“How are you going?”

“All right.”

“Tell me when you want to stop.”

“All right.”

I took another drink of the brandy, then took hold of the two gunwales of the boat and moved forward.

“No. I’m going beautifully.”

“Go on back to the stern. I’ve had a grand rest.”

For a while, with the brandy, I rowed easily and steadily. Then I began to catch crabs and soon I was just chopping along again with a thin brown taste of bile from having rowed too hard after the brandy.

“Give me a drink of water, will you?” I said.

“That’s easy,” Catherine said.