Gail surrendered the point and tossed the tin cowboy down to Ben, who caught it and lost interest in the sunk schooner. He turned his back to the great boulder and sat in the sand and got his cowboy into a fight with some pebbles. The pebbles kept hitting him and knocking him over. Gail didn’t think it was an even match.

“What else do you have?” Joel asked.

“This spoon,” Gail said. “It might be silver.”

Joel squinted at it, then looked back at the lake.

“Better let me have the telescope,” he said. “If there are people out there, we have as good a chance of spotting them as anyone searching for them on a boat.”

“That’s what I was thinking.” She gave him the kaleidoscope.

Joel turned it this way and that, scanning the murk for survivors, his face tense with concentration.

He lowered it at last and opened his mouth to say something. Before he could, the mournful foghorn sounded again. The water quivered. The foghorn sound went on for a long time before trailing sadly away.

“I wonder what that is,” Gail said.

“They fire cannons to bring dead bodies to the surface of the water,” Joel told her.

“That wasn’t a cannon.”

“It’s loud enough.”

He lifted the kaleidoscope to his eye again and looked for a while more. Then he lowered it and pointed at a floating board.

“Look. Part of the boat.”

“Maybe it has the name of the boat on it.”

Joel sat and rolled his jeans up to his knees. He dropped off the boulder into the water.

“I’ll get it,” he said.

“I’ll help,” Gail said, even though he didn’t need help. She took off her black shoes and put her socks inside them and slid down the cold, rough stone into the water after him.

The water was up over her knees in two steps, and she didn’t go any farther because she was soaking her dress. Joel had the board anyway. He was up to his waist, peering down at it.

“What does it say?” she asked.

“Like you thought. It’s the Mary Celeste,” he said, and held up the board so she could see. There was nothing written on it.

She bit her lip and stared out over the water. “If anyone rescues them, it’s going to have to be us. We should make a fire on the beach, so they know which way to swim. What do you think?”

He didn’t answer.

“I said, ‘What do you think?’” she asked again, but then she saw the look on his face and knew he wasn’t going to answer, wasn’t even listening. “What’s wrong?”

She glanced back over her shoulder to see what he was staring at, his face rigid and his eyes wide.