Islands in the Stream

With a variety of themes and moods, dynamic action scenes and-unexpectedly-a rich and ribald sense of humor, ISLANDS IN THE STREAM tells a story closely resembling Hemingway’s life. Thomas Hudson is “a good painter.” His solitary life of artistic self-discipline on the lush Caribbean island of Bimini is interrupted by a visit from his three lively sons. In a thrilling descriptive scene, David, the middle boy, shows his courage when attacked by a shark and his endurance while fighting a thousand-pound swordfish. It is an initiation into manhood. Years later, Hudson is in Cuba mourning the death of his oldest son. A chance encounter with his first wife renews their passionate commitment to each other. In the final episode, a masterpiece of action and adventure, Hudson captains an improvised Q-boat hunting down the survivors of aGerman submarine. This assignment requires a kind of discipline wholly different from his creative life as a painter-but no less important to his integrity. It is Thomas Hudson’s most important battle. “I don’t have to be proud of it. I only have to do it well.-Thomas Hudson

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

ISLANDS IN THE STREAM

With a variety of themes and moods, dynamic action scenes and-unexpectedly-a rich and ribald sense of humor, ISLANDS IN THE STREAM tells a story closely resembling Hemingway’s life.

Thomas Hudson is “a good painter.” His solitary life of artistic self-discipline on the lush Caribbean island of Bimini is interrupted by a visit from his three lively sons. In a thrilling descriptive scene, David, the middle boy, shows his courage when attacked by a shark and his endurance while fighting a thousand-pound swordfish. It is an initiation into manhood.

Years later, Hudson is in Cuba mourning the death of his oldest son. A chance encounter with his first wife renews their passionate commitment to each other.

In the final episode, a masterpiece of action and adventure, Hudson captains an improvised Q-boat hunting down the survivors of aGerman submarine. This assignment requires a kind of discipline wholly different from his creative life as a painter-but no less important to his integrity. It is Thomas Hudson’s most important battle.

“I don’t have to be proud of it. I only have to do it well.-Thomas Hudson

“A complete, well-rounded novel, a contender with his very best… It is 100-proof Old Ernest!”

-The New York Times Book Review

“There are brilliant descriptions in the famous Hemingway style… When he describes the close bonds of love and hate between a group of men who are engaged in a tight and dangerous adventure with death as the ultimate stake, he remains unbeatable in his craft.”

–Maxwell Geismar, Chicago Sun-Times Showcase

“Remarkably alive with voice and muscle… Hemingway never displayed a brawnier wit… There are memories of Paris as pungent and vivid as anything in A Moveable Feast. And the fishing episode… is only slightly less dazzling than Santiago’s struggle in The Old Man and the Sea.”

–Charles Lee, Philadelphia Bulletin

“Incredibly moving and powerful.”

–Robert Kirsch. Los Angeles Times Calendar

“This book contains some of the best of Hemingway’s descriptions of nature: the waves breaking white and green on the reef off the coast of Cuba; the beauty of the morning on the deep water; the hermit crabs and land crabs and ghost crabs; a big barracuda stalking mullet; a heron flying with his white wings over the green water; the ibis and flamingoes and spoonbills, the last of these beautiful with the sharp rose of their color; the mosquitoes in clouds from the marshes; the water that curled and blew under the lash of the wind; the sculpture that the wind and sand had made of a piece of driftwood, gray and sanded and embedded in white, floury sand.”

–Edmund Wilson, The New Yorker

“Many of the episodes contain the most exciting and effective writing Hemingway has ever done.”

–John W. Aldridge, Saturday Review

“Marvelously alive, moving quickly and showing glimmers of joy and humor that you might never have noticed in his work before.”

–Bruce Cook, National Observer

“A part of American literary history, and his fans must read it, as they read all the rest with varying degrees of emotion, exhilaration and just plain joy.”

–William Hogan, San Francisco Examiner amp; Chronicle

“An immensely touching book.”

–Hal Burton, Newsday

“I fell in love with the book at first sight… caught up by the Hemingway voice (never truer nor more relaxed)… A lovely, loving work, deeply sad and deeply felt.”

–Mary Ellin Barrett, Cosmopolitan

“As haunting as any fiction that Hemingway ever wrote.”

–Nicholas Joost, St Louis Globe-Democrat

“The work of an estimable writer… Hemingway’s voice is still effective, hauntingly so.”

–Bernard Oldsey, The Nation

Books by Ernest Hemingway

ACROSS THE RIVER AND INTO THE TREES

BY-LINE: ERNEST HEMINGWAY

DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON

A FAREWELL TO ARMS

THE FIFTH COLUMN AND FOUR UNPUBLISHED

STORIES OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

THE GREEN HILLS OF AFRICA

THE HEMINGWAY READER

IN OUR TIME

ISLANDS IN THE STREAM

MEN AT WAR

MEN WITHOUT WOMEN

A MOVEABLE FEAST

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

THE SHORT STORIES OF ERNEST HEMINGWAY

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO AND OTHER STORIES

THE SUN ALSO RISES

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

THE TORRENTS OF SPRING

WINNER TAKE NOTHING

ISLANDS IN THE STREAM

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

A NATIONAL GENERAL COMPANY

This low-priced Bantam Book has been completely reset in a type face designed for easy reading, and was printed from new plates. It contains the complete text of the original hard-cover edition.

NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED

NOTE

Charles Scribner, Jr. and I worked together preparing this book for publication from Ernest’s original manuscript. Beyond the routine chores of correcting spelling and punctuation, we made some cuts in the manuscript, I feeling that Ernest would surely have made them himself. The book is all Ernest’s. We have added nothing to it. MARY HEMINGWAY

Part I

BIMINI

I

The house was built on the highest part of the narrow tongue of land between the harbor and the open sea. It had lasted through three hurricanes and it was built solid as a ship. It was shaded by tall coconut palms that were bent by the trade wind and on the ocean side you could walk out of the door and down the bluff across the white sand and into the Gulf Stream. The water of the Stream was usually a dark blue when you looked out at it when there was no wind. But when you walked out into it there was just the green light of the water over that floury white sand and you could see the shadow of any big fish a long time before he could ever come in close to the beach.

It was a safe and fine place to bathe in the day but it was no place to swim at night. At night the sharks came in close to the beach, hunting in the edge of the Stream and from the upper porch of the house on quiet nights you could hear the splashing of the fish they hunted and if you went down to the beach you could see the phosphorescent wakes they made in the water. At night the sharks had no fear and everything else feared them. But in the day they stayed out away from the clear white sand and if they did come in you could see their shadows a long way away.

A man named Thomas Hudson, who was a good painter, lived there in that house and worked there and on the island the greater part of the year. After one has lived in those latitudes long enough the changes of the seasons become as important there as anywhere else and Thomas Hudson, who loved the island, did not want to miss any spring, nor summer, nor any fall or winter.

