From below the skylight, too, came tears and cries for help that one might easily have taken for real if they had not been occasionally interrupted by such phrases as “It’s no good: I shall cut off your head just the same!”

Captain Jonsen was thinking about a little house in far-off, shadowy Lübeck⁠—with a china stove⁠ ⁠… it didn’t do to talk about retiring: above all, one must never say aloud “This is my last voyage,” even addressing oneself. The sea has an ironic way of interpreting it in her own fashion, if you do. Jonsen had seen too many skippers sail on their “last voyage”⁠—and never return.

He felt acutely melancholy, not very far from tears: and presently he went below. He wanted to be alone.

Emily by now was conducting, in her head, a secret conversation with John. She had never done so before: but today he had suddenly presented himself to her imagination. Of course his disappearance was strictly taboo between them: what they chiefly discussed was the building of a magnificent raft, to use in the bathing-hole at Ferndale; just as if they had never left the place.