The Island

  They flushed birds and rats and lizards, driving everything before the search.

  Maynard stayed ahead of them, but just far enough so they could neither see nor hear him. He did not want to rush blindly to the south end of the island, for that would trap him in a cul-de-sac from which the only escape would be by wading or swimming out onto the banks, where he would be a conspicuous, solitary target. He took care to examine every bush, every hut, every hole in the ground.

  The searchers made no effort to be silent. They stamped their feet and slashed the bushes and called out to one another. They were entirely confident of success.

  Maynard backed across the clearing where the armorers worked. Barrels of gunpowder were stacked inside a lean-to. Broken muskets and pistols were arrayed on a workbench for repair. Maynard quickly assessed and rejected all possible hiding places in the clearing, and he moved on.

  As he crept along a path, he heard Nau’s voice behind him, instructing: “First, look for signs of fresh digging. See any mound, any scattered earth, stick your cutlass in it. Well?”

  Justin’s voice: “None.”

  “Good. Now we overturn every barrel, upend the table, run a sword through every bush.”

  Maynard’s mind was soaking up every bit of information he heard; all of it might be helpful. As he came to the next clearing, he was aware that what he had just heard had added several minutes to his life. It was the clearing where the company had gathered last night—the charcoal embers were still smoldering beneath the rum pot—and on the far side there were two fresh graves: Basco’s and the catamite’s. Sand and dirt were dug and scattered and heaped everywhere. It would have been tempting to add one more small pile to the general mess. The surprise would have been as bad as the pain when—curled and suffocating in the blackness—he would have felt the probing sword.

  He moved on, past the catamites’ clearing and the prostitutes’, past the latrine and into Beth’s clearing. Beyond was the sea.

  As the voices drew nearer and were more distinct, they were also more concentrated, for the island narrowed sharply on this end, drawing the searchers together, closing the bag.

  Maynard chose. He cut a hollow reed. He would walk into the sea and lie underwater on his back and breathe through the reed while he tried to paddle away. They would probably see him, and if they saw they would pursue, and if they pursued they would catch him, and if . . . to hell with it. He took a step toward the open beach.

  Then he heard the horn—two blasts, urgent, like a warning. Two more blasts. A pause. Two more.

  At first he thought they had seen him, and he prepared to dash for the water. But the voices suddenly receded, back toward the north.

  Cautiously, keeping away from the paths, peering through the underbrush, he followed.

  “A vessel.”

  “Where?”

  “Sou’west, making nuth’ard.”

  “What is she?”

  “Big.”

  Nau’s voice: “To the boats!”

  Windsor’s: “You can’t leave it now!”

  Nau, angry: “Stop your tongue or I’ll cut it for you!”

  Maynard could see nothing, but he heard people shouting and running for the cove. He returned to Beth’s clearing and crept to the edge of the beach and looked off to the south.

  The boat was two or three miles away, but the bow wave that curled and flashed in the sun told Maynard that she was big and fast—too big for a sports cruiser, too fast for a commercial fisherman. It was the color of the hull, as gradually it took shape against the blue-green water, that raised a clot of hope in Maynard’s chest: Coast Guard white. And, on the bow, a wide red chevron. The boat was heading north, keeping seaward of the banks, and from the speed she was making she was not sight-seeing.

  Maynard’s impulse was to run out onto the beach and wave, but a moment’s reason condemned the impulse. The ship’s course would bring it past the island half a mile offshore, at least. The watch on the bridge would be keeping his eyes on the reefs, not the land. There was a chance that Maynard could wave or flash something or cause enough movement to catch the watch’s attention, but the odds were too long and the cost of failure too high: Once the ship had passed, it was gone. He had to send a signal that could not be ignored.

  He ran back along the paths, making too much noise, recklessly confident that everyone on the island had gathered at the cove. When he drew near the cove, he slowed and crept through the thickets.

  He stopped and listened to the sounds from the beach. The pinnaces were being prepared for sea. He was about to step forward, to try to see the beach, when he heard Nau’s voice.

  “She’d be a prize!”

