood before them with his list and called them closer together. They did as he said, eventually. As he ticked off numbers, they took their places in the new line, which was weaving under the myriad of ropes and flapping sails. He was occasionally distracted by how childlike most of them were. Too young to be alone. But this was not his business. They were here now. He would address the older ones—some of whom were almost twenty. Maybe they could look after the younger ones. He began to rearrange, he would put one twenty-year-old beside a younger girl. But that didn’t work as he soon ran out of twenty-year-olds.
    ‘Shush, shush, let me think.’
    He began again. His influenza had not yet dissipated. ‘Shush,