The men realize that they must find a tribe to survive. They are relieved when they meet a native boy who brings them to the Avavares tribe. When the tribe leader asks them why they came across the ocean, Castillo tells him that their leader was looking for something but that they lost everything instead.

Mustafa observes that Narváez’s dream of conquest is dead:

The Castilians were the ones who had been vanquished; they were the ones who lived as servants in this land; and they were the ones who dared not practice their faith openly out of fear that they would incur the Indians wrath. As for me, an interloper among the Castilians, I had shared their fate. Now, years later, I was no longer a slave, but my freedom had come at the price of being an interloper among the Indians (223-24).

Mustafa’s outsider status allows him to reinvent himself as a healer. Mustafa’s “powers” help the Castilians gain the tribe’s acceptance. The Avavares’ appreciation of Mustafa is so great that he’s permitted to marry Oyomasot, the daughter of the tribe’s shaman. Content with his life among the Avavares, Mustafa decides to stop making plans to return home and comes to appreciate that he’s not only free but also “no longer alone” (234).