Prince pawed at the object and buried his nose in it, noisily snuffling and oblivious to the boys as they came to a halt a few feet away.

‘Oh boy,’ he muttered under his breath, taking an involuntary step back.

A wave rolled the object over. Prince began to lick the exposed pale face of a young man, a blond fringe plastered to the brow with dried blood.

‘Is that man dead, Sean?’ the smaller boy whispered, looking up at his older friend for confirmation. ‘He’s dead, ain’t he?’

Sean moved reluctantly towards it, aware that Danny was holding back and looking uncertainly to him to take the lead. He was only a year older than Danny — thirteen, to his twelve — but that was enough to confer an unambiguous seniority on him.

He approached the body and leaned over it, studying the face intently, ‘Think so. He’s not moving a whole lot.’

Danny gasped.

He watched each wave lift and move the dead man’s arms up, and the retreating ebb pull them back down again. In a bizarre way it looked like he was trying to fly.

‘When a body dies it goes all stiff,’ he said matter-offactly. Danny had the stern face of an undertaker. ‘Do you think he’s one of the fishermen?’

The dead man looked like he couldn’t have been over thirty years old. Sean knew most of the men who worked on the trawlers in Port Lawrence; they were all much older. Most of the young ones in Port Lawrence had long ago left these shores for the war in Europe.

‘I don’t think so. I don’t recognise him. Anyway, those don’t look like oilskins.’

He slowly reached out a finger and lightly prodded the corpse’s chest. ‘Yeah, reckon he’s dead all right,’ he announced with growing confidence. ‘Maybe he fell overboard from one of the cargo ships.’

Danny nodded gravely. ‘He must’ve fallen,’ he added soberly.

Sean, encouraged that the corpse wasn’t about to spring to life, grew bolder and started to pull away some ribbons of seaweed that had wrapped themselves around the body. Prince resumed licking the dead man’s face.