Shawn cocked his head at Manuel in some understanding, and Manuel grinned. "Now why would we be tacking, Beneen?"
Ben's nerves crackled and snapped. "Don't call me that!"
"I may not then?" Shawn displayed no anger, though Ben had almost hoped for it. The blue eyes dilated a little, perhaps in hurt, but he did not cease smiling. "Well—well, Cory, why would we be tacking, and a good little westerly breeze on the sta'board quarter that do be sending us where we wish to go?"
"And where is that?"
"Why, tomorrow, Cory, I fear you'll see little except water—a great deal of it—but you'll see tacking enough if that's your wish, and you'll be learning something about the handling of sail on small craft in the forenoon watch, I'm hoping, and later. And now and then, man dear, away far off up in the northwest or sometimes due north, you'll find me a wee blue lump on the horizon—why, so faint and small that sometimes your eyes will say it's not there at all, but it'll be there. And it'll be there the following day, and maybe the day after that, for we'll be standing off and on. Now that's a way of waiting, Cory, that's the way a vessel must wait if she's in the open waters and biding her time for a certain thing to happen—it's the way of a hawk in the air, if you like, the way he must move about continually up there in the great sky, biding his time for a certain thing to happen." He was coming to Ben, and his broad hands fell heavy on Ben's shoulders. The blue stare dilated to black; Ben met it, refusing to shrink away. "That blue lump will be an island, Cory, a sprawling island where it happens I've never gone ashore, but I know how it lies. I'm of no mind to go there on my errand, do you see, because on land—why, on land I'm compassed about, I have enemies, Mother of God, and some of them are agents of—puh!—Her Majesty Queen Anne."
"What's that you say?"
"Easy, Cory, easy! You have a new allegiance. That I will explain later, not now."
"I have no new allegiance."
"Later, friend, I said. The name of the island is Nantucket. Now sooner or later—on the second, the third day, it doesn't matter—a lovely small vessel will put out from Sherburne. We shall speak her, the island then being over the horizon."
"I think I understand your meaning," Ben said. "I think I understood it when that murderer struck me in the face."