High water was at three. Molly found that she was continually looking at her watch, counting the hours and the minutes until then. The tide, smooth and clear as baby oil, began to slide round the rocks at the north end of the island, but there were still three hours to go. She was beginning to guess something of what George was doing. What did he hope to achieve with the emphasis on the danger of the equipment? To tempt one of them to suicide? Or to murder? She approached him when they had finished coffee and no one could overhear.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

He hesitated. “Nothing,” he said. “ There’s nothing to do now.”

There was no more mention of the power of the cannon net, the fear of accident. They had beer at lunchtime, except Elizabeth. It seemed that she had stopped being sick, but that she did not want to drink “for the sake of the baby”. She spoke of the baby with reverence and joy. The others got a little bored by her obsession with her condition, but she seemed very happy.

“I know,” she said. “ Nick can fire the cannon. After all, we’re here in his honour.”

The afternoon moved slowly to Molly. She pictured it oozing forward like the oily water which now surrounded the island. As the tide came in the waders rose in swarms from the shore and circled in fantastic shapes around Gillibry. As the tide came in so did the cloud, but still there was no wind, not a breath of air.

Perhaps she felt depressed because the others seemed in such a party mood. They carried on drinking after lunch. They sat in the common room and throughout the afternoon they built a pyramid of empty red beer tins. There was a lot of movement. Every so often they wandered out singly, or in groups, to empty the nets or check the wader roosts. Molly could not keep track of all the coming and going. She did notice that Doctor Derbyshire did not move at all, and that, like her, he seemed unable to enter the spirit of communal gaiety. He was drinking heavily, sitting by the fire, and his face was red. He hardly spoke. Jasmine Carson watched him, Molly noticed, not with disapproval but with concern. She went out to the traps very regularly, more often than anyone else. She would return to the common room and announce concisely the details of the birds she had caught. She was drinking too, but slowly, and she alone had a glass. Mark, John and Jerry were becoming rowdy in a good-natured, rather frantic way. They were planning a ringing trip to the Hebrides. John had been before and grew more and more enthusiastic in his description of the Western Isles. There was a long story about a visit to a whisky distillery. Nicholas looked on with an amused and adult detachment. George’s pile of red cans was as high as any of the others, but Molly knew that he had not drunk enough for the alcohol to have any effect.