 When it picked up Phillip Enright and his mother in Curaçao, of what were then the Netherlands Antilles, they were fleeing to their native Virginia.Instead the "Hato" was torpedoed; as it sank, Phillip was struck on the back of the head by a piece of loose timber just as he was being thrown aboard a raft, which blinded him two days later.Most of the events in "The Cay" follow the sinking of the "Hato."