  Maynard froze. The voice was only a few feet away, on the other side of a fat bush. He bent his head and peered through the leaves. Nau and Windsor were sitting on the hillside, watching the boat through a brass telescope. If Maynard had taken his intended step, he would have stumbled on them.

  Windsor put down the telescope. “It’s a warship!”

  “Aye. Robust, too. What would be her cargo?”

  “No cargo.”

  “But munitions.”

  “Not worth the risk.”

  “But the vessel is. Would, she not make a fine flagship?”

  “Don’t make jokes.”

  “I don’t joke,” Nau said.

  “Then it’s fool’s talk.”

  “It’s what, Doctor?”

  Windsor retreated. “You’re a man of courage. A courageous leader does not expose his men to certain death.”

  “Surprise lessens certainty.” Nau raised the telescope. “A fine flagship!”

  “You don’t want a war with the United States Government.”

  “They wouldn’t war on phantoms.”

  Windsor started to argue further, but Nau cut him off. “Rest your mind. She’s firing both barrels; she’ll be gone before I could get to her.”

  “Unless she stops,” Windsor said.

  “And why would she stop? To jolly on the beach?”

  Maynard tried to see the ship; underbrush blocked his view, but he could hear the throbbing growl of the big diesel engines. He guessed that the ship was a mile away, moving at, say, twenty knots. He had three minutes.

  He backed away from the thickets, turned, and, watching his footfalls to avoid any branches, moved inland.

  The signal could not be a sound: The engine noises would drown out anything less than an explosion. It had to be visual. A fire. A big fire, preferably smoky. He had no matches.

  He came to the clearing littered with the debris of last night’s celebration: bits of clothing, cases of liquor, half-empty bottles. A wisp of smoke curled up around the rum pot; the embers beneath were still hot. But he saw nothing that would ignite quickly, spectacularly. He didn’t need a campfire; he needed a conflagration, like those pictures of Newark burning during the riots.

  Riots.

  His head had found the answer, and now his hands worked efficiently. He grabbed a bottle of rum, nearly full, and a piece of cloth. He soaked the cloth in rum and jammed it in the bottle neck. On his knees beside the rum pot, he scooped sand away until he found glowing coals. The tip of the cloth ignited instantly. He jumped to his feet and ran.

  The engine noise was louder; the ship must be abreast of the island.

  He ran into the clearing where the armorers worked. A woman was there, and she saw him and screamed, but he barely noticed. He ran toward the lean-to where the powder barrels were stacked, cocked his arm and flung the burning bottle and then pitched face forward into the sand and covered his head with his hands.

  He heard the bottle break, and, for an agonizing second, that was all. His mind shrieked, “Burn, you bastard!” There was a whoosh as the rum went up, a brief moment of indecisive hissing, then a deafening, painful, concussive whump. His skin burned, his ears rang with clashing bells.

  He got up and staggered into the underbrush and picked his way toward the cove.

&n
bsp; C H A P T E R

  1 6

  “You don’t want to take a rifleman?” Florio said.

  “I have this.” Mould pointed to a .45 automatic in a holster at his belt. He stood in the bow of a motor launch that hung on davits over the side of the New Hope. A sailor was in the stern, at the wheel, and another sailor, amidships, held the launch away from the side of the ship. The rest of the launch, which was designed to carry twenty-five people, was covered with canvas sheets lashed from gunwale to gunwale. “Besides, if anybody survived that explosion, they won’t be in a mood to argue.”

  Florio shrugged. “It’s your party.”

  Mould signaled for the launch to be lowered. The boat hit the water on an even keel, and the cables were detached from steel eyes bow and stern.

  Dave Kempe, the television correspondent, called down to Mould, “Make it snappy, will you? We’ll miss our flight.”

  Mould ignored Kempe and said to Florio, “You might check the first-aid stuff. I don’t know what we’ve got for burns.”

  Florio waved and started down the ladder from the bridge.

