She said she could and that it was blue.

They slept in hammocks and in the morning were woken by a chain rattling into a locker a yard from their feet.

“The anchor,” said Lacroix, when Emily raised her head above the canvas. They waited, two risen spirits, listening to the movements of the crew overhead, the dull slap of bare feet on the wood. They waited, then felt the water tighten around the keel and the ship begin to work, to live, to make the air around them live. Something fell; someone laughed.

“The wind,” said Emily.

“Yes,” said Lacroix. “The wind is back.”

He helped her down. The helping ended in an embrace. He thought how much he would like to begin every morning for the rest of his life with such a moment. Thought also that he was glad to do it once.

The wind was a southerly. It took them towards the hills of Skye where they turned, swung west, and beat out into the Minch. Lacroix, leaving Emily eating the oatcakes he bought on the island, her back safely against the timber, went to stand beside the captain. They would, said the captain, make landfall by the middle of the afternoon. In a few hours they would have the tide with them.

Lacroix thanked him. He scanned the sea for other boats, saw two, three. He borrowed the captain’s spyglass to look at one he fancied was on the same heading as the Halcyon. In the glass bobbed four bearded heads, and so alike they had to be brothers. They had no stranger with them.

He went back to sit with Emily. The knowledge that they were only hours from their destination, that they could—should—be at the house by the shore long before dark, did not soothe her. Every fifteen minutes she asked him what he could see, how close they were, how soon he thought they might arrive. She was so agitated he wondered if she was in pain. He asked if her eyes were troubling her. Would she like him to examine them? She frowned at him. She was getting more accurate, did not waste many expressions on empty air.

“It is not my eyes. Use yours.”

“I will,” he said, “when there is something to use them on.”

They sat without speaking, two stiff figures rolling with the rolling of the boat.

“You are already tired of me,” she said, but he didn’t hear her. A half-minute later she felt for his hand, squeezed it. “John,” she said. “Will you do something? Will you sing? It need not be loud. The others need not hear you.”

“Sing?”

“Yes.”

“Sing what?”

“Sing anything.”