Hell, he thought. I’ll get them this week. They’ve got to stop for water and to cook what they have before the animals starve and rot. There’s a good chance they will run only at nights and lay up daytimes. That would be logical. That’s what I would do if I were them. Try to think like an intelligent German sailor with the problems this undersea boat commander has.
He has problems all right, Thomas Hudson thought. And the worst problem he has is us and he doesn’t even know about us. We don’t look dangerous to him. We look good to him.
Don’t take it in any bloodthirsty way, he thought. Nothing of this is going to bring back anything. Use your head and be glad to have something to do and good people to do it with.
“Juan,” he said. “What do you see, boy?”
“All bloody ocean.”
“You other gentlemen see anything?”
“Bloody nothing,” Gil said.
“My bloody belly sees coffee. But it doesn’t come any closer,” Ara said.
“I see land,” Henry said. He had seen it that instant, a low square smudge as though a man’s thumb had daubed weak ink against the lightening sky.
“That’s behind Romano,” Thomas Hudson said. “Thank you, Henry. Now you characters go down for coffee and send up four other desperate men to see strange and amusing things.”
“Do you want coffee, Tom?” Ara asked.
“No. I’ll take tea when it’s made.”
“We’ve only been on watch a couple of hours,” Gil said. “We don’t need to go off, Tom.”
“Go on down and get coffee and give the other desperate men a chance for glory.”
“Tom, didn’t you say you thought they were at Lobos?”
“Yes. But I changed my mind.”
The others had gone down and four were coming up.
“Gentlemen,” Thomas Hudson said. “Split the four quadrants up amongst you. Is there coffee below?”
“Plenty,” his mate said. “And tea. The engines are good and she didn’t make any more water than you would expect in the cross sea.”
“How is Peters?”
“He drank his own whisky in the night. The one with the little lamb on it. But he stayed awake. Willie kept him awake and drank his whisky,” his mate said.
“We have to fill gas at Confites and take on anything else there is.”
“They can load fast and I can kill a pig and scald and scrape him,” his mate said. “I’ll give them a quarter at the radio station to help me and I can butcher him while you are running. You get some sleep while we load. Would you like me to steer?”
“No. I only have to send three signals at Confites and you load and I will sleep. Then we will pursue.”
“Toward home?”
“Of course. They may avoid us for a time. But they cannot escape us. Later we will talk about it. How are they?”
“You know them. We will talk about it later. Steer in a little more, Tom. With the countercurrent you’ll shorten it.”
“Did you lose much with rolling?”
“Nothing that matters. It was a bitch of a beam sea,” his mate said.
“Ya lo creo,” said Thomas Hudson. “I believe it.”
“There should only be the people of this one undersea boat around here. She must surely be the one they claimed sunk. Now they are off La Guayra and above Kingston and on all the petrol lanes. Also they are with the wolf packs.”
“Also they are here sometimes.”
“Yes, for our sins.”
“And for theirs.”
“On this thing we will pursue well and intelligently.”
“Let us get it started,” Thomas Hudson said.
“There has been no delay.”
“It goes slowly for me.”
“Yes,” his mate said. “But get some sleep in Confites and I promise everything will go faster than you could hope.”
V
Thomas Hudson saw the high lookout post on the sandy key and the tall signalling mast. They were painted white and were the first things that showed. Then he saw the stumpy radio masts and the high cocked wreck of the ship that lay on the rocks and obscured the view of the radio shack. The key was not handsome from his side.