The Silent Sea

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A GOLDEN BLUR LEAPT OVER THE SMALL BOAT'S GUNWALE just as the bows met the rocky beach. It hit the water with a splash and plowed through the surf, its tail raised like a triumphant pennant. When the retriever reached land, it shook itself so that drops flew like diamond chips in the crisp air, and then it looked back at the skiff. The dog barked at a pair of gulls farther down the beach that took startled flight. Feeling its companions were coming much too slowly, the purebred tore off into a copse of nearby trees, her bark diminishing until it was swallowed by the forest that covered most of the mile-square island just an hour's row off the mainland.

Amelia, cried Jimmy Ronish, the youngest of the five brothers in the boat.

She'll be fine, Nick said, shipping his oars and taking the boat's painter line in his hand. He was the eldest of the Ronish boys.

He timed his leap perfectly, landing on the pebbled shore as a wave receded. Three long strides later he was above the tidal mark of flotsam and drying kelp, looping the rope around a sun- and salt-bleached limb of driftwood that was a crosshatch of carved initials. He hauled back on the line to firmly ground the fourteen-foot craft and tied it off.

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