‘Please,’ Freize shouted. ‘Walk tomorrow. When it has had time to dry out properly. Don’t go now. I’m afraid the waters will come . . .’

‘You are afraid,’ Johann said gently. ‘You doubted from the beginning, and now you are afraid, as you will always be afraid. You go back. I shall go on.’

Freize looked back to the quayside. A scuffle caught his eye. The little girl that he had first met with the bleeding feet was trying to get back to the quayside. Two boys had hold of her and were dragging her onward, trying to catch up with Johann. ‘You let her go!’ Freize called to them.

They held her tightly, pulling her onwards. Freize turned and ran back for her, burst through the two of them, pulled her away. ‘I want to go back to shore!’ she gasped. ‘I’m frightened of the sea.’

‘I’ll take you,’ he said.

Mutely, she lifted up her arms to him. Freize bent down and swung her up onto his shoulders, and turned to run clumsily back to the quayside, ploughing through the mud which sucked wetly at his feet, calling to the children to follow him as he ran.

He could hear the church bell of Piccolo starting to toll loudly, as the villagers poured out of their homes down to the quayside, the fishermen aghast at the state of the harbour and the loss of their ships. People were staring in wonderment at the anchors and chains lying alongside the beached craft, at the lobsters, dry in their pots, at the sudden extraordinary revelation of the floor of the harbour which was usually sixty feet under water.

Freize flung the little girl up the green steps and shouted at the people gathered there, starting to come down the steps to see the floor of the sea. ‘Go back! Go to your homes! Go to the hills! Get as high as you can. The waters will come back! There’s going to be a flood!’

Freize ploughed his way across the harbour mud to the grounded ship where the horses were rearing and kicking in the stalls on the boat. ‘Be still my dears!’ he called breathlessly. ‘I’m coming for you!’

A few people, remembering stories of inexplicable great waves in fairy tales and folk stories, felt the chill of old fears at their backs, and turned and started to run. Their panic was infectious, and in moments the quayside was empty, people banging into their houses and bolting the doors, climbing to the upper windows to look out towards the sea, other people running past them, up the steep streets to the highest point of the village, to the walls around the landward side of the town, some taking shelter in the church and climbing up the stone steps of the bell tower to look out to sea. A few women ran against the terrified crowd, down to the quayside, shading their eyes against the dazzle of bright sunshine on wet mud, calling their children’s names, begging them to come away from the crusade, to come home.