  On a perch in the bow, Mould guided the helmsman through the break in the reefs. From the sea the entrance to the cove was invisible, and twice the launch passed it by. On the third pass, Mould saw a slim channel of blue water between breakwaters The helmsman throttled down, almost to idle and the launch inched into the cove.

  “Somebody’s here,” said Mould, pointing to the pinnaces.

  “What kind of boats is that?” asked Pincus, the midships sailor.

  “Run her up on the beach, Gantz.” Mould said to the helmsman. “You stay with the boat. Pincus and I’ll have a look around.”

  Gantz nudged the bow of the launch onto the sand and shut off the engine.

  “Sure don’t sound like nobody’s here,” said Pincus. “Man, it’s so quiet it’s noisy.”

  Gantz said, “Whatever it was went off, probably blew ’em all to ratshit.”

  A sound turned their heads toward a small hillock overlooking the cove.

  A man stood, waist-deep in the underbrush at the top of the hill, weaving drunkenly. waving his arms, trying to speak. As they watched, the man moaned and fell forward his arms spread as in a swan dive. He hit the hillside, somersaulted, rolled and skidded down to the sand on the opposite side of the cove from the launch.

  Mould and Pincus jogged around the crescent beach. The man lay on his back with his feet in the water. He wore crude, knee-length leather shorts and nothing else. His body was scratched and bruised.

  Pincus said, “Is he alive?”

  “Sort of. Look at that: His hair’s singed. He must’ve been right next to the explosion.”

  “He sure don’t eat much. Can’t weigh more’n a hundred fifty.”

  Pincus bent to pick up the man, but Mould stopped him.

  “Leave him. No point moving him till we have to. There may be a litter on board we can carry him with.” Mould returned to the launch. “You better come too, Gantz,” he said. “If there’s one, there’s probably more—to bury if nothing else.”

  “There’s a path up there ” Pincus said.

  In single file they left the beach.

  The path they followed snaked through the underbrush, seeming to lead nowhere. The only sounds were their footsteps and the hum of bugs.

  They heard the clink of glass, and a woman’s voice, singing softly to herself.

  The path opened into a clearing. A woman was gathering bottles in a burlap bag. She was filthy and disheveled. She wore a formless gray dress.

  “Hello,” Mould said.

  The woman looked up. She did not seem surprised or upset or happy; her face was blank.

  “How many people were hurt?”

  The woman didn’t answer. There was a sudden movement in the bushes.

  Pincus looked to the edge of the clearing and said, “Shit Lieutenant!”

  The clearing was ringed with armed men.

  Mould’s fingers twitched at his holster.

  “Touch that ” Nau said, stepping forward with a pistol in his hand “and your journey’s done.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Your captor. You need know no more.”

  “Just what the hell . . . ?”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  Windsor said, “L’Ollonois, I beg you, don’t do this.”

  “And you shut yours, Doctor. It’s flapping too much.” Nau spoke to the boys. “Take the clothing from that one and that one.” He indicated Mould and Pincus. “Bind them well. The other leave be. He’ll come with us.”

  “Listen . . .” Mould began, but before the word could leave his mouth, a knife point was pressed under his chin, forcing his head back.

  Nau said to the company, “I want every man. We’ll stack his boat with men like logs. That will be the fox. Any extras will be poor fishermen and will follow in the pinnaces.”

  While Mould and Pincus were being stripped, Nau ordered the women to fetch and pass liquor among the crew. He chose Mould’s clothes for himself, and told Jack the Bat to wear Pincus’.

  Mould and Pincus were bound back to back, and the tail of the binding vine was looped around their throats and pulled tight.

  The men drank heavily and laughed at Jack the Bat and jeered at his threats of violent retribution.

  “We are prepared,” Nau said. “If our number be small, our hearts are great. And the fewer persons we are, the more union and better share in the spoils. Hizzoner . . . ?”

  Hizzoner recited his ritual prayer, and Nau ended the ceremony with: “Fire your furnaces, lads, get damned hot, for this will be a day like the old days.”

  Maynard rolled over, and tasted sand and salt water. His ears had not stopped ringing, but now other sounds infiltrated the ringing. Impelled to survive, he crawled for shelter in the underbrush. He had barely covered himself when the first men arrived on the beach and begun to load the gray launch.

