I got on board and warmed up the engine. Frankie stood on the dock watching. He was smiling that funny deaf smile. I went back to him.
“Listen,” I said. “Don’t you get in any trouble about this.”
He couldn’t hear me. I had to yell it at him.
“Me good politics,” Frankie said. He cast her off.
I waved to Frankie, who’d thrown the bowline on board, and I headed her out of the slip and dropped down the channel with her. A British freighter was going out and I ran along beside her and passed her. I went out the harbor and past the Morro and put her on the course for Key West; due north. I left the wheel and went forward and coiled up the bowline and then came back and held her on her course, spreading Havana out astern and then dropping it off behind us as we brought the mountains up.
I dropped the Morro out of sight after a while and then the National Hotel and finally I could just see the dome of the Capitol. There wasn’t much current compared to the last day we had fished and there was only a light breeze. I saw a couple of smacks headed in toward Havana and they were coming from the westward so I knew the current was light.
I cut the switch and killed the motor. There wasn’t any sense in wasting gas. I’d let her drift. When it got dark I could always pick up the light of the Morro or, if she drifted up too far, the lights of Cojimar, and steer in and run along to Bacuranao. I figured the way the current looked she would drift the twelve miles up to Bacuranao by dark and I’d see the lights of Baracóa.
Well, I killed the engine and climbed up forward to have a look around. All there was to see was the two smacks off to the westward headed in, and way back the dome of the Capitol standing up white out of the edge of the sea. There was some gulfweed on the stream and a few birds working, but not many. I sat up there awhile on top of the house and watched, but the only fish I saw were those little brown ones that rise around the gulfweed. Brother, don’t let anybody tell you there isn’t plenty of water between Havana and Key West. I was just on the edge of it.
After a while I went down into the cockpit again and there was Eddy!
“What’s the matter? What’s the matter with the engine?”
“She broke down.”
“Why haven’t you got the hatch up?”
“Oh, hell!” I said.
Do you know what he’d done? He’d come back again and slipped the forward hatch and gone down into the cabin and gone to sleep. He had two quarts with him. He’d gone into the first bodega he’d seen and bought it and come aboard. When I started out he woke up and went back to sleep again. When I stopped her out in the gulf and she began to roll a little with the swell it woke him up.
“I knew you’d carry me, Harry,” he said.
“Carry you to hell,” I said. “You aren’t even on the crew list. I’ve got a good mind to make you jump overboard now.”
“You’re an old joker, Harry,” he said. “Us conchs ought to stick together when we’re in trouble.”
“You,” I said, “with your mouth. Who’s going to trust your mouth when you’re hot?”
“I’m a good man, Harry. You put me to the test and see what a good man I am.”
“Get me the two quarts,” I told him. I was thinking of something else.
He brought them out and I took a drink from the open one and put them forward by the wheel. He stood there and I looked at him. I was sorry for him and for what I knew I’d have to do. Hell, I knew him when he was a good man.
“What’s the matter with her, Harry?”
“She’s all right.”
“What’s the matter, then? What are you looking at me like that for?”
“Brother,” I told him, and I was sorry for him, “you’re in plenty of trouble.”
“What do you mean, Harry?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I haven’t got it all figured out yet.”
We sat there awhile and I didn’t feel like talking to him any more. Once I knew it, it was hard to talk to him. Then I went below and got out the pump-gun and the Winchester thirty-thirty that I always had below in the cabin and hung them up in their cases from the top of the house where we hung the rods usually, right over the wheel where I could reach them. I keep them in those full-length clipped sheep’s-wool cases soaked in oil. That’s the only way you can keep them from rusting on a boat.
I loosened up the pump and worked her a few times, and then filled her up and pumped one into the barrel. I put a shell in the chamber of the Winchester and filled up the magazine. I got out the Smith and Wesson thirty-eight special I had when I was on the police force up in Miami from under the mattress and cleaned and oiled it and filled it up and put it on my belt.
“What’s the matter?” Eddy said. “What the hell’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I told him.
“What’s all the damn guns for?”
“I always carry them on board,” I said. “To shoot birds that bother the baits or to shoot sharks cruising along the keys.”
“What’s the matter, damn it?” said Eddy. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” I told him. I sat there with the old thirty-eight flopping against my leg when she rolled, and I looked at him. I thought, there’s no sense to do it now. I’m going to need him now.
“We’re going to do a little job,” I said. “In at Bacuranao. I’ll tell you what to do when it’s time.”
I didn’t want to tell him too far ahead because he would get to worrying and get so spooked he wouldn’t be any use.
“You couldn’t have anybody better than me. Harry,” he said. “I’m the man for you. I’m with you on anything.”
I looked at him, tall and bleary and shaky, and I didn’t say anything.
“Listen, Harry. Would you give me just one?” he asked me. “I don’t want to get the shakes.”
I gave him one and we sat and waited for it to get dark. It was a fine sunset and there was a nice light breeze, and when the sun got pretty well down I started the engine and headed her in slow toward land.
