“We are not . . . ” For a second, in the strangeness of it all, the effortless way he had stepped into a circumstance he could not really grasp, Medina’s English deserted him. “Not ladrones.”

Calley started on the stairs. “Ladrones,” he said. “I actually know what that means.”

At the bottom of the stairs he paused to look at the carpet beater beside the clock. It bothered him; it was out of place. He carried it to the kitchen door, opened the door a little, and tossed it inside. Then he buttoned his coat.

7

On the morning of the tenth day they could see the mountains of Arran and in light winds ran towards the mouth of the Clyde. There were more ships now, headed both ways. Many of them the master seemed to know, and though they were often at a distance and far beyond hailing, he nodded to them, as you might to an acquaintance in the street.

At supper that night he came below with a mood of satisfaction on him and drank more of Lacroix’s brandy than his usual mouthful. He said, “Unless we meet with something untoward you will have solid ground under your boots tomorrow. I dare say that will please you.”

Lacroix agreed; he thought it would, but after dinner, alone in his usual place under the shadow of the staysail, looking ahead across a not-quite-perfectly dark sea, he was less sure. He had become used to the Jenny, her incurious crew, his bed barely big enough for a child. Life on board was orderly, slightly boring, like life in a barracks. He had become a student of weather, watching rain arrive from miles off. He had played chess with Erikson, had spent entire hours gazing down at the skirt of weed at the water line, noting how soon the movement of the sea escaped the language he had to describe it with.

So the days had propped him up—and even the nights had been tolerable, had not opened beneath him like a trapdoor, as he had been afraid they would. One dream in which he hid like Crawley among the glass in the hold, hearing (a series of shatterings) the lieutenant from the frigate closing in on him; one dream of the Polish lancers—snow, birds, silence. But these were dreams he could bear. Those things he most feared to find himself in the presence of, they had not found him and he was grateful. It was a respite. A chance to gather strength.

Their tenth night was their last. In the early morning, going on deck to empty his pot he saw they were in the river and near enough to the right bank to see the windows of lime-washed cottages, to see washing on a line. Other vessels were closer now and a wave was answered with a wave. Up river, the sky was smudged with smoke but behind them, in the west, the air shone like spring water.