NATHANIEL AND ELIOT took half-hour turns at the wheel. While one tended the helm, the other kept lookout for approaching ships. They marveled at the steadiness of the wind; it blew as smoothly as oil flowed, with barely a hole, header, or lift in it, and the schooner needed so little steering that she seemed to be racing down an invisible track grooved into the sea by a benevolent spirit. The spirit of Aunt Phrony? They spoke about her for a while, asking themselves how and when the superstition got started and if there could be anything to it. If there wasn’t, then why, Nathaniel wondered aloud, had belief in her guardian powers persisted right down to this day? It was a matter of raw luck—that was Eliot’s opinion. There must have been a lot of sailors who’d done everything right by her but never made it back home. The ones who had probably went around telling everybody that they owed their lives to Aunt Phrony, and everybody believed them.

“Maybe”—Nathaniel, after a short silence. “Still and all, when we were there, by her grave? I kind of felt like something was there. It was like what you feel in a church. You know that feeling?”

“Bored?” Eliot asked. “That’s the only feeling I get in church.”

“And never anything else?”

“Nope.”

Nathaniel looked at him, long enough to put a kink in the fine, ruled line of phosphorescence trailing astern. The sails luffed, telling him that he had veered off course. He tweaked the helm and brought her back on.

“But you believe in it, don’t you?” he inquired, tentatively. He and Eliot generally stayed off the topic of religion.

“Honest truth?”

“Honest truth.”

“Honest truth is that what makes sense to me is something I read in this book my roommate showed me last term. The idea is that God is like an engineer,” Eliot said. “He built the universe, but once he got it to running right, he left it alone to build something else, maybe another universe. He comes back every now and then to tinker with it, maybe to fix a planet or star that’s a little off kilter. He checks the dials to make sure the steam and the oil pressure’s at the right level. Stuff like that. The big stuff. He doesn’t think about or care about every last little screw and bolt and nut in the thing. He doesn’t sit up there, listening to you and me every time we pray for something, like a new bicycle for Christmas, and He isn’t taking notes every time you or me does something wrong.”

“Boy, I bet the Sky Pilot would have your hide for saying that,” Nathaniel said, in a reference to the school chaplain.