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The small fishing boat was in trouble. Deacon, his two brothers, and Boy had taken her out to deep water the day before to catch big tuna for the restaurants on Palawan, but the Yamaha broke down, and the west wind was pushing them farther and farther away from Kalayaan Village.

They hoisted the small sail and tacked for hours, but once out in the strait, the south current picked up, and tacking was having little effect.

Now it was late afternoon, and only large ships would be out this far at night. They could light the boat on fire for all the good it would do if a supertanker bore down on them. Deacon prayed quietly as he once again unbolted the carburetor from the upturned outboard.

While Tomas and Santos sighed and began hauling their long hand lines from the water, Boy stayed at the tiller, watching the approaching dolphin pod rolling in the sea to surround the boat. He also watched the sky, and when the breeze started to gust, and a cloud line formed on the horizon, he tapped Deacon's shoulder.

"You don't have to tell me, Boy. It is coming."

Boy tapped his shoulder again and pointed west.

"Are you sure? Hmm." Deacon had learned never to question the orphan mute's instincts, just as he and his brothers did not question Boy's almost familial relationship with the Palawan dolphin pods. "Tomas, mind the sail for Boy. We're going his way."

An hour later, with the storm close behind, a small atoll took shape just ahead. A broken outer reef, a few coconut palms above a white sand beach, and what looked like a mangrove swamp made up the tiny landfall. Boy and the dolphin pod took them through a large break in the reef, and the boat rode a breaking wave up onto the beach.

Tomas and Santos wrestled the engine off the transom and dragged it into the underbrush. Then the four of them dragged the boat to the soft sand above the waterline. They took the gear out, covered it with the sail, and roped it down tightly. They overturned the boat, and while Deacon and the boy went to secure the engine with canvas and rope, Tomas and Santos dug small runoff canals in the sand beside the boat to divert the coming deluge.

By this time an early darkness covered the atoll. The wind was a gale, and rain was driving horizontally off the lagoon. Boy half-buried two bait buckets to catch fresh water, and then all four of them crawled under the boat.

Twice the wind threatened to blow the boat over, but the men anchored it from inside with their bodies.

After a few hours the wind dropped, and the rain poured steadily, straight down, hammering the boat. Boy and Santos slept while Tomas scurried, crablike in the darkness, molding sand dams where he felt water starting to invade the shelter. Deacon lay on his back under the prow, clicking his rosary beads and dozing.

Boy was the first one out in the early dawn. The sky was clear, the air was fresh, and terns and boobies were crying as they circled their nesting places across the narrow atoll. Down the beach he saw the tracks of a green turtle who had laid her eggs up near the brushline during the night. He gave the boat a kick and went off for a swim.

Deacon woke with a sore neck. It was so sore he could hardly turn his head. He rolled over with a grunt and began to knead his neck, looking in the half-light at the terrible root he had been using as a pillow. He looked closer and saw that it wasn't a root. It was silvery, like metal. He dug around it, tried to dig beneath it. Wherever he dug he encountered smooth silvery metal. Hmm, he thought.

"Awake, my brothers, and praise God for a new day." He shook Tomas, then Santos. "Up and out. The engine will work today."

The three of them tunneled out and stood in the fine morning air, shaking sand and blowing out their noses.

"We'll go for a swim," said Tomas as the men headed for the lagoon.

"Before you go, brothers, help me with the boat. Ah, all together now, up!" The boat was on its side, and then on its keel. "Now enjoy your washing, my brothers. And thank God for your lives, your health, and your loved ones, eh?"

Deacon turned and knelt at the spot where he had uncovered his metal pillow. "God be with me, too," he murmured as he scooped sand.

Boy and the brothers returned to find Deacon using his machete to dig the hard sand deep around what was now a half-excavated steel drum. The pesticide marker and its warning were nearly obliterated, and dents and scrapes covered the drum. Dead brown clumps of seaweed draped the wire cable which ran through the welded eyes and disappeared in the sand.

"What do you have?" asked Santos.

