An old-time riverboat passed them, its stern wheel thrashing, and its captain saluted Double Eagle with his steam whistle. They crossed St. Andrew’s Sound and saw at the mouth of the Saltilla River crowds of sea-island Negroes wading the oyster bars, the sight reminding them of the clammers who worked the Gloucester beds. The tide turned, but the change did not follow the one predicted in the tables; now they were fighting a head current as well as a head wind, and making, at best, one knot over bottom. Further on, the tide turned again in their favor, and still further, in a wide, island-clogged channel between the mainland and Cumberland Island, it was on their nose once more. Talmadge was right—the tides were tricky, and an oysterman they met told them why: the rise and fall varied from sound to sound; a flood in one could be an ebb in another only a few miles down the coast, so that you could start down a creek connecting the two with a favorable current, and, in no time at all, run smack-dab into a foul, or what was worse, find yourself without enough water to wash dishes in. Forget your tables, he told them, you had to have local knowledge, and if you lacked that, the only thing for it was to sail when the tide served and drop your hook when it did not.

So drop the hook they did, hard by a small, nameless, unpeopled island cloaked in cypress and palmetto.