I arrived this morning before dawn by the Western dock, tumbled ashore by a sudden and violent wave – the first and only such I encountered in my entire journey across the sound. Perhaps I am no longer welcome here. These cliffs and caves and fells are forbidding enough on the best day, and so I am ill at ease. I find myself wondering how it was that Donnelly first came to the island all those years ago. I have always pictured a storm – sea and sky in an upheaval so violent that it becomes impossible to tell them apart, and Donnelly’s boat swimming through the churn of water and air to land on this very beach.  But isn’t it more likely that the island welcomed him? That he alighted on the tide pools with the morning gulls from a gentle fogbound crossing?