This daydream, ever more detailed, engrossed him for miles and might have done for miles more had the poet not let go of his strap to point at a pink moon rising above the mist’s horizon. His cry of joy turned to a yelp of terror as he tumbled backwards into the luggage basket. He was in the midst of a somersault that would have ended in the road when the man with the ribbon caught the hem of his coat and clung to it until Lacroix found the poet’s hand and together they dragged him back to his place.

I will have to be quicker than that, thought Lacroix. I will need to be more awake. Enough of this dreaming. Live in the world, man!

At half past eleven they were above Oban, though only the church spire showed clearly—an old black piling in a moonlit sea of milk and purple. They descended, were swallowed up, and came to a final halt in the deadened air between rows of ghostly houses and the yardarms of ghostly ships. The coachman held up his lamp, a thumbprint of yellow light. Lacroix and the others on the roof helped hand down the luggage. It was, generally, how outside passengers regained the use of their limbs.

Emily waited with the woman who had sat beside her on the journey. Lacroix, still unsure where in the town they had stopped, asked the way to the Russian Hotel. The Russian Hotel was not its name but everyone, even the poet, knew what he meant, and three or four of them, more familiar with the town or less easily disorientated, pointed the way.

“But you’ll be lucky to find a room,” said the man with the ribbon.

“Why?” asked Emily.

“The ship,” said the man, “the Chiron. Due in three days. The town will be filling up with passengers. Poor devils.”

Lacroix caught only “ship” and “poor devils” but it was enough. He understood. “We shall have to take our chances,” he said. He collected their bags, and with Emily’s hand on his shoulder, started out, aware their backs were being watched, that the moment they were deemed to be out of earshot there must be some discussion of them.

It was not far to the hotel, a ten-minute walk, but they passed on their way a number of small camps, families bivouacking under shelters of canvas or cloth or nothing at all. The more fortunate had small fires in makeshift braziers and by the light of these could be seen men and women and children. The displaced, the chased-off, or those with an uncle or brother in the New World, someone who sent letters about a land that had no end to it and where you would not be robbed by laird or tacksman.