Condwiramurs put a hand over the side. The boat was moving at such a snail’s pace the water barely foamed or climbed up her hand.

‘Oh, my,’ she said, packing as much sarcasm into her voice as she could. ‘What speed! We’re hurtling over the waves. It’s making my head spin!’

The rower, a short, stocky, compact man, growled back angrily and indistinctly, not even raising his head, which was covered in a grizzly mop of hair as curly as a caracul lamb’s. The novice had put up with quite enough of the growling, hawking and grunting with which the boor had dismissed her questions since she had boarded.

‘Have a care,’ she drawled, struggling to keep calm. ‘You might do yourself a mischief from such hard rowing.’

This time the man raised his face, which was as swarthy and weather-beaten as tanned leather. He grunted, hawked, and pointed his bristly, grey chin at the wooden reel attached to the side of the boat and the line disappearing into the water stretched tight by their movement. Clearly convinced the explanation was exhaustive, he resumed his rowing. With the same rhythm as previously. Oars up. A pause. Blades halfway into the water. A long pause. The pull. An even longer pause.

‘Aha,’ Condwiramurs said nonchalantly, looking heavenwards. ‘I understand. What’s important is the lure being pulled behind the boat, which has to move at the right speed and the right depth. Fishing is important. Everything else is unimportant.’

What she said was so obvious the man didn’t even take the trouble to grunt or wheeze.

‘Who could it bother,’ Condwiramurs continued her monologue, ‘that I’ve been travelling all night? That I’m hungry? That my backside hurts and itches from the hard, wet bench? That I need a pee? No, only trolling for fish matters. Which is pointless in any case. Nothing will take a lure pulled down the middle of the current at a depth of a score of fathoms.’

The man raised his head, looked at her foully and grumbled very–very–grumblingly. Condwiramurs flashed her little teeth, pleased with herself. The boor went on rowing slowly. He was furious.

She lounged back on the stern bench and crossed her legs, letting her dress ride up.

The man grunted, tightened his gnarled hands on the oars, and pretended only to be looking at the fishing line. He had no intention of rowing any faster, naturally. The novice sighed in resignation and turned her attention to the sky.

The rowlocks creaked and the glistening drops fell from the oar blades.