Had this been a dream?
Was it simply a confusion of summer visits to Rafiel, stories told him by Mary, pictures in books (a fine illustrated edition of "Redgauntlet" had been a treasure to him since he was a baby), the exciting figure of the Captain, and the beginning of spring?
And yet the vision was so vividly detailed that it was precisely like a remembered event.

He had always seen things in pictures; punishment meant standing in the corner counting the ships on the wallpaper; summer holidays meant the deep green meadows of Cow Farm, or a purple pool under an afternoon sun; religion meant walking up the great wide aisle of the Cathedral in creaking boots and clean underclothes, and so on.

It was nothing new for him to make a picture, and to let that picture stand for a whole complex phase of life.

But this?
What had it to do with the Sea-Captain, and why was it, as he knew in his heart that it was, wicked and wrong and furtive?
For this had begun as a high adventurous romance.

There had been nothing wrong in that first talk in the Meads, when the Captain had shown him the tatooes.