They sailed on, the compass almost unnecessary, for the reef line and the color change in the sea—a demarcation between the Gulf Stream’s blue and the green of inshore waters as sharp as a bootstripe—guided them down the chain of islands, broken, twisted, suggesting the spine of a victim put to the rack. Dad had said that they were marked as “Los Martires”—“The Martyrs”—on the early Spanish charts. Lighthouses resembling drilling derricks towered above the reef, an immense necklace of rainbow-colored rock, and each one marked a station in the schooner’s progress—Carysfort, Alligator, Sombrero: names Nathaniel had heard his father and Lockwood murmur in their reminiscences, and beholding them now with his own eyes, he felt like an immigrant’s son returning to an ancestral homeland.

They came abeam of American Shoals Light, its red steel girders whitened with the guano of the seabirds roosting there. Offshore, a big four-master westered; inshore, the sails of small fishing smacks and trading boats made white triangles against the islands’ somber green. American Shoals dropped astern, and now the bow sprit pointed dead ahead at another tower, rising taller and taller out of the sea, its framework silhouetted against a range of cumulus, Will checked the charts and said it was the Sand Key Light and weather station, and Nathaniel turned the wheel to bear off west by north, crossing the reef into Hawk Channel. Low cirrus spun like threads of red and purple silk around the cumulus, fringed with gold. A steamer ploughed southward, probably for Havana. A low island appeared some three or four miles off, a lighthouse at its western tip flashing white then green then white through the dusk. Will, standing at the rail, tapped a cigarette from his last pack of Duke’s and said, “Well, Natters, despite ourselves, it looks like we made it.”

18

FROM Double Eagle’s log of 21 July … Arrived Key West harbor 8:15 p.m. Found good holding ground in two fathoms outside ship’s channel. Total time for voyage: 34 days, 8 hours. Total sailing days, 26. Distance covered, 1,644 n. miles. Average speed, 2.6 knots. Remarks: A mighty slow passage, due to layovers in New York and South Carolina, prevailing headwinds, and this vessel’s inability to sail fast close to the wind.