They were in some strange way not unkind – though their appearance was in itself offensive – but so weak they could hardly stand. It was not even clear what they wanted, as their language made no sense. One of the elders said later it was as if their tongues tripped in some manner on their sparse teeth so the words rattled and could not be understood.

‘Nyet,’ one said, shaking his head while he stuttered more unknown words, waving generally in the direction of the sea.

‘Da,’ another added, nodding, pointing away from the sea and towards the shore, towards some thing up on the shore near the forest, the sailor waving and pointing, so that men in the camp out of politeness all looked up in the same direction as intently as they could, but saw nothing.

No part of the encounter was any better, made any sense. The weak men stood, weaving slightly, and the men in camp stood watching them and all was in silence, all in the tendrils of fog that still rolled back and forth. Real but not real, there but not there, men but not men.

Then the moon-currents came once more into the cove and captured the ship and it started to drift out of the cove and the boatmen hurried as best they could, staggering and nearly falling, and went back onto the vanishing ship.

Into the fog, into nothing. As if it had never been there, never been seen or heard or even smelled.

Gone.

Never seen again.

‘They were spirit men,’ said one man from the camp, and who was to argue with him?

‘Fog spirits – ghost men from the dark world . . .’

And those who said such things looked away in quiet fear at where the ship had been, and they shivered as if a dark-cold wind had come upon them.

A dead wind.

Death wind.

‘They are men who have lost their shadows,’ said Old Carl, the eldest of the crew. ‘They are men who have done some great wrong and have lost their shadows.’ He waved his hand to the sky places. ‘They must search for their shadows to become men again. Whole men. They must drift forever in the death ship. And because they will never find their shadows again . . .’

He did not finish as he did not need to finish.

But the boy Leif wanted, needed, to know more and did not know how not to be rude, so he asked: ‘What happens because they cannot find their shadows?’

‘They will bring misery,’ Old Carl said. ‘Misery. They will kill all joy and only bring misery with their foulness.’

And because Old Carl was thought to be wise, everyone believed he was right. Even though they would never see the death ship again and the fish smoke fires drove away the smell of the ship and the man-dead stink, even then they knew something bad had to come. Had to come.