Captain Gringo leaned against the starboard rail, smoking a Perfecto as he stared morosely at the moonlit sea. The bow wave formed a ghostly pale-green stripe across the inky water, and from time to time a firefly’s flicker betrayed a fish in the tepid phosphorescent water. It was cooler out on deck, but that wasn’t saying much. The cabin they’d booked was an oven where someone had once baked dirty socks.
They were aboard the S.S. Pomona, a Clyde-built, three island freighter of British registry. They were steaming up the Mosquito Coast just a few miles offshore. Captain Gringo had mixed feelings about this. The poorly charted Mosquito Coast was notorious for hidden shoals and islands that weren’t always where the map said they were. On the other hand, the S.S. Pomona was apparently held together with a little paint, and a lot of rust. Just so they wouldn’t have too far to swim, when the tub fell apart like a house of cards, he thought.
The sea was gentle. Another break. The ship’s screw was off-center and every time they crossed a slight-swell the blades came part way out of the water to wag the stern like a puppy’s tail, and every once in a while another rivet popped.
As he finished his cigar and flicked it out across the water, a soft feminine voice recited,
Dragon ships on moonlit water
Oar tips dripping cold green fire
Come to Erin, out for plunder
Up the Shannon, bent on slaughter.
The tall American at the rail turned to see a dark, dim figure that came just to his shoulder wearing a big Paris hat draped with mosquito netting. He smiled and said, “I never heard that poem before, ma’am.”
She answered with a trace of brogue, “I just made it up. I’m not sure the seas around Ireland are phosphorescent, but isn’t it the grand image? If Viking raiders didn’t drip cold green fire, they should have. Don’t you agree?”
“I guess so,” he chuckled. “But I never saw a dragon ship, and you’re the expert on Irish waters if I’m right about that County Cork you’d be speaking after.”
“Och, are you Irish? It’s Mab O’Shay I’m called, and my people came from Kerry and not Cork, thank you very much.”
“I’m Dick Walker, and I’m afraid our old sod might have been closer to London before they boarded the Mayflower or a sister ship.”
“Well,” Mab said dubiously, “as long as your people were Yankee in this century we’ll say no more about it. It was in 1836 they took the vote and our Irish Home Rule away from us. What would yourself be doing on this dreadful English tub, Mr. Walker?”
He said, “I was about to ask you the same thing. It’s a funny place to meet an Irish rebel.”
“Och, bite your tongue. It’s an American citizen, I am. I don’t know whether the seas of Erin hold cold fire, for I’ve never seen them. As for Auld Queen Victoria, she’s no better than she should be, but I’ve no dark Fenian plans to topple the auld bawd from her throne. It’s a registered nurse, I am. I’ve been working down in Panama against the Yellow jack. Now I’m bound for the Crown colony of Nuevo Verdugo to patch up the sugar cutters.”
“You’ve been hired by Pantropic?”
“Didn’t I just say so? I understand they own the whole island. Where are you bound for, Mr. Walker?”
He frowned and said, “Same place. I’m an ordinance consultant for Woodbine Arms Limited.”
Mab’s laughter seemed a little forced, but her voice was light as she said, “Och, won’t that be grand? You’ll shoot them and I’ll patch them up. In a way one could almost say we are in the same business.
Captain Gringo shrugged and stared at the horizon. He didn’t know what she looked like, and in any case, he was tired of defending his trade. He said, “The stars are either going out or there’s a squall line over to the east.”
Mab said, “It is getting darker, and the water’s stopped glowing, too. Have you any idea why that should be?”
He said, “Sure, the wee beasties that make the water phosphorescent are dropping deeper. We’re on the receiving end of a cold front and a lot of fresh rain water. We’d better get you inside.”
A gob of rain the size of an egg splattered nearby on the deck and he added, “See what I mean? I’ll see you to your cabin.”
She said, “It’s early. What about the ship’s saloon?”
“Have you seen what they call a saloon on this tub?”
“You’re right. At least my cabin has a window, and I’ve a fifth of the creature in my trunk. It’s down this way.”
