IT WAS A SHOCK to all of us, I think, to find the Monster on the hotel boat, going over to our island; and the way he glared at us was downright wicked. He cheered up, however, when another stout red-faced man on the boat went up to him and struck him heavily on the back.
“Hello, old-timer,” he shouted. “Going to get your diamond button this time?”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“Bet you a hundred dollars I beat you to it.”
“Hell, I hate to work so hard for a hundred dollars. Make it worthwhile and I’ll go you.”
It was then that Tish made the remark which so impressed both Aggie and myself. “Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.”
It is not necessary to relate the details of our arrival and of settling into our cottage. These are unimportant, although while we were registering we all observed that the Monster drew the manager aside and spoke to him at length, while gazing at us. We unpacked, and Aggie put on her foulard while Tish and I wore our black silks to dinner. The Monster was at a table with the other red-faced man, and between them was a very pretty girl who looked sulky and had nothing much to say.
That was our first view of Lily.
After the meal we inspected the tarpon room, and I must say that the size of the stuffed fish rather worried me. Also there were photographs of the fish fighting, and they looked dangerous in the extreme. Aggie turned a little pale, especially as there were other photographs of alligators, sharks, devilfish, and even of an octopus or two.
The girl wandered in about that time and lit a cigarette, and Tish addressed her.
“I perceive that the king of fish is the main pursuit of this resort,” she said.
“I’ll say it is,” said the girl rather shortly.
“It must indeed be a royal sport.”
“It’s not a sport; it’s a mania,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what you’ve got in your head; what you’ve got on a hook is all that counts.”
And with that she turned and went out again.
Aggie and I knitted that evening, while Tish saw to the boat. The Monster was playing poker, and the girl wandered about until he was settled and then with a tall good-looking man disappeared outside. Aggie watched them go, for the blighting of her own early romance—she was at one time engaged to a Mr. Wiggins, who was in the roofing business, and slipped on a rainy day—has left her with a soft spot for all lovers.
“It is an ideal spot for affairs of the heart, Lizzie,” she said. “Yet those two are not happy.”
“Maybe he didn’t get a fish today,” I said sharply. For all the conversation I could hear was about fish and fishing.
But Aggie is strongly intuitive, and later events were to prove her right. If the time was to come when we wished that we had never seen Lily, there was nothing to warn us then or for several days to come.
For a day or so nothing happened. We had packed our case of provisions and bottled water in the boat, as the tarpon were not yet in, and were making preliminary excursions to study the channels and passes. Our bathing suits, skirts, and large sun hats made these excursions comfortable. Also it was during these more or less idle hours that we practiced our life belt drill. The belts were laid in a row in the boat; on Tish’s count of “one” we stooped, “two,” we picked them up, and at “three” we adjusted them.
As it developed, this drill was to save our poor Aggie’s life later on.
But Aggie was growing increasingly nervous. One day we returned to find a large shark lying on the pier, and she could hardly be induced to pass it.
“They eat people, Tish!” she cried.
“Only when driven by extreme hunger, Aggie,” Tish told her patiently.
“How do you know when they’re hungry?” she demanded “I don’t suppose they go around pointing down their throats.”
Tish’s enthusiasm was unabated, however, and she continued to prepare for the day when the tarpon would come in from the cool depths of the Gulf. She had purchased a length of rope, and it was to be my duty, once the fish had struck, to lash her to her chair, which in turn was screwed to the deck of the boat. At the same time Aggie was to fill and hold ready a pail of water, in case the reel became heated and began to smoke.
We saw little of the Monster, although now and then we could hear him shouting at the waitress in the dining room. It appeared that by that time he and the other red-faced man had wagered a thousand dollars on a diamond-button fish, and they spent most of the time scouting around outside the passes looking for tarpon. They were out day and night, and all the hotel people could talk about was the bet between them.
And then, on a day when the wind prohibited fishing, we had a brief talk with Lily.
We had taken our knitting to the beach, and I remember that the sand was covered with small fiddler crabs, all running sideways and very annoying, and that Aggie immediately returned to our cottage and brought back an insect spray which was intended for mosquitoes. By thoroughly spraying a portion of the sand we cleared a place on which to sit, and hardly had Tish lain down with her face to the sun than we all heard a sound of muffled sobbing.
It came from some palm trees, and we discovered that it was Lily, face down and crying bitterly.
With her customary kindness Tish moved over and sat down beside her.
“I perceive,” she said, “that you are unhappy. Yet in this lovely spot—”
“Oh, go away,” said the girl, without looking up. “If I want to cry, that’s my affair.”
“In a week,” said Tish, “you will wonder why you have wept.”
“Will I?” said Lily rudely, and suddenly sat up. “What do you know about it? I’ve had this for twenty years. Don’t come around here and tell me—”
“Had what?” Tish inquired gently.
