Francisco, grinning at Will’s remark, set the patched sail to the southeasterly breeze, tugged the pendant to the centerboard, dropping it, and ran offshore for a quarter of a mile, where he sheeted in and came up, the little skiff reaching westward, her freeboard reduced to inches by the weight of her seven passengers. The boat was making two knots at best, it needed a good hosing down, and the heat was crushing, but the four boys were joyful to be off their feet and grateful for the water jug that Rosaria handed them.

“De dónde en Estados Unidos son ustedes?” asked Francisco, leaning into the transom, the tiller under his arm.

“Tu sabe Boston?”

The boy shook his head.

“Somos de Boston. Está un ciudad en el norte. Tu sabe Cayo Hueso?”

“I have heard of it. It’s across the Straits.”

“Sí. We had sailed from Cayo Hueso when we were struck by the hurricane.”

“José Marti went to Cayo Hueso for money and guns to fight the Spanish. He was our great poet, our great patriot.”

“Cuba Libre!” said Will, toasting with the water jug.

“Cuba Libre!” Francisco echoed.

“Looks like our luck’s changed,” Will said to Nathaniel, who did not reply. “That girl is really something to look at, isn’t she?”

Nathaniel, who was squeezed against the port gunwale, remained silent.

“Something wrong, Natters?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Leaving you on deck like I did. I went yellow on you. No other way to say it.”

“Is that what’s been bothering you the last few days?” Drew interjected.

“Wasn’t talking to you.”

“I’m sitting a foot away from you. It’s a little hard not to hear you.”

Will laid a hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder in the manner of an older brother. “I don’t hold that against you. None of us do. You shouldn’t hold it against yourself.”

Nathaniel did not say anything but mulled his friend’s advice, even though he knew he could never follow it. His mind leapt from thought to thought, but there was a direction to its apparent randomness: It led him back two years, to the last day of the Black Island quarry strike. The quarrymen, in retaliation for Cyrus’s importation of scab workers from Boston, had armed themselves with clubs and stones and marched on the company wharf, where a drogher was being loaded with paving blocks cut by the scabs. The mob dragged the teamsters off the wagons parked alongside the ship, cut the traces to the horses, overturned the wagons, tossed the blocks into the water, and stoned the handful of company men—six engineers and blacksmiths—who tried to stop them. Cyrus, who was in the office with his manager, the big Swede named Pedersen, ran outside and told the strikers to return to their homes, promising he would discuss their grievances with their leaders when order was restored. One of those leaders, a tall Finn, said the time for talking was over. Brandishing three-foot cudgels, throwing stones, the men advanced on Cyrus and Pedersen, forcing them to retreat closer and closer toward the end of the wharf. When his heels bumped against the railroad tie used as an edge timber, Nathaniel’s father pointed at the tall Finn and asked if he could swim. The man, taken aback by the question, shook his head.