For two hours they rowed. I should have enjoyed the fine weather and good till, but fatigue showed on their young faces. We saw no dwelling of any sort, and they kept glancing at their own ship in the distance, making jokes with each other I couldn’t understand. Only one of them spoke any English.

“Why do you keep looking at your ship?” asked shy Marguerite.

“That good breeze?” said the sailor. “Maybe the captain sail without us.” The other sailors laughed, but only to cover their anxiety.

Marguerite looked concerned for them, for us, but she held Fanny tight and sang to her, which for a while calmed us all. Sunbeams played on the ocean, ruffled by the lightest breeze, but the wild, majestic coastline was littered with dark rocks jutting over the sea like the brute materials of Creation. I was more like the sailors, putting up a good front, but even I felt uneasy when the shore seemed to recede the harder they rowed, the tide pushing against us, wanting to carry us farther away. There seemed no end to it, no arrival possible. With dusk soon to be closing in.

When at last we turned into the most picturesque little bay, we saw a small boat coming toward us, rowed by a lone man with a scruffy beard. Marguerite, who’d come to trust our rowers, looked alarmed when I said I’d soon release them back to their ship, but when the man introduced himself, with good English, as the lieutenant who commanded all the pilots on that coast, she climbed gladly on board. Soon a cottage came into view, overlooking the whole bay, and his plump wife appeared at the door, waving us a welcome.

The house was clean, with a sort of rural elegance, its simple muslin beds, curtains, table linens all dazzling white, the floor strewn with juniper sprigs. Fish, milk, butter, cheese, dense dark bread, and brandy were instantly spread on the board. The lieutenant and his wife doted on Fanny, who ate ravenously, tasting things she’d never had, and ending with rose-hip jelly smeared on both her cheeks.

I needn’t have worried about darkness closing in, as night never moved beyond a bluish-purple twilight that gave everything an ethereal glow. I was eager to see whether our honest tars had regained their ship, so the lieutenant gave me his telescope. I climbed some rocks and spotted the vessel underway with a fair gale on a calm sea, watching until it dwindled to a mere dot and disappeared from view. I was glad for them, followed by a sudden panic. They were the last link to our old life, now gone. We were entirely cut off, alone in a new world. There was no turning back now.