Sometimes the summers were too hot when the wind dropped in August or when the trade winds sometimes failed in June and July. Hurricanes, too, might come in September and October and even in early November and there could be freak tropical storms any time from June on. But the true hurricane months have fine weather when there are no storms.

Thomas Hudson had studied tropical storms for many years and he could tell from the sky when there was a tropical disturbance long before his barometer showed its presence. He knew how to plot storms and the precautions that should be taken against them. He knew too what it was to live through a hurricane with the other people of the island and the bond that the hurricane made between all people who had been through it. He also knew that hurricanes could be so bad that nothing could live through them. He always thought, though, that if there was ever one that bad he would like to be there for it and go with the house if she went.

The house felt almost as much like a ship as a house. Placed there to ride out storms, it was built into the island as though it were a part of it; but you saw the sea from all the windows and there was good cross ventilation so that you slept cool on the hottest nights. The house was painted white to be cool in the summer and it could be seen from a long way out in the Gulf Stream. It was the highest thing on the island except for the long planting of tall casuarina trees that were the first thing you saw as you raised the island out of the sea. Soon after you saw the dark blur of casuarina trees above the line of the sea, you would see the white bulk of the house. Then, as you came closer, you raised the whole length of the island with the coconut palms, the clapboarded houses, the white line of the beach, and the green of the South Island stretching beyond it. Thomas Hudson never saw the house, there on that island, but that the sight of her made him happy. He always thought of the house as her exactly as he would have thought of a ship. In the winter, when the northers blew and it was really cold, the house was warm and comfortable because it had the only fireplace on the island. It was a big open fireplace and Thomas Hudson burned driftwood in it.

He had a big pile of driftwood stacked against the south wall of the house. It was whitened by the sun and sand-scoured by the wind and he would become fond of different pieces so that he would hate to burn them. But there was always more driftwood along the beach after the big storms and he found it was fun to burn even the pieces he was fond of. He knew the sea would sculpt more, and on a cold night he would sit in the big chair in front of the fire, reading by the lamp that stood on the heavy plank table and look up while he was reading to hear the northwester blowing outside and the crashing of the surf and watch the great, bleached pieces of driftwood burning.

Sometimes he would put the lamp out and lie on the rug on the floor and watch the edges of color that the sea salt and the sand in the wood made in the flame as they burned. On the floor his eyes were even with the line of the burning wood and he could see the line of the flame when it left the wood and it made him both sad and happy. All wood that burned affected him in this way. But burning driftwood did something to him that he could not define. He thought that it was probably wrong to burn it when he was so fond of it; but he felt no guilt about it.

As he lay on the floor he felt under the wind although, really, the wind whipped at the lower corners of the house and at the lowest grass on the island and into the roots of the sea grass and the cockleburs and into the sand itself. On the floor he could feel the pounding of the surf the way he remembered feeling the firing of heavy guns when he had lain on the earth close by some battery a long time ago when he had been a boy.

The fireplace was a great thing in winter and through all the other months he looked at it with affection and thought how it would be when winter came again. Winter was the best of all seasons on the island and he looked forward to it through all the rest of the year.

II

Winter was over and spring was nearly gone when Thomas Hudson’s boys came to the island that year. It had been arranged for the three of them to meet in New York to come down together on the train and then fly over from the Mainland. There had been the usual difficulties with the mother of two of the boys. She had planned a European trip saying nothing, of course, to the boys’ father when she planned it, and she wanted the boys for the summer. He could have them for the Christmas holidays; after Christmas of course. Christmas itself would be spent with her.

Thomas Hudson was familiar with the pattern by now and finally there was the usual compromise. The two younger boys would come to the island to visit their father for five weeks and then leave to sail from New York, student class, on a French Line boat to join their mother in Paris where she would have bought a few necessary clothes. They would be in the charge of their older brother, young Tom, on the trip. Young Tom would then join his mother, who was making a picture in the south of France.

Young Tom’s mother had not asked for him and would have liked him to be at the island with his father. But she would love to see him and it was a fair compromise with the unmalleable decision of the other boys’ mother. She was a delightful and charming woman who had never altered a plan that she had made in her life. Her plans were always made in secret, like those of a good general, and they were as rigidly enforced. A compromise might be effected. But never a basic change in a plan whether that plan was conceived in a sleepless night or on an angry morning or on a gin-aided evening.

A plan was a plan and a decision was truly a decision and knowing all this and having been well educated in the usages of divorce, Thomas Hudson was happy that a compromise had been made and that the children were coming for five weeks. If five weeks is what we get, he thought, that is what we draw. Five weeks is a good long time to be with people that you love and would wish to be with always. But why did I ever leave Tom’s mother in the first place? You’d better not think about that, he told himself. That is one thing you had better not think about. And these are fine children that you got from the other one. Very strange and very complicated and you know how many of their good qualities come from her. She is a fine woman and you never should have left her either. Then he said to himself, Yes. I had to.

But he did not worry much about any of it. He had long ago ceased to worry and he had exorcised guilt with work insofar as he could, and all he cared about now was that the boys were coming over and that they should have a good summer. Then he would go back to work.

He had been able to replace almost everything except the children with work and the steady normal working life he had built on the island. He believed he had made something there that would last and that would hold him. Now when he was lonesome for Paris he would remember Paris instead of going there. He did the same thing with all of Europe and much of Asia and of Africa.

He remembered what Renoir had said when they told him that Gauguin had gone to Tahiti to paint. “Why does he have to spend so much money to go so far away to paint when one paints so well here at the Batignolles?” It was better in French, “quand on peint si bien aux Batignolles,” and Thomas Hudson thought of the island as his quartier and he was settled in it and knew his neighbors and worked as hard as he had ever worked in Paris when young Tom had been a baby.

Sometimes he would leave the island to fish off Cuba or to go to the mountains in the fall. But he had rented the ranch that he owned in Montana because the best time out there was the summer and the fall and now the boys always had to go to school in the fall.

He had to go to New York occasionally to see his dealer. But more often now his dealer came down to see him and took canvases north with him. He was well established as a painter and he was respected both in Europe and in his own country. He had a regular income from oil leases on land his grandfather had owned. It had been grazing land and when it was sold the mineral rights had been retained. About half of this income went into alimony and the balance provided him with security so that he could paint exactly as he wanted to with no commercial pressure. It also enabled him to live where he wished and to travel when he cared to.

