They glided north past a low and varied coast. They squinted with sun-reddened eyes on miles of white dunes and clumps of vegetation, including a few trees. Once they were close enough to see longhorn cattle grazing, egrets and buffalo birds fluttering about them in the hot and shimmering air.

That night the wind changed and began to blow from the south. Doroteo said he was not sure where they would end up, because he could not see the shore and see there, the skies were clouding over.

“I can’t see the North Star.” He leaned back and searched the soft rolling black overhead. “Estrella del norte, the fisherman’s friend.”

Simon said, “That’s not good. How do we know we’re going north?” He pulled his suspenders off his shoulders and let them fall to his elbows. He unbuttoned his shirt and vest to the wind and sat with his eyes closed, feeling the relief of it, the blessed relief. It seemed to blow right through his ribs and into his grateful soul with a power never felt on land. The stars came and went.

Damon said, “We’ll stick close to shore. Watch and see if you can see house lights.”

There was a good foot of freeboard to protect them from the waves; it was, after all, a haulage vessel, but still the spray struck them when the catboat heeled. They sailed on into the darkness, thirsty and hungry. They had shared out all the water of the full canteen during the day. Patrick managed to keep down his swallow of water. It was oily tasting with tinges of red dirt and horse manure. They had no more than one half canteen now. With the heavy scrim overhead all they saw was the breaking white foam of waves on their starboard side. They silently listened to the sound of the waves and from somewhere on shore a low hooting.

The Tejano stayed at the tiller. He said he would stay within reach of that hooting sound, because it had to be coming from the land. Simon fell asleep on his rucksack. They rose and fell, rose and fell. Simon lay clinging to the gunnel and slid back and forth, back and forth, in the sloshing bilge water.

He woke up in the dark to Damon calling out. “Look yonder! That’ll be Indianola.” He lifted a hand to indicate a row of dim lights on the shore.

“Let’s go there for water,” said the boy.

“Hell no, the Yankees got it.” Damon stood to stare at the lights. “I never got my discharge papers. I just took off.”

“So are we going in the right direction?” Simon asked.

“Yes, yes. We’re good. Take the tiller and keep those lights on your left and then astern.”

Simon took the tiller so Doroteo could get some sleep on the hard, unforgiving strakes with his pack under his head. It didn’t take long for him to get the way of it. He felt the living pull of the tiller in his hand as their sail drew them on northward. The clouds blew away and then he could see the North Star. He kept the masthead in a rolling circle with that dim star in its middle. He wondered why they had not had sense enough to steal more canteens or find some way to fill the ones they had. Too late now. But they were at liberty on the open sea and sailing toward their own futures, precarious as those futures might be. Then Indianola fell astern and was extinguished by the night.

The next day they shared out one good drink each from the last canteen and by the afternoon Simon began to feel the torture of thirst. The waves grew larger and the sail filled until it was hard as a drum head; they heeled to the left and the bluff straight-up-and-down nose of the cutter dug in. The shore was so flat and low it was nearly invisible except for the occasional clump of trees and the airburst frondiness of the native palms.

“Don’t drink the salt water,” said Damon. “Just don’t do it.” He took his turn at the tiller.

“Let’s go in to shore,” said the boy. “I’m so thirsty I can’t stand it.”

“What makes you think there’s water on shore?” said Doroteo. “There isn’t any water on shore.”

Simon pulled the fiddle case out of his rucksack, opened it, and shared out the two slices of mummified apple, half a piece each. It helped. They crowded into the shade of the sail on the lee side, and wherever the sun touched them it was like hot metal searing their skin.

“Get back on the other side,” said Damon. “You sons of bitches are going to capsize us.”

The waves flung them up and then down into the next trough and the boy became seasick again. He dry-retched as the bow sidled sideways up the next roller. Then he lay limp and silent and held his bodhran drum over his face like a parasol. Doroteo bent to him and urged him to drink the last drops of water from the canteen. The boy tipped his head back and let the few drops run down his throat and then lay back again. His wet yellow hair stuck out in discouraged tufts, his face was slack in the shadow of the drum head. His dark blue army shirt rattled in the wind over his body and he seemed to have lost ten pounds in the last twenty-four hours.

“There’s fish down in there.” Doroteo gazed into the depths of the Gulf. They slid down another wave. “But we got no hooks, no tackle, no bait.” He dragged one hand in the water. “You cook them over an open fire with achiote, some epazote.” He closed his eyes against the glare.

“So what are we doing in Galveston?” said Damon. His face, normally a dismal bluish color, was now seared with bright sunburn.

“We’re going to play music and make money.” Simon bent his head against the sun as if against a storm of wind. “Everybody agreed?” He ran a hand through his hair and it was sticky with salt and so were his hand, his skin, his clothes.

“I’m in,” said Doroteo and Damon. The boy lifted his hand and let it fall back again.

Doroteo took his turn at the tiller once more, and he seemed somehow tireless, endlessly strong, as if made of some indestructible wiring. The sun was finally quenched under a layer of cumulus that came up out of the east and the boy seemed to revive. They all revived. Night came and Simon watched for shore lights but saw none. After some hours he laid himself against the side, curled around his rucksack. Then Patrick woke them up crying out about lights and music.

Simon sat up out of dreams of clear water. “What?” he said, and stared around himself. Damon sat slumped against the thwart in the slopping bilge. The boy was shouting still. Doroteo stood at the tiller, staring.

On the far horizon was a misty, gleaming city. Its light shone on the low cloud cover and in sparkles over the waves as each one lifted in turn. Over the water they could hear disconnected noises of wheels rolling over pavement and a long urban sighing of surf and music. Simon buttoned his shirt and vest and fought out of the confusion of dreams, the pain of thirst.

“Galveston,” said the dark man. He smiled and the harbor lights reflected from his black eyes. He was like a devil come home to hell at last. “We made it.”

“What’s the light from?” said the boy.

“Gaslight,” Damon said. “Streets lighted by gaslight.”

They approached over the midnight sea. Damon said, in exhausted and disconnected sentences, they would run up long sand island to north end, gap there, get inside harbor, wharves, city all on other side. He then stopped talking, as it was too difficult with his tacky mouth and split lips. He reached over the side and scooped up a handful of seawater, spit it out again. Then he signaled Doro to give him the tiller. Doroteo held it until Damon had his hand on it and they crawled past each another, switching places.

They sailed past the Union works along the seaward side of the island. Timbers had been thrown up for bulwarks and Union soldiers paced along the berms. Faint lights came from barracks, spilling over the long stretch of white sand beach.

They slid over the sea until the barracks were behind them and came to the passage between Galveston Island and a headland on the other side that Damon said was called Bolivar Point. There they saw a soldier on a high structure like a shot tower. He watched them sail past through a spyglass. He was illuminated by a light inside a bull’s-eye lantern, and he turned slowly, mechanically, keeping the spyglass on them. It was very strange. The soldier seemed like a clockwork figure in his precise movements. Simon wondered what kind of music they had here, lying in wait for them. Where the nearest source of water might be.

They came through the gap under Damon’s directions and then sailed slowly, in a diminishing breeze, into a harbor where the blue-white illumination on the docks threw stark, harsh patterns of shadow and light. The gas lamps stood like sentinels along the streets. They all listened carefully and did not speak. From somewhere they heard disjointed music. As they came toward the docks they heard the heavy breathing of some kind of steam machine. Galveston lay asleep under the rolling slurry of cloud and the white light of burning coal gas.