Will shook his head, his recent experiences having convinced him that life, whether on land or sea, was a chain of accidents ruled by blind chance.

“Well, you will,” Rosaria forecast. “Oludomare guided you here for a reason. Think about how you came to be here and of all the little things and big things that could have prevented you from coming here. Think about that and you will see what I mean. It was destiny. What have you boys had to eat?”

“Nada,” replied Will. “Tenemos mucho hambre.”

“Vayan al bohío, Usted y su amigo. I will see that you get something. Yellow rice, black beans, plantanos. Maybe some sofrito.”

Elvira, standing by the hearth, turned to her aunt and godmother.

“I would like to cook for them, with your permission, Madrina,” she said, in a voice that tore at Will’s heart. They were the first words he had heard from her since meeting her hours ago, in the fire of afternoon.

“Not alone, you won’t. It would not be proper,” Rosaria admonished. She looked at her niece and then at Will. “I will come. I am tired and it is late, but I will come and help you feed these boys who came to us from the sea.”

AFTER DINNER, when the two women had left, Will paced around the small room, as agitated as the Braithwaites had ever seen him.

“That was a bully feed,” Eliot remarked, balling a fist over his mouth to stifle a belch.

“What?” Will muttered, distracted. He fumbled in his pocket for one of the cheroots Tío Enrique had given him but came up empty, so he went into the bedroom and took a butt from the tin plate he used as an ashtray and lit it. Once again, he paced, opened the door and looked outside, and paced some more.

“Jiminy, Will, aren’t you tired?” said Eliot. “It makes me tired looking at you, walking back and forth like that.”

“Then why don’t you turn in, sailor boy?” Will snapped.

“What’s eating you?”

“Not a damn thing, Eliot. Why don’t you pipe down and turn in.”

“Maybe we all should,” Nathaniel said. He looked at Will. “Hey, it’s not that girl, is it?”

“What about her?”

“She’s colored, for one thing.”

Will turned sharply and crushed the cheroot on the earthen floor.

“Not completely. Maybe not even half, I’d say.”

“Half is enough,” said Nathaniel. “You can’t be falling for a colored girl.”

“Who the hell said anything about falling for anybody? Anyhow, what if I was? I’d think that after everything you’ve seen on this trip, you’d be a little more broad-minded about some things.”

“Well, she is pretty good-looking, I’ll say that.” Nathaniel commented, withholding his true feelings. When he thought about the shameless way Elvira had hiked her skirts, she seemed to him to be like the Cuban air—excessively humid and unwholesome.

“It’s not the architecture, although that’s pretty splendid,” said Will, fingering his hair. “Not the eyes either, although they’re pretty splendid, too. Something else. Never seen anything like her.”