He had been successful in almost every way except in his married life, although he had never cared, truly, about success. What he cared about was painting and his children and he was still in love with the first woman he had been in love with. He had loved many women since and sometimes someone would come to stay on the island. He needed to see women and they were welcome for a while. He liked having them there, sometimes for quite a long time. But in the end he was always glad when they were gone, even when he was very fond of them. He had trained himself not to quarrel with women anymore and he had learned how not to get married. These two things had been nearly as difficult to learn as how to settle down and paint in a steady and well-ordered way. But he had learned them and he hoped that he had learned them permanently. He had known how to paint for a long time and he believed he learned more every year. But learning how to settle down and how to paint with discipline had been hard for him because there had been a time in his life when he had not been disciplined. He had never been truly irresponsible; but he had been undisciplined, selfish, and ruthless. He knew this now, not only because many women had told it to him; but because he had finally discovered it for himself. Then he had resolved that he would be selfish only for his painting, ruthless only for his work, and that he would discipline himself and accept the discipline.

He was going to enjoy life within the limits of the discipline that he imposed and work hard. And today he was very happy because his children were coming in the morning.

“Mr. Tom, don’t you want nothing?” Joseph the house-boy asked him. “You knocked off for the day, ain’t you?”

Joseph was tall with a very long, very black face and big hands and big feet. He wore a white jacket and trousers and was barefooted.

“Thank you, Joseph. I don’t think I want anything.”

“Little gin and tonic?”

“No. I think I’ll go down and have one at Mr. Bobby’s.”

“Drink one here. It’s cheaper. Mr. Bobby was in an evil mood when I went by. Too many mixed drinks he says. Somebody off a yacht asked him for something called a White Lady and he served her a bottle of that American mineral water with a lady in white kinda mosquito netting dress sitting by a spring.”

“I better be getting down there.”

“Let me mix you one first. You got some mails on the pilot boat. You can read your mails and drink the drink and then go down to Mr. Bobby’s.”

“All right.”

“Good thing,” said Joseph. “Because I already mixed it. Mails don’t look to amount to anything, Mr. Tom.”

“Where are they?”

“Down in the kitchen. I’ll bring them up. Couple with women’s writing on them. One from New York. One from Palm Beach. Pretty writing. One from that gentleman sells your pictures in New York. Couple more unknown to me.”

“You want to answer them for me?”

“Yes sir. If that’s what you want. I’m educated way beyond my means.”

“Better bring them up.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Tom. There’s a paper too.”

“Save it for breakfast, please, Joseph.”

Thomas Hudson sat and read his mail and sipped at the cool drink. He read one letter over again and then put them all in a drawer of his desk.

“Joseph,” he called. “Have you everything ready for the boys?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Tom. And two extra cases of Coca-Cola. Young Tom, he must be bigger than me, ain’t he?”

“Not yet.”

“Think he can lick me now?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I fought that boy so many times in private life,” Joseph said. “Sure is funny to call him mister. Mr. Tom, Mr. David, and Mr. Andrew. Three of the finest goddam boys I know. And the meanest is Andy.”

“He started out mean,” Thomas Hudson said.

“And boy, did he continue,” Joseph said admiringly.

“You set them a good example this summer.”

“Mr. Tom, you don’t want me to set those boys no good example this summer. Maybe three four years back when I was innocent. Me, I’m going to pattern myself on Tom. He’s been to an expensive school and he’s got good expensive manners. I can’t look like him exactly. But I can act like him. Free and easy but polite. Then I’m going to be smart like Dave. That’s the hardest part. Then I’m going to learn the secret of how Andy gets that mean.”

“Don’t you get mean around here.”

“No, Mr. Tom, you mistook what I meant. That meanness isn’t for in the house. I want that for my private life.”

“It will be nice to have them, won’t it?”

“Mr. Tom, there won’t be nothing like it since they had the big fire. I rank it right along with the Second Coming. Is it nice? you ask me. Yes sir, it’s nice.”

“We’ll have to figure out plenty of things for them to do to have fun.”

“No, Mr. Tom,” Joseph said. “We ought to figure out how to save them from their own fearsome projects. Eddy can help us. He knows them better than me. I’m their friend and that makes it difficult.”

“How’s Eddy?”

“He’s been drinking a little in anticipation of the Queen’s birthday. He’s in tip-top shape.”

“I better get down to Mr. Bobby’s while he’s still in that evil mood.”

“He asked for you, Mr. Tom. Mr. Bobby’s a gentleman if there ever was a gentleman and sometimes that trash comes in on yachts gets him worn down. He was wore down almighty thin when I left.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I went for Coca-Cola and I stayed to keep my hand in shooting a stick of pool.”

“How’s the table?”

“Worse.”

“I’ll go down,” said Thomas Hudson. “I want to take a shower and change.”

“I’ve got them laying out for you on the bed,” Joseph told him. “You want another gin and tonic?”

“No thanks.”

“Mr. Roger’s in on the boat.”

“Good. I’ll get hold of him.”

“Will he be staying here?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll make up a bed for him anyway.”

“Good.”

III

Thomas Hudson took a shower, scrubbing his head with soap and then rinsing under the prickling drive of the sharp, jetted shower. He was a big man and he looked bigger stripped than he did in his clothes. He was very tanned and his hair was faded and streaked from the sun. He carried no extra weight and on the scales he saw that he weighed 192 pounds.

I should have gone swimming before I took the shower, he thought. But I had a long swim this morning before I started work and I’m tired now. There will be plenty of swimming when the boys come. And Roger’s here too. That’s good.

He put on a clean pair of shorts and an old Basque shut and moccasins and went out the door and down the slope and through the gate in the picket fence onto the white glare of the sun-bleached coral of the King’s Highway.

Ahead a very erect-walking old Negro in a black alpaca coat and pressed dark trousers came out of one of the unpainted board shacks along the road that was shaded by two tall coconut palms and turned into the highway ahead of him. Thomas Hudson saw his fine black face as he turned.

From behind the shack a child’s voice came in an old English tune singing mockingly,

“Uncle Edward came from Nassau

Some candy for to sell

I buy some and P.H. buy some

and the candy give us hell-”

Uncle Edward turned his fine face, looking as sad as it was angry, in the bright afternoon light.

“I know you,” he said. “I can’t see you but I know who you are. I’ll report you to Constable.”

The child’s voice went on, rising clear and gay,

“Oh Edward

Oh Edward

Buff, rough, tough Uncle Edward

Your candy rotten.”

“Constable going to hear about this,” Uncle Edward said. “Constable know what steps to take.”

“Any rotten candy today, Uncle Edward?” the child’s voice called. He was careful to keep out of sight.

“Man is persecuted,” Uncle Edward said aloud as he walked on. “Man has his robe of dignity plucked at and destroyed. Oh, Good Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Ahead down the King’s Highway there was more singing coming from the rooms up above the Ponce de León. A Negro boy slipped by hurrying along the coral road.

“Been a fight, Mr. Tom,” he said. “Or something. Gentleman off’n a yacht been throwing things out of a window.”

“What things, Louis?”

