XX

Henry passed the two drinks up and swung up himself after them. He stood beside Thomas Hudson and leaned forward to look at the shadow of the far keys. There was a thin moon in the first quarter of the sky to the westward.

“Here’s to your good health, Tom,” Henry said. “I didn’t look at the moon over my left shoulder.”

“She’s not new. She was new last night.”

“Of course. And we didn’t see her for the squall.”

“That’s right. How’s everything below?”

“Excellent, Tom. Everybody’s working and cheerful.”

“How are Willie and Ara?”

“They drank a little rum, Tom, and it made them very cheerful. But they’re not drinking now.”

“No. They wouldn’t.”

“I look forward to this very much,” Henry said. “So does Willie.”

“I don’t. But it’s what we are here to do. You see, we want prisoners, Henry.”

“I know.”

“Because they made that mistake on the massacre key they don’t want to be taken prisoner.”

“I think that’s putting it mildly,” Henry said. “Do you think they will try to jump us tonight?”

“No. But we have to be alerted in case they do.”

“We will be. But what do you really think they are going to do, Tom?”

“I can’t figure it, Henry. If they are really desperate they will try for the ship. If they have a radio operator left, he could fix our radio up and they could go across to Anguilas and just call a taxi and wait for it to take them home. They have every reason to try for the ship. Somebody could always have talked around Havana and they might know what we are.”

“Who would talk?”

“Never speak ill of the deads,” Thomas Hudson said. “But I’m afraid he might have when he was drinking.”

“Willie is sure he did.”

“Does he know anything?”

“No. He’s just sure.”

“It’s a possibility. But they could also just try to make the mainland and make their way overland to Havana and get a Spanish ship out. Or an Argentine ship. But they don’t want to be picked up on account of the massacre business. So I think they’ll try something desperate.”

“I hope so.”

“If we can set it up,” Thomas Hudson said.

But nothing happened all night long except the movement of the stars and the steady blowing of the east wind and the sucking of the currents past the ship. There was much phosphorescence in the water from the weed that the big tides and the sea made by the wind had torn up from the bottom, and it floated in and out and in again like cold strips and patches of white, unhealthy fire in the water.

The wind dropped a little before dawn and when it was light Thomas Hudson lay down and slept on the deck, lying on his belly with his face against a corner of the canvas. Antonio covered him and his weapon with a piece of canvas but Thomas Hudson was asleep and did not feel it.

Antonio took over the watch and when the tide was high so they swung free, he woke Thomas Hudson. They got the anchors in and started in with the dinghy going ahead and sounding and staking any dubious points. The water on this flood tide was clean and clear by now and the piloting was difficult but not as it had been the day before. They had staked a branch of a tree in the channel where they had grounded the day before and Thomas Hudson looked back and saw its green leaves moving in the current.

Thomas Hudson looked ahead and followed the dinghy closely as she worked out the channel. They passed a long green key that had looked like a small round key when they had been head on to it. Then ahead in what looked like an unbroken but indented line of mangrove keys Gil, who had the glasses, said, “Stake, Tom. Dead ahead of the dinghy against the mangroves.”

“Check,” Thomas Hudson said. “Is it the canal?”

“It looks to be but I can’t see the opening.”

“It is very narrow on the chart. We will just about brush the mangroves on each side.”

Then he remembered something. How could I be so stupid? he thought. But we had better go on now, anyway, and out through the channel. Then I can send them back. He had forgotten to tell Willie and Ara to detrap the hulk of the turtle boat. That is a hell of a thing to leave around if some poor fisherman comes onto it. Well, they can go back and detrap it.

The dinghy was signalling him now to keep hard over to the right of the three tiny spots of key and close against the mangroves. Then, as if to make sure he understood, they wheeled and came up. “The channel’s right in along the mangroves,” Willy shouted. “Leave the stake on your left. We’re going ahead through. As long as you don’t hear from us keep on steaming. It’s just a deep creek.”

“We forgot to detrap that turtle boat.”

“I know,” Willie shouted. “We’ll go back after.”

Ara grinned and spun the dinghy around and they went on ahead, Willie signalling that it was OK. They turned left and right and went out of sight into the green.

Thomas Hudson steered in their wake. There was plenty of water although no such water showed on the chart. This old channel must have been scoured out by a hurricane, he thought. Many things have happened since the U.S.S. Nokomis had boats sounding in here.

Then he saw there were no birds rising from the mangroves as the dinghy went into the narrow brush river of the channel.

While he steered he spoke into the tubes to Henry in the forward cockpit, “We may get jumped in this channel. Have your .50’s ready to fire from either bow and abeam. Keep behind the shield and watch for the flashes and pour it onto them.”

