Content Warning: This section of the novel and the guide depicts slavery and discusses death by suicide.

Adam Ewing is an American lawyer who writes a journal while sailing across the Pacific Ocean in the mid-19th century. He describes his first meeting with Dr. Henry Goose, “surgeon to the London nobility” (3). In his first entry, he recalls how Goose searched for teeth spat out by the Indigenous people of a Pacific island, who are supposedly cannibals. Goose is traveling to escape salacious rumors concerning his behavior that have caused him to be “blackballed from society” (4). He plans to use the human teeth to make dentures as a means to combat those rumors and embarrass the marchioness who has been spreading them.

Ewing is traveling aboard The Prophetess, while Goose is traveling aboard The Nellie. Because The Prophetess needs repairs, Ewing and the crew are forced to stay ashore. There, Ewing and Goose strike up an unlikely friendship. While walking together on a beach, they see a group of enslaved Indigenous people, one of whom is being whipped. He makes eye contact with Ewing, who notes that the man has “the serenity of a martyr” (6). He sympathizes with the man but is told to leave.