  He remembered the launch. It had had two or three men in it, and he had tried to warn them. Had he said anything before he blacked out? Were they leaving without him? Why were the men in uniform working with Nau’s people? Then he saw that one of the men in uniform was Nau.

  The men were loaded into the launch one by one, prone, atop one another, and as each section of the launch was filled, the canvas cover was replaced and strapped down.

  “For the last time, l’Ollonois,” Windsor said, “don’t do this.”

  “And for the last time, Doctor, stop your tongue!”

  “No healthy animal seeks extinction!”

  “I agree,” said Nau, and with a stroke so spasmodically swift that it resembled an electric impulse, he drew his knife from his belt and back-handed it across Windsor’s throat.

  The knife had returned to Nau’s belt before Windsor was fully conscious of what had happened to him. A sliver of red appeared on his neck, and darkened and drooled. He raised a hand to his throat, opened his mouth and closed it again, and sat down on the sand.

  “Sit there and die, Doctor,” Nau said, and he turned away.

  “Jesus!” Gantz said. Jack the Bat pushed him toward the launch.

  The company resumed loading the boat, but Justin seemed paralyzed. He could not take his eyes from Windsor, who was rocking back and forth.

  Watching from across the cove, Maynard could tell that Justin was profoundly shocked. He was not sure why: The boy had seen so much death that one more should not affect him. Maybe, Maynard thought, it was that this was the first time he had seen someone die whom he had known before, in real life, and thus it was the first time death itself was real to him.

  Justin looked at Nau. All he said was, “But . . .”

  Nau took Justin’s arm. “Come, Tue-Barbe. What’s done is done. Surgery was called for, and it has been performed.”

  Maynard saw Justin resist Nau’s pull—for only a second, but resistance was unmistakable—and again he felt a surge of hope.

  Windsor tumbled sideways, w
heezed, and died.

  Hizzoner was the last to board the launch. He threaded pieces of pitch-soaked twine through his pigtail, hoisted the hem of his robe, and—with the delicacy of a damsel stepping over a puddle—climbed aboard and lay down. The canvas cover was lashed over him.

  “Jack-Bat, take the bows,” Nau said. “I will take midships. And you”—he pointed at Gantz—“take the helm. If you cock a finger out of order, if your tongue once trembles, I will serve you like I served the doctor. Agreed?”

  Gantz said, “You’re the boss.” He started the engine and backed the launch away from the beach.

  Four men remained. They boarded a rigged pinnace and followed the launch out of the cove.

  Maynard waited in hiding until he was certain no one else was coming down to the cove. Then he crossed the crescent beach, dropped a paddle in one of the pirogues, pushed the boat into the water, and hopped aboard.

  He heard a noise behind him, a whisper of clothing and footsteps on wet sand. He spun, with the paddle raised before his face.

  Beth stood on the beach. “Good-by,” she said.

  Maynard ducked, expecting to see a pistol raised and pointed at him. But Beth’s hands were empty.

  “Whatever happens, I expect I will not see you again.”

  Maynard put down the paddle and smiled wanly. “Not alive, anyway.”

  “Good fortune, then.”

  Maynard nodded. “You, too.” He dug the paddle into the water and pulled for the mouth of the cove.

  “What do you see?” asked Dave Kempe.

  “She’s riding low in the water,” Florio said. “Loaded down with something.” He braced his elbows against his chest to steady the binoculars. “Looks like he’s got a couple of kids aboard.”

  “What is this, Be Kind to Natives Day?”

  “Mr. Kempe,” Florio said, as patiently as possible, “this is a government vessel. We do have a responsibility.”

  “Not to these people.”

  Florio looked through the binoculars again. “They are kids. Why don’t you shoot some film of them? Make a nice story.”

  “What . . . Tom Sawyer marooned on a desert island?” Kempe paused. “It might, at that. Maybe we’ll salvage this disaster yet.” He started down the ladder, calling, “Schussman! Get your camera!”