“Yes, Tom.”

To Antonio he said, “We may get jumped here. Keep well down and if we are fired on, aim below the flashes and pour it on. Keep way down.”

“Gil,” he said. “Put your glasses away. Take two frags and straighten the pins and put them there in the rack by my right hand. Straighten two pins on those extinguishers and then put your glasses away. They’ll probably hit us from both sides. That’s how they ought to.”

“Tell me when to throw, Tom.”

“Throw when you see the flashes. But loft it plenty because it has to fall through brush.”

There were no birds at all and since the tide was high he knew that the birds had to be in the mangroves. The ship was entering the narrow river now and Thomas Hudson, bareheaded and barefooted and only wearing a pair of khaki shorts, felt as naked as a man can feel.

“You lie down, Gil,” he said. “I’ll tell you when to get up and throw.”

Gil lay on the floor with the two fire extinguishers that were loaded with dynamite and a booster charge and were fired by the detonating assembly of a regulation frag, with its charger hacksawed off at the juncture of the fuse and a dynamite cap fitted and crimped on.

Thomas Hudson looked at him once and saw how he was sweating. Then he looked at the mangroves on either side.

I could still try to back her out, he thought. But I don’t believe I could, the way the tide is flowing.

He looked ahead at the green banks. The water was brown again now and the mangrove leaves were as shiny as though they were varnished. He looked to see where any had been cut or disturbed. But he saw nothing but the green leaves, the dark branches, and the roots that were exposed with the suction of the ship. There were a few crabs that showed when their holes under the mangrove roots were exposed.

They went on and the channel narrowed but he could see it opening wider ahead. Maybe I just had the jitters, he thought. Then he saw a crab come sliding out fast from the high mangrove roots and plop into the water. He looked hard into the mangroves but he could see nothing beyond the trunks and branches. Another crab came out very fast and went into the water.

Just then they opened on him. He did not see the blinking flash and he was hit before he heard the stutter of the gun and Gil was on his feet beside him. Antonio was firing tracers where he had seen the gun flash.

“Where the tracers are going,” Thomas Hudson said to Gil.

Thomas Hudson felt as though someone had clubbed him three times with a baseball bat and his left leg was wet.

Gil lobbed the bomb with a high overhand motion and Thomas Hudson saw its long brass cylinder and conic nose shining in the sun. It was spinning, not going end over end.

“Down, Gil,” he said and thought he ought to drop himself.

Then he knew he shouldn’t but should hold the ship as she was. The twin .50’s had opened up and he could hear them pounding and he felt the jolt of them through his bare feet. Very noisy, he thought. That will keep the bastards down.

He saw the blinding burst of the bomb before the roar came and the smoke started to rise. He smelled the smoke and the smell of broken branches and burned green leaves.

“Get up, Gil, and throw two frags. One on each side of the smoke.”

Gil did not lob the frags. He threw them like the long throw from third base to first and in the air they looked like gray iron artichokes with a thin trickle of smoke coming from them.

Before they burst cracking white in the mangroves Thomas Hudson said into the tube, “Shoot the shit out of it, Henry. They can’t run in there.”

The smoke from the frags smelled differently from the bomb and Thomas Hudson said to Gil, “Throw two more frags. One beyond the bomb and one in this side close.”

He watched the frags go and then hit the deck. He did not know whether he hit the deck or the deck hit him because the deck was very slippery from the blood that had been running down his leg and he fell hard. At the second burst he heard two fragments tear through the canvas. Others hit the hull.

“Help me up,” he said to Gil. “You threw that last one close enough.”

“Where are you hit, Tom?”

“A couple of places.”

Ahead he saw Willie and Ara coming up the channel in the dinghy.

He spoke in the tube to Antonio and asked him to hand up a first aid kit to Gil.

Just then he saw Willie drop flat in the bow of the dinghy and start firing into the mangroves on the right. He could hear the dat-dat-dat of his Thompson gun. Then there was a longer burst. He put in both his motors and headed for them with all the speed the channel would allow. His idea of this speed was not completely accurate because he felt very sick. He felt sick into his bones and through his chest and his bowels and the ache went into his testicles. He did not feel weak yet but he could feel the first onslaught of weakness.

“Get your guns to bear on the right bank,” he said to Henry. “Willie’s found more of them.”

“Yes, Tom. Are you all right?”

“I’m hit but I’m all right. What about you and George?”

“We’re fine.”

“Open up any time you see anything.”

“Yes, Tom.”

