In contrast to the first chapter, this chapter takes us out into the Gulf, where the Pearl of the World is to be found. Along the shore, the graceful old canoes are silent, but the Gulf itself is teeming with sea life of various kinds: brown algae floats upward and supports little sea horses while poisonous fish lie "on the bottom in the eel-grass beds," and bright swimming crabs and many other varieties of sea life contend with each other in the battle of survival. Into this alien world come Kino and Juana. This morning, they are far behind the others because of the attention required by Coyotito.
Kino's canoe, which is "at once property and a source of food," has been in his family for two generations. The irony here is, of course, that the canoe represents a continuation of the family tradition, since it belonged first to Kino's father and before that to his grandfather, and yet at the end of the story, Kino will have neither a child nor a canoe to pass on to another generation.
Juana gathers some brown seaweed and makes a "flat damp poultice," which she applies to Coyotito's swollen shoulder. Note that Steinbeck says that this primitive treatment was as good a remedy as any other, or probably better than any remedy that the doctor in town could give. This should be remembered, for in the next chapter the doctor does administer something to Coyotito and it makes him very ill — until the doctor returns and gives him something else to counteract the first dose.