“Any kind of things, Mr. Tom. Gentleman throw anything he can get his hands on. Lady try to stop him he say he going to throw the lady, too.”

“Where’s the gentleman from?”

“Big man from up north. Claims he can buy and sell the whole island. Guess he could get it pretty cheap if he keeps throwing it around the way he’s doing.”

“Constable taken any action, Louis?”

“No sir, Mr. Tom. Nobody has called in Constable yet. But way everybody figures, Constable’s time is coming.”

“You with them, Louis? I wanted to get some bait for tomorrow.”

“Yes sir, I’ll get your bait, Mr. Tom. Don’t worry about bait. I been with them right along. They hired me to take them bonefishing this morning and I been with them ever since. Only they ain’t been bonefishing. No sir. Unless throwing plates and cups and mugs and chairs and every time Mr. Bobby brings him the bill he tears up the bill and tells Mr. Bobby he’s a robbing thieving bastard and a crook is bonefishing.”

“Sounds like a difficult gentleman, Louis.”

“Mr. Tom, he’s the damnedest gentleman you ever saw before or since. He had me singing for them. You know I can’t sing good like Josey but I sing as good as I can and sometimes I sing better than I can. I’m singing good as I can. You know how it is. You heard me sing. All he wants to hear is that mama don’t want no peas no rice no coconut oil song. Over and over. It’s an old song and I get tired so I said to him, ‘Sir I know new songs. Good songs. Fine songs. And I know old songs such as the loss of John Jacob Astor on the Titanic when sunk by an iceberg and I would be glad to sing them rather than that no peas no rice song if you so wish.’ I said it polite and pleasant as you want. As you know I would say it. So this gentleman say, ‘Listen you ignorant black little bastard I own more stores and factories and newspapers than John Jacob Astor had pots to, you know the word, in, and I’ll take you and shove your head in those pots if you try to tell me what I want to hear.’ So then his lady said, ‘Darling, do you really have to be so rude to the boy? I thought he sang very well and I would like to hear some of the new songs.’ And the gentleman said, ‘Listen you. You won’t hear them and he won’t sing them.’ Mr. Tom, he’s a strange gentleman. But his lady just said, ‘Oh darling, you are difficult.’ Mr. Tom, he’s difficulter than a diesel engine is to a newborn tree monkey out of its mother’s womb. Excuse me if I talk too much. This has aroused me. He’s got her feeling very bad.”

“What are you going to do about them now, Louis?”

“I been to get conch pearls,” he said.

They had stopped in the shade of a palm while he had been talking and he brought out a quite clean cloth from his pocket and unfolded it to show a half dozen of the shiny, nacreous pink, unpearllike pearls that are sometimes found in conches by the natives when they clean them and that no woman Thomas Hudson had ever known except Queen Mary of England has ever cared for as a gift. Of course Thomas Hudson could not think that he knew Queen Mary except through the papers and in pictures and a profile of her in The New Yorker but the fact that she liked conch pearls made him feel that he knew her better than he knew many other people he had known for a long time. Queen Mary liked conch pearls and the island was celebrating her birthday tonight, he thought, but he was afraid conch pearls would not make the gentleman’s lady feel very much better. Then, too, it Was always possible that Queen Mary said she liked them to please her subjects in the Bahamas.

They had walked down to the Ponce de León and Louis was saying, “His lady was crying, Mr. Tom. She was crying very bitterly. So I suggested I might go up to Roy’s and get some conch pearls for her to inspect.”

“They ought to make her very happy,” Thomas Hudson said. “If she likes conch pearls.”

“I hope they will. I’m taking them up now.”

Thomas Hudson went into the bar where it was cool and almost dark after the glare of the coral road and had a gin and tonic water with a piece of lime peel in the glass and a few drops of Angostura in the drink. Mr. Bobby was behind the bar looking terrible. Four Negro boys were playing billiards, occasionally lifting the table when necessary to bring off a difficult carom. The singing had stopped upstairs and it was very quiet in the room except for the click of the balls. Two of the crew of the yacht that was tied up in the slip were at the bar and as Thomas Hudson’s eyes adjusted to the light it was dim and cool and pleasant. Louis came downstairs.

“Gentleman’s asleep,” he said. “I left the pearls with his lady. She’s looking at them and crying.”

He saw the two sailors from the yacht look at each other but they didn’t say anything. He stood there, holding the long, pleasantly bitter drink, tasting the first swallow of it, and it reminded him of Tanga, Mombasa, and Lamu and all that coast and he had a sudden nostalgia for Africa. Here he was, settled on the island, when he could as well be in Africa. Hell, he thought, I can always go there. You have to make it inside of yourself wherever you are. You are doing all right at that here.

“Tom, do you really like the taste of that stuff?” Bobby asked him.

“Sure. Or I wouldn’t drink it.”

“I opened a bottle by mistake once and it tasted like quinine.”

“It’s got quinine in it.”

“People surely are crazy,” Bobby said. “Man can drink anything he wants. He has money to pay for it He’s supposed to be taking his pleasure and he spoils good gin by putting it into some kind of a Hindu drink with quinine in it.”

“It tastes good to me. I like the quinine taste with the lime peel. I think it sort of opens up the pores of the stomach or something. I get more of a kick out of it than any other gin drink. It makes me feel good.”

“I know. Drinking always makes you feel good. Drinking makes me feel terrible. Where’s Roger?”

Roger was a friend of Thomas Hudson’s, who had a fishing shack down the island.

“He ought to be over soon. We’re going to eat with Johnny Goodner.”

“What men like you and Roger Davis and Johnny Goodner that been around stay around this island for I don’t know.”

“It’s a good island. You stay here, don’t you?”

“I stay to make a living.”

“You could make a living in Nassau.”

“Nassau, hell. There’s more fun here. This is a good island for having fun. Plenty money been made here, too.”

“I like to live here.”

“Sure,” said Bobby. “I do, too. You know that. If I can make a living. You sell those pictures you paint all the time?”

“They sell pretty good now.”

“People paying money for pictures of Uncle Edward. Pictures of Negroes in the water. Negroes on land. Negroes in boats. Turtle boats. Sponge boats. Squalls making up. Waterspouts. Schooners that got wrecked. Schooners building. Everything they could see free. They really buy them?”

“Sure they buy them. Once a year you have a show in New York and they sell them.”

“Auction them off?”

“No. The dealer who shows them puts a price on them. People buy them. Museums buy one once in a while.”

“Can’t you sell them yourself?”

“Sure.”

“I’d like to buy a waterspout,” Bobby said. “Damn big waterspout. Black as hell. Maybe better two waterspouts going roaring over the flats making a noise so you can’t hear. Sucking all the water across and scare you to death. Me in the dinghy sponging and nothing I can do. Waterspout blow the water glass right out of my hand. Almost suck the dinghy up out of the water. God’s own hell of a waterspout. How much would one like that cost? I could hang it right here. Or hang it up at home if it wouldn’t scare the old woman to death.”

