The New Fidelity continues sailing under the cholera flag when Florentino Ariza persuades its Captain to use quarantine as a way around the ship’s ordinary obligations. The pretext allows Florentino and Fermina Daza to remain aboard together, and, when authorities later threaten to end the voyage, Florentino chooses continued sailing over an easy return to land. The ship’s altered course turns a practical evasion into a final, open-ended commitment to life together.

The quarantine pretext

At supper, the Captain raises the shipping company’s problem of boats carrying cargo upriver and returning empty, while the traffic in passengers runs in the opposite direction. Florentino listens through the discussion about differential fares, then asks whether a ship could make a trip without stopping, cargo, passengers, or port calls. The Captain answers that it is possible only hypothetically: the River Company of the Caribbean has commitments to cargo, passengers, and mail, most of them unbreakable.

There is, however, one exception. A cholera case aboard would require quarantine; the vessel could hoist the yellow flag and sail under emergency conditions. The Captain has used this procedure before amid outbreaks along the river, even though officials later required doctors to record deaths as common dysentery. The flag has also served less honorable purposes, including avoiding taxes, unwanted passengers, and inspections. Florentino takes Fermina’s hand beneath the table and asks the Captain to put this possibility into practice.

The Captain initially responds with surprise, then recognizes the seriousness of Florentino’s request. He says that he commands the ship, but Florentino commands them, and asks for the order in writing. Florentino signs it. He reasons that cholera has not truly disappeared despite the health officials’ reassuring statistics, and that an expedient used for contemptible reasons can also be used for love.

Setting the voyage in motion

The ship’s small cargo is transferred elsewhere, its passengers are told that a mechanical failure has occurred, and another company’s vessel takes them on their way. At dawn, the New Fidelity weighs anchor without cargo or passengers, its yellow cholera flag flying from the mainmast. The Captain asks to stop at Puerto Nare to pick up someone who will accompany him; there, they take aboard Zenaida Neves, an old friend whom the Captain calls his wild woman.

Her arrival makes clear that the Captain, too, has a private attachment at stake in the voyage. The trip becomes a shared escape rather than merely a scheme devised for Florentino and Fermina. That evening, Fermina goes to the galley and prepares a dish for the crew, which Florentino names Eggplant al Amor. The days and nights settle into a shipboard routine of cards, meals, rest, music, and drinks. Their journey is swift: the boat is light, the currents favorable, and heavy rains have swollen the river. Some villages fire cannons in an effort to frighten away cholera, while passing ships signal condolences to the vessel under the flag.

The authorities intervene

As the New Fidelity reaches the bay near the city of the Viceroys, a launch from the Health Department orders it to stop. The patrol asks what pestilence is aboard, how many passengers there are, whether anyone is sick, and whether new infections are possible. The Captain reports that the three passengers have cholera and are being kept in strict seclusion. He adds that the people expected to board at La Dorada, as well as the crew of twenty-seven, have had no contact with them.

The commander is not satisfied. The patrol orders the ship out of the bay and directs it to wait in Las Mercedes Marsh while the papers for quarantine are prepared. The Captain obeys the order to turn back, but the interruption leaves Florentino and Fermina waiting to learn what will become of their life aboard. Neither has a plan; both understand that the Captain is deciding their immediate fate.

The ship returns through channels covered with taruya, while the Captain eats breakfast and struggles with the consequences of the false cholera declaration. He finally admits that he can see no way out of the predicament created by the flag. The flag has let the travelers escape the company’s schedule and ordinary port calls, but now it has brought the ship directly under the scrutiny of the authorities.

A decision without an endpoint

Florentino looks through the windows toward the compass, the horizon, and the December sky, then gives the Captain a new instruction: “Let us keep going, going, going, back to La Dorada.” Fermina recognizes in his voice the force of his earlier declarations. The Captain, for his part, is struck by Florentino’s conviction and asks whether he means what he says. Florentino answers that he has never said anything he did not mean.

The Captain sees the first sign of age in Fermina’s eyelashes and recognizes the resolve in Florentino. He asks how long they can keep up their coming and going. Florentino has held his answer for fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days and nights: “Forever.” The voyage’s practical disguise thus becomes its defining image. Rather than let the quarantine end their time together, the lovers accept a life of continued movement, with the river’s course standing in for a settled destination.