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tugging at my apron.
    Jessie, who stood at a tub full of soapy water and pewter dishes, scowled at me. “What are you about?”
    “I’ve got to get to sea,” I said, and in a few words I told her of what I had heard.
    “San Angel?” asked Jessie, with a frown on her freckled face. “I’ve never heard of such a place, and I’ve lived here as long as I can remember. The man was drunk!”
    “Drunk or sober, he’s given me the first clue I’ve struck,” I told her, and a moment later I was away.
    A full moon was rising toward zenith, and in its light a good many small craft were gliding in the harbor. I got to my skiff, loosed the lines, and climbed in. A sentry on a wharf asked my business. “Fishing,” I called back.
    He was silent, and I rowed on until I fetched the harbor channel and ran up my single triangular sail. Again, I was not alone, for a good many of the working people of Port Royal went late-night fishing on nights with a good moon, and as one of a dozen or more small craft, my skiff was not easy to notice.
    It was uncomfortable to sail, for even with the fair sky there was a storm stalking out on the sea somewhere, and it sent a choppy swell rolling through the darkness. I shipped some water and had to bail for a good while before getting the hang of it.
    My navigation was nothing more than simple dead reckoning, but the wind favored me. I sailed out onto the dark ocean until Port Royal was only a smear of yellow light low on the horizon, and there I struck my sail and dropped my small anchor.
    I lit my lantern and looked at my uncle’s treasured silver pocketwatch. It was but ten minutes to eleven, and the
Aurora
would surely not show up before the set time. I had more than an hour to wait out on the open sea.
    It was miserable, with the swell bobbing me upand down like a cork in a millrace, and waves breaking over the bows at times, so that I had to bail again and again. Once two other fishing craft came toward me from the darkness, and I doused the lantern. They passed me by without even noticing me, calling to each other as they made wagers on how many fish they were going to take. Before long they were out of sight and out of earshot.
    Then the devil’s own time did I have striking another light, for my tinder was damp, but at long, long last I had the lantern alight again. By then it was nearly midnight, so I ran the lantern up the mast, where it hung pitching and bobbing. Looking at it made me feel seasick. I seem never to be bothered with that illness except when aboard a small craft.
    I forced myself to look away and scan the dark horizon. Nothing. Time crept by like an aged beetle, and every minute seemed an hour.
    If the watch had not told me that only twenty minutes had passed, I would have sworn that it was near dawn when I sighted the twin lights that had to be the
Aurora.
To make sure, I loosed the line that held my own lantern and lowered it and raised it again.
    Sure enough, the top lanterns of the approaching vessel rose and then moved from side to side. Men at the masthead had seen my signal and were giving me the agreed answer. Now all I had to do was stay put until they got to me, but that was a wearisome business, for the wind that was fair to me was foul to them.
    At long last, though, she hove to, and I rowed to her side and tied my skiff fast before climbing aboard. My uncle met me with, “What news?”
    “Let me tell it all at once,” I begged. “For I am weary, and I don’t want to repeat it.”
    He and I joined Captain Hunter in the stern cabin, and there I poured out my story. “’Tis little enough, I know,” I said as I finished the tale.
    “It may be enough,” said my uncle. “Bloodhaven, is it? And San Angel? William?”
    In the light of the hanging cabin lantern, Captain Hunter went to the map chest and rummaged through its contents. He produced a chart and unrolled it atop his table. All three of us bent over it. “There is a San Angel in Mexico, I