He took Mab’s elbow as they stepped away from the rail. She made no comment as the deck was suddenly canted by the rising seas from the east. By the time they made it to her cabin door more gouts of tropic rain were leaping like wet frogs across the deck, spit under the overhang by the gathering storm. As Mab unlocked the door, he hesitated, not sure of the form. Then she opened it and said, “Come in before you drown out there. There’s supposed to be a light switch somewhere in here.”
He joined her inside as a gust of wind slammed the jalousied door shut, plunging them in darkness while, at the same time, the ship’s stern rose and the steel all around them vibrated alarmingly.
Mab found the switch and turned on the Edison bulbs as she gasped, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What was that?”
Captain Gringo stared down at what he now saw was a saucy little redhead with hellfire-green eyes he felt like swimming in. He smiled and said, “It’s just a crazy screw.”
“I beg your pardon, sir!”
He laughed and quickly added, “The ship’s propeller. It’s called a screw. It’s bent or missing a blade or something, and every time it breaks water it shakes the whole ship like that.”
Mab flushed and said, “Och, I thought … well, never mind what I was after thinking. Find yourself a seat and I’ll be seeing if I can find the bottle.”
The only seat the tiny cabin offered was the bottom bunk of the two that were built into the bulkhead. Even if climbing into the top bunk hadn’t been a ridiculous idea, it would have been impossible. Mab had it piled with luggage. So Captain Gringo sat down with his knees a bit high for comfort and watched the redhead rummage in a steamer trunk in the far corner.
Her back was to him, so he noticed for the first time that her thin shantung dress was forest green, and that because of the heat and lack of need, she wasn’t wearing the usual whalebone and obscenely vulcanized unmentionables women over fourteen seemed to find so necessary these days. Her skirts belled out below her trim waist, but, Praise Allah, the bustles and dolly vardens of the eighties were no longer the fashion, and a man could get a better grasp on the size of a woman’s behind. Mab’s derriere looked just about right as she bent slightly to reach deeper into the trunk. The ship’s stern rose, too, and as the crippled screw surfaced everything again went Voom-Voom-Voom. It jiggled Mab delightfully, but she straightened up as if she’d been goosed and gasped, “Oh my eyebrow! We’re sinking sure!”
Captain Gringo said, “Relax, I didn’t hear anything break loose that time. I think we’ve about shed all the rivets and paint that figure to come off tonight.”
He saw she had a bottle of white rum when she joined him on the lower bunk. She said, “I can’t find my teacups. We’ll have to share the bottle raw.” Then she uncorked it, took a healthy swig, and handed it to him. He said, “For a lady, you’re a two-fisted drinker. Most men need a little lemon juice to cut this white-lightning.”
“Och, I was raised on poteen. No Dago rum can froosh an Irish lass.”
Captain Gringo put the bottle to his own lips, rioting that the glass still tingled from her own saucy rosebud lips, and managed not to gasp as the raw white rum ran over his tongue like hot lava. He lowered the bottle, exhaled an invisible dragon flame, and said, “Smooooth,” and handed the bottle back to her. She was welcome to it. He was a big man, who could hold his booze, but this was liquid dynamite and there didn’t seem to be anything with which to chase it.
The bunk tingled under them as the stern rose again, and Mab spilled some rum in her lap when she was’ working on the second round. The vibration made them both aware that their hips were touching in the crowded quarters. But he figured it was up to her to move away if she aimed to. She didn’t. If anything she pressed her softer flesh closer as she said, “Wheee! It feels like a roller coaster.”
He said, “Yeah, the seas are really rising. I hope the man at the helm knows enough to quarter into them. Those ground swells feel like they’re touching bottom.”
“Oh dear. Do you think we’ll be shipwrecked?”
“I hope not. If there was anything but mangrove jungle along this stretch of the Mosquito Coast we wouldn’t be aboard this rust bucket much longer. Traveling by mule would be faster as well as more comfortable. But thee don’t seem to be any roads, so ...”
“Jesus, I don’t want to wind up in no jungle. I hear there’re cannibal Indians as well as alligators and great man-eating snakes.”
She took another heroic swig of rum and he viewed her alarming drinking with mixed emotions. Liquor certainly simplified relations between the sexes, but he wasn’t a necrophiliac, and Mab just didn’t have the body weight to absorb that much booze. He said, “You’d better take it easy, honey.”
