Captain Gringo grimaced and said, “You're a cheerful son of a bitch!” Then he turned to Venezis and added, “It’s your ship, Captain. Any objections?” Venezis said, “Of course not. Between you, you seem to have saved us from a watery grave. But would you mind telling me what in the devil we are doing now?”

Captain Gringo said, “We can’t risk full speed ahead at night in waters like these, phosphorescence or not, and those sea sleds move like spit across a hot stove. The last time those other guys saw us we were heading up the coast. If we put in and duck our masts behind some mangroves—”

“Ah, I see the plan, and I like it. But I heard the Indians along the Mosquito Coast are, ah ...”

“Savage is the word you’re groping for, Skipper. They are. They have good reason to be. But they probably won’t bother us if we don’t bother them.”

“What if they do?”

“That’s why Hakim sent Gaston and me along. They probably won’t. The Mosquito Indians don’t go looking for trouble like Caribs. They just don’t much like to work on sugar plantations for no pay. So they tend to shoot and run. But how deep in solid ship’s timbers can a reed arrow penetrate, right?”

Venezis said he was sure a cheerful son of a bitch and moved forward to herd everyone who didn’t have good reason to be on deck below, out of the way.

Gaston thought he had good reason to be on deck as he moved aft to consult his younger comrade. He said, “Eh bien, since only our adorable ass end is exposed to danger at the moment, I put a fresh belt in the bow gun and came back to see if you have any idea at all what is going on, my noisy youth.”

“Did you put the tarp back on?”

“Mais non, I thought the hot Maxim would enjoy salt spray. Who do we think launched that dramatique whatever at us back there, Dick?”

Captain Gringo frowned and said, “I’m still working on that. I can think of lots of people who might not want us looking for that sub.”

Gaston spat over the stem and said, “In that case my money is on the Boche. They have always loved surprises. The Prussian needle gun came as a trés dismal surprise to us back in seventy.”

Captain Gringo nodded and replied, “I hope that was a German getting cute back there. It makes me feel better about the square heads we have on board.”

Gaston shrugged and said, “Keller’s the only real Boche aboard and he’s half-American as well as queer, non?”

“How did you find out about him and the rosy-cheeked Greek boy?”

“Socrates came running out of Keller’s stateroom as I popped out of ours. We were both buttoning our pants at the time. I think he was more embarrassed than me. But he was lucky as well. Keller’s wife just missed the show, coming along the companionway just a moment later. I still haven’t figured out who she was screwing when things got so exciting. I feel a little jealous.”

Captain Gringo muttered, “Heads up,” as Keller himself moved back to join them. Captain Gringo said, “Evening, Keller. Didn’t the skipper order everyone below just now?”

Keller said, “He did. I’m still in command of this expedition. What in the hell is going on? I was still getting dressed when I heard that huge explosion.”

Captain Gringo said, “Marconi-controlled sea sled, converted to a fast floating bomb. Were they working on anything like that when you were working in Germany, Keller?”

 

“Not exactly. But of course they were experimenting with wireless. The idea was invented in Germany just a few short years ago and ... You say they, were steering explosives at us with it? That’s crazy. Not even Marconi can send radio waves more than a few miles yet.”

“I know. That’s why we have to stay a few miles away from those pricks. You’d better stay below with your wife, Keller. The next thing that comes out of the dark at us could be a reed arrow, poison tipped.”

That seemed to do it. As Keller left, muttering to himself, Gaston sighed and said, “Such a waste. All that blond femininity to enjoy and he prefers sissy derrieres. Who do you suppose could be getting some of that real stuff, Dick?”

“Jesus, don’t you ever think of anything but pussy?”

“Mais non, I told you I didn’t go in for sissy boys. At least, not up to now. But sacre goddamn, if I don’t get some of the real thing soon … Oh well, I see Socrates is taken. I wonder if he’s the only one like that aboard.”

“Don’t try to find out. Despite the jokes about Greek boys, most of them are just as likely to bust your head for stealing a feel as anyone else.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Where there is smoke there should be fire, and we know at least one Greek boy aboard lives up to the reputation, non?”

“One’s about average in any crowd this size. The poor Greeks are stuck with all that garbage Plato wrote. They tell me Plato’s required reading at a lot of boys’ schools all over. So behave yourself.”

Before Gaston could reply, Forsythe called from the helm, “Mangroves ahead!” and signaled dead slow. The two soldiers of fortune leaned over the starboard rail to see what looked like a line of fuzzy inkblots with their roots in green fire as Venezis rejoined them and told the Jamaican he was running them aground, God damn it. Forsythe laughed and said, “I know what I’m doing, Mon. But I don’t talk Greek. So stick around and have your boys drop anchor when I gives the word, hear?”

They were still arguing about it when Forsythe steered the schooner between two clumps of mangrove and snapped, “Now!”

So a few seconds, later they were swinging about on the anchor chain as Forsythe cut the engine and the Peirene came to a dead stop with her stem shoreward and her bows aimed seaward between the mangrove clumps. Captain Gringo said, “Nice going. You’re a pretty good seaman, Jamaica,” and Forsythe said, “Good? Hell, I’m the best, Mon!”

~*~

The rest of the night passed uneventfully. They were too far out to really have to worry about natives on shore, but they kept a deck watch anyway. Captain Gringo didn’t take Antigone up on her invitation, even when most of the ship turned in before morning. For one thing, it wouldn’t have been delicate until he’d had a bath. For another, he was up the mainmast for the next few hours, trying to see if he could spot that other vessel out to sea.

He couldn’t. So as the empty seaward horizon began to turn pearl gray he turned the lookout over to one of the crew members to slide down the stays and enjoy an early-morning skinny dip before turning in to catch a few winks, alone, as Gaston watched the shoreline.

It seemed he’d barely dropped off before the little Frenchman woke him to report they were standing out to sea again and ask if he wanted to do anything about it. So he got up and went on deck as Gaston turned in. There wasn’t much to see. The trades were blowing a fog bank in off the open sea, and the Greek who’d relieved Forsythe at the helm didn’t speak English or Spanish. So he went to the ship’s mess to see if there was anything to eat.

There was. Most of the others were sitting at the table as Socrates served them, looking sort of shy. When someone called out Captain Gringo’s name, Antigone stuck her head out of the galley, looking hurt. Herta Keller sat sipping her coffee as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

As he sat down, Fitzke, the Swiss, asked if they were out of danger now, and Captain Gringo said, “No. We won’t be out of danger until this job is over. But if we don’t run aground amid the Mosquito Keys this morning, we ought to be okay until this fog lifts.”

The little Hungarian girl, Eva Horgany, rolled her spooky eyes and asked him just where they were. So he said, “Almost halfway to the Bahías. We still have to round the big bulge of Cape Gracias a Dios, where Nicaragua and Honduras bump borders. I hope the fog holds up past there. The channel between the cape and the offshore Half Moon reefs is a favorite hunting ground for coastal pirates and patrol boats.”

Eva gasped. “Will those patrol boats be looking for us?”

He shrugged and replied, “Hopefully they’ll be more interested in the pirates. That’s how come they’re patrolling those waters. Nobody’s supposed to know about us, see?”

She still looked worried. Keller looked worried too as he said, “Somebody else knows about us! Have you figured out who tried to stop us last night, Walker?”

Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Not really. I think we can eliminate the American or Royal Navy. No ironclad would have had to act so sneaky against a soft-hulled schooner. So that other craft was probably a souped-up sailboat, too. After that it gets tougher. I doubt if either the Spanish or their German friends really want us to salvage that wrecked submarine ahead of them.”

Fitzke lowered his cup and said, “That means they haven’t located it yet either, no?”

Captain Gringo nodded and said, “That’s another thing we’ve got to worry about. I mean, how come? The Spanish must have known they’d lost a vessel among the Bahías well before anyone else did. So why haven’t they or their German pals already found it? Has it occurred to any of you we could be on a snipe hunt?”

Some of the Europeans looked blank. But the German-American Keller knew what a snipe hunt was and objected, “The Hondurans fished a Spanish submariner out of the water near the Bahías, dammit.”

Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “So what? They didn’t see any submarine, did they? What do we really know about that soggy Spaniard anyway?”

Keller said, “I read the official report. Hakim was able to get a copy for us from a Honduran officer who enjoys good cigars. I forget the shipwrecked Spaniard’s dago name, but he said he was an oiler aboard His Most Catholic Majesty’s D-Uno. Hakim says the D stands for ‘Debajo’ and Uno, of course, means—”

“I know what it means,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding for those who spoke no Spanish, “It would be U-One in Der Kaiser’s navy. Hakim told us it was the first submarine the Spanish bought. I’d still like to know if it was really wrecked at all. That submariner could have been a plant, you know. I doubt if Spain really wants Uncle Sam to know it has at least one functional underwater gunbucket cruising anywhere close to Cuba these days, and anyone can lie if he’s told to.”

Keller said, “Dammit, the man died shortly after the Hondurans rescued him. He couldn’t have been faking it. I read his medical report. He’d been in the water for some time, clinging to some wreckage. Aside from exposure, he was coughing blood a lot. The Honduran navy medics assumed that he had pneumonia. Hakim says it’s more likely he inhaled some chlorine before he got out. That smells like a wrecked submarine too.”

Captain Gringo frowned and said, “I know what chlorine smells like. But what in the hell would chlorine gas be doing aboard a submarine?”

Fitzke said, “I can answer that. Sea water spilled on storage batteries filled with sulfuric acid generates chlorine. So Keller and Hakim must be right about the vessel hitting hard enough to crack her hull. If a man in the engine room got out, it couldn’t have been from far under. So the submarine has to be aground somewhere, awash or not too deep.”

Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Yeah, and not even Bo Peep can find her. There’s a piece of the puzzle missing, folks.”

Little Eva said, “If someone has already found the wreck, would be they trying to stop us from looking for it?”

He’d figured she was smart. Even her husband seemed surprised but not displeased by her suggestion as he said, “By God, she’s right! How far did you say we were from those Bahías, Walker?”

Captain Gringo said, “At least two days. And everyone else has had a chance to search among the Bahías a lot longer. So forget a conning tower still above the surface like a sea serpent, gang. Even if it lay fully submerged but visible from the surface, somebody should have found it by now.”

Keller said, “Not if it’s tucked in some cove the way we were last night.”

“There’s a law saying other search vessels can’t poke into mangroves, too?”

“Not if they’re deep-draft naval vessels. Why did you think Hakim sent us aboard this shallow-draft sponger?”

Captain Gringo thought as he sipped some coffee. Then he nodded and said, “Maybe. But that sure makes the other guys dumb as hell. Any gunboat that doesn’t carry lifeboats smaller than this schooner is in big trouble in these waters!”

He put the problem aside in favor of his ham and eggs and let the others worry about it for now. Hakim wasn’t paying him and Gaston to find the wreck. They just had to keep these other idiots from getting killed before they found it or, more likely, gave up.

He finished and went back out on deck to enjoy a smoke in the fog. As he moved up in the bows, Herta Keller caught up with him and said, “Dick, we must talk.”

He looked aft, past her, and said, “Well, it’s too foggy for anyone to spot us from more than a few feet away, but can’t it wait until dark, Honey Box?”

She sighed and said, “Nein. It is about what happened in the dark we have to talk about, Dick. I don’t know what got into me last night.”

He just smiled crookedly at her. She blushed and said, “Aside from you, I mean. I was terribly annoyed with mein husband, but I may have made a mistake. When I went back to our stateroom I found him all alone, and that Greek boy is the one who delivers food and liquor, as mein husband said.”

He saw no reason to play tattletale. So he just shrugged and said, “I’m glad you made up, Mrs. Keller.”

“Please don’t be angry, Dick. I shall never forget what a grand time we had together, but despite our troubles, I am still a married woman and, well, if he’s not having an affair with anyone else on board, I don’t see how we can continue with ours, do you?”

He tried not to look as relieved as he felt as he nodded soberly and said, “No. We have to consider the children, right?”

“Silly, we have kein kinder. I told you last night I knew how to take care of meinself and ….Are you mocking me, Dick?”

“No. I’m mocking me. I get the picture, Herta. Maybe I’ll see you around the campus sometime, okay?”

She didn’t get that, either. But she kissed him in a disgustingly sisterly way and left him to field-strip and clean the forward Maxim in peace, and feeling a lot better than she’d found him.

He’d just finished and lashed the tarp over the machine gun when Antigone joined him alone in the bows.

There seemed to be a lot of that going around this morning for some reason.

The petite Greek girl looked shyly aft, threw her arms around him to give him a far from sisterly kiss, and asked, “Why didn’t you come to me last night, you brute?”

He pointed at the covered machine gun and said, “I was sort of busy.”

She laughed and said, “It’s just as well. In all the excitement, more than one crewman passed my open door to find my bunk chaste and pure. I heard some of them laughing just now about poor Socrates. I fear I was not the only one who heard him entertaining someone next door to me last night. Naturally, none of the others will admit it was he. So it’s the talk of the ship, and if we are very very discreet—”

“What time do you want me to drop by, Sweet Stuff?” he cut in.

She fluttered her lashes and said, “Not to my quarters. It’s too dangerous, with everyone trying to catch Socrates right next door to me. I took some bedding and pillows down to the hold just now. There’s a crate of ship’s stores I had almost emptied and, well, now it is empty, and discreetly lashed in a corner with the only opening facing the bulkhead and...”

He cut in again to say, “I admire a lady who thinks on her feet about her ass. I’ll come to you by moonlight, though hell should bar the way, or unless someone sinks us first.”

She giggled and asked, “Would you like to see our love nest now?”

He said, with a wistful smile, “Hold the thought. This damned fog’s lifting and someone could need me on deck in a hurry.”

“But you promise to come tonight?”

“Honey, I promise to come all night, if we live that long.”

~*~

They did, but it wasn’t easy. The fog thinned out within the hour and, when it did, the lookout, topside, spotted steamer smoke to the northeast and called it down to Venezis, who swore and called for reverse screw. Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Steady as she goes, Skipper. If they’re over the horizon to us we’re over the same to them, and we’re not throwing smoke, thanks to internal combustion.”

Venezis spat the right orders in Greek, but asked in English, “What if it’s one of those fast new Yankee torpedo rams?”

“We’d sure better hope it doesn’t spot us,” Captain Gringo replied, adding, “All sorts of ships are patrolling the Half Moon reefs over that way, Skipper. We’re never going to make it around the bulge if we duck every smoke plume in these parts. The idea is to get around to the west as soon as possible so there’ll be fewer to duck!”

“I don’t like this at all,” Venezis protested, looking all about as he added, “It’s too fine a day to be sailing such waters. That damned sky is clear as far as the eye can see and the damned horizon line is sharp as a razor in every direction. There’s no way for a patrol boat to miss a shark fin against the skyline right now!”

He was right. The lookout called down in Greek. Venezis said, “Skata!” and whirled to stare back along their wake. Captain Gringo turned too, to watch the dark lateen sails coming their way from the southwest and observe laconically, “Yep, that’s a coastal pirate, sure as shit. They can drop that rig flat in less than a full minute. I told you that patrol boat’s smoke plume was too far out to worry about. Our chums back there must have just put out of the mangroves to see what kind of goodies we might have aboard.”

