floorboard. I knelt on the lousy patch noticing about a foot of water in the little dinghy, but the level was not rising. Confused, I focused my thoughts into one single direction. Survive. Just survive. I have no life jacket; swimming won’t work. Andromeda is gone. "Mourn ye not for Andromeda; she was but an innocent victim of her own vanity," Perseus said of his lover. If I put my foot on the board, maybe I can row. I can row awhile and bail awhile. Bail first, gallon after gallon, after gallon. Where's that beacon? Can I make it?
I took ten strokes with one foot on the patch and then drifted, bailed awhile, ten strokes more and then drifted some more. What was it she said? If I can't have you, then no one can? The work was awkward, cumbersome and immense. I had no way to tell if I was making progress; all I knew was I had to keep going. Ten strokes, drift and bail, ten strokes, drift and bail. My newest patch was miserably ineffective; it leaked in gushes. As the boat took on water, it gained weight and settled low. By the tenth stroke, it so heavy, it was like rowing a rock. From time to time, I looked back at the island to see that fiery glow had diminished, and eventually was gone. I wept tired, angry tears, but through sheer force of will, kept my little boat afloat and moving forward, ten strokes, drift and bail, ten strokes, drift and bail.
By the first light of dawn, my arms hung like lead weights. My head drooped with nowhere else to go. I felt very nearly worked to death. It has been said that there is no clearer picture of motivation than a man with a bucket in a sinking boat. But man has his limits. I was somewhere north of Beef Island and fairly certain I was not being swept out to sea. Must rest. If I could just drift, and if the current doesn't change and if the wood of this dinghy has just enough buoyancy, I might be blown ashore somewhere nearby. Maybe someone will find me. Maybe I will survive. I simply could not lift another gallon of seawater. If I could rest... even a little while... maybe I could work some more. Maybe if I sat on this floorboard patch, the leak would slow and I could sleep. I'll try... I lifted my foot and and scrambled to get my rear end on the board over the patch. Water gushed in for a moment, but stopped with my weight. Painfully, so thirsty my tongue had begun to swell, I bailed another four gallons. I clung to the side of the little lapsrake craft and grudgingly, fighting for every gram of consciousness, fell sound asleep.
The next thing I knew, a pair of muscled arms was lifting me and I heard voices. I was alive.
"You've been through quite an ordeal, young man," the kind voice said. I opened my eyes and looked into a face about seventy years old, tanned and heavily weathered, with a wisp of white hair on its head. He was wearing a natty blue oxford shirt and a wry, powerful smile.
"Where am I?" I moaned.
"Marina Key. You washed up here this morning. You okay?"
"I think so. Now that I'm not fish food, I think so." He chuckled.
"How long were you sitting on that patch?"
"Quite a while." He offered me a cup of coffee and I took it, nursing the first sips..
"What happened?" he asked. Good question, I thought. How much do I tell this guy? If someone told me this story, I’d think him beyond nuts. But could he know Mariah? She said she was well known in the islands.
"I had a little shipwreck. Ran ashore Dog Island out there and had only one way out. Row. The dinghy got a hole in her along the way and here I am." He didn't look like he believed me. There is the truth and then there is the whole truth.
"Your boat totaled?"
"Not sure," I said weakly. I'd like to go back and see. Is there a way I can do that?"
"Sure thing. How 'bout after breakfast tomorrow morning? I'll have a bite to eat brought over in awhile and I'll see you later. By the way, I'm Bob Hughes."
"Ian Dunn. Thanks for being here," I said, and tumbled back into the thick blanket of sleep.
Marina Cay is a favorite anchorage for boats in the charter trade. There's a well-protected harbor and Bob's restaurant, and that's about it, unless you count the twin prop airplanes that land at Beef Island Airport two or three times a day. Like a dozen or so other places in the Virgins, it's a corner where you can be totally alone on your own little floating world, but be only minutes away from noisy, relaxed civilization and tasty, expensive meals.
In the morning, I found a shirt and shorts, soap and razor waiting for me, the gifts of a guardian angel dropped off in the middle of the night. The shower brought me back to life. Clean clothes brought me back to humanity. Breakfast made me glad to be alive. Bob, in khaki shorts and a Polo shirt, joined me at a table. "I'm ready to go when you are."
