For the moment there seemed no more to be said. They were caught in the space between two stories, between the sweetness of what they had, (their half-night at the hotel, souls and bodies bared), and what still lay at a distance, the outer world that signalled to them but whose message would not harden into sense. They stopped their parading of the deck and settled themselves, hip to hip, in the lee of a cord of timber. The smell of forests settled on them. She said it reminded her of her father’s workshop. “By ten,” she said, “I knew wood well. I could tell you the difference between rosewood and maple. Oak and sycamore.”

“You helped him with his work?”

“I remember,” she said, “Jane and Cornelius and myself squatting like Chinamen lining hatboxes with scale.”

“Is that a happy memory?” he asked.

“It is today,” she said. She shifted at the side of him, felt for his face and kissed him. A sailor, tying off a halyard to a pin, glanced at them and looked away, as if he were the world’s observer and had towards them some duty of tenderness.

They crept up the sound. On the water the cloud-shadows were almost stationary. Another hour and a town of brightly painted houses showed on the port side; an hour later and it was still in view. Lacroix spoke with the captain. “When we come out of the lee of the island,” said the captain, “we may find the wind again.” But they came out and the wind was less than before. They were carried north on the current, cleared the headland at Ardnamurchan under the shadow of its cliffs, the crew fretting the sails to pick up whatever scraps of wind might give them sea room. It was already late afternoon. Ahead of them was a small island with a curving high ride of bare rock along its back. This, Lacroix and Emily were informed, was where the Halcyon would spend the night. In the morning they might have better luck.

They closed on the island, drifted into a bay. The anchor was let go and the Halcyon found her angle and was still. The captain asked if they cared to go ashore. They went, rowed over by a straw-haired sailor who told them he had once, on the beach they were rowing towards, found a coconut shell that must have been washed all the way from the Indies.

“Where are you from?” asked Lacroix.

“Friesland,” said the sailor. “Or an island near the coast. Ameland.”

“Is it like this?”

The sailor shook his head. “We have no mountain in Ameland. There you are born with your feet in the sea and you can never make them dry again.” He laughed, shipped the oars, stepped out of the boat and drew them on to the beach. He and Lacroix—one elbow each—lifted Emily down to the sand.