“It would depend on how big it was.”

“Make it as big as you want,” Bobby said grandly. “You can’t make a picture like that too damn big. Put in three waterspouts. I seen three waterspouts closer than that across by Andros Island one time. They went right up to the sky and one sucked up a sponger’s boat and when it dropped the motor went right through the hull.”

“It’s just what the canvas would cost,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’d only charge for the canvas.”

“By God, get a big canvas then,” Bobby said. “We’ll paint waterspouts that will scare people right out of this bar and right off the damned island.”

He was moved by the grandeur of the project but its possibilities were just opening up to him.

“Tom, boy, do you think you could paint a full hurricane? Paint her right in the eye of the storm when she’s already blew from one side and calmed and just starting from the other? Put in everything from the Negroes lashed in the coconut palms to the ships blowing over the crest of the island? Put in the big hotel going. Put in two-by-fours sailing through the air like lances and dead pelicans blowing by like they were part of the gusts of rain. Have the glass down to twenty-seven and the wind velocities blown away. Have the sea breaking on the ten-fathom bar and the moon come out in the eye of the storm. Have a tidal wave come up and submerge every living thing. Have women blown out to sea with their clothes stripped from them by the wind. Have dead Negroes floating everywhere and flying through the air-”

“It’s an awfully big canvas,” Thomas Hudson said.

“To hell with the canvas!” Bobby said. “I’ll get a mainsail off a schooner. We’ll paint the greatest goddam pictures in the world and live throughout history. You’ve just been painting these little simple pictures.”

“I’ll start on the waterspouts,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Right,” said Bobby, hating to come back from the big project. “That’s sound. But by God we can make some great pictures with the knowledge you and I’ve got and with the training you’ve put in already.”

“I’ll start on the waterspouts tomorrow.”

“Good,” said Bobby. “That’s a beginning. But by God I’d like us to paint that hurricane, too. Anybody ever paint the sinking of the Titanic?”

“Not on a really big scale.”

“We could paint that. There’s a subject that always appealed to my imagination. You could get in the coldness of the iceberg as it moved off after they struck it. Paint the whole thing in a dense fog. Get in every detail. Get that man that got in the boat with the women because he thought he could help because he was a yachtsman. Paint him getting into the boat stepping on a few women just as big as life. He reminds me of that fellow we got upstairs now. Why don’t you go upstairs and make a drawing of that one while he’s asleep and use him in the painting?”

“I think we better just start with the waterspouts.”

“Tom, I want you to be a big painter,” Bobby said. “Leave all that chicken stuff behind. You’ve just been wasting yourself. Why there’s three paintings we’ve outlined together in less than half an hour and I haven’t even started to draw on my imagination. And what have you been doing up until now? Painting a Negro turning a loggerhead turtle on the beach. Not even a green turtle. A common loggerhead. Or painting two Negroes in a dinghy bullying a mess of crawfish. You’ve wasted your life, man.” He stopped and had a quick one from underneath the bar.

“That don’t count,” he said. “You never saw me take that one. Look, Tom, those are three great paintings. Big paintings. Worldwide paintings. Fit to hang in the Crystal Palace alongside the masterpieces of all time. Except the first, of course, is a small subject. But we haven’t started yet. No reason why we can’t paint one to end them all. What do you think of this?”

He took a very quick one.

“Of what?”

He leaned over the bar so the others could not hear.

“Don’t shear off from it,” Bobby said. “Don’t be shocked by its magnitude. You got to have vision, Tom. We can paint the End of the World,” he paused. “Full size.”

“Hell,” Thomas Hudson said.

“No. Before hell. Hell is just opening. The Rollers are rolling in their church up on the ridge and all speaking in unknown tongues. There’s a devil forking them up with his pitchfork and loading them into a cart. They’re yelling and moaning and calling on Jehovah. Negroes are prostrated everywhere and morays and crawfish and spider crabs are moving around and over their bodies. There’s a big sort of hatch open and devils are carrying Negroes and church people and rollers and everyone into it and they go out of sight. Water’s rising all around the island and hammerheads and mackerel sharks and tiger sharks and shovelnose sharks are swimming round and round and feeding on those who try to swim away to keep from being forked down the big open hatch that has steam rising out of it. Rummies are taking their last swigs and beating on the devils with bottles. But the devils keep forking them down, or else they are engulfed by the rising sea where now there are whale sharks, great white sharks, and killer whales and other outsized fish circling outside of where the big sharks are tearing at those people in the water. The top of the island is covered with dogs and cats and the devils are forking them in, too, and the dogs are cowering and howling and the cats run off and claw the devils and their hair stands on end and finally they go into the sea swimming as good as you want to see. Sometimes a shark will hit one and you’ll see the cat go under. But mostly they swim right off through it.

“Bad heat begins to come out of the hatch and the devils are having to drag the people toward the hatch because they’ve broken their pitching forks trying to fork in some of the church people. You and me are standing in the center of the picture observing all this with calm. You make a few notes and I refresh myself from a bottle and occasionally offer you refreshment. Once in a while a devil all sweating from his work will brush by us hauling on a big churchman that’s trying to dig into the sand with his fingers to keep from being put into the hatch and screaming to Jehovah and the devil will say, ‘Beg pardon, Mr. Tom. Beg pardon, Mr. Bobby. Very busy today.’

“I’ll offer the devil a drink as he passes, sweating and grimed, going back for another churchman and he’ll say, ‘No thank you, Mr. Bobby. I never touch the stuff when I’m working.’

“That could make a hell of a painting, Tom, if we can get all the movement and the grandeur into it.”

“I believe we’ve got about all we can handle outlined for today.”

“By God, I think you’re right,” Bobby said. “Outlining a painting like that makes me thirsty, too.”

“There was a man named Bosch could paint pretty well along those lines.”

“The magneto man?”

“No. Hieronymus Bosch. Very old-timer. Very good. Pieter Brueghel worked on that too.”

“He an old-timer too?”

“Very old-timer. Very good. You’d like him.”

“Oh hell,” said Bobby. “No old-timer will touch us. Besides the world’s never ended yet, so how the hell does he know any more about it than we do?”

“He’d be pretty hard to beat.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” Bobby said. “We’ve got a picture that would put him out of business.”

“What about another one of those?”

“Yes, damn it. I forget this is a bar room. God bless the Queen, Tom. We’re forgetting what day it is, too. Here, have one on me and we’ll drink her health.”

He poured himself a small glass of rum and handed Thomas Hudson the bottle of Booth’s yellow gin, some limes on a plate, a knife, and a bottle of Schweppes’s Indian Tonic Water.

