“He sure did,” the captain said, laughing. “If you don’t go to Antago on my ship, you don’t go at all. We’re the only line that puts in at Antago; it’s too far off the shipping lanes for any of the larger lines to bother with. Sure, I remember your Phil Pitcher. He spent most of his time reading during the trip, but every once in a while he’d come out of his shell and tell me about himself. It seems he was a little worried about having given up a job he’d had practically all his life to go to Antago. He wasn’t quite sure at the time that he’d done the right thing.”

“He’s sure now,” Steve said quietly. “From what he says in his letters, he’s happier than he ever was at home. He wasn’t very happy at home. Pitch lived next door to us for as long as I can remember, and he was pretty much a part of our family. We all knew he hated his job. He was a bookkeeper in the office of a big lumberyard, and the job kept him inside all the time. He didn’t like that. I guess everyone had heard Pitch say at one time or another that he was going to quit and go to Antago to live with his stepbrother, Tom, who has a sugar plantation there. But no one believed him. Then a little over a year ago he did it. Quit just as he’d said he would, and went to Antago.”

“Good man,” the captain said, smiling.

“Yes,” Steve said seriously, “we were so glad he finally did what he’d always wanted to do. But we’ve all missed him very much.”

“He certainly didn’t talk like a bookkeeper,” the captain recollected. “You should have heard some of the tales he told me about the Conquistadores and the Spanish Conquest. They were enough to make your head spin.”

“Pitch was always interested in the Conquistadores. That was another reason he preferred to come down here rather than go anywhere else. He’s a lot closer to them here.”

“Then it’s Pitch you’re visiting on Antago,” the captain said.

Steve nodded. “He’s been asking Dad and me to get down to see him. Dad couldn’t make it very well with his work and all, but he wanted me to go. I had planned to visit Pitch early next summer, instead of coming down now when I only have a few weeks before school opens again, but …” Steve stopped, his gaze shifting uneasily between the captain and the shoreline of Azul Island. He hadn’t meant to divulge so much.

The captain was looking at him questioningly, waiting.

“I—I mean I just decided to come now,” Steve said, without meeting the captain’s eyes.