Myself aside, not a woman nor a child could be found upon the island. Nor had any sign of the doctor yet been seen. Parish took momentary consolation from the sight of a sail on the horizon: mistakenly thinking it was the women, he began his orders to make sail and pursue them, only to discover that the sail was incoming. It was a modest sloop, and there was agreement among the men that it was the same one which they had met with some days before.

A strange vigil came together on the bluff of granite above the house: Parish and his men, the sealers, Argyle and me: a party so riven with discord that the watching was done without exchange of a word, only occasional spitting and tapping of pipes. The weather was mild, a light south-easterly rippling the surface as it blossomed into the blues and greens of the day. I was thankful the weather was so easy: by my rough reckoning the wives had crammed about thirty people into a small working boat to make their escape.

My father had stayed behind in the house. The tremors had returned, and the pallor of his skin—visible even through the sun’s leathering—had become deeply distressing to me. His hands jumped about as he tried to drink the tea I had made him. He refused food: some clenching pain or nausea was coursing through his body. My father was good at suffering—he’d done enough of it—and he merely shivered as the agonies came and went. It was only through knowing him so closely that I was aware of how bad it had become.

But I did not know what the pain meant. I knew he hadn’t drunk for a day and a night, and perversely, I found myself praying that his only want was another drink. But it had never been like this before, and I dreaded it was something graver.

Smith had devised a plan to cover the low country of the island in a systematic search, believing that Gideon was still among us and could be brought in. He believed it would have the result, like a hunting drive, of flushing Gideon away from the coast and up into the high ground where he could be surrounded. Parish refused to deploy his men to the search, maintaining that it was none of his concern. It was clear he also believed the men had been complicit in the disappearance of the women, since he could not countenance the idea that they had engineered their own escape. His pretty contrapposto had been replaced by a slump of angry resignation.