background, and the blue Caribbean, with natives bowing before the discoverer, innocent of what lay ahead for them—and turned to his right, pausing before display cases filled with nautical instruments. It was a stupendous collection, and he admired the forestaffs, the quadrants, the Arnold chronometers, and the extraordinary collection of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century astrolabes, octants, and sextants, for which someone would undoubtedly be prepared to pay much more than he had received for his modest Weems & Plath.
There were few visitors in the museum, which was larger and brighter than he remembered it. An old man was studying a large rectangular map of Gibraltar, a young couple, probably tourists, were looking into glass cases in the Hall of Discoveries, and a group of schoolchildren was listening to a teacher's explanations in the room dedicated to the rescue of the galleon San Diego. The noontime brightness poured through large skylights and illuminated Coy as he wandered through the central patio. Had he not been obsessed with thoughts of the woman he was there to see, he truly would have enjoyed the models of frigates and ships-of-the-line displayed fully rigged or in cross section, showing their complex internal structure. Coy hadn't seen them since his last visit to the museum, twenty years before, when the entrance had been from calle Montalban and he was still a navigation student. Despite the years that had gone by, he was thrilled to immediately recognize his favorite—a model of an eighteenth-century ship-of-the-line nearly ten feet long, with three decks and a hundred and fifty guns, housed in a gigantic glass case. It was a ship that had never breasted the waves, because she had never been built. Those were real sailors, he said to himself, as he had so many other times, studying the rigging, the sails, and the masts and yards of the model, admiring the deep topsails along which rugged, desperate men had to maneuver, keeping their balance on precarious foot ropes, clinging to the canvas during storms and battles, with wind and shot whistling and the implacable ocean beneath, and the deck swinging beneath the masts. Coy let himself sail with the ship for a moment, lost in a daydream of a long chase at the first light of dawn, of fleeing sails on the horizon. When there was no such thing as radar or satellites or sonar, ships were little dice cups dancing at the mouth of hell, and the sea was a mortal peril, but also an unassailable refuge from all things—lives lived or yet to be lived, deaths looming or already accomplished, but all of it left behind on land. "We come too late to a world too old," he had read in some book. Of course we come too late. We come to ships and ports and seas that are too old, when dying dolphins peel away from the bows of ships, and when Conrad has written The Shadow-Line twenty times, Long John Silver is a brand of whiskey, and Moby Dick has become the good whale in an animated film.
Near a full-scale replica of a section of the Santa Ana's mast, Coy passed an officer in the impeccable uniform of the nation's Navy, an impressive-looking man whose cuffs boasted the special loop in the third gold stripe that meant commander. He stared hard at Coy, who held his gaze until the officer looked away and walked off toward the back of the hall.
Twenty minutes went by. At least once every minute Coy tried to concentrate on what he was going to say when she appeared, if in fact she ever did, and all twenty times he was tongue-tied, unable to string together a coherent phrase, his mouth half open as if she were actually there before him. He was in the hall devoted to the Battle of Trafalgar, standing beneath an oil painting of the scene of the engagement between the Santa Ana and the Royal Sovereign, when again he was aware of the nerves in the pit of his stomach, like needles—yes, that was the exact word—needling him to get out of there. Weigh anchor, idiot, he told himself,
There were few visitors in the museum, which was larger and brighter than he remembered it. An old man was studying a large rectangular map of Gibraltar, a young couple, probably tourists, were looking into glass cases in the Hall of Discoveries, and a group of schoolchildren was listening to a teacher's explanations in the room dedicated to the rescue of the galleon San Diego. The noontime brightness poured through large skylights and illuminated Coy as he wandered through the central patio. Had he not been obsessed with thoughts of the woman he was there to see, he truly would have enjoyed the models of frigates and ships-of-the-line displayed fully rigged or in cross section, showing their complex internal structure. Coy hadn't seen them since his last visit to the museum, twenty years before, when the entrance had been from calle Montalban and he was still a navigation student. Despite the years that had gone by, he was thrilled to immediately recognize his favorite—a model of an eighteenth-century ship-of-the-line nearly ten feet long, with three decks and a hundred and fifty guns, housed in a gigantic glass case. It was a ship that had never breasted the waves, because she had never been built. Those were real sailors, he said to himself, as he had so many other times, studying the rigging, the sails, and the masts and yards of the model, admiring the deep topsails along which rugged, desperate men had to maneuver, keeping their balance on precarious foot ropes, clinging to the canvas during storms and battles, with wind and shot whistling and the implacable ocean beneath, and the deck swinging beneath the masts. Coy let himself sail with the ship for a moment, lost in a daydream of a long chase at the first light of dawn, of fleeing sails on the horizon. When there was no such thing as radar or satellites or sonar, ships were little dice cups dancing at the mouth of hell, and the sea was a mortal peril, but also an unassailable refuge from all things—lives lived or yet to be lived, deaths looming or already accomplished, but all of it left behind on land. "We come too late to a world too old," he had read in some book. Of course we come too late. We come to ships and ports and seas that are too old, when dying dolphins peel away from the bows of ships, and when Conrad has written The Shadow-Line twenty times, Long John Silver is a brand of whiskey, and Moby Dick has become the good whale in an animated film.
Near a full-scale replica of a section of the Santa Ana's mast, Coy passed an officer in the impeccable uniform of the nation's Navy, an impressive-looking man whose cuffs boasted the special loop in the third gold stripe that meant commander. He stared hard at Coy, who held his gaze until the officer looked away and walked off toward the back of the hall.
Twenty minutes went by. At least once every minute Coy tried to concentrate on what he was going to say when she appeared, if in fact she ever did, and all twenty times he was tongue-tied, unable to string together a coherent phrase, his mouth half open as if she were actually there before him. He was in the hall devoted to the Battle of Trafalgar, standing beneath an oil painting of the scene of the engagement between the Santa Ana and the Royal Sovereign, when again he was aware of the nerves in the pit of his stomach, like needles—yes, that was the exact word—needling him to get out of there. Weigh anchor, idiot, he told himself,
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