He learned a little of the ship’s lore. Ropes were ‘sheets’, sails were ‘shrouds’, wooden berths had the narrowness of coffins. All, he noted, was being made ready for death.

For death was everywhere. It kept climbing towards the Queen of the Islands, in the unceasing purpose of the waves in hurling themselves upon the vessel to break over the gunwales. The sea and the wind waged never-ending war with the old brig. And this struck Ross as a wretched state of affairs, that the elements on which the ship depended for its journey appeared perpetually intent on its destruction.

He asked himself if he would mind dying and recognised that in some obstinate part of himself he was made angry by the idea that his life could end at the age of thirty-two. Yet what, really, was left to him? What could he find to fill up all the years that might lie in store? If Edmund’s life could be saved by him, then at least there was honour in that and a real manifestation of the brotherly love he had never ceased to feel. But afterwards, what would remain to him? Would he sink into the debauch and the inertia that tropical climates could bring about in white men who have lost their sense of purpose and resolve? Would it not be better to stuff his pockets with some leaden object lying about the cluttered decks of the Queen of the Islands and say to the heartless ocean, ‘take me into your dread deep, for I have earned nothing better.’

Of Jane, he tried not to think. He wanted to sweep the past clean of her, as though she had never existed and that part of him which loved her with such violent force had never existed either. But she was so mighty a presence, still, in his imagination, that she couldn’t be erased. Her tall shadow seemed to follow him wherever he went and whatever he did. He saw her at the Assembly Rooms, in her red dress, wearing a feather in her hair. He saw her at the Baths, ghostly in her white gown, as the sick and dying reached out to her. He saw her lying naked in his bed.

He asked himself what was to be done to banish her from his mind, knowing that, until this was achieved, he would live a half-life, the pathetic life of a solitary mourner. He tried re-enacting his punishment of her, pounding her skull against the wall, letting her fall on the stairs, left for dead. But these imaginings weren’t sufficient to rid himself of her. For he was unable to believe that he had had the power to take her life. She lived, still, didn’t she? Couldn’t he feel her stubborn head nudging against his heart?

VIGIL

When Jane had fallen against the wall, the foetus inside her, a tiny sac of half-made flesh, which had clung to her womb for five weeks, began to break from its mooring. After contractions which felt as though they were splitting her body in two, it was ejected out of her and washed across the hallway by a blood tide which seemed to have no ebb.