She grinned at him knowingly and asked, “Would you be the sort of rascal to take advantage of a maiden in her cups, sir?”
He doubted she was a maiden, but he said, “That’s the least of your worries. We’re standing off a lee shore in a full gale and we may have to do some serious swimming before sunrise.”
Mab took another swallow, considered, and said, “You’re right. We’d better take our clothes off before we wind up dead and drowned.”
She handed him the bottle and started to unbutton her bodice. He saw no reason to object. She wasn’t that drunk, but he’d played this scene before. He wondered if someday men and women could simply get together on some casual innocent sex without all these foolish games.
He knew she wanted it as badly as he did, but while Queen Victoria had managed to produce a full platoon of babies, she’d done it without admitting she enjoyed a good lay. Any white woman who wasn’t an outright slut had to pretend she was being victimized by her brutish quarry. He wondered if Mab was going to put him through the usual tears and remorse in the cold gray light of dawn. She probably was, but what the hell, it went with the icing on life’s bitter-sweet cake.
A pink nipple peeked out at him coyly when Mab suddenly had second thoughts and said, “Och, you’d better turn out the lights. I’m not one to be naked like a Carib in broad daylight, even to save us from drowning!”
He got up with a grin and flicked off the switch. Outside the rain was slobbering against the cabin door but a faint dim light came through the slits in the jalousie. The decking careened wildly under him as he groped his way back to the bunk. He put a hand out to steady himself and it landed right in Mab’s naked lap. She gasped when he sat beside her, leaving his hand in her moist thatch, and he said, “Sorry. I was reaching for the post.”
“Sure and I’ll bet you were, you awful thing.” She giggled, and, since she didn’t seem to be avoiding the fate she’d set up rather obviously, he pressed her back across the mattress with her feet still on the floor and kissed her as he started working her up with the fortunate hand.
It didn’t take much to fire her boiler. Mab responded to his kisses and put her own hand on the back of his to move it faster. Then she came up for air and said, “Wait. I have to take precautions. Take off your own duds while I practice medicine.”
She rolled away and moved somewhere in the darkness as Captain Gringo proceeded to peel. He heard the tingle of glass above the howling storm sounds and another series of alarming thuds from the ship’s screw as they wallowed over the next swell.
Then Mab was back and all over him, sobbing with desire and smelling of rum and perfume. She groped for his shaft, found it, and gasped, “Och, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you might have warned a girl!” She forked a thigh across him and sank down on it with a moan of mingled awe and pleasure. He reached up in the darkness and took her soft, rounded torso in his arms to pull her on like a boot as the bunk tingled under his nude rump and the ship muttered “Voom-Voom-Voom!”
Mab laughed and said, “Och, ain’t this grand? The darling ship is doing half the work for us!”
Mab proceeded to do the other half. She moved up and down like a pro. But since money hadn’t been mentioned, he assumed she was a free thinker with advanced views for her generation. Being a nurse gave women certain advantages. He knew she knew more about anatomy and birth control than the average, properly raised Victorian Miss, and her?’ wandering ways suggested an adventurous streak, too. He wondered how often she’d done this and decided he didn’t really want to know. It was stupid for a man to expect a long series of innocent virgins. But Victoria and John Calvin had messed up male thinking, too, and he was trying to learn to rise above it, or maybe sink below it.
They were both hot as two dollar pistols, but he tried to make it last. So Mab came first and collapsed against him, crooning in the Gaelic, “Och, ma bhirmohr go brack!” as the screw surfaced, bounced him up and down, and he fired his charge unexpectedly. She contracted on him with pleasure and purred, “Jesus that was a lovely gusher! I hope there’s more where that came from!”
So he rolled her over and got on top to do some serious loving. She was over her first awkwardness, too, and so now that they were friends she worked her legs up to hook a heel over each of his shoulders, and though he was surprised to notice she still had on her high-buttoned shoes and stockings to the knees, he had no complaints. The rest of her felt like velvet where it wasn’t whipped cream. He was grateful for the storm. Without the damp cool draft from the jalousie they’d have been sweating like pigs by now. But it was cool enough for heavy pounding and he knew it was what she’d had in mind from the moment she’d approached him spouting poetry. The real thing was more poetic than any verse ever written.
