and...

The men stood on the deck beneath a full moon. The sea was calm and a warm breeze blew from the south. Below decks the hum of prayer and keening was barely audible...around the deck small groups of men gathered, to smoke or merely bide the time.

Harry regarded his friend’s face, strong and placid in the moonlight. It was not a handsome face, but lean and angular with deep set brown eyes and a mop of coal black curls, prematurely shot through with flecks of grey.

“I expect wee Tansy will have foaled by now” Harry remarked.

“Aye”, Tom replied with a smile flickering across his mouth. “I wonder if it was a colt or a filly. Whatever it is, I am sure it will be a prizewinner, and this the third foal she’s thrown. Her Brownie is a bonny wee filly.”

“Aye”,Harry murmured. “I will be sure to inquire when I write to Father.”

The men fell silent as they gazed out at the sea, one fair head, one dark. So they had stood for a long while, lost in their own thoughts, when a silvery fin, gleaming in the moonlight, cut the water for a moment and then disappeared. Their eyes met briefly, and they beheld each other’s alarm for a long pause but not a word was spoken. Within a few minutes, the fin appeared again, slicing silently through the inky surface of the ocean. As they stood they counted three times the fin broke the water and disappeared, obviously now circling the boat.

“Perhaps you had better hold on to this, ye heathen” Tom said with a grin, slipping his olivewood rosary into Harry’s palm. “I’m reasonably sure my soul is still safe within the terms of my last confession, an’ I have had nary a chance of committing a sin on this leaky old tub.”

Harry looked down at the item in his hand. “This was your mother’s.” The beads were smooth and gleamed with the power of too many Hail Mary’s to be counted.

“Aye” said Tom. “She would want your soul to stand a chance in hell as much as I do.”

Harry chuckled. “Aye, she would. She always worried about my potential for everlasting damnation, every time she caught us out sampling the casks.”

“Well before then” replied Tom with a quiet snort.

The sound of a splash drew their attention once again to the water below them. A porpoise leapt out of the ocean and seemed to hang suspended before following its arc back into the watery depths.

“Was that....?” whispered Harry, more to himself than to Tom.

“Aye.”