Our shipwrecked protagonist shoots one of the creatures, finds her nest, and brings up the young who become quite tame. The tame ‘Dog-Birds’ help him to rescue his beloved from cannibals (naturally, she had been shipwrecked herself on the way to an enforced marriage in India).

This highly entertaining eighteenth-century imaginary voyage is coming with us to the York Book Fair next week: find us at Stand 30, 13–14 September