Cala de Sa Calobra has a bottom made of loose gravel and a habit of funneling gusts straight down the gorge behind it at two in the morning, which is, incidentally, my shift. Warning a crew that their anchor is dragging is proper Klabautermann work. It is one of the oldest jobs in the trade, older than the pipe, nearly as old as the beard.

I did not get to do it. The boat’s glowing oracle box did it for me, chiming away belowdecks before I’d even finished climbing the chain to check. I am told this is called an anchor alarm. I am told it is very reliable. I would like it on the record that I was already awake.

The two smallest crew members, meanwhile, continue to outpace me on sheer capacity for mischief, which stings rather more than the alarm does. A proper ship’s spirit causes gentle chaos: a jammed halyard here, a misplaced marlinspike there, nothing a sailor can’t work around. A three-year-old and a one-year-old, once let loose on deck, achieve more disorder before breakfast than I have managed in several centuries of dedicated effort. I have taken notes.

We are back in Port de Sóller, so I had an ice cream. Pistachio, taken from an empty table while the crew were busy with the kids, and very good. I rode the little wooden train up to town afterward too, in the last carriage, with my boots up on the seat opposite the way you’re not supposed to, and nobody any the wiser. Being invisible is not the same as being absent, whatever the crew seems to think, and there is real pleasure in a good ride taken by someone nobody can see enjoying it.

The train stalled twice on the way, which will be my cousin’s doing. El Revisor runs with this line the way I run with Tinarasia, and he has never once let a locomotive through Sóller without stopping it somewhere scenic to remind the passengers who is actually in charge. Family is family. I didn’t say anything.