He announced this conclusion, eased over the side, and again sank past his knees in the muck that occupied some nether state between liquid and solid. Walking in it was like walking in wet cement, but he forced himself to go forward. Ten minutes later, he was parched and pouring sweat and had covered less than a hundred yards. At this rate, he calculated, the two-mile journey would take about eight hours, assuming the mud did not get any deeper. He jerked his left leg out, planted it, jerked out the right and planted it. Again and again. A thrill of relief passed through him when, taking one more step, he suddenly stood in a foot of water, on a bottom almost as firm as pavement. He reached down and scooped a handful of what looked like crushed limestone. Pressing on, to make sure the hard bottom was not temporary, he trudged another hundred yards in less than half the time it had taken to cover the first. Turning, he slogged part way back to the schooner, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled, “We can do it!” Will signaled with his arms that he had been heard. A quarter of an hour passed, during which he saw Will and his brothers busying themselves with some task—what, he could not tell. When they finally joined him, he saw that they had rigged a harness for a water cask out of rope. Two lengths were bound tightly to the top and bottom, and two more had been tied perpendicular to those to make shoulder straps. Nathaniel was carrying the cask, while Eliot had the shotgun over his shoulder, with a Georgia bundle, composed of sailcloth wrapped around a few tins of food and the logbook, slung from the barrel. The log had been Will’s idea: He thought they might need it to document their story to the Cuban authorities in Cárdenas. If they were lucky—very, very lucky—they would run into U.S. soldiers, for the island was still occupied by the American army.

They trekked to the key, reaching it in two hours, and rested and drank and looked with awe at the destruction wrought by the storm. The mangroves were flattened, as if trod upon by an angry giant. In the distance, the hulk of Double Eagle was silhouetted against a bleached sky. They had sailed and loved her; she had been faithful to them, delivering them from what Artemis called the cruel ocean, and the sight of her now brought to each boy an ache of loss and regret, such as might be felt by a refugee, stealing a last look at a home destroyed by war or natural disaster. None felt that grief as strongly as Nathaniel, and it was compounded by guilt; he had failed her, too, his ship, and to abandon her now, on a foreign shore, struck him as the ultimate betrayal. He stood staring at her with a tightness in his chest until Will touched his shoulder and said, “C’mon, Natters. Let’s go.”