‘Reckon I could’ve gone to Marazion and back twenty-odd times in the time it’s took he,’ said Matthew King, looking up from the length of sail he was scrutinising for holes or tears, a grin on his broad, whiskered face.

Bartholomew was within earshot but he was so wrapped up in his own thoughts he was oblivious of the banter.

‘I believe his mind’s on some maid or other,’ jested Matthew, his giant frame rocking with laughter.

Bartholomew’s two younger brothers, Charles and Jack, on their way to help with the work on the lugger after selling dead fish for manure, filed in behind him, snickering. But Bartholomew did not hear them either.

‘It’ll take some maid to catch he, I d’reckon,’ Paul bawled out, signalling to Charles and Jack to join in the fun. ‘Be easier to land a two-hundred-pound shark with a pilchard.’

‘What?’ Bartholomew said dazedly, coming out of his trance.

‘Tes a maid all right,’ Dan Laity, a neighbour and cousin to the Kings threw in. ‘Can’t ’ee see the starry-eyed look on his face?’

Bartholomew swelled up and grinned. He was proud of his prowess with the females and his reputation as the local cock of the walk among the fishermen. His brothers were proud of him too. Charles at eleven years old was beginning to understand the true meaning of the jests and innuendoes that passed around the moored boats when the womenfolk were not around and listened carefully, telling Jack what he thought they meant. Jack, nearing ten years, was more interested in play and bird watching.

‘Good, was she, boy?’ Paul shouted down from the boat.

‘Let me put it this way.’ Bartholomew breathed in a lungful of the sharp salty air and looked round at the expectant faces. He toyed with the idea of launching into a lurid account of a past conquest, but mindful of the respect owed to the older and religious fishermen and the presence of his younger brothers, he disappointed the indecently minded minority by saying simply, ‘Yes.’

Amid a variety of laughs and murmurs the men returned to their work. Bartholomew, still grinning broadly, leapt aboard the Young Maid. He had been to Marazion to buy supplies from a ship’s chandler and had used the two-mile walk there and back to think deeply.

The King brothers had been correct in their playful assumption that he’d been thinking of a ‘maid’ but they would never have guessed at Ameline Beswetherick.