Two officers at the rail, aft of the turret, were watching a steam launch as it swung wide around the stern and headed for the Havana docks. Both officers were smoking cigs. Virgil remembered this, the smell of tobacco and their comments, wondering who the launch belonged to and where it had come from. There were boats out there all day long: bum boats coming alongside to sell different kinds of fruit and sweets; gigs and lighters chasing around the harbor like taxis with cargo or passengers; but hardly any this late.

When Virgil finally rolled into the sack the canvas curled around him and there was nothing he could do about it. Again he considered looking for a board, but then thought, hell, count the stars and go to sleep. Except there weren't any stars, not with that layer of clouds up there. Christ, but he wished he had a board. You didn't have one, there was no way to sleep on your side in a hammock without suffocating to death. Virgil told himself to quit complaining. He closed his eyes, hearing very faintly rumba music coming across the water from Havana, three hundred yards to port… The explosion-the way it came there was no getting ready for it. It was like it burst in his head, deafened him, in that moment shattering all sense of where he was until he felt the ship heave and shudder beneath him and saw the bow rise from the water like it was climbing out of the trough of a storm wave. He could see it, the bow a good three hundred feet from him in the air, in smoke rising so thick the bow was hidden now, though he could see pieces of the ship bursting in the smoke, flying into the night sky like rockets, and bodies. Christ, men, blown out of the fo'c'sle, and he felt the ship heave again as the bow came down to settle in the water, listing to port and swinging his hammock close to the rail. He heard screams now of men in pain and screams for help, the sound of the screams clear and then dying out, fading, a quiet settling, and he became aware of a faint whistling-hissing sound, air being forced out of the ship by the water rising inside her. Virgil breathed to calm himself, thinking, you have to get out of here, out of the goddamn hammock and over the side, swim for that steamship only about a hundred yards away, the City of Washington… And the second explosion rocked the Maine amidships, the towering twin smokestacks vanishing from Virgil's sight, gone, the superstructure gone, in that moment erupting in a blaze of light, the ship bursting, ripped apart, and Virgil felt himself lifted from the deck, hammock still around him, blown into the cloud of smoke, stunned, his head ringing so loud it was all he heard, blown into the hot sky, an oven, and then falling through smoke to hit the water, the surface on fire, Virgil still wrapped in his canvas shroud.

He was picked up a good fifty yards from the ship, taken from his scorched hammock, both ends burned away, and laid in the bottom of a lifeboat among bodies gathered from the water. He knew this. He could smell burnt flesh. He was on his side, close to a lifeless face without hair or eyebrows staring at him, a fireman he believed he recognized, a fireman or one of the coal passers. He'd seen him in the head washing, the same one who'd been playing an accordion that evening in the starboard gangway. Virgil tried to move but couldn't, wedged in among the dead, below him and on both sides. He could hear voices, the sailors aboard the lifeboat talking to each other. He wanted to yell to one of them, Hey, mate, I ain't dead. But, Christ, he couldn't speak. Couldn't move or speak.

They hauled him up a ladder, not too gentle about it, and laid him out with the dead bodies on a varnished wood deck, close by a row of chairs with leg rests, and left him. He could hear voices and wanted to call out, Sweet Jesus, somebody, look at me, will you? Don't slide me over the side blowing taps till you take a look at me. Feel my goddamn pulse. Finally-how much later he wasn't sure, it was still dark-he felt the toe of a shoe nudge him and heard a voice say, "I think this one's still alive."

The evening of the second day he closed his eyes and opened them and closed them again sighing with relief, saying, "Thank you, Jesus," and in the morning when he woke up he was able to move his head, his hands, his feet… He cleared his throat, pretty sure he could talk, and the nurse ran out before he could say anything and returned with the doctor who had said yesterday he'd been blown senseless. So the first words Virgil spoke after his experience were to the doctor. He said, "I think somebody set off a mine," and told about the launch running full-out away from the ship just before the explosion. After that he asked how many were killed and if Captain Sigsbee was all right. The nurse told him Clara Barton stopped by his bed to see him and asked him his name.

Virgil said, "Oh, is that right?" trying to think of who Clara Barton was.

They got him up on his feet. Virgil walked to the end of the ward and back past empty beds, seeing not one of his shipmates here. The nurse, holding on to him, said he was the only one in this ward who had survived. Virgil had to lie down again, dizzy from the exertion. The doctor told him to be patient, he was lucky to be alive.

That night a man in a light gray military uniform came to see him, sat at his bedside in the dark and smoked cigarettes as he asked Virgil questions, never taking off his hat. Virgil didn't know if he was Spanish or Cuban. The man asked Virgil about his experience and listened with a grave manner, saying, "Oh, that must have been terrible."… "Oh, you are so brave."… "Oh, you were fortunate to sleep on deck." Finally asking about the launch Virgil saw before the explosion.

"Did you get a good look at it?"

"I've seen plenty like it," Virgil said. The harbor was full of them. "What do you call those boats, falucas?"

"Yes, but this particular onemif you saw it again, could you identify it?"

Virgil hesitated. "Are you investigating the explosion?" "Assisting with it, yes."

"Are Americans investigating too?"

"Oh yes, we both are. What we like to know, if you saw a person on the boat you believe you can identify."

Virgil barely saw the launch, much less anyone aboard. Still, he didn't like this guy asking him questions in the dark and he said, "Since I'm American, I better wait and talk to the Americans investigating it."

"What's the difference? We all want to find out what happen."

The man speaking with a strained sound to his voice now, Virgil sensing the guy would like to scream at him and shake him and was holding on to his temper.

"I'll talk to the Americans," Virgil said.

The man in the dark said, "You want to make this difficult, uh? Is that what you want?"

Virgil said, "You want to know what you can do with your questions?"

His mysterious visitor got up and left.

When the nurse came to check on him, Virgil asked her who that guy in the uniform was. She said he didn't tell her his name and probably wouldn't if she asked him. She said, "They have an ugly disposition, those people. They like to make your life miserable."

Virgil asked her who she was talking about. Who's they?

The nurse said, "The Guardia Civil. They're like police, only worse."

Later that night Virgil woke up as two guys in uniform were pulling him out of bed. He said, "Hey, what's going on?" smelling ether. One of them said something in Spanish and a third one stepped in and pressed a cloth to Virgil's face. This was all he'd remember of his last night in San Ambrosio.