We had returned to the Lucretia and had roused the navigator and the third mate, who crowded into the small dinghy with us. Cleopatra had left Hector a two-way radio, and I was communicating with him.
Cleopatra stood next to Solomon, staring back and forth at the red glow of the boat compass and the lighted windows of the tower. Solomon was at the helm, following Cleopatra’s instructions.
The young navigator sat on the rubber boat, sounding the depth of the invisible channel below us and calling out a number and the time to the third mate, who wrote the information in a waterproof journal.
We lined up the lights, one on top of the other, and idled out toward the reef. At one point, the exposed portion of the reef was no more than ten feet to port of the dinghy, and we could see it clearly in the beam of our searchlight, but below us was still twenty feet of water.
“Mark that,” Cleopatra called out to the mate.
In just under ten minutes, we had accomplished the run through the channel, and the sound of the surf crashing against the exposed coral heads came from behind us. We had found the deep water—just as the Mayans had laid it out.
“It worked. I’ll be goddamned. It worked,” Cleopatra said as she looked back at the lights in the tower, glowing against the dark morning sky.
“Dat it did,” Solomon pronounced.
“Mr. Solomon, let’s do it again.”
“Why do we have to do it again?” I asked.
“Don’t worry, son. You won the bet. We are taking you home, and we are going to run the channel with the Lucretia.”
“Holy shit!” was about the only way I could respond to Cleopatra’s announcement. All along I had hoped to find the channel, but having accomplished that, I figured we would head back to the Lucretia and have breakfast. Then we would leisurely make our way inside the reef to the south and out the properly marked channel from which the schooner had entered the anchorage. Never did I dream that Cleopatra would sail the Lucretia through the Mayan cut.
As we approached the Lucretia at anchor, we were hardly noticed by the crew. They had sprung into action, and the deck was alive with preparations to get under way. It was all very exciting for me, and at the same time foreign and a bit scary.
To move the Lucretia—a 142-foot schooner with two masts more than 100 feet tall and 11,000 square feet of sails—from one place to another was a whole new ball game from anything I’d experienced. I was prepared to just stay out of everybody’s way and watch.
As we tied the dinghy up alongside, Solomon and Cleopatra sprang up the ladder and headed for the cockpit as a pair of crew members descended and took control of the dinghy, preparing her to be hoisted up the davits that hung over the stern.
“Mr. Mars,” Cleopatra called out, “your place is up here with us at the helm. Snap to.”
I radioed Hector to keep the torches lit until he heard from me, and I made my way out of the dinghy and aft to the helm.
When I got there, the ship had become strangely silent. The main and the foresails had been unfurled and ready for hoisting; most of the crew stood by, manning the halyards that would raise these giant stretches of canvas. Forward, several crew members hovered around the captain, ready to break the anchor loose the instant the order came from the helm.
High up in the rigging, I could hear the creaks and moans of the ship about to come to life. The big American flag that flew from the end of the gaff of the mainsail signaled that the breeze was still from the southeast and beginning to freshen. A sliver of pink sky backlit the puffy gray clouds on the eastern horizon.
“Mr. Mars, may I offer you a ride home?” Cleopatra asked.
“Aye, aye, Captain,” I said.
“Can I have your radio for a moment, please?” She took it and called Hector in the tower and explained what was about to happen. Hector replied excitedly that he was ready. “Mr. Solomon, send Roberto up the spreaders with the night-vision glasses. We will set the main, the jib, the foresail, and the forestaysail—in that order. Once that is done, we will tack inside the reef until first light, and then we will make our way out the cut.”
“Aye, Captain,” Mr. Solomon replied, and he repeated Cleopatra’s command in a booming voice. Then he added, “Let’s do it, Lucretians.”
