Staring stupidly at the stalls and the blue and yellow buildings across the street, Will would not have known that anything had happened to him if it weren’t for the blot spreading over his shirt and the warm, sticky flow of blood down his trousers. The blade had been so thin and keen and pulled out so deftly that he barely felt it pierce him just above his belt buckle. There had been only that pricking, like a wasp’s sting. A peculiar, detached calm flowed over him, and he unbuttoned his shirt and wiped the blood from his abdomen with his bandanna, revealing a puncture no larger than his navel running alongside it a fraction of an inch away. The smallness of the wound led him to believe, or hope, that he had not been injured too seriously. Thinking of Francisco’s parting words, he suspected that a lower part of his anatomy had been the target, but the boy, in his fear, had struck too high.

Will staunched the bleeding with the bandanna, buttoned his shirt, and hitched his trousers up an inch, tightening his belt over the bulge made by the bandanna. Walking toward the boat, he felt the first waves of pain and forced himself to climb the gangplank with as normal a stride as he could manage. He made a credible show of helping Luis pull it aboard and of giving Drew a hand, casting off the stern line while Nat and Eliot handled the bowline. The cumbersome craft, under a huge triangular mainsail, eased away from the wharf.

“Yahoo!” said Eliot. “We’re bound for being homeward bound.”

Will faked a smile. It was essential to hide his injury from his shipmates, who, bless them, would insist that Luis return to shore and fetch a doctor. Then would come the complicated business of explaining who had stabbed him.… Police would be summoned.… Luis would be held back from sailing, he and the Braithwaites questioned about what they had seen, giving Tío Enrique plenty of time to find Elvira. A lucky thing Will had worn his navy-blue jersey and denim trousers today; the bloodstains were almost indistinguishable from sweat stains. It was also lucky, if he had to be stabbed, that he’d been stabbed with a stiletto instead of, say, a kitchen knife; the puncture wasn’t a great deal larger than an ice pick would have made, and his bandanna would stem the bleeding for a while, for long enough, he hoped, to get Elvira aboard and make course for Havana. But the natural reactions of his body threatened to undo the camouflage of his clothing; as the boat, trailing a small tender, lumbered across Cárdenas’s filthy harbor, Drew remarked to Will that he looked unnaturally pale. Was he all right?

“Ribs,” he said. “Loading the boat … I’m going to lie down in the cuddy for a bit. I’ll be okay in a jiffy.”