He fell into himself, his half-closed eyes looking into an edgeless nowhere.

Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.

White flags waved from the windows; flowers were flung down in profusion; not a voice was raised but in huzzas—not a hand but in applause.

Just as our combined anticipation was starting to build to a blood-boiling crescendo, the swell lines disappeared from underneath us, intercepted by the coastline of approaching islands to our north.