Hatch swallowed. "You're right. I couldn't care less."
There was a long pause, then Neidelman raised his binoculars and examined the island of fog. "Why does it remain fogbound?"
"There's a good reason," Hatch said, grateful for the change of topic. "The island's powerful riptide deflects the frigid Labrador Current into the warm Cape Cod Current, and where they mix you get a large eddy of fog. Sometimes only a thin ring of fog surrounds the island, other times it's totally socked in."
"What more could a pirate ask for?" Neidelman murmured.
It won't be long now, Hatch thought. He tried to lose himself in the hissing of water racing along the chine, the briny scent of the air, the cool brass of the wheel against his palms. He glanced at Neidelman, and saw a muscle twitching in his set jaw. He was also experiencing a powerful emotion, of another though no less private kind.
The patch of fog drew closer. Hatch struggled in silence, willing himself to keep the boat pointed in the direction of the creeping fingers of mist, so strangely alien on a horizon that had otherwise grown clear. He eased down the throttle as the boat nosed its prow into the murk. Suddenly, clamminess surrounded them. Malin could feel droplets of condensation begin to form on his knuckles and along the back of his neck.
He strained to see through the fog. A dark, distant outline seemed to appear, only to vanish again. He cut the throttle further. In the relative quiet, he could now hear the sound of surf, and the ringing of the Ragged Island bell buoy, warning mariners away from its treacherous reefs. He swung the boat in a more northerly course, to bring it around the leeward end of the island. Suddenly, a ruined iron derrick loomed above the mists about two hundred yards off the port side, twisted by storms, streaked with rust.
With a short intake of breath, Neidelman swiftly raised the binoculars to his eyes, but the boat had plunged into another patch of fog and the island disappeared once again. A chill wind had picked up and a light drizzle began to fall.
"Can we get closer?" Neidelman murmured.
Hatch steered the boat toward the reefs. As they entered the lee of the island, the surf dropped along with the wind. Abruptly, they broke through the circle of mist and the island stood revealed in its entirety.
Hatch brought the boat parallel to the reef. In the stern, Neidelman kept the binoculars glued to his face, forgotten pipe clenched between his teeth, his shoulders darkening in the rain. Bringing the bow into the sea, Hatch threw the boat into neutral and let it drift. Then at last he turned toward the island to face it himself.
Chapter 4
The dark, terrible outline of the island, so persistent in memory and nightmare, was now once again before him in reality. It was little more than a black silhouette etched hard against the gray of sea and sky: shaped like a peculiar, tilted table, a gradual incline rising from the leeward to sharp bluffs on the seaward coast, punctuated by a hump of land in the center. The surf pounded the bluffs and boiled over the sunken ledges that ringed the island, leaving a scurf of foam that trailed like the wake of a boat. It was, if anything, even bleaker than he remembered: windswept, barren, a mile long and eight hundred yards wide. A single deformed spruce stood above the cobbled beach at the lee end of the island, its top exploded by an old lightning strike, its crabbed branches raised like a witch's hand against the sky.
Everywhere, great ruined hulks of infernal machines rose from the waving sawgrass and tea roses: ancient steam-driven compressors, winches, chains, boilers. A cluster of weather-beaten shacks sat to one side of the old spruce, listing and roofless. At the far end of the beach, Hatch could make out the smooth rounded forms of the Whalebacks that he and Johnny had clambered over, more than twenty-five years before. Along the nearest rocks lay the shattered carcasses of several large boats, dashed and battered by countless storms, their decks and ribbing split and scattered among the granite boulders. Weather-beaten signs, posted every 100 feet above the high water mark, read:
WARNING! EXTREME DANGER NO LANDING
For a moment Neidelman was speechless. "At last," he breathed.
The moment stretched into minutes as the boat drifted. Neidelman lowered his binoculars and turned toward Hatch. "Doctor?" he inquired.
Hatch was bracing himself on the wheel, riding out the memory. Horror washed over him like seasickness as the drizzle splattered the pilothouse windows and the bell buoy tolled mournfully in the mists. But mingled with the horror was something else, something new: the realization that there was a vast treasure down there—that his grandfather had not been a complete fool who destroyed three generations of his family for nothing. In a moment, he knew what his decision had to be: the final answer that was owed to his grandfather, his father, and his brother.
"Dr. Hatch?" Neidelman asked again, the hollows of his face glistening with the damp.
Hatch took several deep breaths and forced himself to relax his desperate grip on the wheel. "Circle the island?" he asked, managing to keep his voice even.
Neidelman stared at him another moment. Then he simply nodded and raised the binoculars again.
Easing the throttle open, Hatch swung seaward, coming out of the lee and turning into the wind. He proceeded under low engine, keeping the boat at three knots, looking away from the Whalebacks and the other, more dreadful landmarks he knew would lie just beyond.
"It's a hard-looking place," Neidelman said. "Harder than I'd ever imagined."
"There's no natural harbor," Hatch replied. "The place is surrounded by reefs, and there's a wicked tiderip. The island's exposed to the open ocean, and it gets hammered by Nor'easters every fall. So many tunnels were dug that a good part of the island is waterlogged and unstable. Even worse, some of the companies brought in explosives. There's unexploded dynamite, blasting caps, and God knows what else beneath the surface, just waiting to go off."
"What's that wreck?" Neidelman said, pointing at a massive, twisted metal structure rearing above the seaweed-slick rocks.
"A barge left over from my grandfather's day. It was anchored offshore with a floating crane, got caught in a Nor'easter, and was thrown on the rocks. After the ocean got through with it, there wasn't anything left to salvage. That was the end of my grandfather's effort."
"Did your grandfather leave any records?" Neidelman asked.
"My father destroyed them." Hatch swallowed hard. "My grandfather bankrupted the family with this island, and my father always hated the place and everything about it. Even before the accident." His voice trailed off and he gripped the wheel, staring straight ahead.
"I'm sorry," Neidelman said, his face softening. "I've been so wrapped up in all this that I sometimes forget your personal tragedy. Forgive me if I've asked any insensitive questions."
Hatch continued gazing over the ship's bow. "It's all right."
Neidelman fell silent, for which Hatch was grateful. Nothing was more painful than hearing the usual platitudes from well-meaning people, especially the one that went Don't blame yourself, it wasn't your fault.
The Plain Jane rounded the southern end of the island and went broadside to the swell. Hatch gave it a little more throttle and plunged ahead.
"Amazing," Neidelman muttered. "To think that only this small island of sand and rocks separates us from the largest fortune ever buried."
"Careful, Captain," Hatch replied, putting what he hoped was a playful tone on the warning. "That's the kind of rapturous thinking that bankrupted a dozen companies. Better to remember the old poem: