He returned the Plath to the drawer and gazed around the cabin, all paneled in pine and the dining table pine also, and the sun through the skylight adding polish to the varnished wood that, with the cast-iron galley stove, bestowed the snug look and feel of a backwoods hunting cabin. She’s mine, he thought. A fluttering came to his sternum, which he touched with a forefinger and felt an artery squirming just beneath his skin. Double Eagle was his. For only three months, really a little less than that, yet, by Christ, his to sail wherever he pleased, when he pleased. The tiny serpent rose into his windpipe, coiled itself in the hollow beneath his Adam’s apple, and stole part of each breath he drew.

He spread the chart of East Penobscot Bay, placed one end of the parallel rule on the boat’s present position, drew a line lightly in pencil through the Deer Island Thorofare, and then another line, bearing a little more westerly, into the Fox Islands Thorofare between Vinalhaven and North Haven. He walked the lower arm of the rule down to the Compass Rose and noted the bearings (in case the fog rolled in and he could not navigate by landmarks), then spread the dividers on the mileage scale and measured the distance along his two lines. Navigation was not his long suit. Nothing having to do with mathematics was his long suit. He had barely passed geometry last year. He was competent enough at this sort of thing—dead reckoning—but the calculations and plotting demanded by celestial navigation backlashed his brain. Last year, practicing on the cruise to Nova Scotia, he had placed Double Eagle near Salt Lake City, and Eliot had remarked, “Well, at least there’s water there.”

Now Eliot came down, and as the boat rolled a little, grabbed the companionway and swung himself around to avoid banging into a bulkhead. None of them had their sea legs yet; no matter how many times you had sailed, it always took a couple of days, after a long spell ashore, to get used to the tight quarters and constant motion of a vessel. Nathaniel looked at his middle brother and cocked his head toward the hatchway above.

“He’s doing finely. Dead on course, eyes on the horizon, and not a drop of vomit. Aren’t you hungry? You’re always hungry, Nat, and I’m so hungry that if I was a goddamned beaver, I’d eat that goddamned table.”

“Your mouth sure gets free when the old man’s not around.”

“Corned beef hash and scrambled eggs and sea biscuit. How does that sound?”