They went at it hot and heavy until common sense and mutual exhaustion called for a break to’ get their second wind. As she snuggled against him on the narrow bunk, Mab moved her legs experimentally and murmured, “I thought I’d dislocated a hip, but I think I want you to try and cripple me some more. Can you reach the bottle? I forgot where I put it when you leaped on me like a maniac.”
He rolled over and groped along the rolling floorboards until he found the fifth of rum, on its side but corked by a lady who obviously planned ahead. He handed it to her, but said, “I’ll settle for a smoke. I can’t handle you, a storm at sea, and white rum at the same time.”
He fumbled again and found his jacket crumpled on the floor. He fished out a Perfecto and some matches, and while he was at it, retrieved his shoulder holster and hung it on a nail driven into the post at the head of the bunk. He struck a light and Mab glowed up at him with the match light reflected in her green, feline eyes. She said, “I think I’ll stay sober, too, if you’ll share that cigar with me.”
He lit up and took a drag without comment. More than one lady he’d met shared the forbidden joys of the manly weed. He passed the smoke to her by kissing open-mouthed and he noticed she inhaled it deeply. Mab was a girl who lived life to the hilt.
She laughed when she exhaled and took the cigar for a more serious puff. Then she said, “I don’t want you to leave until just before dawn, if we’re still afloat. That little old man you’re traveling with won’t come looking for you, will he?”
Captain Gringo said, “He’d better not. Let him find his own girl.”
“I don’t think there were any others traveling alone on the passenger list, darling.”
That was another slip, but he didn’t comment as he took the cigar back, hoping he was wrong; Captain Gringo had an ear for accents and he knew her brogue was Ulster even though she claimed to be from the Black Irish southern counties. But what the hell, she was a great lay and he could be getting paranoid. There were plenty of Catholic rebels even in loyal Ulster, and while it seemed odd that an innocent traveling nurse had been going over the passenger list with the purser, it wasn’t proof of anything but advanced female curiosity. If Sir Basil did have another agent checking up on them he owed the old bastard a hearty thanks. Since she’d have nothing to report to her boss, if he was her boss, why not just enjoy it?
The ship rose on another swell and dropped alarmingly as Mab stiffened in the dark and clung to him. The bunk under them tingled as if a giant dentist’s drill was boring through the hull, and she gasped, “Oh my eye-brow! What was that?”
He patted her soothingly and said, “We just scraped bottom, I think. Things are looking up. I don’t think we could sink far enough to matter in this shoal water.”
Privately, he was more worried than he let on. He knew the seas would pound this bucket of ‘bolts to bits in no time if they really grounded. But there was no sense in both of them sweating it out.
His calm tone seemed to comfort her, and more to soothe her than because he really cared, he changed the subject by saying, “You must have come across some West Indians down in Panama, right?”
“I did. There’s a mess of them working on the new canal. The poor creatures have been dying like flies, too. Some say Negroes are used to Yellow jack, but the ones I was caring for in the company infirmary died just as often as anyone else. It’s a disgusting way to die, for anyone. Its Spanish name, Vomito Negro, fits it better than the graveyard whistle of Yellow jack.”
“I know. I’ve had it.”
“Have you now? Well, that’s one thing you’ll never have to worry about again. Now you’d be immune, but sixty percent of them that gets it never recover. I’ve had my bout with Yellow jack, and as you see I’m still here. They say there’s no fever where we’re going, if we can only get there without drowning.”
He passed her the smoke and said, “Let’s get back to those West Indians in Panama. Did any of them ever talk to you about zombies?”
“Och, of course. Dreadful superstitious they was. I remember them beating Voodoo drums every time we had one dying on us.”
She inhaled, let it out, and added, “In God’s truth, the medicine we had for Yellow jack wasn’t much better. Nobody really knows what causes the damned fever.”
“Did any of those Voodoo guys claim they could bring a dead man back to life, Mab?”
She thought before she said, “No. That zombie stuff is like the Hindu rope trick. Everybody knows somebody who’s seen it, but they haven’t seen it themselves.”
“How do you feel about the notion, as a nurse?”