Deacon sat back on his haunches, staring at the keg. "Salvage, but what?" he answered. "It will not open easily." He pointed to the padlock linking the gasketed, threaded top cap to a welded eye. "Get the quick weights."

The fifteen-inch lengths of galvanized pipe used to carry bait into deep water did little damage to the padlock, but Tomas and Santos pounded at the eye weld until it broke, and Deacon used his boat hammer and a quick weight to loosen the cap from its calcified threads.

Inside the container were packs of heat-sealed, heavy plastic film. Tomas snorted as Deacon brought one out, "Cocaine, I'll bet. This is stuff they looked for a long time ago."

Deacon used the screwdriver to open the packet. It was full of money. He was looking at United States dollar bills, one hundreds, fifties, and some twenties, bound in thick bundles.

"Holy pig ears!" gasped Tomas. Santos' mouth dropped open. Boy looked on, mildly curious.

"No," said Deacon, back on his haunches with the big packet of money in both hands. "Holy God, Holy Mother of God, Holy Christ Jesus come to set the world on fire! Would you look at this!" He reached into the keg and brought out more packets as his brothers crowded around. The packets all seemed to be the same size. Two more were opened and showed the same contents as the first.

Deacon quickly replaced the packets and screwed the cap back on the keg. "Dig, my brothers. Dig!"

Boy went off to fill the water bags from the rain buckets, and then he went to gather coconuts and turtle eggs for the trip home. When he came back after three or four trips, the jubilant, sweating men had dug out around three more kegs identical to the first, all wired and welded together. They rested on their haunches, smiling and chuckling at one another, with no fear of being two days from home over open water, against a westerly wind, with a broken engine.

"What do we do now?" Santos asked Deacon.

High overhead the sound of a distant aircraft mixed with bird cries and breaking waves on the reef. The three men looked to the sky, and it began to dawn on them that salvage or not, this treasure was not really theirs.

The drone of the plane signaled danger, and not a danger of weather, sea, and livelihood, but one where the first owner of the treasure might now have a clear passage to its recovery-through the finders.

Deacon went to his knees. "First we pray."

He motioned to his brothers and Boy, and they formed a small circle, holding hands and closing their eyes. "God, Lord Jesus, Mother Mary, and Saint Teresa of the Islands, we thank you for this great gift. We know that it was meant for something else, probably something bad, we earnestly hope. You have given this gift, legal salvage we think, to us, your humble, your most humble servants. You certainly gave it to us so we could do something good." He paused for a long moment, looking at the jet's contrail in the sky.

"There are evils in the world, and we have no protection from wicked people who want riches for such evils. So we ask your protection, and in exchange"—he squeezed at the hands he held—"in exchange we promise to dedicate these gifts to you, and to use them only for good. Amen."

"What about new boats and motors?" mumbled Tomas.

"My roof leaks," added Santos.

Deacon squeezed the hands harder. "Oh yes, Father, Jesus, Mary, and Teresa, we also ask that you let us use your money, God's money, for the needs of Kalayaan Town, and for your very humble servants. But not," he growled, "for extravagances and false idols." Tomas and Santos nodded, satisfied. "In return we swear not to talk about this money except among ourselves. In your Name and names we send this prayer right up, and hope for the best. Amen!"

The prayer circle made everyone feel better, but as they looked at their salvage of great value, the feelings of danger and fear did not go away. "All right, brothers and young friend, here is the plan."

Four packets were taken from the first keg, wrapped in a tarp, and hidden in the boat. The kegs were covered up again, using lagoon water to pack the sand around them, and then covered with beach detritus.

The men dragged the boat into the water, remounted the Yamaha, and Tom and Santos loaded the gear while Deacon and Boy cleaned the carburetor, gapped the spark plugs, and siphoned some rusty water from the bottom of the gas tank.

"All right, Sweet Jesus, now we really need help," murmured Deacon as he set the choke and pulled the crank rope. The Yamaha coughed to life, and kept coughing while around it the brothers whooped.

It finally settled down to a half-decent drone, and the wealthy fishermen leapt in, heading for the reef break and home.

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