“Fix your own damn drink. The hell with those fancy drinks.”

After Thomas Hudson had made the drink and shaken a few drops of bitters in it from the bottle that had a gull’s quill in the cork, he raised his glass and then looked down the bar.

“What are you two drinking? Name it if it’s simple.”

“Dog’s Head,” one of the sailors said.

“Dog’s Head it is,” Bobby said and reached into the ice tub and handed them the two cold bottles of ale. “The glasses are out. Rummies been throwing the glasses away all day. Everybody got their drinks? Gentlemen, The Queen. I don’t think she’d care much for this island and I’m not sure she’d do extremely well here. But gentlemen, The Queen. God bless her.”

They all drank her health.

“Must be a great woman,” said Bobby. “Bit on the stiff side for me. Always fancied Queen Alexandra myself. Lovely type. But we will try to give the Queen’s Birthday full honors. This is a small island but a patriotic one. Man from here went to the last war and had his arm shot off. Can’t be more patriotic than that.”

“Whose birthday did he say it was?” one of the sailors asked.

“Queen Mary of England,” Bobby said. “Mother of the present King Emperor.”

“That’s the one the Queen Mary’s named after, isn’t it?” the other sailor asked.

“Tom,” said Bobby. “You and I will drink the next toast alone.”

IV

It was dark now and there was a breeze blowing so that there were no mosquitoes nor sand flies and the boats had all come in, hoisting their outriggers as they came up the channel, and now were lying tied up in the slips of the three docks that projected out from the beach into the harbor. The tide was running out fast and the lights of the boats shone on the water that showed green in the light and moved so fast it sucked at the piling of the docks and swirled at the stern of the big cruiser they were on. Alongside in the water where the light was reflected off the planking of the cruiser toward the unpainted piling of the dock where old motorcar and truck tires were tied as fenders, making dark rings against the darkness under the rock, garfish, attracted by the light, held themselves against the current. Thin and long, shining as green as the water, only their tails moving, they were not feeding, nor playing; only holding themselves there in the fascination of the light.

Johnny Goodner’s cruiser, Narwhal, where they were waiting for Roger Davis, was headed into the ebbing tide and astern of her in the same slip, made fast so that the two cabin cruisers lay stern to stern, was the boat of the party that had been at Bobby’s place all day. Johnny Goodner sat in a chair in the stern with his feet on another chair and a Tom Collins in his right hand and a long, green Mexican chile pepper in his left.

“It’s wonderful,” he said. “I bite just a little piece and it sets my mouth on fire and I cool it with this.”

He took the first bite, swallowed, blew out, “thew!” through rolled tongue, and took a long swallow of the tall drink. His full lower lip licked his thin Irish upper lip and he smiled with his gray eyes. His mouth was sliced upwards at the corners so it always looked as though he were about to smile, or had just smiled, but his mouth told very little about him unless you noticed the thinness of the upper lip. His eyes were what you needed to watch. He was the size and build of a middleweight gone a little heavy; but he looked in good shape lying there relaxed and that is how a man looks bad who is really out of shape. His face was brown but peeling across the nose and the forehead that went back with his receding hairline. He had a scar on his chin that could have been taken for a dimple if it had been just a little closer to the center and his nose had been just perceptibly flattened across the bridge. It wasn’t a flat nose. It just looked as though it had been done by a modern sculptor who worked directly in the stone and had taken off just the shadow of a chip too many.

“Tom, you worthless character, what have you been doing?”

“Working pretty steadily.”

“You would,” he said and took another bite of the chile. It was a very wrinkled and droopy chile about six niches long.

“Only the first one hurts,” he said. “It’s like love.”

“The hell it is. Chiles can hurt both ways.”

“And love?”

“The hell with love,” Thomas Hudson said.

“What a sentiment. What a way to talk. What are you getting to be? A victim of sheepherder’s madness on this island?”

“No sheep here, Johnny.”

“Stone-crab herder’s madness then,” Johnny said. “We don’t want to have you have to be netted or anything. Try one of these chiles.”

“I have,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Oh I know your past,” he said. “Don’t pull your illustrious past on me. You probably invented them. I know. Probably the man who introduced them into Patagonia on Yak-back. But I represent modern times. Listen Tommy. I have these chiles stuffed with salmon. Stuffed with bacalao. Stuffed with Chilean bonito. Stuffed with Mexican turtledoves’ breasts. Stuffed with turkey meat and mole. They’ll stuff them with anything and I buy them. Makes me feel like a damned potentate. But all that’s a perversion. Just this long, drooping, uninspiring, unstuffed, unpromising old chile with the brown chupango sauce is the best. You bastard,” he blew out through his pursed tongue again, “I got too much of you that time.”

He took a really long pull at the Tom Collins.

“They give me a reason for drinking,” he explained. “Have to cool my damned mouth. What are you having?”

“I might take one more gin and tonic.”

“Boy,” Johnny called. “One more gin and tonic for Bwana M’Kubwa.”

Fred, one of the island boys Johnny’s captain had hired, brought in the drink.

“Here it is, Mr. Tom.”

“Thank you, Fred,” Thomas Hudson said. “The Queen, God bless her,” and they drank.

“Where’s the old whoremaster?”

“Up at his house. He’ll be down.”

He ate some more of the chile without commenting on it, finished his drink, and said, “How are you really, old Tom?”

“OK,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’ve learned how to live by myself pretty well and I work hard.”

“Do you like it here? I mean for all the time.”

“Yes. I got sick of moving around with it. I’d rather have it here. I get along well enough here, Johnny. Pretty damn well.”

“It’s a good place,” said Johnny. “It’s a good place for a guy like you that’s got some sort of inner resources. Hell of a place for a guy like me that keeps chasing it or running away from it. Is it true that Roger’s gone Red on us?”

“So they’re saying that already.”

“That’s what I heard on the coast.”

“What happened to him out there?”

“I don’t know all of it. But it was something pretty bad.”

“Really bad?”

“They’ve got different ideas of what’s bad out there. It wasn’t St. Quentin quail if that’s what you mean. Anyway out there with that climate and the fresh vegetables and everything it’s like the size of their football players. Hell, girls fifteen look twenty-four. At twenty-four they’re Dame May Whitty. If you’re not a marrying man you better look at their teeth pretty close. And of course you can’t tell a damn thing from their teeth. And they’ve all got mothers and fathers or one or the other and they’re all hungry. Climate gives them appetite, too, of course. Trouble is, people get enthusiastic sometimes and don’t ask for their driving licenses or their social security cards. I think they ought to measure it by size and weight and general capabilities and not just by age. Wreaks too many injustices just going by age. All around. Precocity isn’t penalized in any other sport. Other way around. Apprentice allowance claimed would be the fairest. Same as racing. They had me pretty well boxed on that rap. But that wasn’t what they got old Roger on.”

