He watched as the ship churned past him, steam spouting from her funnels. She turned toward the land and sailed past an outcropping, beyond his view. He was suddenly filled with a great urgency. How long would it take for the officials to board the ship? For the doctors to examine passengers? How long for Padma and her brother to answer their foolish questions and prove they were literate, to pay that silly tax? Not long, or very long? Hours? Days? From his perch on the rock, he could see a ferry come to take the first-class passengers to shore. It did not matter how long it would take because, regardless, it would be too long. Was it possible for her foot to touch this shore? That she would be walking, alive, alongside him?

He returned to the pier in San Francisco, but she did not arrive that day. At nightfall he took a trolley to the old Ghadar headquarters. It was now called Yugantar Ashram, after the arrest and trial of the Indians and Germans and the murder of RamChandra Bharadwaj. Before Ram left for San Francisco, Karak had sent a telegram there on Ram’s behalf. When Ram knocked, a Bengali man allowed him inside. A Tamilian prepared his dinner plate. There were others there: three Punjabis and two Marathi who were students at the university.

Ram slept on the floor, barely listening to their political talk. In the morning he went to the docks and waited again. The ferry carried some passengers from Angel Island. Four Hindustanees were among them, but she was not. The men were not dressed poorly, but they were tired and disheveled.

“Have you met my brother-in-law, Shankar?” he asked them. “He is traveling with his sister, my wife.”

“There is a small boy with them?” a turbaned man said. He spoke like a rural man, a farmer.

“My son,” Ram said.

“They came with us on the journey,” one of the other men said, nodding his head.

“The boy is quite beautiful,” another said, perhaps reading the anxiety in Ram’s face. “Shankar-ji has not yet been processed. He is waiting still. I have not seen your wife since we arrived. They are keeping men and women separately.”

“Don’t worry, brother,” the third man said.

Ram took them with him to the ashram. He ate and slept there again. They told him more: His wife had suffered from seasickness on the journey, but she traveled well despite her cane. She had written poems about the sea and, when they insisted, had read them aloud. The men had exchanged forwarding addresses with Ram’s brother-in-law. They intended to be in touch. And the boy—at five years old, he was very mischievous, very smart. He would stare at the ocean with round eyes. So round, so dark—so curious! They had never seen eyes as black as his.