Venezis said, grim faced, “I know what that other vessel is. Our Aegean Sea scum use the same Arab rig. What are you waiting for? You still have your machine gun covered, dammit!”

“Simmer down and order full speed, Skipper. We ought to be able to outrun ’em without a firelight. I’d just as soon not have one with something bigger patrolling the same waters just out of sight but maybe not out of earshot. The wind’s hardly blowing right now and the sounds of gunshots carry pretty good over water, you know.”

Venezis ordered full speed ahead. It soon became obvious that wasn’t doing them much good. The Greek skipper stared aft and said, “I don’t understand. You’re right about the light airs. So how is that goddamned lugger moving so fast? Lateen sails are fast, but not that fast!”

Captain Gringo said, “Obviously they have an engine, too, and a good one. They’re just using their sails to hold them steady on one heel as they overtake us. It’s a pain in the ass to have to aim a deck gun with said deck rocking under you a lot, see?”

“I see all too well what they intend! Shouldn’t we put our own canvas up for the same reasons?”

“No. We don’t have deck guns to worry about. So let the pricks guess which way we’re about to yaw when they get within range. I can aim a Maxim from any angle and with bare poles we’ll be more maneuverable than them.”

Gaston came aft to join them, rubbing his eyes as he muttered, “What is going on, Dick? I just awoke to find us tearing madly at full speed through the chop.” Then he spotted what they were looking at and said, “Merde alors, I thought the Royal Navy had cleared this stretch of the Mosquito Coast.”

Captain Gringo said, “That was last year. There seem to be some new kids on the block. From the way they’re moving, they don’t look like the usual native fishermen turned rogue. That tub has a mighty good engine in its hull. Internal combustion, too. They’re not throwing steam-engine smoke.”

Gaston said, “Oui, they must take their profession trés seriously. I’d better get up to the bow gun, hein?”

“Not yet. See how they’re holding their position well out of gun range?”

“Oui; they obviously don’t intend to move in on us until we’re both clear of that gunboat smoke I now regard to seaward. As I said, they must be professionals who know their chosen trade.”

Venezis said, “Oh, God, I told that damned Papadakis I did not wish to come to America!”

Captain Gringo said, “Relax. Gaston and me are pros, too. If you have to do something while we wait ’em out, make sure none of the others pop out on deck uninvited. It could start getting sort of noisy around here before too long.”

The skipper made the sign of the cross and moved forward, leaving them alone with the sweating but silent helmsman, who probably only knew half of what was going on. Captain Gringo said, “Damn. I should have told him to get Forsythe. We may need a man at the wheel I can talk to.”

Gaston said he’d go get the Jamaican. But he didn’t have to. Great minds seem to run along the same channels, and the big black came around the cabin coaming to call out, “Skipper says we got more trouble, Mon. What’s up?”

Captain Gringo pointed at the lateen sails behind them and told Forsythe to see for himself. The Jamaican whistled and said, “I know that lugger, Mon. That’s old Providencia Pete and the centerboard lugger, No Quarter!”

“Is he a friend of yours, Jamaica?”

“Providencia Pete ain’t got no friends, Mon. His mammy hated him so much she kept dropping him on his head when he was a chil’. That boy is one mean nigger, and he feeds his crew on rum and gunpowder, too!”

“Okay, if he’s looking for trouble he came to the right place. Take the wheel and when he moves in we’ll give him some crossfire, too.’ ’

“Won’t work.” Forsythe sighed, adding, “That old boy ain’t just mean. He’s smart. He may not know about the machine guns, but he won’t close within range of small arms anyhow. Soon as we don’t have that smoke plume over yonder, Old Providencia Pete means to open up on us with his deck guns. Rifled breech-loading two-inchers, long range. You mind do I make a suggestion? It’s sorty of sneaky.”

“By all means, Jamaica. I sure don’t have an answer for long-range deck guns!”

Forsythe explained how it was the custom of those who knew the pirate and his customs to hoist a white flag and start tossing presents over the side to him. Half the time, if Providencia Pete was pleased with the results, and the endangered vessel kept going, he’d give up the chase. The pirate knew he could always overtake his victims again if they tried to satisfy him with cheap trade goods.

Captain Gringo started to ask what they had on board to toss over the side to the pirates. But Gaston said, “Mon Dieu, could anyone I know still be that innocent? You take the wheel, Forsythe, I shall prepare the tribute for our Jolly Rogers, hein?”

So, less than two hours later, with the smoke of the distant patrol boat no longer haunting the horizon to seaward, the Peirene hoisted a pillow case and slowed down as the grinning Gaston heaved what looked like a sea chest over the stem and let it trail aft on a long line. But as the No Quarter moved closer, the sponger edged away like a nervous virgin, staying just out of range as the pirate skipper laughed and called out to his crew, “I told you they was sissies. But keep that deck gun trained on them anyway, whilst we see what they think their white asses is worth.”

The No Quarter reversed its screw as it bore down on the bobbing sea chest and a crewman leaned out over the side to haul it aboard with his gaff hook.

He didn’t. Aboard the Peirene, Gaston sparked together the bare copper ends of his improvised battery line, and the sea chest, along with the pirate lugger, No Quarter, dissolved in a fireball of exploding dynamite!

As the shock wave passed over the schooner, Venezis stared in wonder at the falling debris and said, “By the beard of Pantocrator, it worked! Shall we see if there were any survivors?”

The two soldiers of fortune just looked at him, and he said, “Sorry. Dumb question, once one thinks about it.”

~*~

 

It was good to be home again in a sweet old-fashioned girl as Captain Gringo lay with Antigone in her improvised love nest down in the hold that night.

She’d been right about it being what she called discreet. He’d never have thought to look between the nondescript packing case and the bulkhead, even if he’d expected to find someone playing slap and tickle down there in the dark.

The inside was fixed up soft and comfy with the pillows and bedding she’d smuggled from her quarters, and, even better, by bracing his bare feet against the inside of the crate he was able to put it to her deep as hell with those two pillows under her sweet little derriere. She said she liked it, too.

They couldn’t smoke between times. Aside from the danger of someone wondering why they smelled tobacco smoke coming from a deck vent, it was already stuffy enough down there. Before holding their naked bodies, the packing case had been stuffed with coffee and goat cheese. Gaston had been right about Greek cheese being an acquired taste. But Antigone smelled just right as she rubbed her perspiring naked flesh against his, so what the hell.

He’d already established that she liked her loving old-fashioned, albeit often. So he didn’t suggest anything acrobatic, even if it had been possible in such close quarters. He was glad he hadn’t when, during a pause for pillow conversation and, hopefully, renewed inspiration. Antigone snuggled close and said, “This is nice. But I’ll be glad when I can use my real bunk again. It should be safe tomorrow night, darling. Nobody is watching Socrates next door now. They’ve found out who he’s been doing you-know-what with.” He grimaced and said, “Remind me never to make love to Socrates behind a keyhole. Who’d they catch him with?”

“You’ll never guess. It’s that Swiss, Fitzke.”

He blinked in the dark and said, “You’re right. I never would have guessed it was him!”

She shrugged a bare shoulder against him and began to fondle him as she said, “Well, the poor Swiss doesn’t have his own woman aboard, like Keller, Horgany, or you. But it’s still a little disgusting, don’t you agree?”

“I’ve never tried it. What happens, now that the crew knows?”

She frowned and asked, “What do you mean, darling? Nobody’s going to do anything. They just wanted to know. My people are a curious race.”

“You can say that again. On some vessels the skipper would maroon anyone caught at buggery, it they let the poor bastard live at all. Your people must be tolerant as well as nosy.”

She chuckled and said, “Everyone enjoys gossip. But Greek men feel it is beneath them to pick on weaklings, unless their women are involved.”

“Hmm, that makes them not only regular guys but explains a lot of dumb stories, I guess. How come your people are so strict with you girls if they don’t mind a guy getting sexy with another guy?”

“Heavens, can’t you see the difference, dear? What you and I are doing would be a sin, if my father ever found out. What Socrates does is just silly! The poor thing thinks he is a woman, but it’s not his fault he’s crazy. That Swiss is the one who’s disgusting, as well as weak. Could you put this in such a disgusting place, Dick?”

“Heaven forfend!” he answered innocently, adding, “I’d cut it off first.”

She laughed and said, “Please don’t. I’m not through with it just yet.” Then she stiffened in his arms and hissed, “Oh, someone’s coming!”

It sure wasn’t him. He stiffened, too, and tried not even to breathe as they heard someone moving around in the hold outside. Moving sneakily; too!

A million years went by as the two lovers in the crate listened with bated breaths to the odd rummaging sounds outside. Then whoever it was went back up the ladder and shut the hatchway quietly.

He took a deep breath and muttered, “Must have been one of the crew, swiping a late snack or something.”

But Antigone said, “No, In the first place, not even Socrates would steal ship’s stores. That would get a man killed aboard a Greek vessel! Besides, he didn’t come over this way, where the provisions I haven’t unpacked yet are.”

“He or she was surely after something down here, and I don’t think it was sloppy seconds, no offense! We’d better get dressed and get out of this box, Doll.”

“Don’t you want to make love to me some more, darling?”

“Want to. Can’t. I have to see if I can find out what he she or it might have swiped. Aside from that, this hold isn’t as private as you said it was, and I do so hate to get caught with my pants down!”

It was a good thing he’d thought of that. They’d barely dressed-and lit the hold lamp to examine the cargo when the hatch above slid open and Venezis called down, in Greek. So when Captain Gringo told her to for Pete’s sake answer and let him take it from there, she did, and the skipper came down the ladder, holding a big belaying pin in his free hand and wearing a puzzled frown on his leathery face.

Captain Gringo said, “You heard it too, eh? Your cook here just told me she thought someone was trying to get into her stores. But when we came down just now, whoever it was was gone.”

Venezis went right on frowning thoughtfully as he said, “You heard noise in the hold and came down alone, without calling me?”

Captain Gringo opened his jacket to expose the grips of his .38 as he answered easily, “I didn’t come down alone. I told this girl here not to follow. But you crazy Greeks all seem to want to act brave for some reason.”

Venezis said, “All Greeks are brave, even our women, as you just saw. But you probably just heard something shifting as we tacked just now. The trades are picking up again and I’ve hoisted the sails to save fuel; see?”

Captain Gringo certainly didn’t want the skipper poking about among the packing cases. So he said, “Well, everything seems secure enough now.” Then he turned to Antigone and said briskly, “You did well to tell me anyway, Miss ... Antigone, right?”

She managed not to laugh as she demurely admitted that was her name. So the three of them went back up out of the hold together and, what the hell, he’d seen enough to know that none of the other cases had been broken into. So maybe it had been someone just looking for a place to jerk off or something.

But he told Gaston about it anyway as he rejoined the Frenchman in the stateroom he was supposed to be spending the night in and now, dammit, had to.

Gaston didn’t like it. He said, “If someone planted a bomb down there I may never speak to you again, Dick. You should have searched further!”

Captain Gringo said, “I looked around as much as anyone could without hauling half the cargo up on deck. Nobody aboard would be crazy enough to sink the schooner under them. By the way, speaking of crazy, that Greek boy, Socrates, sure gets around. They say he’s been screwing that Swiss, Fitzke, now.”

“Sacrebleu, I am beginning to feel so left out. I thought you said Keller liked boys.”

“That’s what his wife told me, before she changed her story. Maybe Keller and Socrates had a lover’s quarrel and the Swiss caught him on the rebound?” Gaston laughed and said, “I wish that Hungarian, Horgany, would go to bed with Socrates so I could get a crack at that little Eva! Alas, they seem a devoted couple, even though she does have the eyes of a dedicated sex maniac.”

Captain Gringo told him to stop talking dirty and let him get some sleep for chrissake. It was bad enough a guy had to turn in earlier than planned with an only partly satisfied erection. Now the noisy old bastard had to remind him of stuff he hadn’t even been thinking about.

He turned over and tried to fall asleep. He wondered if Antigone, or Herta, was hurting for him right now. He wondered what that little Oriental-eyed Eva looked like with her clothes off, and if Horgany was treating her right right now. Jesus, he was never going to fall asleep at this rate, tired as he was. But then he did, and didn’t stop to dream until just before Gaston woke him up, saying something dumb about something on deck.

Captain Gringo sat up, rubbing his face, and muttered, “God damn you, Gaston. I was having this dream and somebody was telling me something important, if only I could remember who it was or what they were telling me. What time is it?”

“About seven in the morning, and wait until you see what’s come up with the sun! It looks like a Carib canoe, adrift, and the lookout does not think it’s empty. He just called down that there is a naked lady lying down in it off our bows!”

The lookout wasn’t drunk or crazy. As Captain Gringo and Gaston joined the crewmen in the bows, the Peirene lay dead in the water, gently riding the long glassy ground swell as the second mate and bos’n gently hauled a stark-naked girl aboard from her semi-swamped dugout canoe She was unconscious. That was the only reason she wasn’t putting up one hell of a fight. For the more worldly soldiers of fortune could see at a glance she was a Black Carib, no more than fourteen or so, with her firm young body too dark for pure Indian but too red for pure black or mulatto.

Venezis still thought he’d rescued something less inclined to kill on sight, of course, so as they approached he turned and said, “There is no paddle aboard the canoe or adrift in sight. She must have lost it and been swept out of the mouth of some river over that way, no?”

Captain Gringo said, “No, she’s not a Mosquito. The first thing we do is tie her hands and feet. Then we’d better take her canoe in tow and wake her up with some brandy. I doubt it, but she may speak a little Spanish.”

Venezis frowned and said, “We’ll make her comfortable in my quarters and give her some ouzo. But it seems silly to tie her up.”

Then the naked girl opened her eyes, murmuring in quite human discomfort until she looked up at the Greek seamen holding her and showed Ilias Venezis what a Black Carib behaved like, thinking she’d been captured by the white men she’d been raised to hate.

The Greek who’d been gently supporting her howled and reared back, clapping a hand to his face as four claw marks spattered blood across the deck. The second mate tried to grab her from behind but made the mistake of uttering soothing remarks to what he still took for a little girl, until she put him on the deck with a kick in the crotch. So when she screamed like a banshee and staggered aft along the deck, it was all hers, even if she didn’t know where she was going.

Venezis gasped. “My God, what’s wrong with her?”

Captain Gringo said, “Spanish slavers, for openers. I’ll get her when she falls again. She’s too weak and groggy to really sink the ship with her teeth right now.”

He saw he was right when the Black Carib girl staggered into the fore-cabin coaming, tried to tear the roof off, and fell unconscious to the deck again as Gaston whipped off his belt and said, “I’ll get her wrists. Someone get those ankles before she wakes up again, dammit!”

Captain Gringo dropped to his knees to hold the girl’s ankles as Venezis came unstuck and produced a length of splicing cord to lash them together. Gaston said, “Give the rest to me. I’d rather have my pants falling down than a Black Carib running free on deck. But that looks better.”

