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was dry. I wanted a whole cup. “Please fill it up,” I said.
    Timothy poured only a few drops into the bottom.
    “That isn’t enough,” I complained. I felt I could drink three cups of it. But he pressed the wooden stopper firmly back into the keg, ignoring me.
    I said, “I must have water, Timothy. I’m very hot.”
    Without answering, he opened the trap in theraft and secured the keg again. It was then that I began to learn what a stubborn old man he could be. I began to dislike Timothy.
    “Young bahss,” he said, coming back under the shelter, “mebbe before d’night, a schooner will pass dis way, an’ if dat ’appens, you may drink d’whole kag. Mebbe d’schooner will not pass dis way, so we mus’ make our wattah last.”
    I said defiantly, “A schooner will find us. And my father has ships out looking for us.”
    Without even glancing at me, he answered, “True, young bahss.” Then he closed his eyes and would not speak to me any more. He just sprawled out, a mound of silent black flesh.
    I couldn’t hold the tears back. I’m sure he heard me, but he didn’t move a muscle of his face. Neither did he look up when I crawled out from under the shelter to get as far away from him as I could. I stayed on the edge of the raft for a long time, thinking about home and rubbing Stew Cat’s back.
    Although I hadn’t thought so before, I was now beginning to believe that my mother was right. She didn’t like them. She didn’t like it when Henrik and I would go down to St. Anna Bay and play near the schooners. But it was always fun. The black people would laugh at us and toss us bananas or papayas.
    She’d say, when she knew where we’d been, “They are not the same as you, Phillip. They are different and they live differently. That’s the wayit must be.” Henrik, who’d grown up in Curaçao with them, couldn’t understand why my mother felt this way.
    I yelled over at him, “You’re saving all the water for yourself.”
    I don’t think he was asleep, but he didn’t answer.
    When the sky began to turn a deep blue, Timothy roused himself and looked around. He said, with just an unfriendly glance at me, “If luck be, d’flyin’ feesh will flop on d’raff. We can save a few biscuit by eatin’ d’feesh. Too, wattah is in d’feesh.”
    I was hungry but the thought of eating raw fish didn’t appeal to me. I said nothing.
    Just before dark, they began skimming across the water, their short, winglike fins taking them on flights of twenty or thirty feet, sometimes more.
    A large one shot out of the water, skimmed toward us, and then slammed into the raft flooring. Timothy grabbed it, shouting happily. He rapped its head with his knife handle and tossed it beneath the shelter. Soon another came aboard, not so large. Timothy grabbed it, too.
    Before total darkness, he had skinned them, deftly cutting meat from their sides. He handed me the two largest pieces. “Eat dem,” he ordered.
    I shook my head.
    He looked at me in the fading light and said softly, “We will ’ave no other food tonight. You bes’ eat dem, young bahss.” With that, he presseda piece of the fish against his teeth, sucking at it noisily.
    Yes, they were different. They ate raw fish.
    I turned away from him, over on my stomach. I thought about Curaçao, warm and safe; about our gabled house in Scharloo, and about my father. Suddenly I blamed my mother because I was on the raft with this stubborn old black man. It was all her fault. She’d wanted to leave the island.
    I blurted out, “I wouldn’t even be here with you if it wasn’t for my mother.”
    I knew Timothy was staring at me through the darkness when he said, “She started dis terrible wahr, eh, young bahss?” He was a shadowy shape across the raft.

CHAPTER

Four
    T OTAL DARKNESS blotted out the sea, and it became cold and damp. Timothy took the shelter down, and we both pulled our shirts and pants back on. They were stiff from salt and felt clammy. The wind