Crimm glanced over his crew. None looked happy to be rowing. One man, Xon, the youngest, looked withdrawn, fearful. Crimm said cheerfully, ‘Call this a fog? Ayto’s breath is thicker than this, most mornings.’ He got grins in response.

They emerged at last into the daylight; the fog was a solid bank behind them. But now the northern horizon was greying too, bubbling into an ominous wall of cloud. At a soft command from Crimm they rested on their oars.

‘Told you so,’ Ayto said to Crimm.

‘Told me what?’

‘Should have put in before the famous fog rolled in. Told you.’

‘Yes, but in the next breath you said—’

‘Anyhow, now we’re stuck out here.’

The wind picked up again. Loose corners of the mainsail flapped and cracked. Though the sails were furled, Crimm felt the Sabet surge, back towards the fog.

Ayto raised his hands. ‘And now comes the wind too. You spoil us, o little mother of the sky.’

The wind gusted, becoming an icy blast in Crimm’s face, hurling particles that stung his skin and eyes, more like frozen sand than water or ice.

And suddenly, in just a few heartbeats, that bank of cloud to the north rushed down on them, towering high into the sky. It was a storm coming out of nowhere, as fast as the fog had come upon them, or faster. The men didn’t need to be told what to do. They lashed down the nets and their barrels of water and dried fish, tried to make fast the day’s catch, a pitiful heap of immature fish glistening in the bilge, and grabbed lines, bracing themselves.

The storm hit with a tremendous howl. The wind was a chill blast that tried to drag Crimm off the boat, and dug deep through his layers of clothing to his skin, and drove more of those stinging ice grains into his face, and snow, big fat flakes of it that slapped his cheeks and forehead. The men, the snow sticking to their furs, were like bears, he thought, lumbering in the grey light through the rushing snow. But the spray was coming up too and freezing where it fell. As the ice formed slick on the deck, you had to take care not to slip.

Ayto shouted something, and pointed upwards. One hand wrapped in the rigging, Crimm leaned back, holding his hood against the wind, and saw that ice was forming in sheets on the main mast, the furled sail, the rigging. The boat could be capsized by a sufficient weight of ice up there.