“It’s not like smashing up a car or losing a ship. We’re just aground waiting for a tide.”
“I know.”
“Both wheels are sound. She’s just in mud up to her ass.”
“I know. I put her there.”
“She’ll come off as easy as she went in.”
“Sure she will.”
“Tom. Are you worried about anything?”
“What would I be worried about?”
“Nothing. I only worried if you were worried.”
“The hell with worry,” Thomas Hudson said. “You and Gil go down. See everybody eats well and is cheerful. Afterwards we’ll go in and check that key. That’s all there is to do.”
“Willie and I can go now. We don’t have to eat.”
“No. I’m going in later with Willie and Peters.”
“Not me?”
“No. Peters speaks German. Don’t tell him he’s going in. Just wake him up and see he drinks plenty of coffee.”
“Why can’t I go, too?”
“The dinghy is too damn small.”
Gil left him the big glasses and went down with Ara. Thomas Hudson studied the key carefully with the big glasses and saw that the mangroves were too high for him to learn anything about what was inside. There were other trees mixed with the mangroves on the solid part of the key and they brought the height up even more so that he could not possibly see if there was any mast showing in the horseshoe-shaped shelter on the far side. The big glasses hurt his eyes and he put them in their case and hung the strap of the case on a hook and laid the glasses flat on the frag rack.
He was happy to be alone again on the flying bridge and he relaxed for the short time of his reprieve. He watched the shore birds working on the flats and he remembered what they had meant to him when he was a boy. He could not feel the same about them now and he had no wish to kill them ever. But he remembered the early days with his father in a blind on some sand-spit with tin decoys out and how they would come in as the tide lowered and bared the flats and how he would whistle the flock in as they were circling. It was a sad whistle and he made it now and turned one flock. But they veered off from the stranded ship and went far out to feed.
He swept the horizon with the big glasses once and there was no sign of any boat. Maybe they have made it out through the new channel and into the inside passage, he thought. It would be nice if someone else caught them. We can’t catch them now without a fight. They will not surrender to a dinghy.
He had been thinking so long in their heads that he was tired of it. I am really tired finally, he thought. Well, I know what I have to do, so it is simple. Duty is a wonderful thing. I do not know what I would have done without duty since young Tom died. You could have painted, he told himself. Or you could have done something useful. Maybe, he thought. Duty is simpler.
This is useful, he thought. Do not think against it. It helps to get it over with. That’s all we are working for. Christ knows what there is beyond that. We’ve chased these characters quite well and now take a ten-minute break and then proceed with your duty. The hell with quite well, he thought. We’ve chased them very well.
“Don’t you want to eat, Tom?” Ara called up.
“I don’t feel hungry, kid,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’ll take the bottle of cold tea that’s on the ice.”
Ara handed it up and Thomas Hudson took it and relaxed against the corner of the flying bridge. He drank from the bottle of cold tea and watched the biggest key that was ahead. The mangrove roots were showing plainly now and the key looked as though it were on stilts. Then he saw a flight of flamingoes coming from the left. They were flying low over the water, lovely to see in the sunlight. Their long necks were slanted down and their incongruous legs were straight out; immobile while their pink and black wings beat, carrying them toward the mud bank that was ahead and to the right. Thomas Hudson watched them and marvelled at their downswept black and white bills and the rose color they made in the sky, which made their strange individual structures unimportant and still each one was an excitement to him. Then as they came up on the green key he saw them all swing sharply to the right instead of crossing the key.
“Ara,” he called down.
Ara came up and said, “Yes, Tom.”
“Check out three
The flamingoes had settled on the bank to the far right and were feeding busily. Thomas Hudson was watching them when Willie said, “Look at those goddam fillamingoes.”
“They spooked flying over the key. I’m pretty sure that boat or another boat is inside there. Do you want to go in with me, Willie?”
“Of course.”
“Did you finish chow?”
“The condemned man ate a hearty lunch.”
“Help Ara, then.”
“Is Ara going with us?”
“I’m taking Peters because he speaks German.”
“Can’t we take Ara instead? I don’t want to be with Peters in a fight.”
“Peters may be able to talk us out of a fight. Listen, Willie. I want prisoners and I don’t want their pilot to get killed.”