Anxiously the mother waited on the porch of the white clapboard cottage. Her calico print housedress billowed in the sudden wind while her apron flew, like a white flag of surrender, parallel to her waist. Ringing her hands into the white cloth, she wrapped it into her fists as though it were a tight hard ball. Her little boy was out there on the raging sea in his little skiff. The storm was fast approaching and would surely overtake him if he weren't home soon.

Using her hands as a shield to screen her eyes, she peered toward the beach and the horizon. Usually she could see the little skiff as it bobbed up and down in the lagoon. It was nowhere in sight. "Sammy, Sammy!" she screamed into the wind with nary a chance of him hearing her even if it had been a clear day.

Eight-year-old Samuel Delancy was allowed to fish off the little skiff if he promised to stay in the lagoon and within sight of the front door of his home. With his mutt of a dog, Buddy, sitting in the prow, the tow-headed boy would row to the approximate middle of the lagoon and drop his fishing line in the clear turquoise waters. Sometimes he would catch enough fish for dinner; other times he would come home empty-handed. Always cheerful, he didn't mind as long as he could enjoy his time on the water he so loved.

His father allowed him to fish in the lagoon as long as he was careful to watch the skies. The unpredictable Florida weather could produce lightning storms with hardly any notice. When one lived on a Key (a small island), the storms could be quite dramatic. The Delancy family lived on a tiny outcrop of land just north and west of Key West called Isle el Sol Bello, "The Island of the Beautiful Sun". The mother and father knew how to be careful of the fast approaching storms and were cautious about allowing their little boy out of their sight on the usually serene water surrounding their little piece of paradise.

The last time the mother saw her son, he was exactly where he was supposed to be. Turning her back for a moment to take a fresh Key Lime Meringue pie from the oven, she wasn't worried about him until she heard the first crack of lightning. Rushing out the front door and onto the porch, she was greeted by a gust of wind strong enough to nearly knock her from her feet. The sky was ominously gray with fiercely black clouds hovering close to the horizon. With each crack of thunder and bolt of lightning the sky flashed a bright neon pink color. Huge slender palms trees began to bend in the ever-strengthening wind. Out in the lagoon, the little skiff was nowhere to be seen. The mother was suddenly terrified.