All the next day they sanded and varnished the new spars: tedious, frustrating work because the moist heat caused the varnish to bubble in patches, and those had to be resanded and recoated several times over. Will was in a constant fret, half expecting a posse from Snead’s Landing to come and drag him off to a shotgun wedding. Late in the day, as the no-seeums were boiling off the river to turn exposed flesh red with bites, he went into town with Drew to stock up on food; they had depleted their larder during the previous week and did not have stores enough to last them to Key West. Two of Geslin’s employees, meanwhile, delivered the new foresail; though the spar varnish was still tacky, Nathaniel and Eliot decided not to wait to try it on for size. Peak, clew, and tack were lashed on, the foot laced to the new boom, the head to the gaff, the luff bent to the mast hoops, and the canvas was hauled up. It set without a flaw.

In the morning, well before church bells had begun to summon Beaufort’s devout to Sunday services, Double Eagle set off once more in a light southerly air, glided into Port Royal Sound, then beat along the wild beaches of Hilton Head, crossed the mouth of the Savannah River, its waters muddying the sea’s green, and passing Tybee Island at midafternoon, began its voyage down Georgia’s broken coast.

They ran offshore, knowing it would be nearly impossible to navigate a forty-six-footer through the labyrinthine creeks and inlets of Talmadge’s inland route. With what little wind they had blowing into their eyes, they got no further than St. Catherine’s Island by nightfall. They sailed on, guiding on Arcturus and Spica and the low red beacon of Antares. A crescent moon rose, dolphins made fiery green wakes crossing the bow. An hour after dawn, Will took a morning sight, and fixed them off St. Simon’s—they had logged only thirty miles in a full night’s sailing. The barometer dipped, and soon, they were once again struggling in the face of a high wind and mounting seas, and when the wind began to turn to southeast, heading them inshore, the tide tables were consulted, so too the coast pilot. Falling off, they reached through St. Simon’s Sound, the channel marked by leaning stakes with crude arrows nailed to them, and rode a rushing three-knot tide past salt meadows and rice marshes and offshore islands, wooded to their edges with pine and oak trees dipping moss-draped branches into the water like bearded old men bowing to drink. Night herons crouched amid the sedge, great blues and egrets raised stalklike necks above the marsh grasses, and nearing Jekyll Island, Drew spied their first pelicans, comical and clumsy-looking getting up to fly but thrillingly graceful once in the air.