“Och, I think it would be marvelous, if it worked. God knows I’ve seen enough people die before their time. But believe me, Dick, when people die they stay that way, especially in the tropics. It’s a terrible thing to see them starting to bloat before you can get them to the morgue.”
“There’s supposed to be some kind of zombie cult in Nuevo Verdugo, where we’ll be landing in the morning. Did anyone mention it to you when you took this job?”
Again she thought before she replied, “No, I don’t remember mention of such things. But I’d have signed on anyway. I’ve an open mind about banshees and wee people. But I’ve studied enough medicine to be sure of some things—the dead don’t ever get up again.”
He said, “I read a library book while we were waiting to board this tub. Did you know there are statutes on the books in Haiti forbidding people to practice Voodoo.”
“Och, there used to be laws in our books forbidding witchcraft, too. You can pass all the laws you like. You can even grant people a license to do it, for all it matters. Leaving out the theology about immortal souls, anyone who knows simple biology knows that even a living vegetable has a chemistry that makes sense. Dead muscles stiffen like hard-boiled eggs before they start to fall apart. A fresh cadaver twitches a bit as it stiffens, but that’s the end of it. You couldn’t move a limb with a decomposing muscle, even if your brain was still alive.”
He grimaced and said, “Glugh. It sounds pretty grim.”
“It is. I’ve been there when they have amputated a dead limb from a living body. If a man with blood poisoning has no feeling or movement in his dead tissue, how could the whole dead thing get up and walk a-round?”
“Try it this way. One writer suggested that so-called zombies aren’t really dead, but drugged some way. As a nurse, do you think a man hopped up on some jungle joy-juice might be able to keep going with a mess of bullets in him?”
She handed back the smoke and said, “Well, I’ve seen insane or hysterical patients do some wild things and that’s a fact. But even drugs have limitations. Enough anesthesia to block out all feeling would have you sleeping soundly on your back.”
“What about a combination of pain killing drugs, a stimulant, and a hard sell about one’s cause?”
“Well, you’d wind up with a very sick lad in the end, whether someone shot him or not. But I suppose someone full of opium and strychnine would look and act pretty strange.”
Then she began to fondle him as the ship mounted another wave and she said, “Speaking of stimulation, I’m well-rested and ready when you are.”
He moved his hips and stubbed out the smoke as she, teased him with her hand and then, to speed the process up, slid down the mattress to take him between her saucy rosebud lips. She apparently liked to inhale that way, too, and he liked it.
But as he rose to the occasion and was about to suggest doing it right, he heard his name above the rain and wind outside. He said, “That sounds like Gaston.”
She stopped long enough to suggest, “I thought he was supposed to get his own girl?”
Captain Gringo sat up as once again he heard Gaston, in an oddly weak tone, call out, “Dick? Merde alors, where are you?”
Captain Gringo said, “He sounds like he’s in trouble!” He swung his feet to the floor, went to the door, forced it open against the wind, and called back, “Here! What’s up, Gaston?”
The small Frenchman tottered toward him in the dim light on the wildly swaying deck. He was limping and looked like he was about to fall. So the tall American stepped out into the rain and steadied him, repeating, “What’s up? What’s the matter with you?”
Gaston said, “I seem to have been bitten by a snake.”
“Out here in the middle of the ocean?”
“I agree it is tres ridiculous, but I assure you I did not plan for such an event. I awoke to find it in bed with me. As we were discussing the matter it got me just above the knee.”
The American hesitated, aware he was stark-naked clinging to a man in soaking wet pajamas. Mab had heard and said, “Bring your friend in here, Dick.” She he did.
Mab flicked on the light, and to Captain Gringo’s relief she’d slipped into a print kimono. It was hanging open, but Gaston was in no shape to ogle. Is the light he looked like death warmed over. The two of them got him on the mattress they’d just vacated, and Mab dropped to her knees to start ripping Gaston’s pajama leg open along one seam while she asked in a professional tone, “What kind of a snake was it?”
Gaston stared at the part in her red hair with some confusion and said, “Sacre! How should I know? The creature is in the sea with a very flat head at the moment. One does not bite Gaston lightly.”
Then he stared owlishly up at his naked friend and asked, “Are not introductions in order, my old and rare friend?”
