The tune came from the Outer Hebrides, as did the man who had taught it to Cyrus: his maternal grandfather, Alexander Wallace. Its haunting melody rose and fell like slow ocean swells, and Nathaniel’s oars fell into the rhythm, brass tholepins squealing in brass locks and the blades dipping to the thump … thump … thump of the chart case on the gunwale.

FATHER: Wives are waitin’ by the shore boys …

SONS: They’ve been waitin’ since break o’ day-o …

Nathaniel had never seen even a picture of the Outer Hebrides, wasn’t sure where they were exactly, except off the coast of Scotland; yet those lyrics always evoked in his mind an image so clear it was as if he had been there, maybe in another life: weatherworn women in dark homespun looking seaward from a bleak headland, their expressions revealing hearts poised between dread and hope. He rowed on, looking straight into his father’s face, trying to understand the puzzling message of anger and sorrow written there.

FATHER: They are waitin’ for their loved ones …

SONS: As the sun sets on Mingulay …

Their voices carried over the bay for a short distance, heard only by themselves and the cormorants congregated on the ledge, black wings outspread to dry. Nathaniel never liked the sight of those birds, so ominously plumed; sometimes he imagined them to be the reincarnate souls of sailors’ widows, waiting, like the wives in the song, for ghosts to come home.