The summer passes in a slow, languid procession of sunny days, boat trips, and Saturday excursions to fish and pick berries. On Sundays everyone attends the Church of England service, arriving by boat, and in the evening local families gather for an informal 'evensong' service; without a sermon, they join to sing well-known and beloved hymns. Grandpa Page attends these services off shore, sailing in his Ackroyd dinghy, smoking his pipe and enjoying the sound of singing in the tranquil evenings.

Suddenly, one weekend towards the end of August, the weather turns angry. A raw northeasterly wind brings rain and a drop in temperature. The fire in the stone fireplace at Pine Cliff blazes all day. On a gloomy evening, in the wind and the rain, Walter Page and his wife and daughter are invited to dine and play bridge with a married daughter, Lillian Clark, in one of the other cottages in the family enclave. While they are gone, Walter's lifelong friend Henry Shaw notices a glow in the sky - and realizes that Pine Cliff is on fire. Hurrying by boat to the burning cottage, he finds all the boats in the dock, but no sign of his dear friends, who he fears have died in the fire.