Spanish bayonet

The story opens in the streets of Port Mahon in 1769, where Easter celebrations clash with a year of failed harvests, leaving the island’s people thin and hungry. Young Sebastian Zafortezas watches the English fleet bobbing in the harbor, hearing promises of land and a fresh start in the distant Floridas, while his own home has been stripped bare after his mother’s death. The vivid smells of sweetmeats, the clang of guitar strings, and the restless chatter of red‑faced soldiers create a backdrop that feels both festive and foreboding.

Though fifteen, Sebastian feels the weight of his family’s poverty and the pull of adventure, clutching his mother’s rosary of sea‑snail shells and his father’s knife as the only talismans of his past. He joins a bustling convoy of Mahonese—men, women, children, even pet lizards—who are bound for a British colony where a doctor promises each settler a modest plot to call their own. As the ships pull away from St. Philip’s Castle, Sebastian’s imagination flits between the rugged coastline he leaves behind and the hopeful vision of a fig‑sweetened future on new soil.