The boat came alive again. The anchor rose from the bottom, the boat pointed into the wind, and Roberto scampered up the rigging as the sails were hoisted, filling in the sky above the ship and blocking out the morning stars. The sails shuddered for a few seconds, and as Cleopatra ordered the wheel hard over to port, they began to fill and stiffen. Sheets and braces were adjusted, winches clicked, and a litany of strange words rang out all over the ship, but they were instantly interpreted and carried out by the crew. I could feel my body weight shifting as the ship heeled gently to port, and the ageless landscape of the shoreline began to change. We were moving.
As the sky lightened a bit more and we came around on a tack and headed back to the north, I could now see that when Cleopatra had told the third mate to mark something, he had literally done just that. Now bobbing in the chop were three pairs of fluorescent Styrofoam floats marking the path of the deep water out of the cut.
I guess I was staring at the markers, because Cleopatra smiled and said, “Just a little insurance, Mr. Mars, in case Hector has a sixties flashback or something.”
Solomon drove the ship to within two hundred yards of the beach under the watchful eye of Cleopatra. “Bring her around to a heading of zero six five degrees, Mr. Solomon.” The wheel spun, and the ship followed instantly. Once we picked up our heading, the wind speed increased ten knots almost instantly.
I watched Cleopatra as I rubbed the Lister’s conch between my hands. All of her senses and instincts were plugged into her boat. She looked up at the sky, down at the sea, and back at the lights in the tower.
“We are at a slack high tide, Mr. Solomon. There is little current, and the wind is freshening. I think we can do with the fishermen and the jib topsail.”
Orders were shouted, and the two sails went up, fitting into the high rigging like pieces of a puzzle. The ship heeled further, and I grabbed the post of the bench to my right for balance.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Mars. She has the power to carry sail.”
The ship seemed to contract like a giant muscle. She rose and fell on the approaching swells; the water rushed noisily down the hull and formed a smooth wake off our stern.
“Nine knots across da bottom,” Mr. Solomon said.
“You have the wind on your beam, and she is slicing the channel in two. Your lights are lined up, and I can see blue water ahead. This is the way it should be for your first ride. Ease the main.”
When I looked back at the tower, the lighted windows were lined up as they had been in the dinghy, but light was not the only thing coming from the tower. Out over the water, floating on the breeze, was music from Hector’s blaster. As the water rushed under the hull, the Lucretia seemed to ride not only on the waves but on the music. The Garifuna crew sensed it immediately and began to tap out the rhythm with their hands on the deck, masts, and spars, and I started to sing along with Jimi Hendrix:
Will the wind ever remember
The names it has blown in the past,
And with this crutch, its old age and its wisdom
It whispers, “No, this will be the last.”
The yachties from America joined us in the chorus, and a beat later, the Garifuna descendants of slaves, Indians, and pirates put their own icing on the psychedelic cake. As we all sang “The Wind Cries Mary” repeatedly, we steered down the path laid out by the Mayans, past the markers deposited by Cleopatra, on the guitar riff of Jimi Hendrix, out the cut into deep, deep water.
“Twelve knots,” Mr. Solomon called out.
“Take her through, Mr. Mars. It’s your channel,” Cleopatra commanded.
I was startled, but this was not the time or place to politely decline. It had not been worded as an invitation, but as an order. Sometimes
you just have to step up to the plate.
I handed Cleopatra my conch shell and took the wheel.
“Where’d you get this Lister’s conch?” she asked. “I haven’t seen one of these since the last time I was in Calcutta.”
This was not the time for the Johnny Red Dust story as I looked at ninety feet of hauling-ass schooner in front of me, threading its way through a narrow channel lit up by a Mayan calculation that hopefully would guide us through a coral reef. “I’ll tell you later,” I said.
“I take it this is your good-luck charm?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cleopatra rubbing the shell in her hands. “Well, let’s hope to hell it hasn’t run out of luck. Just watch the bowsprit against the horizon, and use a light hand.”
I did as Cleopatra instructed. The wheel was amazingly light to the touch. The Lucretia knew where she was headed, and I was just along for the ride.
Holding on to the wheel of the Lucretia with the wind on the beam and all the sails aloft, curved and contoured to give us a forward speed of fourteen knots, I now knew why certain astronauts sometimes longed to stay in outer space forever.