The skipper tossed Gaston the coil. They’d just tied her good when she woke up again, struggled madly, screamed loudly, and banged her head on the deck a couple of times to knock herself out again.

Captain Gringo said, “You don’t want her in your quarters. If she can’t get at you any other way she’ll shit your bunk. Let’s take her to the mess and put some food and water in her, for openers. She looks like she hasn’t been getting either regularly, lately.”

He picked her up. She was amazingly light for so much trouble. He carried her aft to the ship’s mess, where by now everyone, awakened by the noise, seemed to be gravitating. As he carried the young girl through the gathering crowd he shouted, “Stand back and, better yet, get the hell out of here. This kid’s scared of white faces. So it could throw her into shock to see this many gaping at her when she comes to again.”

Actually, it seemed to give the Black Carib a raving fit just to see Captain Gringo, Gaston, the skipper, and Antigone Kantos when she sputtered and opened her eyes again after the Greek girl had forced some ouzo between her lips. She bit down on the tin cup with strong white teeth and tossed it over Antigone’s shoulder with a jerk of her head. Then, since the startled Antigone was out of easy reach, she twisted and tried to bite Captain Gringo’s face off as he held her up in a seated position atop the mess table.

He swore and flattened her gently but firmly against the table as she pounded her bound heels on the wood, struggled to free her bound hands, and cursed him and everyone else in sight in incomprehensible Carib.

Antigone asked what she was saying. Captain Gringo said, “It’s Carib to me. Have you got anything back there that smells really yummy? I don’t think she’s getting the message that we want to feed her before we rape and torture her.”

“My God, is that what she thinks you mean to do to her?”

“Can’t you tell? Get some damned food, Antigone!”

The Greek girl dashed into the galley, grabbed the first pot she came to, and ran back out with a mess of fava beans laced with garlic and olive oil. She smiled down at the raging captive and put a spoon in the Greek cooking to let the Black Carib girl smell it.

Captain Gringo braced himself. He knew what he'd do if unknown savages showed something that smelled like that under his nose!

But apparently the pretty little Black Carib had been adrift at sea longer than they’d assumed. She went right on scowling and snarling at Antigone, but let the Greek girl feed her a spoonful at a time, the way a trapped wolf might accept its last meal.

Captain Gringo laughed and said, “I’ll be damned, she seems to like Greek cooking!”

The laugh was a mistake. The young captive turned her head away from Antigone, glared thoughtfully at him, then spat a mouthful of chewed fava beans and garlic in his face.

He wearily wiped it away as he sighed and said, “Could use a little less garlic. I forgot they only allow their friends to laugh at them.”

“They have friends?” marveled Venezis.

Gaston said, “Oui, but, as one might assume, not many. She probably thinks we are Spanish slavers. Please don’t point out there are no Spanish slavers anymore. It’s been quite some time since the last ogre ate a child in my old neighborhood, but when one is raised on horror stories, one tends to become excited when they seem to be coming true, hein?”

Having deigned to swallow a few spoonfuls of Antigone’s highly seasoned beans, the young captive refused more and seemed to be asking for something. Then she remembered one wasn’t supposed to ask favors of the devil and dummied up, trying not to cry. Antigone asked, “What do you suppose she’s asking for?” and Captain Gringo said, “That’s easy. Water. Now that we’ve relined her stomach and put some salt back in her, we can slake her thirst without killing her.”

Antigone ran back to the galley as Venezis snorted in disgust at himself and said, “Of course. I should have thought of water right away instead of ouzo!”

But Captain Gringo said, “No. It’s better to wake a dehydrated stomach up gently. I made the mistake of pouring a canteen down the throat of a prospector we found lost in the Arizona desert one time. He thanked us, threw it all up, and died of shock. I think it’s die salts you lose, sweating under a hot sun. I don’t know what the garlic helps, but, yeah, this one’s coming back to life okay.”

Antigone returned with a pitcher of water and some sweet sticky loukoumi she’d just baked. The Black Carib girl seemed to trust another female better. She may have assumed Antigone was a slave girl, too. At any rate, she let Antigone feed her loukoumi and would have swallowed the whole pitcher of water had not Captain Gringo told Antigone to take it easy. The native girl glared at him as she realized he was the head torturer who wouldn’t let her have all the water she wanted.

The others asked what came next. Captain Gringo said, “We’d better lay her down somewhere and toss a blanket over her.”

Antigone frowned and said, “I hardly think she needs a blanket, Dick. She’s sweating like a little pig now.”

He nodded and said, “Yeah, she sure was dehydrated. Now that her pores are starting to work again, she’ll probably come down with pneumonia on us if we let her catch a chill. She must have been adrift quite a while to get her system so screwed up.”

Venezis said, “You’re right. She’s starting to shiver. I once found a Turk adrift, back home, and we’d no sooner cooled him off and made him comfortable than he turned blue and died on us. But it could have been worse. At least it was only a Turk. We’ll have to put her to bed. But where, if you say she’s liable to mess the bunk?”

Antigone laughed and said, “Let’s put her in Socrates’s cubby. He’s seldom in his own bunk, and what’s a little skata on the sheets to his kind?”

Venezis laughed too, but said, “All right. But you shouldn’t talk about a shipmate like that, Girl. It’s not seemly, coming from a woman.”

Gaston said, “I’ve a better idea. Why not just give her a paddle and put her back in her canoe. Look at those savage eyes glaring back at us. She shows no gratitude at all and I doubt she ever shall, hein?”

Captain Gringo said, “We’re not after thank-you notes. We just have to save the poor little brute’s life.”

“Pour quoi? If the shoes were on the other feet the adorable child would eat us! Can’t you see she’s an untamed savage?”

“Sure, but we’re supposed to be civilized. Let’s get her into that cubby under a blanket.”

They did, but it wasn’t easy. The Black Carib girl wriggled like a panic-stricken snake when Captain Gringo picked her up to carry her to the mess attendant’s cubby. It felt sort of sexy to him. For she was nicely built as well as naked and slippery. But from the way she was screaming she must have thought he was about to put her in the cooking pot. She seemed surprised as hell when she found herself still bound but lying on a clean sheet with a cotton-flannel blanket over her. Antigone said she’d stay with her until she calmed down, since she was the only one the frightened native girl didn’t scream at.

As the men went back outside, Venezis asked how long all this would be going on. Captain Gringo said, “We’re over a day’s sail from the Bahías, where she must have drifted from. It looks like she lost her paddle before or after getting caught in the coastal countercurrent that swept her this far down the coast. By the time we reach her home waters, she’ll have hopefully calmed down enough to tell us which Bahia she belongs on.”

“How? Do you speak Carib, Captain Walker?”

“Not exactly. But we all know at least three Carib words. ‘Hurricane,’ ‘hammock,’ and ‘cigar’ were picked up by the early Spanish from the Indians. She may remember a little Spanish, once she stops spitting at everyone.”

Venezis shrugged and said, “Well, I’m sure Socrates can find somewhere to bed down until then.” The Greek skipper chuckled and added in a lewd tone, “Our Socrates has never been happier than on this voyage.”

“Yeah, I heard he’s been keeping his little ass busy. I wonder where, right now. I haven’t seen him at all this morning. But what the hell, he’s not my type.”

Venezis frowned and said, “Pantocrator, you are right, and it’s his watch, too! I’m a tolerant man, but this is too much. He’s not supposed to entertain passengers when he’s supposed to be on duty! Let’s see, he’s been bending over for that Frenchman, DuVal, so—”

“I protest in the name of France!” Gaston cut in, adding, “DuVal is a stuck-up species of bourgeois prick. But he is not a homosexual. He was boasting to me last night about his five children, and one must assume if a man has one, it could hardly have come out of a pervert’s derriere, hein?”

Venezis shrugged and said, “Perhaps DuVal has been away from home too long. Perakis told Tarsouli and Tarsouli told me that Socrates spent the night in the Frenchman’s stateroom.”

Captain Gringo said, “That’s funny. I heard he was bending over for Fitzke, the Swiss. I forget who told me. Must have been a little birdie.”

Gaston said, “Fitzke and DuVal were both on deck when we fished that native girl from the sea. Perhaps it is someone else’s turn with our Socrates?”

Venezis frowned and said, “Enough is enough. The fool is supposed to be on duty, not fucking the entire passenger list!”

The soldiers of fortune followed the skipper down the companion way, bemused. Venezis came to DuVal’s door first and pounded it imperiously. The French engineer opened it, wearing his clothes and a curious look on his otherwise innocent face. The skipper demanded to know if Socrates was there. DuVal looked blank and replied, “Of course not. I have not ordered room service. As a matter of fact, now that you mention it, I have not seen the boy at all this morning. What is going on here?”

Venezis nodded curtly and marched on. Behind him, Gaston said something in French to DuVal, who gasped. “Mais non! C’est ridicule!” and so forth until he slammed his door in a huff as the skipper banged on Fitzke’s.

The Swiss looked more sleepy than perverse as he came to the door in his pajamas to ask what they wanted. Venezis stared beyond him at the empty bunk. There were two bunks in the stateroom. The top one was neatly made up. Captain Gringo asked, “Doesn’t Olsen share this stateroom with you, Fitzke?” and the Swiss nodded sleepily and said, “Of course. He’s been up for some time, if you’re looking for him. What’s going on?”

Captain Gringo said, “Go back to bed. False alarm,” as he hauled Venezis back and shut the door politely in Fitzke’s bewildered face.

Captain Gringo said, “We’d better have a powwow with your crew. Somebody has to be fibbing like hell. They forgot Fitzke was bunking with that big ugly Swede, and I think Gaston’s right about DuVal, too!”

They moved aft to the skipper’s quarters and Venezis called his men in one at a time. Captain Gringo and Gaston found it sort of tedious, as neither spoke Greek. But it seemed to work out that Tarsouli had been told by Parakis, who’d been told by Savalis, that Meletzis had told him Socrates was screwing both the Frenchman and the Swiss.

So the skipper had Meletzis come down from the crow’s nest. When confronted, young Meletzis confirmed, red faced, that he had indeed passed on the gossip. But when Venezis demanded to know who’d told him, Meletzis confided he’d gotten it from the horse’s mouth. Socrates himself had boasted of his conquests among the passengers. Meletzis was quick to add he’d still refused the mess boy’s offer to bend over for him as well.

Venezis sent him back aloft and told Captain Gringo, “There you have it. Some men boast of having had women they’ve never even kissed, too. Socrates seems to think he’s another little Ganymede. But by the beard of Zeus, I’ll show him what I think of troublemakers aboard my vessel. When I finish with his ass he’ll be in no condition to brag about it!”

Captain Gringo asked, “Don’t you have to find him first?”

Venezis snorted and said, “I’ll find him, the simpering little braggart. Where could he hide aboard such a small vessel?”

It was a good question. Venezis and some of the deck watch searched high and low for Socrates, without any luck. Captain Gringo went to the Keller stateroom, not wanting to tell tales out of school. But all he found there were Keller half-asleep and Herta half-undressed and in no mood for a long conversation just now. So that was that. Socrates wasn’t in any of the staterooms, on deck, or in the hold when Captain Gringo joined Venezis and Gaston down there. Antigone of course had taken the bedding from the empty crate back to her own quarters long before this time, but Gaston, damn him, was sniffing around and called out from the corner, “A-hah! Someone has been using this empty packing case as a love nest! My ancient and adorable nose never misses the scent of...” and then he caught Captain Gringo’s eye and finished lamely, “asshole.”

Venezis didn’t seem to care where Socrates may have been making love aboard the Peirene. He took the more logical view that it was more important that his swishy mess boy had obviously gone over the side sometime in the night!

He said, “This is too much! First Papadakis and now Socrates! Do you think we have a murderer on board?”

Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Well, they were both a little strange, and you do have low rails for sure.”

“Dammit, they were both seamen, whatever other odd habits they may have had. Wait! Remember how we searched for the source of mysterious noises in this very hold not long ago?”

Captain Gringo remembered the skipper dismissing those footsteps as shifting cargo, tcto. But he nodded and said, “Yeah, it could have been Socrates and some, ah, friend down here. We never thought to look in that empty case. But I don’t see how he could have gone over the side from down here. Do you?”

Venezis said, “No. But what if he managed to seduce someone on board who later had second thoughts? We are all men of the world. You surely know how an idea that seemed quite reasonable with a raging erection may strike one as disgusting in the cold gray light of satisfaction, eh?”

Gaston said, “You would make a good policeman, Venezis. I confess I have often wanted to throw someone I woke up with on a Monday morning overboard. I might have really done so, had I ever come to my senses in the arms of an ugly man!”

Venezis nodded and said, “That must be the answer. Someone who’s been at sea too long gave in to the sodomite’s persistent flirting, realized he, too, had left himself open to the contempt of real men, and decided to get rid of the evidence by simply pushing Socrates over the side. But it could have been anyone and ... Wait. We can easily eliminate the women on board, eh?”

Captain Gringo nodded, but he wasn’t all that sure. Herta Keller, for one, had had a pretty good motive, and she was one big dame. Aside from that, the killer could have had a less-obvious motive. A pansy who got around with his trays as well as his twitchy tail could have found out something he wasn’t supposed to know, and that worked even better.

~*~

They didn’t find out how Socrates had gone over the side. But since nobody else did in the next twenty-four hours, everyone aboard but the Black Carib girl calmed down, and even she had stopped raging and struggling with her bonds by the time the lookout spotted the palms of the Bahías on the horizon.

They brought the now fully restored native girl on deck, and she just growled like a caged animal when Captain Gringo pointed and tried to get her to tell them which way she wanted to go now. He said, “Well, we’re out beyond the countercurrents and she has to live some damned where around here. We’ll just put her back in her canoe with an oar and some provisions and let her figure it out.”

Venezis put two spare oars as well as enough food and water to last her a couple of days in her canoe as Captain Gringo untied her, ducked the beautiful right cross she threw at him, and let her figure out that she was supposed to drop over the taffrail into her dugout. She did, with a very bewildered look, and was trying to paddle away even before the crew untied the painter and cast loose. She paddled like hell until she was out of pistol range, then turned and shook her fist at them.

Captain Gringo laughed and waved bye-bye. This seemed to confuse her even more. But she grimly began to paddle away as if she knew where she was going.

The Jamaican, Forsythe, who’d been watching from a safe range at the rear of the crowd, laughed and said, “That fool girl’s going to get lost again. Ain't no islands off the way she’s headed.”

Captain Gringo stared beyond the determined girl and her canoe and, sure enough, saw that she seemed to be headed for empty horizon to the northwest. He said, “She’s making a beeline and she knows these waters better than any of us, Jamaica. How do you know there’s nothing over there the way she’s headed?”

“If they is, they ain’t on no map, Mon.”

“Hmm, I don’t think Black Caribs read the same navigation charts as we do. Let’s give her a good head start, then sort of tag along.”

Forsythe protested, “The main Bahías is dead ahead, Mon!”

