MacCusk nodded, began to tie back his hair with a piece of leather cord that dangled between his fingers. Medina stood up. Though he knew it was not entirely safe to leave Calley with MacCusk, he needed to piss. He found his way outside, scraping his head on the lintel as he went. Cold, clear air; the usual frenzy of birds. Full day was still an hour off, but he could see the beach where they had landed and half a dozen thatched houses on the heights above.

He walked behind the house looking for somewhere he could use as a latrine. He saw the woman, a dripping bucket in one hand, coming towards him.

“Buenos dias,” he said. She stopped. He did not think she was afraid of him. He stepped closer. “Hablas español?”

She shrugged, or she moved the shoulder on the side that was not weighed with the bucket.

“De donde eres?”

“Brasilia.”

“Una brasileña?”

She nodded. He tried to guess how old she was. Younger, he thought, than she looked. Had she sailed from Brazil on the warship? The Achille?

“Has cruzado el mundo,” he said.

“Sí,” she said. “Hecho.”

He asked her if she had seen the Englishman.
She nodded again.
He wanted to ask her why her husband was angry. Instead he asked simply, “Qué ha pasado aquí?”

“Pasado?” she said.

“Sí.” Then a moment of certainty. A thought that had not, until that instant, occurred to him at all. “Está aquí, no? Todavía aquí.” He’s still here.

Her gaze dropped to his chest then lifted to his face again. He wondered if she had ever been a slave.

“Sí,” she said. “Ele está aquí.” He is here.

She walked past him, carrying the water to the house. Medina went to piss. Another treeless island. He found a rock and watched the heat of himself steam off its surface.

When he went back into the house he heard, then saw, the woman and MacCusk in a hushed wrangling with each other. They used three languages, three at least, while Calley watched them from his chair, looking now at the husband, now at the wife. MacCusk was insisting on something, on silence perhaps, but Sara was holding her ground. They argued either side of the fire and its light lit them strangely. The copper of her face, the blue and grey of MacCusk’s; the sailor’s body like a tool worked from wood, from the roots of something, the woman in her old gown, stout and short but supple and upright. It was MacCusk who backed away. He unslung his jacket from a hook on the door and left the house.

Calley looked at Medina.

Medina said, “He’s here. On the island.”

“Our man?” asked Calley.

“Yes.”

“Is he close?”

“I think she knows,” said Medina.

Calley turned to her. “Go on then,” he said.

“This night,” she said. And to Medina, “Esta noche.”