Then the breeze died entirely. They unshipped the oars and Simon flailed wildly at the water with them. At last they came upon the wharf, where all the ships were tied up, and there they saw Galveston’s long waterfront and its brick warehouses, many of them scarred with cannonball shot, presenting a grim face to the oily water. A sign on two tall poles said kuhn’s wharf.

They lowered the sail and wadded it up in a sloppy and unseamanlike way and coiled the ropes. Simon grasped at his possessions and finally got his rucksack on his back, his blanket roll over his shoulder, and his hat on his head. They found a place to tie up under the lee of a great cargo ship, a steamer, whose watch leaned over the gunnels and called out to them.

“Don’t you tie onto this ship, you sons of bitches. Hear me?”

“Ya ya,” called Damon. “We hear you, stow it, tying onto the bollards.” Then he asked, “Still a pump around here?”

“There is,” said the watch. He peered down at them and seemed to regret his harsh words. “Yes, just up in front of the seaman’s employment building.”

Simon wondered if he had the strength to climb up the wharf timbers. “Give me the rope,” he said. His voice was weak. “I’ll go up and tie on.”

“Esperate,” said Doroteo. He caught up the long tie rope called a painter, carefully rolled it into a large coil, made a hondo and a loop, and began to circle the loop over his head. He threw it with an expert overhand, lassoing the bollard high above.

“Ro-de-o!” cried Damon. “Man of unsuspected talents.” He climbed up the ladder of timbers and fell down with his rucksack on his back, lost his Hardee hat, regained his feet and his hat, and then stood quietly gathering his strength. Simon reached the dock after several clumsy tries. Doroteo came after. All Simon could think of was that soon he would not be thirsty anymore, he was not going to die of thirst. There was no other thought in his head.

“They’ll find this boat.” Patrick clutched his drum as he stood unsteadily in the boat and stared down the dark of the waterfront.

“And so?” said Doroteo. “Not got our names written on it.” He reached down to help the boy but Patrick first handed up Doroteo’s guitar case and then struggled up himself.

Simon said, “We have to find that pump.”

“Then we got to find a place. Sleep, lay down,” said Damon. He looked to the left and then to the right. “Untie that boat. Let it float off. Then somebody finds it, they’ll just take it.” His voice was hoarse. “They won’t go and try to find out who came in on it. They’ll just take it.”

“Yes. Good thinking.” Doroteo turned back, untied the painter, threw it in a long loop into the boat, and watched for a moment as it began to drift. They stumbled along Galveston’s harbor front with their baggage strung about them.

They found the pump set in a concrete housing in front of the Seaman’s Employment Bureau and pumped water into one another’s hands. They drank and drank, extravagantly. They splashed water over their heads and the handle screeched like a banshee over the silent wharf. They drank again and refilled the canteens and then just sat for a while. They regarded the lights, the great buildings, the many ships tied up at the wharves. Tall canted cranes, black skeletons, stood over the docks and from the ships came the sparks of watchmen’s lanterns.

It took half an hour or more to recover, but at last they got to their feet, shouldered their burdens, and went on.

As they walked, they passed the canteens back and forth as if they would never get enough water. They went past brick buildings and empty lots littered with bottles and broken kegs. Flyers advertising various events and services flapped in the sea breeze. One building front had been entirely battered in by cannon fire and glass lay in the street still. Their steps sounded loud on the pavement, the eerie light shone on every street, on the low clouds and a city asleep.

Then Simon saw two figures approaching from far down the docks, two Union soldiers who fell in and out of step with each other as they checked the big warehouse doorways and shone their bull’s-eye up onto ship forepeaks. They moved through pools of gas illumination. Simon dodged through stacked bales and barrels with names printed on them: Pryor, Bailey. Steamships tugged at their hawsers. The soldiers were coming closer.

“Hey, hey,” he called in a low voice and ducked into an alleyway between two warehouses. Rather than go crashing noisily through the trash, he sat down with his back against a wall. The others came after him running low and sat down alongside.

“Patrol,” said Simon in a whisper.

“Why are we hiding?” Damon whispered back.

“I don’t know,” said Simon. “Seems like a good idea.” He thought of the revolver. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to have a revolver.

“?Se pueden callar?” Doroteo whispered. His head flopped back against the wall and it made the back of his hat brim stand up. Patrick snatched the Confederate cap from his head and jammed it down into his rucksack.

The four sat silently amid unseen garbage and refuse as the patrol went past. The two soldiers murmured between themselves and went on, their footfalls stark and heavy on the stones. Without speaking the same thought occurred to all of them: They have good boots. They heard church bells ring out; one. And stop.

After listening for a long time Simon stood up and said, “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know that either. Someplace.”

They turned away from the waterfront and into the city. They walked together in a defensive group, Simon leading and Damon bringing up the rear. Doroteo kept the center with his guitar case on his back and the boy Patrick beside him, bareheaded, holding the round drum in front of him by its inner bar like Saint Brendan’s shield held out against the devils of the night.

They finally came upon a sort of saloon. A light gleamed out the front window and music could be heard from inside. Simon stood in the street listening to the rich, full sound of a German flute playing a lighthearted shanty.

He stepped forward and pushed the door open a crack. He turned up his head to see what had once been a two-story building; the upper floor had been taken out and now it was a cavernous tall space with broken beams overhead.

A thin man sat on a packing box. A single lantern burned at his feet. The flute was silver, the kind you blew across the mouthpiece, with stops on velvet pads. At several tables men were asleep with their faces on their arms and one on the floor curled up around a seaman’s bag, snoring. The man lowered the flute and sang, Sail away ladies, sail away . . . Then he noticed the newcomers.

“Well, well,” said the thin man. “Come in.”

“We’re looking for a place to sleep,” said Simon. “Where we won’t bother the patrols.”

“This is the place,” said the man. He held out his bony long fingers in a gesture of invitation. “Join the merry crowd. They’ve drank themselves insensible. From the Liverpool ship called the Lisa Rose.”

They sat down on the chairs; Damon plucked at one knee of his trousers to straighten a nonexistent pleat and regarded the filthy litter of the floor.

Then the flute player said, “Did you all just come from Brazos de Santiago? There was a big battle down there.”

Simon cried out, “No! Was there? What happened?”

The flute player tipped his head to the side and shut one eye. “Sorry I asked. It was the remains of your Confederate uniforms.”

“No problem,” said Damon.

Simon lifted a hand and then placed his rucksack against the wall, sat on the floor with his legs out straight in front of him, and immediately fell asleep. Sail away ladies, sail away, live with the angels by and by.

When daylight came the flute player was gone. The English sailors still snored. Simon, Damon, Doro, and Patrick stepped out into the street again. They gazed around themselves at a ruined city. Thin horses languished in their harnesses and most windows were broken, but still people bustled down the cavernous streets, ship’s boys ran hither and yon clutching bills of lading, men in homburgs walked along reading the latest newspapers from New Orleans, sailors loitered in slanky unobtrusive loiter stances in whatever shade they could find. They bought a sack of broken ship’s biscuit from a marine supply store and walked along biting at it, drinking from the canteens.

“We must find a place for renting,” said Doroteo. “A room.” And then in a discouraged voice, “The verandah, the roof, the gutter. Someplace, anyplace.”

“That takes money.” Damon had the sack of biscuit by the neck. “We ain’t got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, as they say in the vernacular.”

“We got our dinner money from the officers,” said Patrick. “Ain’t we? I do.” He wiped crumbs from his mouth. “Whyn’t we ask somebody?”