But Keller, who’d been listening, said, “Walker has a good point, you know. If that wreck lay along a mapped coast, the others searching for it should have found it by now.”

“How you know they hasn’t, Mon?” asked Forsythe. Then he grinned sheepishly and said, “Yeah, right, they wouldn’t be trying to stop us if the game was over!”

Venezis didn’t care if they found the wreck or not. So he didn’t argue when Captain Gringo told them to let the girl get them hull down behind her and follow dead slow with the lookout keeping her in sight.

The next few hours went dull as hell. Moving no faster than a paddled canoe, the sponge schooner wallowed like a dead whale and sweated like a pig under the hot tropic sun. Tar bubbled from between the deck planks and the sponges rotting in her rigging didn’t smell so great either. When someone was dumb enough to bitch about the trades being light today, Captain Gringo pointed out that they couldn’t have put the native girl over the side in fresh winds.

As it was, she should have been pooped by now. But as the lookout kept her just in sight she just kept paddling as if her life depended on it, and by late afternoon the lookout called down that there was land ahead after all.

Captain Gringo turned to the skipper and said, “Let’s heave to and let her make her home shore on her own.”

“Don’t you want to see where she lands on that unmapped island?”

“Why? We’re looking for a sunken submarine, not her. She may rate a welcoming committee and we don’t want to spook them by making it obvious we’ve followed her. The island is what we were looking for, and, if it’s inhabited by people half as wild as she was, I sure hope we can spot that wreck without having to make a landing!”

It was a pretty good plan. But then the lookout called down another vessel astern and added it was hull down and seemed to be staying there with its lookout looking at him, like a big-ass bird.

Venezis said, “Skata! Someone’s been following us as we followed that native canoe, the stupid sons of the bitch!”

Captain Gringo said, “Oh, I dunno. They’re at least as smart as we were. But let’s make ’em work at it. Now that we know where the island is, we’d better hoist sails and motor due east toward the main Bahías.”

“Why hoist canvas? Even if the trades were fresh we’d be sailing against them in that direction!”

“I want us nice and visible. If their lookout’s just poking his head over the southern horizon at ours, he can’t see the island from there. Do you really want him to see the island, Skipper?”

Venezis swore and started yelling in Greek as he caught on. So the Peirene was soon moving full speed to the east with the distant mystery ship ghosting east with them, just over the horizon. Captain Gringo said, “Don’t race them until the sun goes down. If we lose them they could circle to find us and stumble over that island they don’t have on their charts, see?”

Venezis growled, “I don’t think I can outrun the bastards. They don’t seem to be having any trouble keeping abeam with us. They must have a serious engine, too, eh?”

“Yeah. Hakim must not be the first guy who’s ever thought to disguise a speed boat as a tramp schooner. But what the hell, it’ll soon be getting dark and the moon’s not due to rise tonight until almost an hour after sunset.”

They plowed on and at least it was cool on deck now, thanks to their headway against such wind as there was. So everyone wound up on deck. Herta Keller looked as if she was trying to tell Captain Gringo something with her eyes as she passed them, circling the deck without her husband. But he didn’t follow. The sun behind his back was getting lower by the minute and this was no time to flirt with dames.

It got even more important to remain near the helm and rear machine gun when the lookout shouted down in Greek and the skipper said, moaning, “Oh, no, there’s a smoke plume dead ahead! There’s either a steamship or a gunboat dead ahead! What do we do now?”

Captain Gringo looked back over his shoulder and said, “Steady as she goes. It’ll be dark well before we meet whatever it is to our east.”

“Shouldn’t I at least slow down?”

“No. Let everyone guess we’re afraid of meeting patrol craft. We’re supposed to be an innocent sponger, dammit!”

“That other schooner off to the south knows we’re not.”

“So what? You want a patrol boat chasing us all night, too?”

For an erstwhile sponge fisherman, Venezis was a pretty quick student. He told his helmsman not to veer suspiciously as the lookout called down that he could see where the smoke was coming from now, and that it was for sure a patrol craft, albeit a battle cruiser, not a gunboat.

Aboard the souped-up schooner ghosting them, Oberst Jager was getting the same dismal news from his own lookout. He swore and muttered to his own skipper, “Zum Teufel! Why on earth would they be headed to meet that British cruiser? Can’t they see where they’re going?’'’

The German naval officer disguised as a merchant skipper said, “That Basil Hakim has connections at the British court, nicht wahr?”

Jager said, “Ja, but unless that treacherous Greystoke knows of our telephone tap...Ach, that’s it! The whole thing is another sneaky British trick! Damn them, they never play fair! Even when Der Kaiser was a little boy and went to visit his grandmother, Victoria, at Windsor Castle, he says the British children got nicer presents at Christmastime.”

The skipper had never met Der Kaiser. So he just asked, “Steady as she goes, Herr Oberst?”

Jager hesitated, then said, “Hein. I am not ready to tangle with a British cruiser until Der Tag arrives. We’d better sheer off for now and hopefully pick up Hakim’s schooner again in less-imposing company.”

And so a few minutes later, aboard HMS Malta, a bridge officer knocked politely but persistently on the door of his captain’s quarters until the old man woke and sputtered, “What? What? Come in, God damn your eyes!”

The bridge officer came in to find the captain propped up in his bunk, bleary-eyed. He wasn’t sick or drunk. He’d manned his bridge all the way from Kingston on some sort of fool’s errand for British intelligence and he was as worn out as his antique boilers. The younger officer who’d relieved him on the bridge said, “Lookout’s spotted two schooners against the sunset, sir.”

The captain sputtered, “What? What? Schooners you say? Of course there are schooners in these waters, Man! We’re just off the bloody Honduran coast! You mean to say you woke me up to tell me about perishing dago sailboats?”

“Just one, sir. One of them’s moving innocently enough our way, no doubt making for the main Bahia we just passed. The other veered off to the south, about the same time our lookout spotted it. I thought you should know.”

The cruiser captain rubbed his sleep-gummed eyes as he pondered the picture. Then he asked wearily, “Do we have a full head of steam yet?”

“Yessir. They fixed that trouble with the condenser about an hour ago.”

“Very well. Wake me up when you overtake the one who seems so shy. Probably just a bloody smuggler. But we were ordered to intercept some bloody schooner or other. What was that name again?”

“Peirene, sir. Greek registry, working for a British subject one gathers Whitehall would like to pin something on.”

The captain answered with a snore. The bridge officer shrugged and went back up to the bridge, now that he had his orders.

And so, as the sun set with a green tropic flash, Oberst Jager found himself running for his life with a British cruiser in hot pursuit while, to their north, the Peirene circled sedately around to return to the unmapped island in the dark.

~*~

The moon was high and the sea was calm as a millpond as they circled the mysterious island just outside the breakers. Keller didn’t like those breakers much. He explained and Venezis agreed that surf breaking against a rocky shore meant deep water farther out. It got worse when they stationed a man in the bows with a lead line. The bottom was rocky too, and twenty fathoms down at the shallowest. Venezis said, “If that Spanish vessel was driven ashore here, she went down like a rock. There’s no shelf big enough to hold a big tin cigar above the drop-off in any kind of seas!”

Keller said they might be able to spot the submerged wreck anyhow, come daybreak. But Captain Gringo said, “Let’s not break out the diving gear until we have a look at the lee side of the island.”

Keller said, “That makes no sense, Walker. If the Spaniards made it around to the sheltered side, the storm shouldn’t have sunk them at all!”

“How do we know it did? What if the storm popped some rivets and salt water getting into their batteries filled the hull with poison gas? We know one guy got out, with his lungs ruined. The others might not have been as tough. But they still could have run her into a cove or, hell , a beach would be better than nothing if you wanted to get off in a hurry, right?”

The others agreed it was worth a try, since the island was only six or seven miles long. But as they cruised its dark jungle-covered coast it didn’t look too friendly. There were no lights ashore, but someone among the trees was sure beating hell out of a big Carib drum. They couldn’t tell if the Black Caribs were giving a party because the missing girl had made it home or if they’d spotted the schooner in the moonlight and might be feeling hungry.

They left the drumbeats behind as they rounded the west point of the island and saw lights ahead along the shore. Venezis said, “That looks like a village. I see houses. Do Caribs live in houses?”

Captain Gringo called Forsythe aft for his opinion. The Jamaican was of the opinion that Black Caribs lived in trees, and pointed out, as they got closer, that some of the buildings on shore had corrugated metal roofing. Captain Gringo nodded and said, “Yeah, electric lights, too! I’d be sort of surprised if any Caribs, red or black, had ordered any Edison bulbs lately. Looks like someone more civilized must have moved out here from the mainland. Let’s put in and ask ’em why.”

Forsythe warned, “They could be wreckers or worse, Mon. If that island ain’t on the map, we know they ain’t paying taxes to no government!”

“Hell, would you pay taxes to anybody if you didn’t have to? Run up to the bows and tell Gaston not to fire that forward Maxim unless he hears me popping off back there. I like to keep things friendly if I can.”

The people on shore apparently had the same idea as the Peirene putted in, dead slow, making for the timber wharf running out from the gravel beach. A couple of locals grabbed the lines the Greek crewmen cast them, and when the schooner snubbed its bumpers against the wharf a portly man in a white linen suit and a panama hat called out, “Welcome, amigos! I am called Don Diego Montez. May I ask who you are, and to what I owe the honor of this visit to my humble plantation?”

Captain Gringo muttered, “Everyone else had better stay aboard until Gaston and I check him out. If he eats us, back off, shooting.”

Don Diego didn’t seem that hungry when Captain Gringo went forward to gather Gaston on the fly and leap to the wharf. As he shook hands with the heavyset Spanish bianco, Captain Gringo explained that they were sponge fishermen, looking for sponge, of course. Don Diego smiled as if he believed them and said, “You are welcome to fish all you like off my island, señores. But I shall be most surprised if you encounter any sponges. My rocky domain stands with its roots in deep rough water, most of the time. The seas are quiet tonight, but even so, your divers will find the currents most treacherous and the rocks below most bare.”

“We, ah noticed the surf on the weather side, Don Diego. Tell us, has anyone else been diving in these waters lately?”

“Not that I have noticed, señores. As you just discovered, this is the only harbor on my island. So anyone else interested in it would have put in here, no?”

“You’d know best, Don Diego. No offense, but I can’t help noticing you keep referring to this as your island. How do you go about buying an island that’s not on any map?”

Don Diego smiled, put a finger to a flabby cheek to pull his lower lid down in the Latin sigh for hanky-panky, and explained, “Squatter’s rights. Honduras may claim the Bahías they have on the map, even if they don’t govern them much. But I see no need to bother them with petty details, eh? They leave me alone and I leave them alone. But why are we standing here discussing it? Come up to my house, all of you. We shall try to make you welcome, and your friends aboard that, forgive me, smelly boat, would no doubt enjoy stretching their legs on land again.”

Captain Gringo smiled thinly and said, “They’re just fine where they are, for now, Don Diego.”

The Spaniard looked hurt and made a sweeping gesture around at the handful of peones in view as he said, “I see no reason for you to act so suspicious, Señor... ah?”

“Walker. This is Señor Verrier. We mean no offense either, but, forgive me, how come you're so trusting? For all you know, we could be pirates, right?”

Don Diego laughed and said, “True, things are not always what they seem, although I must say your disguise is ingenious, if you are pirates instead of spongers. Let us lay your suspicions to rest at once. Come, I shall be only too happy to show you around, and, as you shall see, there is not much here to be suspicious of.”

He did, and he was right, in a way. The Montez plantation was modest in size albeit a bit luxurious for the acreage he, or rather his workers, had cleared. It was hard to tell by moonlight -what they were growing here. But when asked, Don Diego made no bones about its being opium, adding, “Opium is still legal in all but a few fussy countries, as you know. But since it is a luxury crop, the export duties on opium can be so unreasonable on the mainland. Let us go into the house and have some cold cerveza, no?”

They did. The main house was wired for electricity, and the beer a frightened-looking Black Carib girl in a Mother Hubbard served them was ice cold. As they sat on the veranda swigging it, Don Diego explained that he made his own ice, adding, “If you listen carefully, you will hear a dull roar in the distance. That is my internal-combustion generating plant. I’d have it even further from the house if it were not for unreasonable neighbors. But it’s not too noisy to bear from here.” Gaston said it must have cost him a bundle. Captain Gringo asked about the neighbors. Don Diego said he could afford the luxuries of life, thanks to the current opium market, and dismissed his neighbors as “ignorant savages of the Black Carib variety.”

Captain Gringo whistled softly and asked, “Doesn’t it make you sort of nervous, squatting on the same small island with Black Caribs?”

Don Diego shrugged and said, “Not really. My guards have instructions to shoot the beasts on sight. So they stay well back in the trees with the other monkeys.”

The same girl came out to refill their beer steins when the Spaniard rang for her. Captain Gringo waited until she’d left before he asked wryly, “What about her? Catch her young?”

Don Diego nodded and said, “It’s impossible to tame them otherwise. I have, let’s see, thirty or so domesticated natives now. All captured as children, of course. You catch them the way you catch any other apes. You shoot the mother and grab the infant before it can get away. Once they get used to sugar, salt, and, ah, discipline, they’re not bad workers. Naturally, most of my peones are mestizos from the mainland.”

Gaston started to ask if he’d gotten them by shooting their mothers. But Captain Gringo kicked his ankle to shut him up, put down his empty beer stein, and said, “It’s sure been interesting talking to you, Don Diego. But we’d better get back to the schooner.”

“Not just yet, Captain Gringo,” said Don Diego flatly.

It got very quiet for a moment. Then Captain Gringo smiled crookedly and said, “Okay, I see you get newspapers from the mainland out here as well. But if you know who I really am, you didn’t really mean I couldn’t leave, did you?”

It was Gaston’s turn to kick Captain Gringo’s booted ankle as he muttered, “Dick, behind you, Winchester.”

Captain Gringo said, “Yeah, there’s a bozo covering you from the shadows at the far end of the veranda, too. But I’m sure our host is a reasonable man who wants to go on living. Ain’t that right, Host?”

Don Diego said, “Don’t be hasty, señores. I am not after the modest rewards posted on your heads. I am already very rich. I pay well, too.”

“We’re listening.”

“I have been open with you. So you know my troubles as well as I know yours, señores. The Black Caribs we were just discussing have the odd notion this is their island instead of mine. Can you believe it?”

“Easy. Some of our Indians back in the States held similar views until just recently. But do we look like the Seventh Cav?”

Don Diego chuckled fondly and said, “You look like what you are, a couple of killers for hire, and I need some annoying natives killed. You will do this little favor for me, no?”

Gaston asked, “For how much?”

The Spaniard shrugged and said, “Oh, I suppose ten dollars a head, U.S., would be fair, no?”

Captain Gringo growled, “You don’t put too high a value on human heads, Pal.”