We lay offshore about a mile in the dark. The current had freshened up with the sun down and I noticed it running in. I could see the Morro light way down to the westward and the glow of Havana, and the lights opposite us were Rincón and Baracóa. I headed her up against the current until I was past Bacuranao and nearly to Cojimar. Then I let her drift down. It was plenty dark but I could tell good where we were. I had all the lights out.
“What’s it going to be, Harry?” Eddy asked me. He was beginning to be spooked again.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “You’ve got me worried.” He was pretty close to the shakes and when he came near me he had a breath like a buzzard.
“What time is it?”
“I’ll go down and see,” he said. He came back up and said it was half past nine.
“Are you hungry?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “You know I couldn’t eat, Harry.”
“All right,” I told him. “You can have one.”
After he had it I asked him how he felt. He said he felt fine.
“I’m going to give you a couple more in a little while,” I told him. “I know you haven’t got any guts unless you’ve got rum and there isn’t much on board. So you’d better go easy.”
“Tell me what’s up,” said Eddy.
“Listen,” I said, talking to him in the dark. “We’re going in to Bacuranao and pick up twelve Chinks. You take the wheel when I tell you to and do what I tell you to. We’ll take the twelve Chinks on board and we’ll lock them below forward. Go on forward now and fasten the hatch from the outside.”
He went up and I saw him shadowed against the dark. He came back and he said, “Harry, can I have one of those now?”
“No,” I said. “I want you rum-brave. I don’t want you useless.”
“I’m a good man, Harry. You’ll see.”
“You’re a rummy,” I said. “Listen. One Chink is going to bri
ng those twelve out. He’s going to give me some money at the start. When they’re all on board he’s going to give me some more money. When you see him start to hand me money the second time you put her ahead and hook her up and head her out to sea. Don’t you pay any attention to what happens. You keep her going out no matter what happens. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“If any Chink starts bursting out of the cabin or coming through the hatch, once we’re out and under way, you take that pump-gun and blow them back as fast as they come out. Do you know how to use the pump-gun?”
“No. But you can show me.”
“You’d never remember. Do you know how to use the Winchester?”
“Just pump the lever and shoot it.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Only don’t shoot any holes in the hull.”
“You’d better give me that other drink,” Eddy said.
“All right. I’ll give you a little one.”
I gave him a real one. I knew they wouldn’t make him drunk now; not pouring into all that fear. But each one would work for a little while. After he drank this Eddy said, just as though he was happy, “So we’re going to run Chinks. Well, by God, I always said I’d run Chinamen if I was ever broke.”
“But you never got broke before, eh?” I said to him. He was funny all right.
I gave him three more drinks to keep him brave before it was half past ten. It was funny watching him and it kept me from thinking about it myself. I hadn’t figured on all this wait. I’d planned to leave after dark, run out, just out of the glare, and coast along to Cojimar.
At a little before eleven I saw the two lights show on the point. I waited a little while and then I took her in slow. Bacuranao is a cove where there used to be a big dock for loading sand. There is a little river that comes in when the rains open the bar across the mouth. The northers, in the winter, pile the sand up and close it.
They used to go in with schooners and load guavas from the river and there used to be a town. But the hurricane took it and it is all gone now except one house that some gallegos built out of the shacks the hurricane blew down and that they use for a clubhouse on Sundays when they come out to swim and picnic from Havana. There is one other house where the delegate lives but it is back from the beach.
Each little place like that all down the coast has a government delegate, but I figured the Chink must use his own boat and have him fixed. As we came in I could smell the sea grape and that sweet smell from the brush you get off the land.
“Get up forward,” I said to Eddy.
“You can’t hit anything on that side,” he said. “The reef’s on the other side as you go in.” You see, he’d been a good man once.
“Watch her,” I said, and I took her in to where I knew they could see us. With no surf they could hear the engine. I didn’t want to wait around, not knowing whether they saw us or not, so I flashed the running lights on once, just the green and red, and turned them off. Then I turned her and headed her out and let her lay there, just outside, with the engine just ticking. There was quite a little swell that close in.
“Come on back here,” I said to Eddy and I gave him a real drink.
“Do you cock it first with your thumb?” he whispered to me. He was sitting at the wheel now, and I had reached up and had both the cases open and the butts pulled out about six inches.
“That’s right.”
“Oh boy,” he said.
It certainly was wonderful what a drink would do to him and how quick.
We lay there and I could see a light from the delegate’s house back through the bush. I saw the two lights on the point go down, and one of them moving off around the point. They must have blown the other one out.
Then, in a little while, coming out of the cove, I see a boat come toward us with a man sculling. I could tell by the way he swung back and forth. I knew he had a big oar. I was pretty pleased. If they were sculling that meant one man.
They came alongside.
“Good evening. Captain,” said Mr. Sing.
“Come astern and put her broadside,” I said to him.
