Bedartha Goswami

The Pacific Ocean is a vast pot of water that someone occasionally stirs, now at one edge, now at another. When warm water piles up off the coast of South America, fishermen call it El Niño, "the child," because it often arrives around Christmas.

An experienced navigator steers the ship by a well-tested chart, but in unfamiliar waters the chart lies. A cabin boy who has watched the navigator err for years learns to anticipate where the chart will fail. Together they plot a course more accurately than either could alone.