Fourteen knots is just a little less than twenty miles an hour. In land terms, that is about the speed you are allowed to travel through a school zone in your car. It does not seem very fast, but at one time, it was as fast as any vehicle on earth traveled.
It seemed like the blink of an eye since Cleopatra had offered me the wheel. The lights in El Castillo had been extinguished by the rays of the rising sun, and the navigator announced that we were less than an hour from dropping anchor in the bay in front of Lost Boys.
My time aboard the Lucretia had not lasted long enough. It had been less than twenty-four hours since I had left Lost Boys, but it seemed as if I had been to the moon and back. Like the astronauts, I did not want to go home, but I knew I had no choice.
I stayed at the wheel as we paralleled the shore, running due south. I gobbled down a scrambled egg sandwich for breakfast with one hand while the other guided the ship. The salt air and the spray from the bow wave cleared my head. Today I was determined that I was not going to think about the loss of Donna Kay but instead appreciate the fun things we had done together. I would not forget our past, but I wouldn’t regret it either. There was a big lesson in all of it for me. I wanted to learn how to be a better communicator and how not to live my life in fear of relationships. I felt optimistic. From the wheel of the Lucretia, the future looked very promising indeed. I felt as if I had shed my victim skin back in that mud puddle only a morning ago and willed my way from the beach to this boat. I smiled the entire time at the idea that I was actually on the boat, not to mention driving it.
But the party was about to end. I turned the wheel to port a few degrees, at the command of Mr. Solomon, when Punta Allen came into sight.
Cleopatra sent word from the cockpit that she wanted to see me below. Solomon took the wheel, and I headed down the stairs. The smell of onions grilling and bacon frying wafted out of the galley as I passed through on the way to the ship’s office.
Cleopatra was seated at her desk, beneath a painting of the USS Maine. She was writing in a thick journal.
I tapped on the open door. “You wanted to see me, Captain?”
“Come in, Mr. Mars. Have a seat.” She turned to face me. “Well, I have some good news, sir. I contacted Dr. Walker. He was right where you said he would be on Half Moon Cay off Belize.” Cleopatra laughed aloud as she lit up a Cuban cigar and took several long, satisfying puffs. “He couldn’t believe we took the Lucretia out the Mayan cut.”
“That makes two of us.”
“It has simply been my experience to do things if they feel right, and this morning it all felt right. We have you to thank for that, Mr. Mars. That light trick was something,” she said.
“I think we should thank those Mayan navigators who sailed to Egypt,” I told her.
“Right you are, my boy. Right you are. Now to the business at hand. We are heading to Half Moon Cay ourselves. We are going to help Dr. Walker finish up his work on the light there, and then he will be joining us on board. We are headed to Panama. I am chasing a lead. There is a story that when the French first came to Panama to attempt to dig a canal across the isthmus, two Fresnel lenses were shipped to Colón among the tons of equipment they sent across the ocean. When their great adventure failed, the Froggies packed up and left twenty-two thousand of their countrymen dead in the jungle. They also left behind a lot of other stuff. There is a man in Colón who says he knows where the lenses are.”
“That’s great news,” I said.
“Or bullshit,” she snapped. “It’s no secret in the back alleys and gin mills of the Caribbean that there is a rich hundred-year-old lady looking for a light and will pay anything for it. But it is worth a look, and besides, I haven’t been to Panama for a while. It’s a great little country, and it’s not that far from Havana. I have to be back there by the first of next month for the Cuban all-star game.”
“Sounds like your dance card is filling up,” I said.
“Tully, did you kill anybody back there in Montana?” she asked abruptly.
“No, ma’am. I’ve never killed anyone, and it was Wyoming, not Montana. I busted a plate-glass window in my former employer’s house. That’s all I ever did. Honest.”
“Oh, I believe you. You didn’t look like the Pablo Escobar type. You have to be careful about who you hire in these waters, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean to be offering you a job as a crewman on the Lucretia if you want one—starting today. Our Peruvian guests will be leaving us in Panama, and so will some of our college swabbies. It is obvious you have a feel for the ocean, and this boat.”