“What did they get me on?” Roger Davis asked.

He had dropped down from the dock onto the deck in his rope-soled shoes without making any noise and he stood there looking awfully big in a sweatshirt three sizes too large for him and a pair of tight old dungarees.

“Hi,” said Johnny. “Didn’t hear you ring. I was telling Tom I didn’t know what they got you on but that it wasn’t jailbait.”

“Good,” said Roger. “Let’s drop the subject.”

“Don’t be so powerful,” Johnny said.

“I’m not being powerful,” Roger said. “I asked politely. Do you drink on this boat?” He looked at the cabin cruiser that lay with her stern toward them. “Who’s that?”

“The people at the Ponce. Didn’t you hear?”

“Oh,” said Roger. “Well, let’s have a drink anyway even though they have set us a bad example.”

“Boy,” Johnny called. Fred came out of the cabin. “Yes sir,” he said.

“Enquire what the pleasure of these Sahibs is.”

“Gentlemen?” Fred asked.

“I’ll take whatever Mr. Tom is drinking,” Roger said. “He’s my guide and counselor.”

“Many boys at camp this year?” Johnny asked.

“Just two so far,” Roger said. “My counselor and I.”

“My counselor and me,” Johnny said. “How the hell do you write books?”

“I can always hire someone to put in the grammar.”

“Or get someone free,” Johnny said. “I’ve been talking with your counselor.”

“Counselor says he’s quite happy and contented here. He’s hit the beach for good.”

“You ought to see the place,” Tom told him. “He lets me come in for a drink once in a while.”

“Womens?”

“No womens.”

“What do you boys do?”

“I’ve been doing it all day.”

“But you were here before. What did you do then?”

“Swim, eat, drink. Tom works, read, talk, read, fish, fish, swim, drink, sleep-”

“No womens?”

“Still no womens.”

“Sounds unhealthy to me. Sort of unwholesome atmosphere. You boys smoke much opium?”

“Tom?” Roger asked.

“Only the best,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Got a nice stand of marijuana planted?”

“Any planted, Tom?” Roger asked.

“Was a bad year,” Thomas Hudson said. “Rain gave the crop hell.”

“Whole thing sounds unwholesome,” Johnny drank. “Only saving aspect is you still take a drink. You boys gone in for religion? Has Tom Seen The Light?”

“Tom?” Roger asked.

“Relations with the Deity about the same,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Cordial?”

“We are tolerant,” Thomas Hudson said. “Practice any faith you wish. Got a ball field up the island where you can practice.”

“I’ll give the Deity a fast one high and inside if he crowds the plate,” Roger said.

“Roger,” said Johnny reproachfully. “It’s after dark. Didn’t you see twilight fall and dusk set in and darkness come? And you a writer. Never a good idea to speak slightingly of the Deity after dark. He’s liable to be right behind you with his bat poised.”

“I’ll bet he’d crowd the plate, too,” Roger said. “I’ve seen him crowding it lately.”

“Yes sir,” Johnny said. “And he’d step into your fast one and knock your brains out. I’ve seen him hit.”

“Yes, I guess you have,” Roger agreed. “So has Tom and so have I. But I’d still try and get my fast ball by him.”

“Let’s cut out the theological discussion,” Johnny said. “And get something to eat.”

“That decrepit old man you keep to tool this thing around the ocean still know how to cook?” Thomas Hudson asked.

“Chowder,” Johnny said. “And a yellow rice tonight with plover. Golden plover.”

“You sound like a damned Interior decorator,” Tom said. “There’s no gold on them this time of year, anyway. Where’d you shoot the plover?”

“On South Island when we went in to anchor and swim. I whistled the flock back twice and kept knocking them down. There’s two apiece.”

It was a fine night and after they had eaten dinner they sat out in the stern with coffee and cigars, and a couple of other people, both worthless sporting characters, came over from one of the other boats with a guitar and a banjo and the Negroes gathered on the dock and there was some sporadic singing. In the dark, up on the dock, the boys would lead off with a song and then Fred Wilson, who had the guitar, would sing and Frank Hart would fake along on the banjo. Thomas Hudson could not sing, so he sat back in the dark and listened.

There was quite a lot of celebration going on at Bobby’s place and you could see the lights from the open door over the water. The tide was still ebbing strong, and out where the light shone fish were jumping. They were gray snappers mostly, Tom thought, feeding on the bait fish that fell out with the tide. A few Negro boys were fishing with hand lines and you could hear them talking and cursing softly when they lost a fish, and hear the snappers flopping on the dock when they landed one. There were big snappers out there and the boys were baiting them up with chunks of marlin meat from a fish one of the boats had brought in early that afternoon and that had already been hung up, photographed, weighed, and butchered.

There was quite a crowd on the dock now with the singing and Rupert Pinder, a very big Negro who was said to have once carried a piano on his back, unaided, from the Government dock all the way up the King’s Highway to the old club that the hurricane blew away, and who fancied himself as a fighting man, called down from the dock, “Captain John, boys say they getting thirsty.”

“Buy something inexpensive and healthful, Rupert.”

“Yes sir, Captain John. Rum.”

“That’s what I had in mind,” John said. “Why not try for a demijohn? Better value, I think.”

“Many thanks, Captain John,” Rupert said. Rupert moved off through the crowd which thinned rapidly and fell in behind him. Thomas Hudson could see them all heading toward Roy’s place.

Just then, from one of the boats tied up at Brown’s dock, a rocket rose with a whoosh high into the sky and burst with a pop to light up the channel. Another went whooshing up at an angle and burst, this time, just over the near end of their dock.

“Damn,” said Fred Wilson. “We should have sent over to Miami for some.”

The night was lighted now with rockets whishing and popping and, in the light, Rupert and his followers were coming back out onto the dock, Rupert carrying a big wicker demijohn on his shoulder.

Someone fired a rocket from one of the boats and it burst just over the dock, lighting up the crowd, the dark faces, necks, and hands, and Rupert’s flat face, wide shoulders, and thick neck with the wicker-covered jug resting tenderly and proudly alongside his head.

“Cups,” he said to his followers, speaking over his shoulder. “Enameled cups.”

“Got tin cups, Rupert,” one boy said.

“Enameled cups,” Rupert said. “Get them. Buy them from Roy. Here’s money.”

“Get the Verey pistol of ours, Frank,” Fred Wilson said. “We might as well shoot up those flares and get some fresh ones.”

While Rupert waited grandly for the cups someone brought a saucepan and Rupert poured into it and it was passed around.

“For the little people,” Rupert said. “Drink up, unimportant people.”

Singing was proceeding steadily and with little organization. Along with the rockets some of the boats were firing off rifles and pistols and from Brown’s dock a Tommy gun was skipping tracers out over the channel. It fired a burst of threes and fours, then loosed off a full clip, rattling the red tracers out in a lovely looping arc over the harbor.

