He has problems all right, Thomas Hudson thought. And the worst problem he has is us and he doesn’t even know about us. We don’t look dangerous to him. We look good to him.
Don’t take it in any bloodthirsty way, he thought. Nothing of this is going to bring back anything. Use your head and be glad to have something to do and good people to do it with.
“Juan,” he said. “What do you see, boy?”
“All bloody ocean.”
“You other gentlemen see anything?”
“Bloody nothing,” Gil said.
“My bloody belly sees coffee. But it doesn’t come any closer,” Ara said.
“I see land,” Henry said. He had seen it that instant, a low square smudge as though a man’s thumb had daubed weak ink against the lightening sky.
“That’s behind Romano,” Thomas Hudson said. “Thank you, Henry. Now you characters go down for coffee and send up four other desperate men to see strange and amusing things.”
“Do you want coffee, Tom?” Ara asked.
“No. I’ll take tea when it’s made.”
“We’ve only been on watch a couple of hours,” Gil said. “We don’t need to go off, Tom.”
“Go on down and get coffee and give the other desperate men a chance for glory.”
“Tom, didn’t you say you thought they were at Lobos?”
“Yes. But I changed my mind.”
The others had gone down and four were coming up.
“Gentlemen,” Thomas Hudson said. “Split the four quadrants up amongst you. Is there coffee below?”
“Plenty,” his mate said. “And tea. The engines are good and she didn’t make any more water than you would expect in the cross sea.”
“How is Peters?”
“He drank his own whisky in the night. The one with the little lamb on it. But he stayed awake. Willie kept him awake and drank his whisky,” his mate said.
“We have to fill gas at Confites and take on anything else there is.”
“They can load fast and I can kill a pig and scald and scrape him,” his mate said. “I’ll give them a quarter at the radio station to help me and I can butcher him while you are running. You get some sleep while we load. Would you like me to steer?”
“No. I only have to send three signals at Confites and you load and I will sleep. Then we will pursue.”
“Toward home?”
“Of course. They may avoid us for a time. But they cannot escape us. Later we will talk about it. How are they?”
“You know them. We will talk about it later. Steer in a little more, Tom. With the countercurrent you’ll shorten it.”
“Did you lose much with rolling?”
“Nothing that matters. It was a bitch of a beam sea,” his mate said.
“There should only be the people of this one undersea boat around here. She must surely be the one they claimed sunk. Now they are off La Guayra and above Kingston and on all the petrol lanes. Also they are with the wolf packs.”
“Also they are here sometimes.”
“Yes, for our sins.”
“And for theirs.”
“On this thing we will pursue well and intelligently.”
“Let us get it started,” Thomas Hudson said.
“There has been no delay.”
“It goes slowly for me.”
“Yes,” his mate said. “But get some sleep in Confites and I promise everything will go faster than you could hope.”
Thomas Hudson saw the high lookout post on the sandy key and the tall signalling mast. They were painted white and were the first things that showed. Then he saw the stumpy radio masts and the high cocked wreck of the ship that lay on the rocks and obscured the view of the radio shack. The key was not handsome from his side.
The sun was behind him and it was easy to find the first big pass through the reef and then, skirting the shoals and the coral heads, to come up on the leeward shelter. There was a sandy half-moon of beach and the island was covered with dry grass on this side and was rocky and flat on its windward end. The water was clear and green over the sand and Thomas Hudson came in close to the center of the beach and anchored with his bow almost against the shore. The sun was up and the Cuban flag was flying over the radio shack and the outbuildings. The signalling mast was bare in the wind. There was no one in sight and the Cuban flag, new and brightly clean, was snapping in the wind.
“Maybe they had a relief,” Thomas Hudson said. “The old flag was pretty worn when we left.”
He looked and saw his drums of gas where he had left them and the marks of digging in the sand where his blocks of ice should be buried. The sand was high like new-made graves and over the island sooty terns were flying in the wind. They nested in the rocks up at the windward end and a few nested in the grass of the lee. They were flying now, falling off with the wind, cutting sharply into it, and dipping down toward the grass and the rocks. They were all calling, sadly and desperately.
Must be somebody out getting eggs for breakfast, Thomas Hudson thought. Just then he smelled ham frying in the galley and he went astern and called down that he would take his breakfast on the bridge. He studied the island carefully. They might be here, he thought. They could have taken this.