Dead ahead some seven miles, Sand Key Light craned above the horizon. Drew scaled the ratlines of the main shrouds for a better look, and made out the clapboard weather station, set beneath the light on a circle of sand not fifty yards across. Beyond, the Gulf Stream turned the ocean indigo. He was beginning to understand the magnetism that drew his father and Lockwood and Nathaniel to the sea. The sea, he thought, watching a solitary tern swoop to pluck some microscopic morsel from a wave, was like mathematics in the sense that it was pure and incorruptible. It was governed by its own laws, which men might learn but never master, nor bend nor twist to suit themselves. The sea’s fogs had blinded him, his brothers, and Will; it had drenched and terrified them with line squall and gale; its dead calms had maddened them; but it never had intended to blind, discomfort, terrify, or madden anyone. It was in its nature to be foggy or clear, calm or stormy, and it did not care a whit for what effect its moods had on sailors and ships. He had heard his father speak of the ocean as if it had mind, heart, and will: It was cruel or kind, raging or serene, but in truth, it was none of those things. The sea simply was, in the same way that an equation or law of physics was, regardless of what men thought about it or wished it to be. And what about the land? The land he had missed so and yearned for when this voyage began? He thought about Mike Downey and crazy old Talmadge and orphaned Clara locked in her prison of silence; about Aunt Judith, embittered and alone, and about Doris and the obscene wetness glistening on his lips when he told Drew to take his pants down. The sea was a domain of purity; land, the province of violence, irrationality, suffering, loneliness, strange passions.

“Hey, dere! You aloft! Come on down and lissen to what your cop’in got to say!”

He left the perch reluctantly and joined Will and his brothers on the afterdeck.