The theme that drives all of page 211 is confusion. As S talks to Maelstrom, trying to make sense of how the ship ended up there, the goals of the ship, the passage of time on the ship, and more generally his life as a whole, he very begins to come to the realization that there are not necessarily answers to his question.

One of the most significant revelations on the page is that Maelstrom doesn’t know exactly what is going on either-he’s not a sewn-lipped mastermind who is engineering S’s life, he’s a man who’s just as confused. This starts off when S asks Maelstrom why he found the bedraggled traveler. Maelstrom responds “I don’ mean y’ one thing or ‘nother. All I mean’s t’steer the ship” (211). Later in the page, when S asks Maelstrom about the passage of time on the ship, Maelstrom bluntly states “Ye’d know well as I do” (211).

While S does not learn the answers to his questions from the conversation, he does realize for a fact that time is different on the ship; his toes, which had been burning from his previous misadventures, are completely healed when he checks, even though he has been on the ship for less than a day. This is not a normal recovery time for such a grave wound, showing that there is something supernatural about the ship (as if there wasn’t already enough evidence of this fact).

The comments in the margins on page 211 are minimal, except for one comment by Jen that concludes the exchange on the previous page about the footnote. Jen writes that she did in face research the ship Covarrubias, finding that “of course there’s nothing in Tortugan Journals about this” (211). She then notes that it is interesting how FXC, despite appearing to regard Straka and his works very highly, regularly makes up fictional footnotes. This shows that Jen and Eric are beginning to notice something sketchy about the footnotes, though they still do not understand the code.

The Tortugan Journals themselves are also worth mentioning. The word “tortuga” is Spanish for “turtle,” which implies that the pirates may have been Spanish. Additionally, there is a link between the Tortugan Journals and Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise. Both the paradox and the connection to the book are explained here.