“What government boat is there, Cappie?” asked the big-faced one looking away from the stern.
“Coast guard.”
“What can she make?”
“Maybe twelve.”
“Then we’re O.K. now.”
Harry did not answer.
“Aren’t we O.K. then?”
Harry said nothing. He was keeping the rising, widening spire of Sand Key on his left and the stake on little Sand Key shoals showed almost abeam to starboard. In ten more minutes they would be past the reef.
“What’s the matter with you? Can’t you talk?”
“What did you ask me?”
“Is there anything can catch us now?”
“Coast guard plane,” said Harry.
“We cut the telephone wire before we came in town,” the pleasant-speaking one said.
“You didn’t cut the wireless, did you?” Harry asked.
“You think the plane can get here?”
“You got a chance of her until dark,” Harry said.
“What do you think, Cappy?” asked Roberto, the big-faced one.
Harry did not answer.
“Come on, what do you think?”
“What did you let that son of a bitch kill my mate for?” Harry said to the pleasant-speaking one who was standing beside him now looking at the compass course.
“Shut up,” said Roberto. “Kill you, too.”
“How much money you get?” Harry asked the pleasant-speaking one.
“We don’t know. We haven’t counted it yet. It isn’t ours, anyway.”
“I guess not,” said Harry. He was past the light now and he put her on 225°, his regular course for Havana.
“I mean we do it not for ourselves. For a revolutionary organization.”
“You kill my mate for that, too?”
“I am very sorry,” said the boy. “I cannot tell you how badly I feel about that.”
“Don’t try,” said Harry.
“You see,” the boy said, speaking quietly, “this man Roberto is bad. He is a good revolutionary but a bad man. He kills so much in the time of Machado he gets to like it. He thinks it is funny to kill. He kills in a good cause, of course. The best cause.” He looked back at Roberto who sat now in one of the fishing chairs in the stern, the Thompson gun across his lap, looking back at the white boats which were, Harry saw, much smaller now.
“What you got to drink?” Roberto called from the stern.
“Nothing,” Harry said.
“I drink my own, then,” Roberto said. One of the other Cubans lay on one of the seats built over the gas tanks. He looked seasick already. The other was obviously seasick too, but still sitting up.
Looking back, Harry saw a lead-colored boat, now clear of the Fort, coming up on the two white boats.
“There’s the coast guard boat,” he thought. “She’s pitiful too.”
“You think the seaplane will come?” the pleasant- spoken boy asked.
“Be dark in half an hour,” Harry said. He settled on the steering seat. “What you figure on doing? Killing me?”
“I don’t want to,” the boy said. “I hate killing.”
“What you doing?” Roberto, who sat new with a pint of whiskey in his hand, asked. “Making friends with the captain? What you want to do? Eat at the captain’s table?”
“Take the wheel,” Harry said to the boy. “See the course? Two twenty-five.” He straightened up from the stool and went aft.
“Let me have a drink,” Harry said to Roberto. “There’s your coast-guard boat but she can’t catch us.”
He had abandoned anger, hatred and any dignity as luxuries, now, and had started to plan.
“Sure,” said Roberto. “She can’t catch us. Look at those seasick babies. What you say? You want a drink? You got any other last wishes, Cappie?”
“You’re some kidder,” Harry said. He took a long drink.
“Go easy!” Roberto protested. “That’s all there is.”
“I got some more,” Harry told him. “I was just kidding you.”
“Don’t kid me,” said Roberto suspiciously. “Why should I try?”
“What you got?”
“Bacardi.”
“Bring it out.”
“Take it easy,” Harry said. “Why do you get so tough?”
He stepped over Albert’s body as he walked forward. As he came to the wheel he looked at the compass. The boy was about twenty-five degrees off and the compass dial was swinging. He’s no sailor, Harry thought. That gives me more time. Look at the wake.
The wake ran in two bubbling curves toward where the light, astern now, showed brown, conical and thinly latticed on the horizon. The boats were almost out of sight. He could just see a blur where the wireless masts of the town were. The engines were running smoothly. Harry put his head below and reached for one of the bottles of Bacardi. He went aft with it. At the stern he took a drink, then handed the bottle to Roberto. Standing, he looked down at Albert and he felt sick inside. The poor hungry bastard, he thought.
“What’s the matter? He scare you?” the big-faced Cuban asked.
“What you say we put him over?” Harry said.
“No sense to carry him.”
“O. K.,” said Roberto. “You got good sense.”
“Take him under the arms,” said Harry. “I’ll take the legs.” Roberto laid the Thompson gun down on the wide stern and leaning down lifted the body by the shoulders.
“You know the heaviest thing in the world is a dead man,” he said. “You ever lift a dead man before, Cappy?”
“No,” said Harry. “You ever lift a big dead woman?”
Roberto pulled the body up onto the stern. “You’re a tough fellow,” he said. “What do you say we have a drink?”
“Go ahead,” said Harry.
“Listen, I’m sorry I killed him,” Roberto said. “When I kill you I feel worse.”
“Cut out talking that way,” Harry said. “What do you want to talk that way for?”
“Come on,” said Roberto. “Over he goes.”
As they leaned over and slid the body up and over the stern, Harry kicked the machine gun over the edge. It splashed at the same time Albert did, but while Albert turned over twice in the white, churned, bubbling back-suction of the propeller wash before sinking, the gun went straight down.
“That’s better, eh?” Roberto said. “Make it shipshape.” Then as he saw the gun was gone, “Where is it? What did you do with it?”
“With what?”
“The ametralladora!” going into Spanish In excitement.
“The what?”
“You know what.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“You knocked it off the stern. Now I’ll kill you, now.”
“Take it easy,” said Harry. “What the hell you going to kill me about?”
“Give me a gun,” Roberto said to one of the seasick Cubans in Spanish. “Give me a gun quick!”
Harry stood there, never having felt so tall, never having felt so wide, feeling the sweat trickle from under his armpits, feeling it go down his flanks.
“You kill too much,” he heard the seasick Cuban say in Spanish. “You kill the mate. Now you want to kill the captain. Who’s going to get us across?”
“Leave him alone,” said the other. “Kill him when we get over.”
“He knocked the machine gun overboard,” Roberto said.
“We got the money. What you want a machine gun for now? There’s plenty of machine guns in Cuba.”
“I tell you, you make a mistake if you don’t kill him now, I tell you. Give me a gun.”
“Oh, shut up. You’re drunk. Every time you’re drunk you want to kill somebody.”
“Have a drink,” said Harry looking out across the gray swell of the gulf stream where the round red sun was just touching the water. “Watch that. When she goes all the way under it’ll turn bright green.”