The cups came at the same time as Frank Hart dropped down into the stern carrying a case with a Verey pistol and an assortment of flares and one of Rupert’s assistants started pouring and handing cups around.

“God bless the Queen,” Frank Hart said and loaded and fired a flare past the end of the dock directly at the open door of Mr. Bobby’s place. The flare hit the concrete wall beside the door, burst, and burned brightly on the coral road, lighting everything with a white light.

“Take it easy,” Thomas Hudson said. “Those things can burn people.”

“The hell with take it easy,” Frank said. “Let me see if I can bag the Commissioner’s house.”

“You’ll burn it,” Roger told him.

“If I burn it I’ll pay for it,” Frank said.

The flare arced up toward the big white-porched house but it was short and burned brightly just this side of the Commissioner’s front porch.

“Good old Commissioner,” Frank reloaded. “That will show the bastard whether we’re patriotic or not.”

“Take it easy, Frank,” Tom urged him. “We don’t have to play rough.”

“Tonight’s my night,” Frank said. “The Queen’s night and mine. Get out of my way, Tom, while I nail Brown’s dock.”

“He’s got gas on it,” Roger said.

“Not for long,” Frank told him.

It was impossible to tell whether he was trying to miss each shot to devil Roger and Thomas Hudson or whether he was really being bad. Neither Roger nor Thomas Hudson were sure either but they knew no one should be able to shoot a signal pistol with that much accuracy. And there was gas on the dock.

Frank stood up, took careful aim with his left arm down at his side like a duelist, and fired. The flare hit the dock at the far end from where the gas drums were piled and ricocheted off into the channel.

“Hey,” someone yelled from the boats that were tied up at Brown’s. “What the hell?”

“Almost a perfect shot,” Frank said. “Now I’m going to try for the Commissioner again.”

“You better damn well cut it out,” Thomas Hudson told him.

“Rupert,” Frank called up, ignoring Thomas Hudson. “Let me have some of that, will you?”

“Yes sir, Captain Frank,” Rupert said. “You got a cup?”

“Get me a cup,” Frank said to Fred, who was standing watching.

“Yes sir, Mr. Frank.”

Fred jumped and came back with the cup. His face was shining with excitement and pleasure.

“You figure to burn down the Commissioner, Mr. Frank?”

“Only if he catches fire,” Frank said.

He handed the cup up to Rupert who three quarters filled it and reached it down.

“The Queen, God bless her,” Frank drained the cup.

It was a terrific slug of rum to take like that.

“God bless her. God bless her, Captain Frank,” Rupert said solemnly, and the others echoed, “God bless her. God bless her indeed.”

“Now for the Commissioner,” Frank said. He fired the signal pistol straight up in the air, a little into the wind. He had loaded with a parachute flare and the wind drifted the bright white light down over the cruiser astern.

“Sure missed Commissioner that time,” Rupert said. “What’s wrong, Captain Frank?”

“I wanted to illuminate this beautiful scene,” Frank said. “No hurry about the Commissioner.”

“Commissioner’d burn good, Captain Frank,” Rupert advised. “I don’t want to influence you in it but it hasn’t rained on island for two months and Commissioner’s dry as tinder.”

“Where’s Constable?” Frank asked.

“Constable’s keeping out of the way of things,” Rupert said. “Don’t you worry about Constable. Nobody on this dock would see shot if shot was fired.”

“Everybody on this dock lay flat down on their faces and see nothing,” a voice came from back in the crowd. “Nothing has been heard. Nothing win be seen.”

“I give the command,” Rupert urged. “Every face is averted.” Then, encouragingly, “She’s just as dry as tinder that old place.”

“Let me see how you’d do it,” Frank said.

He loaded with another parachute flare and fired up and into the wind. In the falling garish light everyone on the dock was lying face down or was on hands and knees with eyes covered.

“God bless you, Captain Frank,” came Rupert’s deep solemn voice out of the dark when the flare died. “May He in His infinite mercy give you courage to burn Commissioner.”

“Where’s his wife and children?” Frank asked.

“We get them out. Don’t you worry,” Rupert said. “No harm of any kind come to anyone innocent.”

“Should we burn him?” Frank turned to the others in the cockpit.

“Oh, cut it out,” Thomas Hudson said. “For Christ’s sake.”

“I’m leaving in the morning,” Frank said. “As a matter of fact I’m cleared.”

“Let’s burn him,” Fred Wilson said. “Natives seem to favor it.”

“Burn him, Captain Frank,” Rupert urged. “What do you say?” he asked the others.

“Burn him. Burn him. God give you strength to burn him,” said the boys on the dock.

“Nobody want him unburned?” Frank asked them.

“Burn him, Captain Frank. Nobody see it. Nothing ever been heard. Not a word’s been said. Burn him.”

“Need a few practice shots,” Frank said.

“Get off this damned boat if you’re going to burn him,” Johnny said.

Frank looked at him and shook his head a little so that neither Roger nor the boys on the dock saw it.

“He’s ashes now,” he said. “Let me have just one more, Rupert, to stiffen my will.”

He handed up the cup.

“Captain Frank,” Rupert leaned down to speak to him. “This will be the deed of your life.”

Up on the dock the boys had started a new song.

“Captain Frank in the harbor

Tonight’s the night we got fun.”

Then a pause, and pitched higher…

“Captain Frank in the harbor

Tonight’s the night we got fun.”

The second line was sung like a drum bonging. Then they went on:

“Commissioner called Rupert a duty black hound

Captain Frank fired his flare pistol and burnt him to the ground.”

Then they went back to the other old African rhythm four of the men in the launch had heard sung by the Negroes that pulled the ropes on the ferries that crossed the rivers along the coast road between Mombasa, Malindi, and Lamu where, as they pulled in unison, the Negroes sang improvised work songs that described and made fun of the white people they were carrying on the ferry.

“Captain Frank in the harbor

Tonight’s the night we got fun.

Captain Frank in the harbor”

Defiant, insultingly, despairingly defiant the minor notes rose. Then the drum’s bonging response.

“Tonight’s the night we got fun!”

“You see, Captain Frank?” Rupert urged, leaning down into the cockpit. “You got the song already before you even commit the deed.”

“I’m getting pretty committed,” Frank said to Thomas Hudson. Then, “One more practice shot,” he told Rupert.

“Practice makes perfect,” Rupert said happily.

“Captain Frank’s practicing now for the death,” someone said on the dock.

“Captain Frank’s wilder than a wild hog,” came another voice.

“Captain Frank’s a man.”

“Rupert,” Frank said. “Another cup of that, please. Not to encourage me. Just to help my aim.”

“God guide you, Captain Frank,” Rupert reached down the

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 896