Don Diego sniffed and said, “We are not talking about human heads. Black Caribs are wild animals. My offer is, not as cheap as you seem to feel it is. I estimate you’d clear at least a few thousand dollars, even at ten dollars a head, if you did a thorough job. I want them all wiped out, you see. The creatures breed like flies, and unless one eliminates a whole tribe—”

“Yeah, that’s what they told us about Apache,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “They were right. But how come you and your own gunmen need outside help if you’re so brave, Don Diego?”

“Did I say I was brave? I am an opium planter, not a professional hunter, and my guards have enough to do here, keeping the workers in line. I knew as soon as I recognized you that you were just what the doctor ordered to rid us of red fleas. Please say you will do it, Captain Gringo. I would much rather be your friend than your enemy.”

The two soldiers of fortune looked at each other. Neither had to say anything to know what the other was thinking. This murderous fat slob was obviously a born egomaniac who’d been smoking his own crops a lot!

Cautiously, Captain Gringo said, “Well, we’d need the machine guns we have aboard the schooner, of course.”

Don Diego pouted his lower lip and said, “I don’t think so. You might change your minds if I allowed you to return to your friends before you dealt with my enemies.”

That was a pretty safe assumption on Don Diego’s part. So Captain Gringo tried, “Look, we’re good, but not that good! How the hell are we supposed to take a whole tribe, on their own ground, with just a couple of six-shooters?”

“Oh, I can let you have some Winchesters or, better yet, shotguns, with all the ammunition you can carry. My men have found shotguns best for close-range work in the jungle. The natives of course are only armed with machetes, poisoned arrows, and such. They usually run from gunfire. But there are just so many trees for them to hide behind out there …”

Before either soldier of fortune could say what fun that sounded like, they all heard the distant sound of slapping lines, Greek curses, and a couple of gunshots. A moment later one of Don Diego’s guards ran up to them, shotgun in hand, to shout. “Those bastards aboard the schooner are leaving, My Patron!”

Gaston muttered, “Eh bien, that’s what I’d have done by now.”

Don Diego turned to them, smiling, and said, “I’m so sorry they did not choose to wait for you, Señores. But don’t worry. I’m sure there will be another vessel along by the time you wipe out the Black Caribs for us. Is it not grand that you now have no choice? It saves so much dickering.”

Captain Gringo stood up, stretched, and said, “Yeah, we may as well get cracking. Come on, Gaston. Let’s go play cowboys and Indians.”

Gaston didn’t argue. But as he rose to follow, Don Diego said, “Wait. Won’t you need the shotguns?” Captain Gringo growled, “Never mind. Right now I’m so pissed I could likely lick every cocksucker on this island bare-handed!”

~*~

Gaston waited until they were in the dark jungle, away from Don Diego and his thugs, before he asked, “Dick, why are we running around in the dark with -only two little pistols?”

Captain Gringo said, “I was afraid if I stayed there another minute I’d go for the fat bastard’s throat, and he does have at least a dozen hired guns to back his crazy play. We don’t need guns. We need a map. I don’t think Venezis would rat on us completely. He got suspicious, thank God, and got his vessel and the others safely out to sea while he still could. If he means to pick us up at all, there’s only one place he’d put in. We passed what looked like a deep cove coming around the end of the island. It’s far enough from the plantation as well as sheltered just to the lee of this stupid rock.”

“But is it sheltered from Black Caribs, and are we? Listen, Dick. Is that my pitty-patting heart I hear, or something even more passionate.”

“Yeah, it’s a tom-tom all right. But look on the bright side. If the Black Caribs are beating it over that way, it should be reasonably safe to head this way. Let’s go. Pick ’em up and lay ’em down before they notice us trespassing through their woodlot.”

It was a good idea, but it couldn’t be done. The Black Caribs waited until the two white men had made it a couple of miles from the plantation and sat down on a fallen log to rest and get their bearings. Then they moved in, from all sides, arrows nocked, and wearing neither a stitch of clothing nor any expressions on their dark faces in the moonlight. Gaston sighed and said, “Bonsoir. Could any of you direct us to the nearest good restaurant?”

They couldn’t. They just pointed and gargled until the soldiers of fortune got the idea they had two choices. They could die right here and now or go with the Black Caribs and maybe die a little later.

So they went with them. Neither commented when the natives failed to pat them down and find their shoulder-holstered guns, and, better yet, Gaston still had his dagger sheathed at the nape of his neck under his shirt.

The scouts led them not toward the distant drumbeats but to a firelit clearing ringed with thatched huts. That part looked reasonable. Then Gaston glanced up at what the Black Caribs had mounted on poles above the huts and crossed himself, muttering, “Mon Dieu!” Captain Gringo said nothing as he gazed soberly up at the human heads, lots of human heads, sun dried or smoked. The hair and bone structure gave them away as the heads of white men. At least two dozen. It was small wonder Don Diego and his thugs stayed close to home at night!

As the soldiers of fortune were marched in, people started popping out of the huts, smiling as if they’d just seen something yummy. The most impressive figure stood almost six feet in its naked, dark red hide. After that it got better. It was a dame, and not bad-looking if one admired necklaces of gleaming white bone. Her beads could have come from any critter. The thigh bone she was using as the handle of her rattle, mace, or whatever, had obviously come from a human leg.

Gaston muttered, “All that’s missing is the cooking pot. When do we make our move, Dick?”

The big Black Carib woman said, in perfect English, “Don’t be silly. Are you the ones who rescued that young girl of ours? You answer the description she gave of a tall blond leader.”

Captain Gringo smiled and said, “I was afraid she hadn’t noticed. I’m Dick Walker. This is Gaston Verrier. Can we take it the kid made it home okay, Miss...?”

“She did, and I am Fisi, obeah of this island. How did you get away from that monster, Montez?”

“It’s nice to know our fans have been keeping track of us. I hope you won’t take this personal, Miss Fisi, but he sent us out to kill you guys. But I guess you know he’s like that, huh?”

Fisi nodded grimly and said, “We know the animal all too well. We’d very much like to have his head up there with the others. But as you saw, we can’t get at him. Not with machetes and our bows and arrows. You must be tired. Come inside with me and we’ll discuss what we should do with you.”

Captain Gringo didn’t argue. But when Gaston started to follow, Fisi pointed at the doorway of the hut next to hers and said, “Not you. Go in there and make yourself comfortable.” So Gaston went. He felt a lot better about it when, inside the other hut, he found himself with two giggling young naked ladies. But he said, “Merde alors, of all times to feel coy about removing one’s shirt!”

In Fisi’s hut, Captain Gringo found himself alone with the lady chief, witch doctor, or whatever. As she sat cross-legged across the little central fire from him he tried not to stare. But it wasn’t easy, when a naked lady sat like that so close.

He said, “You speak very good English, Fisi.”

She shrugged and said, “So do you. I had no choice. I was kidnapped by blackbirders as a child and spent some time in Jamaica before I was able to get away. I wish I spoke Spanish. I have some things to say to Diego Montez if I ever get my hands on him. But I probably won’t. So what does it matter?”

He asked, in a desperately casual tone, if the heads outside had once belonged to Don Diego’s hired guns. The obeah grimaced and said, “No. I wish they were. But they were just some shipwrecked sailors. My people killed them before I could find out much about them. None of them spoke English. Some begged for their lives in Spanish, of course. Don’t ever ask a Black Carib for anything in Spanish, Dick.”

“I heard. But surely there can’t be many blackbirders bothering your people these days?”

“What do you call Montez, a whitebirder? He’s stolen dozens of our children to grow his damned weeds. When his men spot one of us older natives they have orders to shoot on sight, and do. But we know all that. The question now is what’s to be done with you and your little friend.”

“What do you usually do with white guests, Fisi? Never mind, it was a stupid question, I guess.”

She smiled thinly and said, “Yes, but not many white men save our children and return them to us unharmed. The girl said you didn’t even rape her. What’s the matter, white boy, don’t you like dark meat?”

“Not that young. If you'd like to change your luck, why don’t we just put out the fire, Jamaica Gal?”

She laughed and said, “You’re not afraid of me. I like that. Between my size and obeah powers, most of our own men are afraid of me. But let’s not be flirting with the dark stuff, White Stuff. Right now I have a constitutional crisis to solve. Under tribal law, your kind and mine are sworn enemies, see?”

“Hell, I never declared war on you, Fisi.”

“That doesn’t matter. We declared war on you, shortly after a crewman off the Santa Maria raped the first Carib girl. What you did to the black side of the family tree didn’t make us like you any better!”

“Oh, bullshit; I’m a Connecticut Yankee, and I’ll be damned if I’ll do penance for any long-dead slave trauci, Fisi.”

“Some of them aren’t so dead. But I can use that point in your favor, I guess. Tribal law also says that a friend of a Black Carib is a friend for life. So let’s get back to that castaway gal you befriended. You sure you weren’t even tempted to trifle with her?”

“Sure I was tempted. She was pretty, stark naked, and tied up. I guess some of the others on board were tempted too. But, hell, she was just a frightened kid. What kind of a bastard would take advantage of a tied-up teenager?”

She smiled softly and said, “Not the kind you seem to be. All right, you’ll stay here tonight where none of the others less understanding can get at you. Come morning we’ll take you to where your friends are waiting for you, anchored in a cove. They'll be safe, too, unless they’re dumb enough to try to come ashore.”

“Nobody’s that dumb, even if they don’t read drum talk. Are you sure they’re there, though?”

“What did you think the drums were discussing, the weather? You want to go right to sleep or would you rather have some food and a woman first?”

“I get a choice? I must say you folks are more hospitable than I’d been led to believe. But don’t put yourself to any bother. I’m not hungry.”

“All right. I’ll send you a woman.”

“What’s the matter with the present company, Fisi?”

She looked startled, would have blushed had she been able, and said, “Don’t joke with me, White Boy. I’m obeah as well as big and ugly. Aren’t you afraid of waking up witched?'’

“What can I tell you? You may be tall, but you sure ain’t ugly, and if you turn me into a frog it’ll serve me right.”

She laughed, proceeded to put out the fire with a big bare foot, and said, “I’ll turn you into worse than a frog if you’re just funning me!”

She decided he wasn’t when he found her in the dark after shucking his duds and groping his way along the thatch to where she lay, stiffly expectant, on her sleeping mat. As he took her in his arms she sighed and asked, “Are you sure I’m not too big for you?”

Then, when she felt what he was putting into her, she moaned and said, “Oh, I think you may be too big for me! But don’t you dare stop now! I told you, I’m not popular with many men and, oh, yessss! You sure do know how to make friends, Dick! That feels friendly as anything and, oh, faster, faster, I just love it!”

It was nice to meet a lady so easy to please. So he hooked an elbow under each of her naked knees, lifted her long dark legs high and wide, and started hitting bottom with every stroke, which was a new and delightful experience to her, it would seem, from the way she sobbed with joy. He couldn’t tell if she was really as inexperienced as she let on. Women lied as bad as men in bed. But while her smooth moist vagina ran deep enough up into her muscular dark torso to take him as deep as he might want to go, she was as tight as that little native girl they’d saved could have been. So he was glad he’d behaved himself on the schooner, too. For this was reward for virtue indeed.

After they’d climaxed together twice, she pleaded for mercy, so he dismounted for a smoke. By the light of the match flare Fisi stared up adoringly at him and whispered, “Oh, Dick, you’re so pretty.”

He lit the claro and told her she was pretty, too, as he shook out the light. She snuggled closer, all six feet of her, and fished for more compliments by remarking on her size again. He said she was little enough where it mattered, and then, to change the subject, said, “You told me those Spanish-speaking guys your people killed were shipwrecked. Would that have been in the last big hurricane? I’ve a reason for asking.”

She said, “Yes. They put in for shelter in a dumb place. The storm tides made what looked like an anchorage out of what’s usually a fresh-water pond not far from here. So when the water went down they were stuck.”

“I get the picture. What did their vessel look like?”

“Funny. Like that cigar you’re smoking, only made out of iron. It had a little cannon mounted on a post on its deck with a bigger gun turret or something behind it. I don’t know much about ships, Dick. On Jamaica they were trying to make a house nigger out of me. Till I ran off to the cockpit country where some free maroons sheltered me until I could steal a rowboat.”

The idea of even a strong girl rowing all the way here from Jamaica sounded interesting as hell. But not as interesting as her description of the vessel stranded closer. He said, “Okay, they knew they couldn’t get out to sea again over the bar. So they came ashore, walked into an ambush, and, hold it. They’d surely have left a skeleton crew on board.”

Fisi said, “I don’t know if they’re skeletons yet, but they sure smell awful from shore. Nobody can go out to look, of course. It’s obeah.”

“What do you mean, something like taboo, Fisi?”

“I don’t know what ‘taboo’ means. But ‘obeah’ means the wreck’s been witched. So nobody can board it now. Not even you.”

“Let’s not get ahead of the story, Doll. Who put this curse on it, you?”

“No. Can’t you feel I’m still alive, you loving man? It’s obeah because some men of my tribe did go aboard, to see if those dead Spaniards had left any guns they could use against Montez. But they never came back. They just climbed into that tall part and nobody ever saw them again. Obeah got them, see?”

“Yeah, it would look like that from safe on shore. I don’t think they were killed by a curse, Fisi. It fits with that one Spaniard throwing himself in the sea to swim for it. He must have been one of the skeleton crew and, yeah, I’d want to get out of a gas-filled hull in a hurry, too!”

She reached down to fondle him as she asked if he wasn’t ever going to finish that fool cigar and added, “Don’t worry about that obeah wreck, Lover Man. I’m not going to let you get anywhere near it now.”

He laughed and said, “Hell, the gas must have cleared by now.”

“What’s gas?” she asked. So he made the mistake of trying to explain it. No matter how he tried, her semi-educated and superstitious mind added it up the same way. Obeah was a mysterious, invisible force that could kill people. This chlorine gas the white folks knew how to make killed people. Ergo it was obeah, and she was just too fond of him to let it get him. So no matter what he said or did, and he even did it dog style before morning, Fisi flatly refused to tell him where the wrecked submarine was. It got worse. She said if anyone in her tribe told, she’d obeah them. So none of the other Black Caribs figured to tell him, even if he could find one to talk to!

~*~

Fisi was just as adamant in the cold gray light of dawn and, worse yet, was starting to cool off. Like him, she’d just been enjoying sex with a proper stranger, and the trouble with recreational sex was that it left everyone so damned clear-headed once it was over. When he pointed out it didn’t matter if the curse killed a white man just passing through, after all, Fisi said, “Don’t press your luck too far, Dick. My people understand my letting you and Gaston live because you helped that girl. They’d never understand if I lifted my own obeah. I told them anyone who boarded that wreck would die. Do you want to make a liar out of me?”

“No. But if we don’t investigate that wreck, someone else is sure to, and they might not be as friendly.”

She shrugged and said, “We’ll deal with them as we deal with other unfriendly strangers, Dick. Your guides are ready to lead you to the schooner. I won’t be going with you. Don’t look for the wreck on your own. My men have orders to kill you if you try to lose them in the jungle.”

He said, “Wait. Maybe we can still make a deal. Wouldn’t it make you a pretty good witch if you could do something about those opium planters who’ve been bothering you?”