“Father,” said Lily. “And the way I feel about him is nobody’s business. I’ll tell you this: I’ve been hoping all morning that he’d go in bathing. There’s a shark out there.”
Tish glanced at Aggie and myself.
“I think I know him.”
“Well, you’ll have heard him anyhow,” said Lily.
“A red-faced man, and inclined to be violent?”
“Inclined to be! Listen! Last year his boatman fell over his rod and broke it, just as a tarpon struck, and he threw the man overboard.”
As she began to weep again at this moment, Aggie, who is the soul of kindness, brought her some blackberry cordial. She took it suspiciously, but in a few minutes she was feeling better.
“That’s great stuff,” she said. “If I had a feather in my hand, I could fly.”
But she confided no more to us, although she was much more cheerful and even did a dance step or two on the beach before she departed.
“If you see a handsome youth looking for me,” she called back, “give him some of that medicine of yours and send him in to bite father!”
Tish was very thoughtful. It was clear to her, she said, that the young man was mixed up in Lily’s trouble, and that the Monster was more than usually unpleasant because of the wager; that if he got a diamond-button fish before the other man he would be more reasonable, and that it was clearly our duty to help him get such a fish.
“Like the man or not,” she observed, “the happiness of two young hearts lies in his keeping. And if we can in any way assist him to such a fish, it becomes our duty to do so.”
Both Aggie and I perceived the nobility of the idea, and I wish to say now that in all that followed, unfortunate as it was, this was Tish’s ruling thought.
Nevertheless, with that fatality which pursued us throughout, that very evening we were unwittingly to rouse his suspicion against us once more.
The late afternoon boat brought Tish a telegram from Charlie Sands:
WIRES FROM CERTAIN PERSON INDICATE BAD FISHING AND EQUAL BAD HUMOR. TRUSTING YOU TO DO YOUR BIT AS AGREED.
But as it was then dinnertime, and we were to practice with our rods and reels that night from a small bridge which led from the golf links to a pavilion on our islet, Tish put it in her knitting bag and quite forgot it. And the events of that night put it out of her head entirely.
Briefly, on the bridge all had gone well that evening until we heard a boat rapidly approaching and about to pass under it. Both Tish and I reeled in, but Aggie unluckily had twisted her line and was unable to do so. Just what occurred I do not know, but the next moment the boat had hurled itself at the island with a terrific crash and climbed almost to the pavilion.
In the really dreadful silence that followed I could hear Tish whispering to us to run; this we did, although as the end of her rod had struck Aggie in the chest she could go neither fast nor far. In the end we found safety in a sand trap on the links and lay there for some hours. Most uncomfortably, as the sand immediately irritated Aggie’s nose and started her to sneezing, and as we were extremely anxious about Tish.
We had heard her running rapidly toward the hotel, and a moment or so later the Monster and his boatman followed. But Tish carries no surplus weight as I do, and we learned from her later that she was well in the lead from the start.
“I had sufficient time,” she said, “to leave my rod on the back veranda, go inside, and pick up my knitting. But I think he suspects me, Lizzie. He stood outside a window and shook his fist at me.”
Well, it really was unfortunate, because the tarpon came in that night for a short time, and the other man brought in a fish only a pound and a half under the diamond-button weight. But Lily’s father went down to the pier to look at it, and then insisted on having it cut open. The other man objected, but it was finally done, and they found that three eight-ounce weights had been rammed down its throat.
The other man claimed that his boatman must have done it while his back was turned, because he had promised him a hundred dollars if the fish made the weight. But there was a great deal of hard feeling all around, and it was agreed that both men would go out without boatmen thereafter. All of which has a bearing on this narrative, whether Charlie Sands thinks so or not. Because if the Monster had had a boatman along on that terrible night later, things might have been different.
The tarpon had disappeared again, and the wind was still high. All the fishermen were in an unchristian frame of mind, but the Monster was really dreadful. Even golf did not soothe him, and one day when we were watching and Aggie happened to sneeze just as he drove off at the last hole, he sent his ball into the water and turned on us in a frenzy of rage.
“Great suffering snakes!” he yelled. “Can’t you women keep away from me? That’s all I ask: just keep away. And if this island isn’t big enough, find another island. Any island!”
Well, later on we did exactly that and he did not like it. He was certainly a difficult person, and when Lily’s young man won the golf match that day he walked right up to Aggie and accused her of sneezing on purpose.
“It’s persecution!” he yelled. “That’s what it is. What did I ever do to you women anyhow?”
Then he broke the golf club he had in his hand and stalked away.
It was that night that Tish had another telegram from Charlie Sands.
ARE YOU MIXED UP IN SITUATION IN ANY MANNER? PLEASE REPLY.
But, as our dear Tish said with dignity, it did not deserve any reply, and so she sent none.
Looking back over that situation, I can see how one more event led up to the catastrophe, and by eliciting Tish’s interest in the young man himself, finally precipitated the crisis.