"Ready now," he said.
We walked into the crystalline day toward some slips under construction. Tied to one of the posts was what I would guess was a 24-foot launch, a working boat open inside except for the wheelhouse, a beamy thing that looked like it could take plenty of weather. The guttural diesel cranked to life. We backed out of the slip, into the channel, and then gunned into the strait.
"How'd you end up at Dog Island?" Hughes asked.
"Stopover on the way over from St. Martin on the way to St. Thomas," I said over the engine's loud growl.
"How'd you crack up?"
"Long story." He nodded.
"Bad wreck?"
"Ran onto the beach... maybe we can get her off."
"I've got a work crew from the docks. Plenty of gear. We can do whatever you need."
"Thanks, Bob,” I said, truly grateful. “You're great news for a shipwrecked sailor." I decided to go fishing. "Anybody live on any of these little islands?"
He looked at me with a serious, almost knowing look. "No. Why?"
"You sure?"
"Son, I've been out here twenty years now and I think I know every living thing hereabouts. Why do you ask?"
"I thought I saw somebody on the island the other day."
He stared forward intently through the windshield, pursing his lips, concentrating, as though he didn't know exactly what to say. Finally, he snapped his head around and said, "Mariah."
"What?!" I said thinly. "Say that again?"
"Mariah! You saw Mariah!"
"You know her?"
"Son, I've been in love with her for decades." Oh shit, I thought, I'd better keep my mouth shut. I've been messing with somebody's private stock. If this guy finds out I've been playing house on his island, I'm a dead man. We were nearing the island now and I was afraid to look at the little cove to see the charred hulk of the Friendship Sloop. I looked instead at Bob Hughes, who had an odd little smile on his face and just nodded once in awhile in answer to questions being asked inside his head.
"That your wreck?" he asked, nodding toward the cove.
I turned my head slowly, ready to acknowledge the damage. What I saw made my jaw go slack. I stared with saucer eyes. This was unbelievable. There was Andromeda, bright in the morning sun, flags flying, tethered peacefully to her anchor. "Son of a bitch," I said. "Bob, I swear to you, when I left her, that boat was on the beach and on fire. How in hell did it get off?" He said nothing, but throttled down and came alongside the little sloop. She was shipshape in every way. Sails perfectly furled, lines spanking white and nearly coiled, everything properly stowed below. She smelled of fresh varnish and shone with gleaming brass and scoured decks. I was completely in awe as I stepped aboard. The little yacht was in perfect shape.
"Beautiful old classic," Bob said from his boat.
"Bob," I said exasperated, "What the frick is going on?"
He hesitated for a moment, sizing me up. "Come on,” he said at last. “I’ll tell you what I know." I climbed back aboard the launch and rode the short distance to shore. He was about to introduce me to his mistress. Oh, Lord, the guy saved my life. How will I handle this?
With the launch on the beach, he strode toward the big Casuarina pine. "Here, this way, I want to show you something." I followed, yet there was no path. I could see no steps. "We've got to push our
way through these brambles a bit," he said. "Give me a hand." It was hard, ugly work to make any progress at all, but he thrashed like a machine, oblivous to the thorns and the thicket. And then he stopped, pulling one shrub aside. "There."
It was weathered writing, carved into the rock, just below where the grotto should have been. Where the hell was the grotto? Am I going nuts? And then I read:
R. I. P.
Mariah Mulqueen
Born, Plymouth, Mass 1820
Died in shipwreck 1851
"Woe be to he that sails
the Virgins at night"
"They say she was the master of the vessel, a freelance privateer before it became a legitimate occupation,” Bob said. “She never married but used her considerable feminine charms to put her enemies off guard and capture their ships. A lot of men wanted her for their own, but she'd have none of it. She was caught in a storm near here while trying to sneak by navy ships anchored at Spanish Town for the night. She steered too close to the Dogs and hit a reef. The storm blew into a gale and dashed her ship to bits against these rocks.
"Legend has it," he said, looking me right in the eye, "... people round here believe... the rock is haunted. They say they can see lights from time to time, that it's Mariah, courting her next victim."
I touched the epitaph... the cold, hard letters in stone. It was real. But yesterday was real. The bump on the head... yes, that was real too, it's still sore. But she was there. I