AFTER A WHILE, Fermín noticed that the rumbling of the engines had stopped and the ship was swaying, lying at rest in the calm waters of the harbour. It was too early for them to have reached the docks, by his reckoning. After two or three ports of call on the journey, his ears had learned to read the protocol and the cacophony that issued from a docking manoeuvre, from the casting-off of the mooring rope and the hammering sound of the anchor chains to the groaning of the ship’s frame under the strain of the hull as it was being dragged against the dock. Aside from an unusual stir of footsteps and voices on deck, Fermín recognized none of those signs. For some reason the captain had decided to stop the boat earlier, and Fermín, who after almost two years of war had learned that the unexpected often goes hand in hand with the unwelcome, gritted his teeth and made the sign of the cross once again.
“My little Virgin, I renounce my irreverent agnosticism and all the malicious suggestions of modern science,” he murmured, confined in the makeshift coffin he shared with third-hand rifles.
His prayer did not take long to be answered. Fermín heard what sounded like another vessel, a smaller one, approaching and scraping the hull of the ship. Moments later, almost martial footsteps landed on the deck amid the bustle of the crew. Fermín swallowed hard. They had been boarded.