Captain Gringo said, “Her name is Mab O’Shay and she’s a nurse.”
“Ah, I thought she was a maniac intent on my groin. I expected to find you with a beautiful woman, but a nurse was almost too much to hope for. Don’t you ever make a false move, Dick?”
“Never mind all that. How does it look, Mab?”
“Like a snake bite. A big one. Can’t you remember what it looked like, Gaston?”
The Frenchman tried to sit up, fell back weakly, and said, “It was as big a serpent as one could wish for in a nightmare. It looked something like a rattlesnake with a glandular problem, but it had no rattles.”
Mab said, “Hold this, Dick,” as she started to rise. Captain Gringo took the ends of the rag tourniquet she’d improvised around Gaston’s thigh. The fang marks below it were dark open punctures surrounded by swollen white flesh. Mab hauled open a drawer of her steamer trunk and Captain Gringo asked her, “What difference does it make what kind of snake it was, Mab?”
She dropped to her knees beside Gaston, spread her kit open on the sheets and replied, “It sounds like he was bitten by a bushmaster. If he was, this antivenom is the one to use.”
Gaston asked, “What if it was not a bushmaster?”
“You’ll probably be dead in minutes,” Mab said bleakly. Then, without further consultation, she drove her hypodermic needle into Gaston’s thigh above the tourniquet, put a rubber suction cup to the wound, and started pumping.
Captain Gringo said, “It would bleed faster if you cut it open like the Indians do, wouldn’t it?”
She said, “Yes, and then he’d have an even bigger entrance for infection in this climate. The Indians don’t have antivenim. I do, if I used the right antidote. You see, a bushmaster is a viperoid snake. That shot should counteract viper venom. If that’s a cobroid bite, well …”
“Don’t you have both kinds of antivenom?”
“Of course I do.” ‘
“Then why not give him both?”
“It would be quicker to put a gun to his head. The two antivenoms would fight each other, and your friend has enough of a problem as it is!”
“Is she always so cheerful, Dick?” Gaston asked with a sigh.
Captain Gringo pasted a smile across his own numb lips and said, “Yeah. It sounds like a bushmaster to me, too.” He almost added that they’d know for sure in a minute, but he figured Gaston knew that.
Mab squirted her suction cup into a glass and reapplied it to Gaston’s leg while she said, “Ease up on the pressure a moment, Dick. We have to allow some circulation.”
Captain Gringo released the tension, and Gaston blanched and muttered, “Merde!”
“How are you feeling, Gaston?”
“Too angry to be dying. I was too excited to consider the matter when I woke up with a serpent in my bed. Now that I have had time to reconsider, you were right. Getting bitten by a jungle snake is an unusual sea adventure, hein?”
“It might have crawled up out of the cargo hold. Which bunk were you sleeping on?”
“Yours, of course. It seemed obvious you had other plans, so I saw no need to recline in the top bunk with the ship rolling like this. There is a ventilator over the top bunk. But as I was not up there, it seems obvious that the snake did not drop on me from there.”
Mab had been listening. She shuddered and said, “If someone put the bushmaster there, Dick, it seems they were aiming for you!”
Captain Gringo wondered what else was new. He asked, “How do you know for sure it was a bushmaster?” But Mab said, “Easy. Gaston’s swelling is going down.”
“I am well?” Gaston said and smiled.
She said, “No. You’re going to live. But you’re going to be a very sick lad for a few days. As soon as we get to Nuevo Verdugo it’s the infirmary for you, me bucko. You’ll be lucky if you’re able to walk without a cane in two weeks at least.”
Gaston tried again to sit up, fell back with an annoyed groan, and said, “Merde! I feel as weak as a kitten! But I must rise to strike back. When I find the cochon who threw that serpent at me, I intend to bite him back!”
Captain Gringo said, “Relax. There’s an outside chance it was an accident, and if it wasn’t, our snake charmer must still be somewhere aboard this ship.”
Gaston made it up on one elbow this time, and gasped, “Aux barricades! Why are you just standing there in your ridiculous nudity? When do we search the ship for my attacker?”
Captain Gringo glanced at Mab and asked, “When do we take this tourniquet off, doll?”
