“These goddamned backwaters are no place for schoonermen,” Nathaniel declared, once the tender was triced up and secured again to the davit. “We’re getting back out to sea, and it’s Florida or bust today.”

Excusing his brothers from further duties, he and Will took Double Eagle on the outside of Cumberland. Two miles or less ahead, they made out a town amid palmetto and pine on a spit of land; eastward, a river spilled into the sea through a breachway between the spit and the southern tip of Cumberland. To make sure they had read their charts right, they hailed a passing fisherman and asked what the river was called. “St. Mary’s,” he shouted, and they hauled on the wind and beat southward, down the Florida shore.

17

“THAT’S THE FIRST big animal I ever shot,” Eliot said. “Never even shot a deer.”

He and Drew were forward, trimming the foresail. A brown booby glided off Double Eagle’s starboard quarter, its wide wings spread to catch the wind deflected by the mainsail.

“That’s well,” called Nathaniel from the helm, and Eliot looped the sheet around the belaying pin.

“When I think about it, it scares the hell out of me,” he said. “But I wasn’t scared then, because I didn’t have time to think. Reckon you know what I mean?”

Drew murmured that he did.

“I wonder why that boar charged us.”

“For the same reason that guy wanted to knock Nat’s block off,” said Drew, and looked astern at the big brown bird hitching a ride. “I think that bird is like an albatross. Aren’t they supposed to be bad luck?”

“Thought you didn’t believe in stuff like that.”

“I don’t. I was just asking if they’re supposed to be.”

“Yeah, I think so,” Eliot said as Drew sat against the mast and pulled his legs into his chest. “But I reckon we’ve had our ration of bad luck. Smooth sailing from here on in. Hell, we’re as good as there.”

“Take a look at the chart. Florida’s more than three hundred miles long and Key West is another hundred past the end of it. That’s like sailing from Boston to Chesapeake Bay.”