He said something to the man who was sculling but he couldn’t scull her backwards, so I took hold of the gunwale and passed her astern. There were eight men in the boat. The six Chinks, Mr. Sing, and the kid sculling. While I was pulling her astern I was waiting for something to hit me on top of the head but nothing did. I straightened up and let Mr. Sing hold onto the stern.
“Let’s see what it looks like,” I said.
He handed it to me and I took it up to where Eddy was at the wheel and put on the binnacle light. I looked at it carefully. It looked all right to me and I turned off the light. Eddy was trembling.
“Pour one yourself,” I said. I saw him reach for the bottle and tip it up.
I went back to the stern.
“All right,” I said. “Let six come on board.”
Mr. Sing and the Cuban that sculled were having a job holding their boat from knocking in what little swell there was. I heard Mr. Sing say something in Chink and all the Chinks in the boat started to climb onto the stern.
“One at a time,” I said.
He said something again, and then one after another six Chinks came over the stern. They were all lengths and sizes.
“Show them forward,” I said to Eddy.
“Right this way, gentlemen,” said Eddy. By God, I knew he had taken a big one.
“Lock the cabin,” I said, when they were all in.
“Yes, sir,” said Eddy.
“I will return with the others,” said Mr. Sing.
“O.K.,” I told him.
I pushed them clear and the boy with him started sculling off.
“Listen,” I said to Eddy. “You lay off that bottle. You’re brave enough now.”
“O.K., chief,” said Eddy.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“This is what I like to do,” said Eddy. “You say you just pull it backward with your thumb?”
“You lousy rummy,” I told him. “Give me a drink out of that.”
“All gone,” said Eddy. “Sorry, chief.”
“Listen. What you have to do now is watch her when he hands me the money and put her ahead.”
“O.K., chief,” said Eddy.
I reached up and took the other bottle and got the corkscrew and drew the cork. I took a good drink and went back to the stem, putting the cork in tight and laying the bottle behind two wicker jugs full of water.
“Here comes Mr. Sing,” I said to Eddy.
“Yes, sir,” said Eddy.
The boat came out sculling toward us.
He brought her astern and I let them do the holding in. Mr. Sing had hold of the roller we had across the stern to slide a big fish on board.
“Let them come aboard,” I said, “one at a time.”
Six more assorted Chinks came on board over the stern.
“Open up and show them forward,” I told Eddy.
“Yes, sir,” said Eddy.
“Lock the cabin.”
“Yes, sir.”
I saw he was at the wheel.
“All right, Mr. Sing,” I said. “Let’s see the rest of it.”
He put his hand in his pocket and reached the money out toward me. I reached for it and grabbed his wrist with the money in his hand, and as he came forward on the stern I grabbed his throat with the other hand. I felt her start and then churn ahead as she hooked up and I was plenty busy with Mr. Sing but I could see the Cuban standing in the stem of the boat holding the sculling oar through all the flopping and bouncing Mr. Sing was doing. He was flopping and bouncing worse than any dolphin on a gaff.
I got his arm around behind him and came up on it but I brought it too far because I felt it go. When it went he made a funny little noise and came forward, me holding him throat and all, and bit me on the shoulder. But when I felt the arm go I dropped it. It wasn’t any good to him any more and I took him by the throat with both
hands, and brother, that Mr. Sing would flop just like a fish, true, his loose arm flailing, but I got him forward onto his knees and had both thumbs well in behind his talk box and I bent the whole thing back until she cracked. Don’t think you can’t hear it crack, either.
I held him quiet just a second, and then I laid him down across the stem. He lay there, face up, quiet, in his good clothes, with his feet in the cockpit, and I left him.
I picked up the money off the cockpit floor and took it up and put it on the binnacle and counted it. Then I took the wheel and told Eddy to look under the stem for some pieces of iron that I used for anchoring whenever we fished bottom fishing on patches or rocky bottom where you wouldn’t want to risk an anchor.
“I can’t find anything,” he said. He was scared being down there by Mr. Sing.
“Take the wheel,” I said. “Keep her out.”
There was a certain amount of moving around going on below but I wasn’t spooked about them.
I found a couple of pieces of what I wanted—iron from the old coaling dock at Tortugas—and I took some snapper line and made a couple of good big pieces fast to Mr. Sing’s ankles. Then when we were about two miles offshore I slid him over. He slid over smooth off the roller. I never even looked in his pockets. I didn’t feel like fooling with him.
He’d bled a little on the stern from his nose and his mouth, and I dipped a bucket of water that nearly pulled me overboard the way we were going, and cleaned her off good with a scrub brush from under the stern.
“Slow her down,” I said to Eddy.
“What if he floats up?” Eddy said.
“I dropped him in about seven hundred fathoms,” I said. “He’s going down all that way. That’s a long way, brother. He won’t float till the gas brings him up and all the time he’s going with the current and baiting up fish. Hell,” I said, “you don’t have to worry about Mr. Sing.”