Willie was back up with the empty rum bottle full of tea wrapped in a paper towel and with two rubber bands around it to keep the towel in place.
“She’s cold, skipper,” he said. “And I have insulated her.”
He handed a sandwich, wrapped in a paper towel segment, to Thomas Hudson and said, “One of the highest points in the sandwich-maker’s art. We call it the Mount Everest Special. For Commanders only.”
In the calm, even on the bridge, Thomas Hudson smelled his breath.
“Don’t you think it’s a little early in the day, Willie?”
“No sir.”
Thomas Hudson looked at him speculatively.
“What did you say, Willie?”
“No sir. Didn’t you hear me, sir?”
“OK,” Thomas Hudson said. “I heard you twice. You hear this once. Go below. Clean up the galley properly and then go up in the bow where I can see you and stand by to anchor.”
“Yes sir,” said Willie. “I don’t feel well, sir.”
“Fuck how you feel, you sea lawyer. If you don’t feel well you are going to feel a damned sight worse.”
“Yes sir,” Willie said. “I don’t feel well, sir. I should see the ship’s surgeon.”
“You’ll find him in the bow. Knock on the door of the head and see if he’s there as you go by.”
“That’s what I mean, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“He’s skunk-drunk,” Henry said.
“No, he’s not,” Thomas Hudson said. “He’s drinking. But he’s closer to crazy.”
“He’s been strange for quite a while,” Ara said. “But he was always strange. None of us has ever suffered as he has. I have never even suffered at all.”
“Tom’s suffered,” Henry said. “And he’s drinking cold tea.”
“Let’s not talk morbid and let’s not talk wet,” Thomas Hudson said. “I never suffered and I like cold tea.”
“You never did before.”
“We learn something new all the time, Henry.”
He was coming up well on the light and he saw the rock he should keep outside of now, and he thought this was a worthless conversation.
“Go up forward with him, Ara, and see how he’s doing. Stick around with him. You get the lines in, Henry. George, get down and help Antonio with the dinghy. Go in with him if he wants you to.”
When he was alone on the bridge he smelled the bird guano from the rock and he rounded the point and anchored in two fathoms of water. The bottom was clean and there was a big tide running. He looked up at the white-painted house and the tall old-fashioned light and then past the high rock to the green mangrove keys and beyond them the low, rocky, barren tip of Cayo Romano. They had lived, off and on, for such a long time within sight of that long, strange, and pest-ridden key and knew a part of it so well and had come in on its landmarks so many times and under such good and bad circumstances that it always made him an emotion to sight it or to leave it out of sight. Now it was there at its barest and most barren, jutting out like a scrubby desert.
There were wild horses and wild cattle and wild hogs on that great key and he wondered how many people had held the illusion that they might colonize it. It had hills rich in grass with beautiful valleys and fine stands of timber and once there had been a settlement called Versailles where Frenchmen had made their attempt at living on Romano.
Now all the frame buildings were abandoned but the one big house and one time when Thomas Hudson had gone in there to fill water, the dogs from the shacks were huddled with the pigs that had burrowed in the mud and dogs and pigs both were gray from the solid blanket of mosquitoes that covered them. It was a wonderful key when the east wind blew day and night and you could walk two days with a gun and be in good country. It was country as unspoiled as when Columbus came to this coast. Then, when the wind dropped, the mosquitoes came in clouds from the marshes. To say they came in clouds, he thought, is not a metaphor. They truly came in clouds and they could bleed a man to death. The people we are searching for would not have stopped in Romano. Not with this calm. They must have gone further up the coast.
“Ara,” he called.
“What is it, Tom?” Ara asked. He always swung up onto the bridge and landed as lightly as an acrobat but with the weight of steel.
“What’s the score?”
“Willie’s not himself, Tom. I took him out of the sun and I made him a drink and made him lie down. He’s quiet now but he looks at things too fixedly.”
“Maybe he had too much sun on his bad head.”
“Maybe. Maybe it is something else.”
“What else?”
“Gil and Peters are sleeping. Gil had the duty to keep Peters awake last night. Henry is sleeping and George went in with Antonio.”
“They should be back soon.”
“They will be.”
“We must keep Willie out of the sun. I was stupid to send him forward. But I did it for discipline, without thinking.”
“I am disassembling and cleaning the big ones and I checked all the fuses from the dampness and rain of last night on the other stuff. Last night after the poker game we disassembled and cleaned and oiled everything.”
“Now, with the dampness, we have to make a daily check, whether anything is fired or not.”
“I know,” Ara said. “We ought to disembark Willie. But we can’t do it here.”
“Cayo Francés?”
“We could. But Havana would be better and have them ship him from there. He’s going to talk, Tom.”
Thomas Hudson thought of something and regretted it.
“We never should have taken him after he had a medical discharge and with the bad head,” Ara said.
“I know. But we did. How many damn mistakes have we made?”
“Not too many,” Ara said. “Now may I go down and finish the work?”
“Yes,” Thomas Hudson said. “Thank you very much.”
“A sus órdenes,” Ara said.
“I wish to hell they were better orders,” Thomas Hudson said.
Antonio and George were coming out with the dinghy and Antonio came up on the bridge immediately and let George and Henry hoist the motor and the dinghy aboard.
“Well?” Thomas Hudson said.
“They must have gone by in the night on the last of the breeze,” Antonio said. “They would have seen them at the light if they came into the cut. The old man who has the skiff and the fish traps hadn’t seen any turtle boat. He talks about everything and he would have mentioned it, the lightkeeper said. Do you think we ought to go back and check with him?”
“No. I think they’re down at Puerto Coco or else at Guillermo.”
“That’s about where they would have reached with what wind they had.”
“You’re sure they couldn’t have gone through the cut at night?”
“Not with the best pilot that ever lived.”
“Then we have to find them in the lee of Coco or down by Guillermo. Let’s get the anchor up and go.”
It was a very dirty coast and he kept outside of everything and ran the edge of the hundred-fathom curve. Inshore there was a low rocky coast and reefs and big patches of banks that came out dry with the low tide. There was a four-man watch and Gil was on Thomas Hudson’s left. Thomas Hudson looked toward the shore and saw the beginning of the green of the mangroves and thought, what a hell of a place to be now in this calm. The clouds were piled high already and he thought the squalls would come out earlier. There are about three places past Puerto Coco that I must search, he thought. I had better hook her up a little more and get in there.
“Henry,” he said. “Steer 285 will you? I want to go below and see Willie. Sing out if you sight anything. You don’t need to watch inshore, Gil. Take the starboard watch forward. That’s all too shallow inshore for them to be in there.”