“Of course. But they have so many guns.”

“What do you think we have, fly swatters? Look, if you’ll show us where the Spanish submarine was trapped, we’ll take out Montez and his thugs. I’ll even throw in a skeleton suit and mask that ought to fit you just about right. Come on, Honey, don’t be so stubborn.”

She thought, then said, “I can’t lift my own obeah before I prove I have even greater powers. First you kill everyone on the plantation. Then we’ll talk about the wreck.”

“I don’t want to kill everybody on the plantation. Just the ones with guns, and you agree to spare the peones and captives, right?”

“Well, we may be able to turn the captive children back into Black Caribs. All right, they can live.”

“The innocent workers, too, or no deal. Agreed?”

“You certainly drive a hard bargain.” She sighed. But then she giggled and said, “You drive lots of things hard. All right. You rid us of Montez and his guards and we won’t bother the others if they leave us alone.”

“And then you show us the wreck and lift the obeah, right?”

“I’ll show you the wreck. If the obeah kills you it won’t be my fault.”

So they shook, kissed, and would have screwed on it if it hadn’t been getting so late.

As Captain Gringo and Gaston left the village with their silent scouts a few minutes later, the Frenchman sighed and said, “Eh bien, I don’t know how you got us out of that, Dick. But forget all the bad things I’ve ever called you in the past. Mon Dieu, I never want to spend a night like that again! Where were you when I needed you? I was wedged between two prick-teasing savages and it was all I could do not to weaken!”

Captain Gringo laughed and said, “You can’t be serious! Are you saying you didn’t get any tail last night?”

“Mais non. The trés sneaky girls tried to trick me into exposing my hidden weapons, and my glands seemed bent on getting us all killed, too. But you’d have been proud of me, Dick. I was and am a man of steel. Do we have to walk so fast? I still have a raging erection and these pants are tight.”

Captain Gringo couldn’t slow down their non-English-speaking guides. But to spare Gaston further discomfort he refrained from telling him how he'd spent the night.

Thanks to the size of the island and the pace set by the Black Caribs, it took less than an hour to reach the cove where the Peirene lay at anchor. Their guides deserted them with grunts, and when Captain Gringo hailed the schooner from the tree-covered shore Venezis sent a longboat in for them.

After a few minutes of mutual congratulations on deck, Captain Gringo called a council of war in the ship’s mess to narrow the crowd down to the skipper, fellow passengers, and the adoring Antigone, who kept feeling him up on the sly every time she served another round of coffee.

Leaving out the dirty parts, Captain Gringo brought everyone up to date on the deal Montez had offered and the even better deal he’d made with the natives. Keller asked suspiciously, “How do you know we can trust those cannibals, Walker?” and he replied, “They didn’t eat us, exactly, and we’d have never made it back here without their help.”

Venezis frowned and asked, “You mean you didn’t see the flares we sent up for you last night?”

Captain Gringo looked aghast and said, “Jesus, I hope I didn’t hear you right! How the hell were we supposed to see flares through forest canopy, and doesn’t anybody remember that other schooner tailing us? Who the hell had that bright idea?”

They all looked sheepish. But it was Horgany, the Hungarian, who said, “I just happened to have a flare gun along with my other emergency gear in the hold. I was only trying to be helpful.”

“Helpful to whom?” snapped Captain Gringo. Then, noting the hurt look on the Hungarian’s red face, he added, “Okay, you meant well. But don’t ever do that again.”

He started to go on to explain about the deal he’d made with the Black Caribs. But another thought struck him and he said, “Wait a second. Did anyone but you know about that flare gun in the hold, Horgany?”

The Hungarian looked puzzled. He didn’t seem to get it yet as he shrugged and replied, “It’s no secret what we’re carrying along on this expedition. Hakim himself provided most of our supplies and salvage gear. Why?”

The Greek skipper caught on faster. He gasped. “Pantocrator! That must have been what someone was looking for down in the hold the other night, eh?”

Captain Gringo said, “Could be. Lucky he or she didn’t get to the flares before we investigated. That other schooner would have been just over the horizon at the time!”

Horgany looked horror-stricken and said, “Oh my God, what have I done?”

Captain Gringo said, “Hopefully, nothing. We dodged that mystery ship pretty good and it’s probably nowhere near right now. But just in case, we’d better get moving. Here’s my plan.”

~*~

Captain Gringo didn’t think much of his plan, either. But it was the best he could come up with on such short notice. Gaston kept bitching that they should at least have waited until dark as the tall American led him and their picked crew through the jungle toward the plantation. But Captain Gringo told him just to pick ’em up and lay ’em down, adding, “We’ll probably get killed anyway. So why waste a whole day? If we finish off Montez and his thugs by noon, we’ll have all afternoon to examine that wreck, see?”

Gaston asked to be excused for the rest of the day. Aside from Gaston, Captain Gringo had taken Fitzke, Olsen, Forsythe, and DuVal along. The two married men and the other machine gun had been left aboard the schooner for obvious reasons. Captain Gringo packed his Maxim without its tripod, and the water jacket was drained. It was still heavy, even with Gaston packing the ammo belts for him.

Nobody was too cheered up about their chances when they stumbled over a couple of white corpses in the jungle, two-thirds of the way to the plantation. One lay bloody and spread-eagled on its back. The other lay face down on the soggy fallen leaves, or would have, had he still had a face. Both of their heads had been lopped off.

Captain Gringo said, “They haven’t started to bloat yet. Looks like Montez sent them out looking for us. That was sure dumb.”

Forsythe asked, “How come we’re out here surrounded by bad niggers if we’re so smart, Mon?” But Captain Gringo told him the white guys they were after were badder and led his combat patrol on as, somewhere in the distance, a tom-tom throbbed ominously.

He led his followers within a quarter of a mile of the cleared plantation and left them with the machine gun while he and Gaston scouted the setup by daylight. The plantation wasn’t set up right, according to Gaston.

As they peered out from the treeline, the Frenchman observed, “Merde alors. The field of fire is not bad, thanks to the plantation house and outbuildings being surrounded by open fields all around. But regard how the triple-titted gunmen of Don Diego are spread out_, Dick!”

Captain Gringo did. Don Diego was nowhere in sight. So they could assume he was in the house. Why work when one didn’t have to? The morning chores were being performed by scattered ragged mestizo or native work gangs, overseen by armed guards, just as spread out. Gaston said, “Even a machine gun has its limitations, Dick. You can no doubt drop about a quarter of them before the others have made it to cover. But after that, things get complicated, non?”

“Non. I told you we’d get them to bunch up around the main house. Run back and tell Fitzke, Olsen, and DuVal to circle around to the generating plant as planned. Then get back here with Forsythe on the double.”

Gaston slipped back into the jungle, leaving Captain Gringo with his lonely thoughts for a time. They were pissers. There were so many things that could go wrong that he tried not to think of them. But of course he did.

Gaston returned with the big Jamaican and said, “Eh bien. Fitzke will fire one pistol shot and run like hell with the others as soon as they get away with it, if they get away with it.”

Forsythe asked, “How come I couldn’t go along with them, Mon? I run pretty good, too.”

Captain Gringo said, “I need you and your complexion here, no offense. You’d better move along the treeline, oh, a hundred yards. Then, when I open up, you pop out and wave those innocent workers your way. I sure don’t want ’em in my way, see?”

Forsythe nodded and said, “Yeah, I can see how a white face might make ’em nervous. Jesus, they got a paleface overseer pointing a gun at every eight or ten workers. Wouldn’t it be just as cheap to pay the poor bitty bastards?”

“Montez is a bigger bastard, and I don’t think many of them volunteered to grow his opium for him. You’d better get moving, Jamaica. That powerhouse on the far side isn’t that far.”

Forsythe nodded and moved off through the trees. Meanwhile, the Swiss, Fitzke, spotted the plantation generating plant ahead and told Olsen and DuVal, “I don’t see anyone posted to guard it. But cover me anyway. I’m going in.”

He did. The Swiss made it from the treeline to the corrugated metal powerhouse without incident. But as he opened the door a shotgun blast blew him backward, dead before he hit the ground!

DuVal swore and fired his Winchester at the dim figure of the watchman inside the doorway. He said, “I think I hit him! But it’s no good now! Let’s get out of here!”

But Olsen just growled and broke cover, leaping over Fitzke’s body and dashing inside as, on the other side of the clearing, Captain Gringo and Gaston looked at each other thoughtfully. Gaston said, “What kind of a signal do you call that? Wasn’t Fitzke supposed to fire his pistol?”

“Yeah. That was no pistol. I made it a shotgun blast and a rifle shot. Hold the thought until we see what those guards out there make of it!”

Work in the fields had stopped, but nobody was moving anywhere as they stared all around, uncertainly. Don Diego came out on his veranda, looked around himself, and then, when nothing else seemed to be happening, yelled at everyone to get back to work, before going back inside.

Captain Gringo grinned and said, “I’ve heard of overconfidence, But that guy must really think he owns this island and all the guns on it! He probably thinks the guys he sent out in the jungle just met a girl or something.”

“The gunmen not wearing their heads at the moment?”

“Sure. Montez doesn’t know Fisi’s boys got the drop on ’em. I wonder who the hell that was just now. None of our guys were packing shotguns.”

At the powerhouse, Olsen had made sure there was only one watchman on duty, and that one dead, then went to work as planned on the fuse boxes they’d hoped to find there. The Swede removed each fuse in turn and swiftly replaced it with a copper coin, short-circuiting it, as Captain Gringo had directed. Olsen knew enough about electricity to know that the slum dwellers who tried to get around replacing fuses with that trick were taking an awful chance. If Don Diego had any lights burning in his house in broad daylight, hopefully he shouldn’t be too upset by a momentary flicker.

With the fuses sabotaged, Olsen moved over to the generator. The self-regulating internal-combustion engine was turning the dynamo at about quarter speed. Enough to supply the amount of power needed by such a modest plantation. The plant had been designed to supply a lot more if it was needed. Olsen wanted all the power he could get. So he disconnected the governor, gave the engine full throttle, and ran back outside as the engine roared wide open.

Olsen drew his pistol and fired it once in the air as he got back to DuVal and snapped, “Let’s go. I’ll race you to the schooner. It’s going to get very noisy around here any minute!”

But it didn’t. Not right away. Captain Gringo and Gaston heard the signal, but knew they’d have to wait a few minutes for results. They were not the only ones who heard the pistol shot, of course. So Don Diego came back out on his veranda and called out to demand who was making all the damned noise while he was trying to sleep. His scattered guards looked blank. Then one called out, “I’ll go have a look, Patron! It sounded like it came from the powerhouse!”

Captain Gringo muttered, “Shit,” as the guard started ambling across the field the way he wasn’t supposed to be going, fortunately slowly. Then he stopped and turned as, from the veranda, Don Diego screamed, “Oh, no! My house is on fire!”

That had been the general idea. As planned, the overloaded, fuseless wires in the walls of the plantation house were spitting sparks and igniting dozens of electrical fires all through the house by now. But Montez knew only that his house was on fire and kept yelling at his men to do something about it, muy pronto.

They all ran for the house at once, abandoning their work gangs for the moment, and so, as they all bunched up in one place, Captain Gringo rose to his feet, braced the Maxim on his hip, and opened up on them with a deadly stream of hot lead!

It worked pretty good. As half or more fell writhing to the ground, Don Diego and the others dashed into the house for cover, which wasn’t such a great idea with the house on fire and Captain Gringo raking the frame walls with slugs no tin or wooden siding was about to slow down enough to matter.

Meanwhile, Forsythe popped out of the treeline farther down and called out, “Come to Papa, Children!” as he waved the confused and frightened workers his way. They didn’t all run home to Papa. But the ones who just ran were moving out of the Maxim’s way, so it evened out. Captain Gringo popped the fresh belt Gaston handed him into his hot weapon and, with a clear field of fire now, proceeded to chop hell out of the plantation house while the fire helped a lot by bursting out through his many bullet holes.

Don Diego was on fire too as he ran out screaming like a stuck pig with two others following, also dressed in burning rags. The others were still waving guns. So Captain Gringo dropped them with one burst as Don Diego ran on a few yards, fell face down among his opium poppies, and rolled over and over, screaming in agony. Captain Gringo didn’t shoot him. They didn’t owe the fat prick any favors.

The big Yank shouldered the smoking Maxim and said, “That should do it. Let’s go.” So they did, calling out for Forsythe to join them. The big Jamaican’s voice sounded strained as he called out from the jungle, “I can’t, Mon. I don’t feel so good right now.”

They found him sitting against a tree trunk, holding both hands to his guts. Captain Gringo dropped the Maxim and knelt to see how bad he was hit. He was hit pretty bad. Captain Gringo asked, “Jesus, how did that happen, Jamaica?”

Forsythe replied, “Beats the shit out of me, Mon. One minute I was waving at everybody and the next thing I knew I was on my ass with one hell of a tummy ache! I hope you got the one who winged me, Mon.”

He wasn’t winged. He was dying. But Captain Gringo said, “We must have. They hardly got off any shots at all before they were on the ground roasting. Where did all the workers go, Jamaica?”

“Hell, how should I know, Mon? When they seen me go down they just kept running. That’s ... gratitude ... for … Oh, shit!” And then he let go to spill blood and guts in his lap as he slumped over sideways, dead.

Gaston said softly. “He was a good man, non?”

Captain Gringo said, “Don’t rub it in. It was a one-in-a-million lucky shot. We’ll leave him here for now. We have to speak to a lady about a submarine she owes us.”

~*~

The Spanish wreck was right where Fisi had said it was. They’d never have found it without native help. The long gray metal cigar rested on the shallow bottom of the once more land-locked lake with a good thirty feet of rocky beach between its stem and the open sea. Its decks were awash but, as Fisi had said, the conning tower and deck were high and dry. The decking was less than knee deep under the placid surface, and a dark doorway set in the side of the conning tower stood agape, as if in sinister welcome.

There was no anchorage for the schooner near enough to matter, so Captain Gringo and the others working for Hakim had to leg it over with their gear. He wasn’t sure it was such a hot idea to bring the two wives along. But when Herta and Eva heard that they meant to make camp by the wreck and work through the night if need be, they insisted on coming along. The Greek crewmen who helped them carry the gear over were smarter. They all went back to the Peirene and Antigone’s cooking.

As Herta and Eva started putting pots and pans on the campfire by the hidden lake and Horgany, DuVal, and Olsen pitched the tents and piled the gear neater, Captain Gringo, Gaston, and Keller paddled out to the wreck in a dugout provided by their spooky Black Carib friends. They had to paddle their own canoe because once the natives had shown them the place they’d all run off to avoid its obeah. Even after they’d given her a swell spooky skeleton suit Fisi insisted the wreck was cursed and that they were on their own.

As the dugout bumped against the submerged steel hull and Gaston leaped aboard in ship-deep water to secure it, Keller sniffed and said, “My God, what’s that awful smell?”

Captain Gringo said, “Obeah. I sure hope you guys can tell what went wrong without having to go below. Don’t bodies pickled in salt water smell swell?”

