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herself by now, and her humour had quite faded, until they barely looked at each other and could only stutter absurdities, before one or the other would scurry off. Harry felt himself a boy just out of puberty again.
    Then one night there came a tapping on the deck above his head, and when he pushed up the trap door, she slipped inside, all chance of sailing without mischance from this landing was lost, and, soon after, he found himself asking a man he feared for the thing that man would be least willing, as he thought, to give.
    So Harry spoke the words, but George Hunt said nothing, his huge body squeezed into his chair before the cedarwood desk in a corner of the greathouse, a sheaf of close-written paper laid neatly out before him, his hard eyes on Harry. So Harry squirmed and his feet shuffled like he had no control of them, until he found himself speaking words he would never otherwise have spoken.
    â€œI know I ain’t much,” he said. “Indeed, I don’t say I’m much of anything at all. But I have my boat and the things I know and, such as I am, I’d promise to do right by her.” He resented George for drawing this from him as soon as it had been said. And was it not about as far from the truth as could be, just waiting as he was for his moment to escape?
    But what made him even ask, when he’d had his taste of her already?
    Oh, he wanted more, of course he did. The fine tilt of her eyelids, each alien twist of her thinking, her skin beneath his fingers, her tomfoolish jokes: he wanted more and more. And she was a good, strong woman:raucous, but honest. A decent wife for any man. Still, he’d hardly been seeking such permanence. All the years at sea, gathering what fortune he could. And now he had his treasure, the Hesperus , and the world spread before him. He flew before the winds of his fate. He didn’t tack against it, as someone had once put it to him.
    In any case, the winter storms came howling down the island’s coastline off the Pacific, until it was not hard to persuade himself he had to stay. If only till the spring. So he’d promise to do right by her, he told Hunt, in the gloomy month of December, and then he said it again. But still the old man was silent, until Harry shivered at the duplicity of his own tongue, and some deeper shame came upon him. There was something, after all, when he thought on it. Something he sensed in himself that day before his future father-in-law. It felt like what? Respite? The thought of setting out upon the ocean suddenly felt too much to cope with. Running before a wind. Always running. And now to have an end to it! To feel peace. He thought on Grace until he was certain that his words were true. He would do right by her. Yes. He’d support her—and, yes, he’d do right by all these people here.
    So he stood fast under the eagle gaze of George Hunt. He did his utmost not to jitter, remembering Grace’s words to him: “My father is a big man, but not a bad man. Don’t shake like fish in a boat. Look him right back.”
    At last, Hunt spoke up. “You’ve heard of my labours here?” He gestured down at the papers on his desk.
    â€œYou write about the Indians.”
    Hunt glared up through the thorny twists of his eyebrows. Then he reached and brought down a book from off the shelf above the desk. He held it up to Harry, made almost as if to hand it to him. But then he threw it down on top of the papers. The candle spluttered, showing a rough leather binding, black in the flickering light.
    â€œWritten of them?” Hunt said. His voice was like a gathering wind, blowing up toward a squall. “Whole books. On us, mind! For what is my family if it ain’t Indian?”
    Harry said nothing. He had heard plenty from Grace already about the man’s book that he had penned with some famous scientist out of NewYork. It puffed up his bride-to-be like a cock turkey when she spoke on it.