He had not wept at the funeral. He had sat in the family pew, dry-eyed, while Lucy’s nose turned red with blowing and Sarah, on the other side, dabbed with a handkerchief and sighed. Nell had cried. Even Tom for Christ’s sake (he had seen him quite plainly across the nave in the common pews). Tom who worked the fields, who was paid—what?—one and six a day at harvest, less in other seasons. He had wondered at it during the prayers, had been self-perplexed, made angry even by these displays of grief. Was it vulgar? Was it false? Might it be false? Or was it simply that he lacked something the others had? Some common response, a sense of pity? Was that what had happened in Spain? He did not know, he did not know. In his effort to understand he had worn language thin but made it no sharper. He was bitterly tired of thinking about it, thinking and a minute later beginning again with the same bare and terrible facts. That was almost the worst of it, not being able to stop the thinking. Or not until the world broke in with hunger, a fist, stars above the sea. Then, for a breath or two, he went free.

In the morning he saw they were closing on an island. Were they going to land? On the shore a small fire showed a meeting place, a welcome party. The sailors worked the boat to within parleying distance, then, in a minute of swift activity, the sails were dropped and an anchor thrown clear. The boat swung and was still. The party on the shore—men and women—walked down to the sea. There were no houses in view, no nearby village. One of the sailors climbed on to the bows and called across in their own language. When he was answered he came down again, took Lacroix by the arm, picked up the fiddle and led him back along the boat, out of the way. He said nothing to him but there was no unkindness in his actions. Then he went among the cattle with the other sailors. They drew one of the animals to the shore side of the boat, and with a sudden movement—a thing they must have done together countless times—they launched it into the sea. Its panic was comical. Whatever it had expected of life it had not expected this. It bellowed. Its eyes were wild. Then, having floundered a while, it discovered itself to be a creature that could survive in this new element and began to swim for the beach. A second animal soon followed, until there were five of them, swimming like dogs, necks straining, heads held clear of the water. At the surf they were met, and, even at a distance, there was something beyond the merely practical in the way they were surrounded and touched, then led towards the dunes.