Nathaniel found the second telling no less painful than the first. The morning after Will’s death had come with barely a wind, so that Luis had to tack his ship inside the reef to avoid being pushed backward by the Gulf Stream. La Esperanza wallowed some two miles off an inhospitable shore marked by tall cliffs and made headway only because of a sluggish, west-setting current.

Will’s body lay under the sailcloth, in the broiling sun. Around mid-morning, Luis, with extravagant gestures, communicated the urgency of disposing of it, but Nathaniel was determined to bring the remains home for Christian burial. He had no clear idea of how this was to be effected, but he was resolved to do it, and to allay any doubts the others might have about his resolve, he seized the L. C. Smith and stood vigil over the corpse for some three hours. By then, there was nowhere aboard the small vessel to escape the stench. So dense it seemed almost visible, burning the nostrils and causing everyone’s eyes to water, weaving itself into the threads of their clothes; it was an odor the Braithwaites had never experienced before, unlike Luis, who had made its acquaintance fighting in the insurrection against the Spanish. Handing the tiller off to Eliot, he angrily stripped the sailcloth from Will’s body and said to Nathaniel, “Mira!” Will’s chest and abdomen had swelled, straining the buttons of his shirt; his bloated face was dark yellow blotched with pale green.

But even that appalling sight did not quite dissuade Nathaniel. It was Drew who finally convinced him that his notion was pointless, because that wasn’t Will, it was a mass of decomposing flesh and chemicals breaking down. Whatever had made Will Will was gone—to heaven, to hell, or into thin air, but gone. Nathaniel gave in but insisted that the mass of decomposing flesh was not to be unceremoniously tossed overboard; it would be given a proper sailor’s interment in the deep. He signed to Luis that a weight was needed. Luis dropped into the cargo hold, and came out with a ballast stone. Masking nose and mouth with a bandanna, Nathaniel covered the body again, lashed the sailcloth tightly with the bowline, and tied the stone to the line. Luis then took the shrouded corpse by the ankles, Nathaniel its shoulders, and the two lifted it to the gunwale.

A proper seaman’s burial required prayer and hymn, so Nathaniel petitioned God to allow the soul of Willard Terhune into the kingdom of heaven, then told Eliot to lead them in the “Navy Hymn.” Eliot demurred, saying that he thought that was overdoing things a bit; after all, Will had not been a bluejacket.

“But he was our shipmate, so you sing,” Nathaniel commanded.

Eliot cleared his throat and began,

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm has bound the restless wave …