As they all got aboard, sort of splashy, Keller waded about a bit and said, “The hull seems sound enough, topside. I don’t see how they could have taken green water aboard, even in a bad storm, even with that one hatch open.”

“I was afraid you’d say we have to look at the bottom. I wonder if we can get at it from inside. Unless that was an awfully big minnow I just saw over that way, the storm trapped some sharks in here as well. I doubt they’ve been getting much to eat in here, cut off from the sea so long.” He waded to the open hatch, looked in, and added, “Oh boy!”

The inside of the conning tower was of course flooded shin deep. But that wasn’t what bothered him. The two bare bloated corpses floating face down in the fetid water looked too rotten to move without having them fall apart and stink even worse.

Keller gagged at the reek of rotting flesh but was man enough to sniff and say, “I don’t smell any chlorine now.” So Captain Gringo said, “By now the batteries have been washed clean. Unfortunately for these two Black Caribs, they came aboard too soon. The rest of the crew must be below, unless some got over the side to feed the sharks a light snack. It looks like you’re going to need your diving gear, Keller. Unless you can tell something from the few pipes and gauges I see in here.”

Keller muttered something about his hard hat and pump as he stepped inside gingerly, avoiding the dead natives, for an examination of the little visible evidence. Captain Gringo and Gaston remained outside. They didn’t know beans about submarines and the smell was bad enough on the shin-deep deck.

Keller soon came out, gasping for air, and said, “Nothing. Nobody opened any wrong valves. Not that I’d have expected them to. They were running on their internal-combustion engines when they went aground in here. That’s no surprise, either. They’d never have found this inlet had they been running submerged on their batteries on a dark stormy night.”

“The batteries were fucked up with sea water anyway, right?”

“We don’t know that. The sea water may not have gotten to them before they grounded. If you want an educated guess, I’d say it appears they ran for what they thought was shelter, grounded on a rocky bottom, and sprang a leak. Probably not such a bad one, if there was time for anyone to get out, with the flooded batteries generating poison gas inside.”

Gaston looked down at his submerged feet and said, “Merde alors, I’d never call what happened a slow leak!”

Keller shrugged and said, “It’s been here long enough to fill with water from a bathtub tap. I’ll know more once I have a look below with my diving gear. But I don’t think we have much of a mystery here. The Spanish crew displayed just plain poor seamanship. They’d have been all right if they’d just ridden out the storm in a watertight vessel. But they chose to run it aground on rocks, like greenhorns.”

Captain Gringo said, “We’ll have to do better than that if we expect Hakim to pay us off. The Spanish navy may or may not have been dumb enough not to pick a crack crew after spending so much money for this cigar. But I’m betting her skipper had his reasons for putting in here and I imagine Hakim wants to know why, too.”

So they went ashore to break out Keller’s diving outfit. But it just didn’t seem to be Keller’s day. He swore in rage as he hefted his hard hat and said, “The goddamned glass plates are missing! Who in the hell could have stolen them, and why?”

As the others gathered around, concerned, Captain Gringo took the helmet from Keller to examine and growled, “The who was our mystery guest in the hold the other night. The why is easier. Nobody would notice clear glass missing, down there in the dim light. The glass wasn’t broken out. I can see the bastard simply unscrewed them quietly. I’d say someone doesn’t want us looking too closely at that wreck’s pressure hull, unless we have a mad glass collector among us.”

The others started looking at one another uncertainly. Then Herta Keller asked, “Couldn’t it have been that Greek, Socrates? He's missing, too, nicht wahr?”

“That might work,” Captain Gringo said dubiously.

Keller said, “We don’t know he drowned. There was that other schooner skulking somewhere near us, and if he just dove overboard with a life jacket or a float—”

“He could have been that brave, or dumb about sharks,” said Captain Gringo, “but we’re not going to be able to ask him about it now. How long would it take to cut new helmet ports if Venezis can spare us some glass, Keller?”

“Are you crazy? That wasn’t window glass the son of a bitch stole from my helmet, dammit! It would be suicide to dive without the original tempered, shatterproof ports!”

Horgany suggested, “The water out there isn’t very deep. Perhaps if we tried simply swimming down with our eyes open underwater, eh?”

Keller told him he was crazy, too, and Captain Gringo had to agree to the extent of mentioning the shark or more he’d spotted circling the wreck. Then he said, “Of course, if a guy who enjoyed holding his breath a lot were to swim down inside the hull, with a waterproof flashlight—”

Keller said, “Be my guest. Aside from God knows what sort of wreckage clogging the passages down there, the other dead bodies should be lots of fun to swim through!”

Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “I’d be no good down there. I wouldn’t know what to look for, even if I managed not to drown. Hakim wants a report on the tub’s naval architecture, not heroics.”

Olsen said he was willing to try. Captain Gringo didn’t ask the big Swede if he could swim. He asked if he was a naval architect. When Olsen said he just knew guns and engines, the American told him to forget it, explaining, “We know their engines were running, until they ran out of ocean. The question is why they made for the nearest uncharted shallows when they could have simply submerged and ridden the storm out below the wave surge.”

Keller said, “Maybe they were just chicken. It’s sort of hard to get used to the idea of sinking your vessel on purpose, so, if the skipper was an old clipper-ship type—”

“I doubt that,” Captain Gringo cut in, adding, “Hakim says Spain already paid good money for that vessel. No navy accepts a new ship without sea trials conducted by its own people. So Spain has to have at least a few guys who know how to dive a submarine, and it just doesn’t figure they’d put a total jerk-off in command of their one and only sub!”

Before anyone could offer any further suggestions, Gaston swore and pointed out to sea, shouting, “Regardez!” So when Captain Gringo turned to look he got to swear, too. A schooner was cruising just off shore. It was not the Peirene.

Herta Keller screamed, “Oh mein Gott! We have to get out of here before they see us!”

But Captain Gringo said, “They might not, if we don’t all yell at them at once. From out where they are, this should look like just a shallow cove, thanks to the rocky bank between the lake and sea. Let’s just keep our heads and let ’em sail by. If they’d spotted us they’d be heaving to, so no sudden movements, and, yeah, they do seem to be moving on. But we’d better send a runner to warn Venezis.”

DuVal said, “I’ll go. I once won some foot races as a schoolboy. But what are your orders, M’sieur?”

“Tell the Greeks to get the hell out of their cove and circle back for us after dark. If those clowns out there don’t spot anything too interesting, they should have given up on this island by then. Don’t bother coming back, DuVal. Just get going. There’s just about time if you run like hell!”

He and most of the others were staring after DuVal as the Frenchman tore into the trees, of course. So Captain Gringo’s back was turned to Horgany and Eva when he heard two shots in rapid succession! He whirled and went down on one knee as he drew his .38 to see Horgahy on the ground with Eva standing over him with her own whore pistol in hand, smoking. Horgany held a bigger flare pistol in his dead hand, too. Before anyone could ask why, the flare he’d fired exploded high in the sky above him, and Captain Gringo said, “Oh, swell!”

Eva Horgany said, “I tried to stop him. The bastard was a German spy!”

Captain Gringo lowered the muzzle of his own gun politely but kept it handy as he asked the Hungarian girl what she was.

Eva said, “I was not his wife. He thought I was his mistress. He wasn’t Hungarian. He was a German who spoke enough Magyar to pose as one. But Hakim is hard to convince. So he paid me to seduce this two-faced rat and keep an eye on him.”

Gaston said, “I am sure you were well paid, M’mselle. But while we are standing here discussing the past misdeeds of a dead man, that trés fatigue ship out there seems to be turning about!”

Captain Gringo turned, holstered his revolver, and sighed. “When you’re right you’re right. Come on, let’s get back out there in the canoe. I mean now, Gaston!”

As the soldiers of fortune ran for the dugout, Captain Gringo called back to the other men, “Get yourselves and the women back in the jungle. Far. If this doesn’t work, a lot of shells should be landing around here any minute!”

As they paddled for the submarine, Gaston said, “Ah, oui, I see the plan. But how am I to fire that adorable deck gun with no shells, Dick?”

“There’s a rack of seventy-fives in the conning tower. I noticed them before, but didn’t think we’d ever need them this bad! Can’t you paddle any faster, dammit?”

“Not when you insist on going the wrong way. That schooner’s heaving to out there and they could have even heavier deck guns, non?”

“Shit, they don’t even know what they’re aiming for. They just stopped to figure out what that flare was all about. So we should still have surprise on our side.” They bumped against the submarine and leaped out to wade for the conning tower.

Captain Gringo said, “Get on the gun and aim it, dammit! I’ll only be a jiffy with the ammo.”

He didn’t take that long. As he sloshed toward Gaston and the deck gun with a heavy clip of four shells, the little Frenchman swung the German-made barrel seaward at the no-doubt German-made schooner and said, “Voilà, I can just hold them in my sights without hitting that stupid conning tower, if they don’t move behind it on me!”

He opened the breech. Captain Gringo braced the shell clip between his legs and slammed the first one home, asking, “What are you waiting for?”

Gaston said, “Stand clear,” and pulled the lanyard.

It didn’t work as planned. The deck gun fired swell. But the steel deck it, and they, were standing on peeled up and away like the lid of a sardine can, sending the soldiers of fortune ass over teakettle over the bows and into the water!

The shock of cold brine closing over his head and ringing ears revived the stunned Captain Gringo enough to start swimming fast. It seemed to take forever. But in truth he’d made it to the shallows and was helping the groggy Gaston ashore before any shark in the neighborhood recovered from its own no-doubt ringing ears. Gaston spat brine, coughed, and asked, “What happened?”

Captain Gringo waited until they were back on dry land before he said, wheezing, “I think they should have used more rivets on that deck.”

They staggered toward the piled supplies. Nobody else was still about, of course. Captain Gringo picked up his machine gun, propped it over the piled boxes with its muzzle pointed seaward, and armed it. Gaston picked up a rivet that had flown all this way, shrugged, and said, “So much for German engineering. But why are you pointing that stupid weapon out to sea, Dick?”

“They’re hoisting a parley flag out there. Have you got something white to wave?”

Gaston pulled some bedding from one of the sleeping bags they hadn’t gotten to use here after all and proceeded to wave it back and forth, but said, “Oui, this should do it. But why argue when it’s so simple to just run, Dick?”

“Run where? Now that those fucks know we’re here, they can just lob shells at this little rock until it sinks. Heads up. They’ve seen our bed sheet. They’re putting a boat over the side.”

The soldiers of fortune waited until the landing party from the mystery ship grounded on the barrier beach. Then as the eight men from the longboat stood marveling at the hidden lake and wreck between them and the forted-up soldiers of fortune, Captain Gringo fired a short burst of automatic fire to show them he wasn’t a sissy before he called out loudly, “Over here. We’ll talk to just one of you!”

The distant figures went into a huddle. Then one started walking around the lake alone, hands polite. Captain Gringo waited until he’d made it around to their side and gotten within speaking distance before he snapped, “Far enough. State your name and business, pal.”

The man, dressed in ordinary seaman’s clothes but standing as if he had a ramrod up his ass, clicked his heels and said, “I am an officer and a gentleman. I am not at liberty to tell you more.”

“That’s okay. I know a German accent when I hear one, Fritz. I used to be an officer and gentleman myself. Do you want to make a deal?”

“What kind of deal, Mein Herr? As you see, resistance is useless. But all will go well with you, if you obey.”

“Bullshit. We can still make you fight for the prize, and even if you win, it’s going to cost you.”

“Be reasonable, Captain Gringo. You can’t even hit my schooner from there with that machine gun. But I assure you our new Krupp deck guns can hit anyone on this island!”

Captain Gringo lit a smoke as he let Jager stare into his machine-gun muzzle awhile before he said, “I’m willing to be reasonable if you are. You see the wrecked Spatiish sub we’ve all been looking for. It’s no use to us. But you can have it if you agree to my terms.”

Jager turned on one heel to stare soberly at the now-more-wrecked-than-ever wreck for a time before he turned back and demanded, “What are your terms, Captain Gringo?”

“If you know who I am, you know I can make life rough on any salvage crew you try to send ashore. But, like I said, the wreck’s all yours, provided you agree to the following. One: your people land here and nowhere else on the island. Two: you salvage, examine, eat, or whatever that wreck and nothing else. Then you get the hell out of here.”

“What is your number three?”

“There isn’t any number three. I’m offering you the wreck free and clear and you’re agreeing not to bother anyone or anything else on the island. I may be doing us both a favor. The natives are sort of restless and I have a terrible temper when I’m double-crossed, too.”

Jager smiled thinly and said, “So I have been told. Hakim’s people have of course already examined the wreck, nicht wahr?”

“Not really. The German agent you put aboard fucked up our salvage gear. You don’t have to worry about picking him up before you leave, either. Horgany’s body is over here behind these boxes with us. You can bury him or stuff him or whatever without even entering the treeline before you go. How do you like it so far?”

Jager chuckled and said, “You seem to have thought of everything. How did you find out about our man on board?”

“That was Horgany who fired the flare for you just now. Need I say more? If you want to bicker about details we can give you a pretty good fight. If you’re smart, you’ll see it’s just not worth it. So let’s hear your terms.”

Jager saluted stiffly and said, “I agree to yours. But no tricks, ja? I agree not to fight if you give me no cause to fight you. I do not mean I am afraid to fight you if you are planning treachery, Captain Gringo!”

“What can I tell you? We both went to military school and we both know the rules. Go back to your landing party now, and give us ten minutes to clear out.”

“Don’t you trust me, Captain Gringo?”

“About as well as you trust me, Square Head!”

Jager laughed and turned away to rejoin his men. Captain Gringo waited until he was out of range and told Gaston, “Okay, let’s get out of here poco tiempo.”

Gaston grinned slyly and said, “For once we agree on something. But just how are we to cross those Boches double without getting our adorable derrieres shot off now?”

Captain Gringo said, “We can’t. Not without big guns of our own. We’ll find the others, move everyone over to what’s left of the Montez plantation, and build a bonfire for Venezis after dark. He’ll spot it from sea and put into that wharf to pick us up, I hope.”

“What if those Boches spot it as well?”

“They won’t, if they’re here trying to figure out what went wrong aboard that sub they sold Spain. If they plan a double cross, we should know it before nightfall. Some are sure to get off at least a few shots before the Black Caribs whack their heads off in the jungle.”

As they walked through the same jungle, Gaston thought a bit and said, “Eh bien. Even a Boche should be able to see the disadvantages of treachery after you’ve made it so easy for them to get what they want. Why did you make it so easy for them, Dick? It’s not like you to give up without a fight.”

“Shit, trying to stop them now wouldn’t be a fight. It’d be plain suicide.”

“True, but I have seen you standing up to greater odds, you noisy child. I imagine Hakim was expecting a little more for his money, too.”

“Fuck Hakim. He didn’t offer us enough to get us all killed for him, you know. Come to think of it, nobody has that kind of money!”

“I agree. But unless Hakim does, he’s not going to pay us at all.”

