Yet the second alternative—sitting tight—wasn’t very attractive, either. Loggerhead Reef, less than a mile wide, would not provide much of a lee.

“But maybe it isn’t a hurricane,” said Eliot, with hope in his voice. “Maybe it’s just a line squall.”

“Maybe,” said Will, turning to the chapter on tropical cyclones in the Practical Navigator. Reading aloud, he informed his shipmates that hurricanes spawned in the Gulf of Mexico generally occurred early in the season and generally tracked northeast or northwest. This was August, the middle of the season, and the cloud bank was traveling due east. “So maybe that’s all it is, a line of thunderstorms,” Will added. “But a damned big one. What do you think, Natters?”

“I don’t know,” Nathaniel replied, with a listless shrug and in a listless voice. “You’re the expert.”

“I meant, what do you think we should do? You’re the skipper.”

“There any kind of safe harbor around here?”

“There’s Tortugas harbor, only five miles southwest of where we’re sitting”—pointing at the chart with the dividers—“but I can’t say how safe it’ll be. It’s on the west side of Garden Key, so it would be open to whatever’s coming from the west. But if we could tuck in there, set both anchors with plenty of scope, we could take the tender ashore and hide out in the fort if things looked like they were going to get real nasty.”

“What happens to Double Eagle if she gets blown onto those reefs? She’d be busted to bits.”

“In that case, I’d much rather be in the fort. Only problem is, the harbor entrance is corked by this big rocky shoal here, and the channels on either side don’t look fifty yards across, probably less. If I knew these waters, I’d chance it, but I don’t. It’s nothing I want to try in the middle of the night. We ought to wait till we’ve got some daylight, but it might be too late by then.”

Again Nathaniel shrugged. Eliot and Drew had never seen him like this—not merely subdued but indifferent. They and Will waited for him to speak, but he remained still for half a minute, his palms flat on the table, his gaze on the chart but far away at the same time, vacant and somber.

“Natters, we haven’t got a month of Sundays. What happened … We can’t dwell on that now.…”