The wind was brisk but the sea—grey, scalloped—was calm enough. To the north, a mile or two in the distance, the Welsh coast showed itself in patches of green and grey. It looked, he thought, as if it might be raining there.

He could not see many of the crew; he was not sure how many there were to be seen. The master was standing at the stern rail, staring back along the boat’s wake. Same black jacket he had worn at their first meeting, same solid posture. There was a man at the wheel, another sitting at the foot of the great mast, plaiting strands of hemp. The boy who had fetched him from the Star was holding a hen in his arms. He came down the deck with it, speaking to the bird as though to a pet. Then a man with a leather hat—a hat like a horse’s nosebag, something medieval about it—appeared up to his waist in the hatchway and took the bird from the boy. He held it by its feet and when he saw Lacroix lifted it up and called something. Lacroix, not quite hearing the words but guessing the sense, called back, “Yes!” The man grinned and disappeared.

He stayed on deck for what was left of the day, standing just beyond the dark line where the spray landed. Clouds hurried past but the ship herself seemed to get nowhere. He grew cold, cold enough to shiver, though could not quite be bothered to go below and dig out his cloak. He did not mind being uncomfortable. It kept him aimed at the dull miracle of sea and air, of time slipping like honey through muslin.

In the last full hour of daylight, the man with the leather hat thrust his head above the hatch again and beat a saucepan with a metal spoon. He waved the spoon at Lacroix, flourished it like a sabre. Lacroix followed him down into the ship’s underworld, past his own cabin, past the entrance to the galley, and into a low room (much wider than it was high) where a table was laid between benches. Here he was left alone, standing behind one of the benches and peering into the room’s restless zones of light and shadow. A small cat observed him from the seat of a grand but much battered easy chair, the chair itself lashed to the timber behind it.

“You know you do not know me,” said Lacroix quietly. The cat shut its eyes, withdrew to the edge of the visible.