“What do you want, egg in your cerveza? You’re the one who’s always bellyaching about taking chances. I should think you’d be happy for a change, to get out of the mess without further risk to your ass.”

Gaston frowned and said, “I would, if we were not giving in to a Prussian species of motherfucker, Dick. But there is something about a Boche that brings out the Frenchman in me. I still owe them for the time they fired on a French truce flag in seventy. So if you have any second thoughts, I am with you. God owes me at least one more German in my sights before I call it quits!”

~*~

But Captain Gringo didn’t double-cross the Germans, and, as Jager kept his end of their armistice as well, things started to go right for a change. The soldiers of fortune found the other survivors in the jungle and led them to the Montez plantation, where they found a few liberated workers had returned to their few unburned shacks and didn’t seem to want anything to do with the obviously crazy gringos.

That night they built a bonfire on the beach and around ten o’clock the Peirene came in cautiously to pick them up. Venezis asked where to, next, and seemed delighted when Captain Gringo told him to make for Limón muy pronto, just in case the Germans had second thoughts about the deal.

Apparently they didn’t. For by dawn they were well under way southeast, with not another sail in sight.

By this time Captain Gringo was feeling a little bushed. So he went below to turn in, alone. They now had a lot more room to spare than they’d started the voyage with. So he was flaked out in one of the spare staterooms, naked and trying to sleep, when he heard a discreet tap on the door and, thinking it was Antigone, got up to let her in without bothering to pull his pants on.

Eva Horgany, or whatever her name was, gasped in dismay as she saw his nude flesh and welcoming semi-erection. But she slid in fast and locked the door behind her, saying, “Dick, we have to talk. You got us off that island alive, but you may have gotten us all killed anyway!”

“We who are about to die salute you. If you don’t intend to take off that dress I’d better find a towel or something. I wasn’t pointing a weapon at you personally, Eva. I thought you were someone else.”

She batted her Oriental eyes knowingly and said, “I know about you and that German slut, Herta. I hope you found her amusing as she spied on you.”

He moved over to the bunk and sat down, draping a pillow across his lap as he frowned up at Eva and asked, “She’s a spy too? Who sent her to spy on me, Der Kaiser or Hakim?”

Eva sat beside him and said, “Neither. That fake Hungarian was the German spy and I’m Hakim’s ears and eyes on board this vessel. Herta and her husband are working for Linke-Stettin. They never really fired him at their Kiel yards. It was all a ruse.”

He frowned and said, “Keller was planted by the firm that built that submarine for Spain? Hell, if anyone had the blueprints it should have been them. But, yeah, I noticed how reluctant he was to dive. Okay, so Keller stole his own helmet glass so he wouldn’t have to. Is he really bisexual as well?”

“Of course. They both are. That’s what makes them such a great team. What did Herta get out of you? I know I didn’t tell her anything when she made a lesbian pass at me one night.”

He chuckled and said, “She didn’t get any information out of me, at least. I didn’t have any to give her. You sure must listen at keyholes a lot, Eva. Who else was that big blonde getting, ah, information out of?”

Eva grimaced and said, “Anyone she could get alone for a few minutes, I imagine. I only know for a fact she seduced Fitzke and, of course, your friend Gaston.”

He laughed and said, “Always knew Gaston was a sneak. Yeah, that was why she cooled off so sudden, once she saw she wasn’t getting anything but slap and tickle out of anyone. I’ve got to hand it to her, though. She told a pretty good story about her husband and her not getting along, and … hold it … she must have been the one who spread stories about that poor Swiss being a sissy too, right?”

Eva shook her head and said, “No, Socrates just liked to boast. That’s why Keller shoved him overboard. He enjoyed a change of pace as well as any other sodomist, but he didn’t like his lovers boasting of it. Killing Socrates also clouded the sabotaged helmet, no?”

He grimaced and said, “You sure paint a pretty picture of that pair. What do you think Hakim will do to them, once you tell him all this?”

She said, “That’s what we have to talk about. I don’t think I want to face Sir Basil now that we’ve failed him. I have a little money. But I don’t know my way around in Costa Rica as well as you do. What would it take to convince you that you should let me hide out with you until Hakim gets tired of looking for us and goes somewhere else to cause trouble?”

He frowned thoughtfully and said, “I don’t see how I can do that, Eva. You see ...”

But she didn’t let him explain further. He’d noticed she could move fast when she thought she had to. But it was still a surprise, albeit not an unhappy one, when she wrapped her arms around him and with no further ado proceeded to French kiss him and jerk him off at the same time.

He came up for air, protesting, “Hey, don’t waste me in mid-air, for God’s sake. I’ve got a better place in mind to come, if we’re going to be such good friends!”

She laughed lewdly and shoved him flat on his back to hook a petite thigh across him and impale herself on his raging erection He hadn’t thought she was wearing much underwear under that thin pongee dress. She moved her internal muscles with astounding skill on his shaft as she smiled down at him and asked, “Are we really to be good friends, darling?”

He said, “Oh, yeah!” as he started to undress her while she slid up and down, gripping tightly, and added, “Let’s see what else you have to offer.”

She said, “Everything I have is yours, beloved. Do you like my pussy? It is yours.” And when he peeled her dress off over her head she held her perky little breasts up for inspection and said they were all his, too. So he rolled her over on her back and kissed them both as he pounded her and climaxed in her almost at once. She felt it and sighed. “You will save my life, won’t you, darling?”

He said, “Can’t talk right now. Too busy,” as he kept on moving in her delightful interior.

She sobbed, “Oh, yes, bus me, bus me, bus me!” He didn’t ask her what “bus” might mean in Hungarian. There were some things a guy could figure out all by himself. It sure was a funny word for “fucking.” He wondered how a Hungarian caught a regular crosstown bus.

Eva didn’t see fit to tell him the Hungarian for “coming.” She just let him know by trying to bite him off at the roots with her amazing little snatch as they both went crazy for a while. Gaston had been right about her being a wild-thighed as well as wild-eyed little thing. Some of the positions they wound up in were obviously impossible. But she was pretty as well as double-jointed, so what the hell.

After having bused him crosstown, uptown, downtown, and straight up and down, Eva stayed plastered against him, begging for her life, as he lit a claro to figure out what day it was at least. She kept saying the Merchant of Death would surely kill them all for failing, until he patted her bare bottom fondly and said, “We didn’t fail. I’ve been fibbing a lot. I’d already figured out why Keller didn’t want anyone to know what was wrong with the underwater gunbucket his firm built. I knew even better when we tried to fire her deck gun and peeled the deck off. He tried to con me with disparaging remarks about Spanish seamanship. But I read my history books, and despite Francis Drake, some Spaniards know one end of a boat from the other. Hakim wanted to know how Linke-Stettin underbid him oh those submarine contracts. Okay, we found out.”

“Yes, but you let the Germans recover her and now they'll know, too. Oh, Dick, I’m so frightened. You’ve never seen Sir Basil in a real rage!”

He didn’t ask her if she’d ever seen the old bastard with his clothes off. He didn’t want to know, and, hell, it probably would have killed a man Hakim’s age. So what the hell.

He said, “I’ll handle Hakim. You can hide out with Gaston while I try to get our money out of the old shit, if you promise not to do this to Gaston. He doesn’t deserve it.”

She purred like a kitten and rubbed her open crotch against his hip, saying, “I told you, I’m all yours for as long as you want me, provided we get to live that long., Hakim’s German rivals were not supposed to find out what was wrong with their design, dammit!”

He said, “Let me worry about that. We’ve got some problems closer to hand to worry about.”

“Oh, would you like to bus me some more?”

“I’d like to. I’d better not. This is kind of delicate, Eva. But you see, Herta isn’t the only other lady aboard I have to keep calmed down at least until we make port.”

“My God, you’ve been busing that Greek girl, too?”

“What can I tell you? If we’re going to be pals we have to level with each other, right?”

She laughed and said, “I’ll help you keep your secrets if you’ll be nice to me once more before I leave, playing the innocent.”

So he did, and she did, and if it took a little longer than usual with Antigone that night, Antigone didn’t seem to mind.

~*~

He was just as glad he’d left Eva with Gaston, on the far side of town, when he reported to Sir Basil Hakim back in San José a few days later.

As Eva had feared, the Merchant of Death listened calmly enough until Captain Gringo got to the part about letting the Germans have the damned fool submarine. Then he said flatly, “I’m going to have you killed, you stupid son of a bitch!”

Captain Gringo said, “No, you’re not. You’re going to pay us the bonus and, oh, yeah, I think we rate the Kellers’ share too. Now that you know they were working for your rivals. I’d like the Swiss and Jamaican’s share to go to their families, of course.”

“You certainly are optimistic, for a man who’s about to die, Walker. I’ll naturally do the right thing as far as the men who died in my service are concerned. It’s good business to keep one’s word. As for the Kellers, they’re dead. They just don’t know it yet. You can save yourself a lot of pain by telling me where Gaston and the Hungarian girl are, before your execution.”

“Hadn’t you better grow some before you threaten an armed adult so freely, Shorty?”

Then he noticed the gun barrels pointing out from the drapery all around and said with a crooked smile, “Come to think of it, you do seem a little taller now. But you still don’t want to have me shot.”

“I don’t, dear boy? You have perhaps one full minute to tell me why. I never sent you out to lead that perishing Jager right to my submarine, God damn your eyes!”

“I’m going to need more than a minute to explain if you don’t knock off all this spooky shit. In the first place, it was not your submarine. It was never your submarine. Your rivals in Kiel, Linke-Stettin, built it, and you never laid eyes on it. I did. I know how they underbid you. You won’t, unless you stop waving guns at people and act like a grown man, for God’s sake.”

“I’m listening. Keep talking.”

Captain Gringo explained how Linke-Stettin had underbid him by simply building an impossibly fragile vessel that would have sunk the first time Spain tried to use it against anyone, if a storm hadn’t sunk it even sooner. The old man’s eyes grew thoughtful and almost amused as he heard how trying to fire the deck gunshot rivets clean ashore.

But when Captain Gringo paused for breath, Hakim wasn’t smiling as he said, “All right. I know Linke-Stettin is run by shit heels. I knew that before I sent all of you to salvage their latest efforts. I’ll concede you found out how they underbid Woodbine Arms, Limited. But I fail to see what good the information is to me. I already knew they hold almost anything together with haywire and spit long enough to sell it. But I sell weapons meant to be used in the field, not for show. If you’d only brought back a few more details, my engineers might have been able to design something as cheap as Linke-Stettin that wouldn’t melt in the rain. But all you did was ruin the wreck further and run away, letting the Germans have it without a fight! God damn it, man. I paid you good money to fight as much as you had to!”

Captain Gringo said, “I wish you’d shut up and listen.”

“You tell me to shut up? You dare, with my men covering you?”

“Have to. You said I only had a minute, and I’d have been finished by now if you’d shut up and listen.”

“Keep talking. This had better be good.”

“I think it is. In the first place, there’s just no way you’ll ever underbid Linke-Stettin. If they bid any lower they couldn’t even afford the haywire and spit. That’s what they didn’t want you or anyone else to find out. That’s why they infiltrated your company with their own agents after firing Keller, they said, just for being a little fruity. By the way, you’d better not waste money having them killed. Let Linke-Stettin take care of them for you. You think you're mad?”

“I don’t think. I am. You let Keller sabotage the mission, you clown!”

Captain Gringo shrugged and said, “Couldn’t be helped. Even if I hadn’t been busy screwing his wife, how was I supposed to watch him every minute? He managed to keep anyone from examining the lousy underwater riveting, but it didn’t matter, when Gaston and me popped all the rivets out of the top plates without really trying. So if Keller and Herta are dumb enough to go anywhere near Germany for their just deserts, I figure they’ll sure as hell get them. They really fucked up. Linke-Stettin should be going out of business any minute, unless they want to give a lot of people their money back. By the way, was that submarine insured?”

“In time of peace? Yes. Get to the point, dammit!”

“I’m trying to. Okay, so the insurance agents will be trying to serve papers on the directors of Linke-Stettin as well. Keller and his wife may get lucky and never find them, if they have unlisted Swiss bank accounts. I know I sure would if I set out to cheat Der Kaiser, His Most Catholic Majesty, and international insurance dicks who play even rougher in peacetime.”

Hakim snorted and asked, “Who’s supposed to tell him all this, me! Unfortunately, some people just don’t understand how honest I am, in my own little way. They’d never believe me if I made an obvious effort to discredit a business rival, you idiot!”

Captain Gringo reached into his shirt pocket for a claro as he grinned and said, “I know. That’s why I suckered German intelligence into doing it for you. Don’t you suppose Der Kaiser will believe his own naval architects when they report to him what they found sort of melting like ice cream in the sun, back at that island?”

Hakim looked perhaps a little less like a public executioner as he said, “I like the first part. What do you mean you suckered Jager?”

“Hell, had we simply run away and let him have it as a gift free and simple, the prick might have suspected us of something sneaky. Jager knew who I was. So he knew I was working for you, and you’re right, people just don’t understand you. They think you’re a treacherous backbiting little son of a bitch.”

Hakim smiled for the first time that morning and said, “I am. Let me light that cigar for you, son. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer a Havana Perfecto?”

“No, thanks. Just give me the money. Got a lady waiting to spend la siesta with, see?”

Hakim reached under a silk cushion to produce a wad that would have choked a horse. But he held on to it as he said, “Let me see if I have it straight. Having outwitted the great Captain Gringo for Der Kaiser and no doubt expecting another medal for it, Jager will report he got to the wreck before you could examine or sabotage it. As soon as his engineers see what a shitty job Linke-Stettin did, they’ll report that, too, and if you think I have a temper you should see Kaiser Willy in a snit! I like it. It’s foolproof. Even if the directors of Linke-Stettin don’t wind up against a wall, they’re never going to be able to bid against me again, and I’ll now be free to build all the U-boats I want to, at a modest profit of course. I pride myself on good weaponry, but I’m not in the business for my health.”

“You’re all heart, Sir Basil. Naturally, as soon as the Brits find out Germany’s ordered a fleet of submarines they'll be in the market for more of the same from your British shipyards?”

“Naturally. It’s my patriotic duty as a British subject. Let’s see, here’s your bonus, Gaston’s, and that silly girl may as well have hers for shutting up that German spy to confuse the issue further.”

“What about the shares Keller and his wife would have gotten if they hadn’t jumped ship and run like hell the minute we hit Limón?”

“Don’t I deserve anything, dear boy?”

“Shit, Hakim, you already have the money. Be a sport and I’ll tell you what. I won’t tell the Brits a fucking thing when Greystoke contacts us, okay?”

“Are you expecting the Brits to approach you?”

“Sure. They know you’d sent us on that mission, too, don’t they? Knowing Greystoke of old, he’ll probably try to bribe me with pussy as usual. British intelligence is hard to get money out of.”

Sir Basil Hakim chuckled, peeled off the extra money, and handed it over, asking, “Will this be enough to console you for saying no to a pretty British spy, dear boy?”

Captain Gringo said, as he put the money away, “I never say no to a pretty British spy. But I promise I won’t tell on you in bed.”