He worked north from inlet to inlet, stopping for breaks at islands that were free of bears until one afternoon – or morning, or evening, they all seemed the same in his new life – he pulled out of an inlet and started to paddle and noticed, felt, something different about the motion of the water beneath the canoe.

There was tidal movement still, as there always had been, currents he rode with or tied up to let go by, but something new.

There was a surge to it. A gentle rhythm that had nothing to do with the tidal currents. A new life to the water he had not felt beneath the canoe earlier that seemed somehow familiar. Seemed he should know it. Know the surge, the motion of the water.

And it came to him. It was the swells from the open sea. He had known it for years on the ships. Felt it for his whole life, though never in such close confines as it was now, caught in inlets and islands. Shaping, warping it.

The heartbeat of the ocean, Old Carl had called it. ‘Feel the pulse of it,’ he said, sitting one day on a pile of rotting rope, smoking the disgusting black tobacco in a small clay pipe that fit in a round hole worn in his teeth. ‘It’s the pulse of the sea, going ’round the world. You might feel a swell that started days or even weeks ago, far away, moving without tiring, instead getting stronger the further it travels . . .’

And with the knowledge of the swells, remembering them, he noted that the channel between the mainland and the big island had widened more and more as he paddled. Then, later, he saw the sun shining on an open sea. Saw the swells as they came marching in . . .

Different now. Everything changed quickly. Still inlets on the eastern side, and he could see more land in the distance ahead – days away – but he had gone from calm, lakelike waters among the islands to the edge of the immensity of the sea itself.

It was calm now, peaceful now, but not a place a canoe could live if the sea decided to become angry. He would be flipped, rolled, and sunk in moments if even moderate waves brewed up.

He would have to stay close, always close to shore, working in and out of the inlets so he could get to safety if the sea changed, came with added wind-force, at least until he had moved still further north where there might be smaller islands and shelter from the open sea.

And there were new problems. As the sea grew larger it seemed his canoe grew smaller. Much smaller, in comparison with even the modest swells that came rolling in. A chip of wood, a leaf floating on a puddle.