Thomas Hudson stopped his engines and commenced to go astern again slowly to hold the ship outside the angle where Willie was firing. Willie had a clip in now with tracers in it and he was trying to spot the target for the ship.

“You got it, Henry?” he asked through the tube.

“Yes, Tom.”

“Work on it and around it with short bursts.”

He heard the .50s start slamming and he waved Ara and Willie in. They came in as fast as the little motor would bring them. Willie was firing all the time until they were under the lee of the ship.

Willie jumped aboard and came up on the flying bridge while Ara made the dinghy fast.

He looked at Tom and at Gil who was putting a tourniquet on his left leg as close to the crotch as he could tighten it.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “What you got, Tommy?”

“I don’t know,” Thomas Hudson said. He did not know, either. He could not see any of the wounds. All he saw was the color of the blood and it was dark so he did not worry. But there was too much of it and he felt very sick.

“What’s in there, Willie?”

“I don’t know. There was a guy with a burp gun fired on us and I got him. Or I’m pretty sure I did.”

“I didn’t hear it with the noise you made.”

“You guys sounded like an ammunition dump going up. Do you think there’s anything still back there?”

“Still, maybe. We gave it the treatment.”

“We’ll have to work it out,” Willie said.

“We can let these sons of bitches hang and rattle,” Thomas Hudson said. “Or we can go in now and finish it.”

“I’d rather take care of you.”

Henry was probing with the .50s. He was as delicate as he was rough with a machine gun and with a pair of them all his qualities were doubled.

“Do you know where they are, Willie?”

“There’s only one place they can be.”

“Then let’s go in blasting and blow the shit out of them.”

“Spoken like an officer and a gentleman,” Willie said. “We sunk their skiff.”

“Oh. We didn’t hear that either,” Thomas Hudson said.

“It didn’t make much noise,” Willie said. “Ara chopped her open with a machete and cut the sail up. Christ couldn’t repair her in a month the best day he was in that carpenter shop.”

“You get up forward with Henry and George and have Ara and Antonio on the starboard side and let’s go in,” Thomas Hudson said. He felt very sick and strange, although there was no dizziness yet. The dressings Gil had put on contained the bleeding too easily and he knew it was internal. “Put lots of fire on and you signal me how to go. How close are they?”

“Right up against the shore behind the little rise of ground.”

“Can Gil reach it all right with the big ones?”

“I’ll shoot tracers to show him the target.”

“They’ll still be there?”

“They got no place to go. They saw us break up the skiff. They’re fighting Custer’s Last Stand in the mangroves. Christ, I wish I had some Anheuser Busch.”

“Ice cold in cans,” Thomas Hudson said. “Let’s get in.”

“You’re awfully white, Tommy,” Willie said. “And you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“Let’s take her in fast then,” Thomas Hudson said. “I’m still all right.”

They closed fast with Willie with his head up over the starboard bow sometimes waving a correction.

Henry was traversing before and behind the rise that showed by the higher trees and George was working on what should be the lip of the rise.

“How is it, Willie?” Thomas Hudson said into the tube. “You got enough hulls up here to start a brass foundry,” Willie answered. “Lay her goddamn bow up against the bank and swing her broadside so Ara and Antonio can bear.”

Gil thought he saw something and fired. But it was the low branch of a tree that Henry had cut loose.

Thomas Hudson watched the bank come closer and closer until he could see individual leaves again. Then he swung her broadside until he heard Antonio firing and saw his tracers going in a little to the right of Willie’s. Ara was firing now, too. Then he came a little astern on his motors and swung her close to the bank but not so close that Gil could not throw.

“Throw an extinguisher,” he said. “Where Willie’s been shooting.”

Gil threw and again Thomas Hudson marvelled at the throw and at the shine of the brass cylinder whirling high through the air to drop almost exactly where it should. There was the flash and the roar and then the rising smoke and then Thomas Hudson saw a man walking toward them out of the smoke with his hands clasped over his head.

“Hold up the fire,” he said as rapidly as he could into two tubes.

But Ara had already fired and he saw the man slump forward into the mangroves on his knees with his head forward.

He spoke again and said, “Resume fire.” Then he said to Gil, very tiredly, “Put in another one about the same place if you can. Then put in a couple of frags.”

He had had a prisoner. But he had lost him.

After a while he said, “Willie, you and Ara want to have a look?”

“Sure,” Willie said. “But keep some fire on while we go in. I want to go in from the back.”

“Tell Henry what you want. When do you want it off?”

“As soon as we clear the entrance.”

“All right, jungle man,” Thomas Hudson said and for the first time he had time to realize that he was probably going to die.