" The skin on his palm was thicker than the hide on a man's heel, but across it and between the fingers were deep raw cracks from the cold and the salt which would never heal, not until he settled ashore. And that was not likely to be anytime soon, for when a man's got salt water in his blood and a sea wind in his lungs, neither wife nor land can keep him from the waves. "

― Karen Maitland , The Gallows Curse