She said, “Now. The antivenim seems to be taking.”
She dug a tumbnail into Gaston’s thigh and asked if he felt it. He said, “Out But you are feeling me up too low. I don’t suppose you would consider massaging my. . . never mind. When are you going after them, Dick?”
Captain Gringo let go of the tourniquet, sat down and started getting dressed. He said, “Aside from the other passengers, there’s a good-sized crew. The bridge hands are mostly Brits. The Black Gang’s Chinese and probably doesn’t speak English or Spanish. I don’t speak Hindi, so it would be a waste of time to try and question the rest of the crew. Most of the deck watch is Lascar.”
Gaston said, “So I noticed. But could there not be a snake charmer among those Lascars? India has a certain reputation for such nonsense.”
Captain Gringo shrugged as he pulled his boots on and said, “I think East Indians play with cobras. That bushmaster was a West Indian critter.” He turned to Mab, who was eyeing his fly wistfully as he stood up to button it, and said, “You’re the expert on bushmasters, doll. Am I right in assuming it’s a pit viper?”
She said, “I think so. I’m not sure what the difference between vipers is.”
He said, “Snakes in the cobra family strike at prey they can see. Pit vipers strike at the warmth of a target in the dark. A Lascar crewman who might have handled cobras in India wouldn’t know much more than us about handling a bushmaster. If that snake was tossed in here it must have been via a bucket or basket against the door slats. You sure don’t carry one in a warm hand in the dark!”
Gaston stared morosely at the jalousie of the closed cabin door and said, “Bah. The creature I woke up with was too big to fit through there. It was as big around as my wrist and I felt like I was arm wrestling, when I got it down and stood on its head.”
“Was the door locked?”
“But of course. Who sleeps in a strange place with his door unlocked?”
Captain Gringo nodded, reached for the gun rig on the post and strapped it on, saying, “I’ll be right back.”
He went out into the storm and made his way along the wet slanting deck to his and. Gaston’s cabin. The wind and rain were letting up, but the seas were still high and the deck was deserted. He didn’t know what he’d say to anyone he met out there in any case.
He drew his .38, took a deep breath, and stepped inside, crabbing sideways to avoid being outlined in the doorway as he fumbled for the light switch.
The cabin was empty, and despite Gaston’s hurried departure and the unlocked door, nobody had been at their minimal luggage. He could see where Gaston had stamped the bushmaster to death on the floorboards with his bare but tough old heel. There was a little blood on the sheets, too. But that was about it. The vent above the top bunk was screened with a solid-looking grating. There were no large gaps in the wall paneling or baseboards.
He waited until the ship was in a trough and switched off the light, bracing himself with his free hand against a bunk post. A pale gray slit in the otherwise total blackness gave the show away. One of the wooden slats near the top of the door had been pried away. A missing slat on a tub this old meant little. But no snake had slithered six feet up a wet door and dropped in unassisted as well as uninvited.
He locked the door as he let himself out, brows knitted in thought. He knew he hadn’t done it, Mab hadn’t done it, and it seemed pretty obvious Gaston hadn’t done it. But there were well over thirty people aboard who could have.
He knew the watch officer would have a list of every crewman whose duty would eliminate him from the time slot involved. But that would mean long tedious explanations and wouldn’t prove enough to matter. If one or more ship’s officers was involved it would only add to the confusion. Almost anyone aboard could have slipped away for a lousy five minutes and nobody else would remember that he had, too.
He went back to Mab’s cabin and told them, “The snake wasn’t looking for us. It was pushed. If a crew member did it, we’ll probably never find out why. If it was a passenger, they’ll be getting off with us at Nuevo Verdugo.”
Mab asked, “Aren’t you going to tell the captain he has a murderer aboard?”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “That’s his problem and the least of his worries. This tub figures to sink any minute. Right now, whoever did it is holed up in the dark, waiting to hear all the noise when someone’s found dead in my bunk. It might be interesting to just watch and see who looks most surprised when the three of us walk down the gangplank alive.”
Gaston nodded and said, “I see it as our best move, too.”
But Mab said, “Don’t you think they’ll try again, once they know they’ve failed?”
Captain Gringo’s eyes were grim as he replied, “I sure hope so.”