I’ve never known another man with Danny Ray’s uncanny piloting abilities. It’s as though he can find his way by sense of smell, or like some sort of seagoing homing pigeon with the imprint of the Earth’s magnetic field upon his brain. Whether it was by the elapsed time of movement, or a subtle change he detected in the flow of the water, I could not tell. But Danny instinctively knew there had been a shift in the cut of the channel, and he knew which way led to deeper water.

And that’s the inexplicable part of all this. It is one thing to learn and memorize a fixed route, that’s something even we dullards can do. But the channels of these tidal waters never stand still and are forever changing. Filling here and cutting there—shifting with every tide, storm, and river flood—they are never at rest. But by some virtue that can only be explained as genius or magic, Danny Ray Pledger is utterly attuned to the brackish rhythms and salty pulses of these waters and is completely at one with them. They speak to him, and he knows them in their secret ways.

The river soon widened, so that we lost contact with either bank and were utterly lost within a universe of white upon white and gray upon gray. But our progress was swift as we fell downstream with the rapidly falling tide.

“Parker,” I said, turning to our silent companion. “Think you could rustle us up a pot of coffee?”

“You must be a mind reader, Kennesaw. That was my own thought just this second. Coffee for all hands, coming up directly,” he said as he left the pilothouse and headed for the galley.

I should get a pot to keep here in the pilothouse, I realized, for times such as this. I wonder why I’ve never thought of that before.

It wasn’t long before Parker returned with a pot of coffee and three cups. I took the proffered cup and thanked him. Danny took a cup, but his eyes never strayed from their hold on the route ahead.

In the distance, diffused and softened by the fog, I saw a blinking red light. I watched and counted. It blinked every two and a half seconds. I checked the GPS and the radar and determined this to be the buoy marking the center of Wassaw Sound. I started to give the wheel a turn to starboard, but Danny Ray arrested me with a touch of the hand.

“W-w-wait. F-f-fetch th-th-the b-b-buoy to p-p-port. Th-then turn d-d-due west,” he instructed.