The cabin was silent. Cleopatra was waiting for my answer, and I was trying to come up with something to say. Here I was again, having to make one of those sudden decisions that needs to be acted upon immediately but will change your life forever.
“How much time do I have to think about it?”
“I’d say about twenty minutes.”
“That’ll be enough time,” I said.
I went up to the rigging to think and sat there, watching the tip of Crocodile Rock become larger by the minute. The Lucretia was wasting no time in rounding the headland. I felt the power of the ship as it pulsed from the hull all the way up through the rigging to which I was clinging.
It wasn’t long before we rounded the point, and directly in front of us, Punta Margarita glistened in the sun. I could see the skeletal frame of the tree house sitting atop the giant banyan that marked Lost Boys.
“Stand by to drop the staysails!” the mate shouted from below. The crew began to move along the deck, and I headed down. I had made my decision.
As we roared through the channel under a cloud of canvas with a foamy wake trailing behind us for a quarter of a mile, I recalled a conversation I’d had at a bar a few years back with a Navy fighter pilot. It was a clear day, and we were watching the Blue Angels, who were practicing overhead. I was in awe of the spectacle of those rocket ships defying gravity.
The pilot just shrugged it off. “That’s nothing,” he said. “The big show happens at home.”
I had asked him what he meant, and he told me that most air battles occur far away from the spectators, and no one sees the amazing life-and-death maneuvers of modern air combat. But once the battle is over, and the survivors head back to their ship, that is where they really show their stuff.
“Why?” I asked.
The wily pilot shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and looked back up at the looping jets. “Because that is where the audience is.”
My ego got the best of me that morning as we sailed for home. Fully expecting to be met by a flotilla of skiffs, fishing guides, and staff with cameras flashing, I assumed an Errol Flynn stance atop the starboard rail. I held a pair of binoculars to my eyes, looking
very salty.
“Stand by to drop da staysails!” Solomon shouted from below.
I repeated the command for effect.
I had been studying the action on the deck and in the rigging, and I hadn’t even looked over at my audience. When I finally swung a glance sideways, I saw only the empty channel. All the flats skiffs were tied neatly in their places on the dock, and there wasn’t a soul visible in the whole camp.
I couldn’t quite process what was going on, but the flurry of activity with sails, sheets, and halyards took precedence over my lack of a welcoming committee.
When I turned around, Cleopatra was watching me with an amused look on her face. “Well, Mr. Mars?”
I stood in silence below the luffing sails. Errol Flynn had left the bridge. “Looks like I might need a lift to the beach,” I said timidly.
“I take it you are going ashore,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. Though this isn’t the kind of welcome I was hoping for,” I admitted, “I have a job here. And as much as I want to stay, and as thankful as I am for the offer, I have made a promise, and I have to keep it.”
“I understand,” Cleopatra said. “I have a feeling there will be more photo opportunities in your future. Now don’t forget you have also made a promise to a certain Hendrix freak up the road.”
“I gave you my word. I will get Hector to Sin City.”
“I know you will, Tully,” she replied. She paused as she gazed at the shoreline. The current was flowing swiftly seaward along the waterline of the ship. “Tully, there is something else I need. It is not a promise, just a favor. You have won the bet fair and square, but I am beginning to think I may never find my light. For more years than I care to remember, it has been my only crusade, but I am afraid I might be running out of time. That friend of yours, that Willie fellow, on his way to the Pacific—do you think you could ask him to keep an eye out for a light for an old lady?” The tone of her voice was something I hadn’t yet heard. I knew it was hard for Captain Cleopatra Highbourne to ask for help.
“You bet,” I answered.
Next thing I knew, she flung her arms around me and gave me a huge hug. Then, instantly, she became the captain again. “Mr. Solomon, Mr. Mars will be leaving the ship here. But he needs a lift to shore. Can’t dally too long though. This tide is on the run.”