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Alexis took on the role of the penguin. “Go away,” he said in a high timorous voice. “You're scaring me. I don't like you.” Then he giggled.

We went back down the way we came. Perhaps as a form of consolation, our guide told us a little about the penguins' sex lives. “A few weeks ago during the breeding season, things got pretty noisy up here. You should hear the sounds they make calling to their mates.” He made it sound like some kind of orgy.

“Ozzie and Harriet go wild,” said Alexis.

On first glance, the little penguins seem to be the epitome of family life. Males and females “mate for life”—with a relatively low divorce rate of 18 percent, according to penguin researchers. (Not bad compared to a human divorce rate of 50 percent in the United States and 40 percent in Australia.) Husband and wife little penguins raise their young together, sharing the duties of sitting on eggs, watching young chicks, and feeding older juveniles.

But a closer look reveals a looser lifestyle. Partners frequently cheat— sometimes mating with four different birds in one night! Husbands do attempt to keep their wives from consorting with other males—but they're so easily distracted by their own infidelities that they have trouble successfully guarding their territory. Their cries during breeding season are sometimes described as wails, and the sound of all the nighttime calling in the rookery is thought to stimulate sexual activity.

Alexis seemed to be taking on a renewed interest. “Maybe someone should knit them some lingerie.”

“Survival of the sexiest?” we suggested.

“You got it, baby.”

The tour was officially over. Alexis, Dorothy, and Chris decided to walk back to the Pol and Pen, while we lingered at the bottom of the trail. Before the guide took off, we asked him whether Tasmanian tigers had ever preyed on little penguins.

“Maybe they still do,” he said cryptically. Then he smiled and walked away.

With the shadowy hulk of the Nut looming above us, we envisioned a striped quadruped slinking down the beach with a blue-tuxedoed bird in its mouth. Anchovy ? fairy penguin ? Tasmanian tiger. It was an exotic food chain.

15. LISTENING FOR TIGERS

Tasmania's not very big, 177 miles from top to bottom, and 188 miles across at its widest. Some people told us we could drive across the island in a day and see everything there was to see in a weekend—but it just wasn't true. There are so many areas where roads, even trails, don't penetrate, so many folds in the landscape—forming countless hills and valleys. There's always something new to be found over the next ridge.

We looked at the map of Tasmania that James Malley had given us. The place-names provided a snapshot of the early-settlement era and were by turns quaint, romantic, and bizarre. Some were achingly British: Queenstown, Stonehenge, Northumbria Hill. Others were English spellings of aboriginal words—Marrawah (eucalyptus tree), Maydena (shadow), and Corinna (tiger). Some names described landforms or a place's most prominent flora or fauna—these included Frenchman's Cap (a high peak), Whale Head (a coastal point), Reedy Marsh and Rushy Lagoon (both townships), Black River (where James Malley lived), Opossum Bay, and the Tiger Range. And still others were testimony to the land's remoteness and the hard life of the first surveyors and settlers: Misery Plateau, Desolation River, Lake Repulse.

There was no name to describe the spot we had marked with an X, the place where James had heard a Tasmanian tiger calling when he was thirteen. It was in the middle of the South Arthur Forests on the edge of the meandering blue line that stood in for the Arthur River.

We decided to take James's advice. Find a high ridge in good tiger habitat on the south side of the river. Head up there at night and listen.

“Alexis, would you be up for a little tiger hunting tonight?” We were eating a breakfast of scones and clotted cream at the Stranded Whale. The claws of Astacopsis gouldi loomed up behind us.

He glanced at the claws. “Sure,” he said. “Who knows what may lurk in the heart