ISLANDS IN THE STREAM

“Must be. They move a lot in ten days.”

“When they want to,” Ara said. “Let’s stop thinking, Tom. It gives me a headache. I’d rather handle gas drums. You think and tell me where you want me to steer.”

“Just as she goes and watch for that no-good Minerva. Keep well inside of that and outside the sand-spits.”

“Good.”

Do you suppose she lost her radio when she got smacked? Thomas Hudson thought. She must have had an emergency radio that she could have used. But Peters never picked her up on the UHF after she was smacked. Still, that doesn’t necessarily prove anything. Nothing proves anything except that those two boats were seen on the course we are on three days ago. Did I ask him if they had their dinghys on deck? No, I forgot to. But they must have because he said they were ordinary Bahaman turtling boats except for the shelters they had rigged with the palm branches.

How many people? You don’t know. Any wounded? You don’t know. How armed? All you know is a machine pistol. Their course? We are on it until now.

Maybe we will find something between Cayo Cruz and Mégano, he thought. What you’ll probably find is lots of willets and iguana tracks in the sand toward the water hole.

Well, it keeps your mind off things. What things? There aren’t any things any more. Oh yes, there are. There is this ship and the people on her and the sea and the bastards you are hunting. Afterwards you will see your animals and go into town and get drunk as you can and your ashes dragged and then get ready to go out and do it again.

Maybe this time you will get these characters. You did not destroy their undersea boat but you were faintly instrumental in its destruction. If you can round up the crew, it will be extremely useful.

Then why don’t you care anything about anything? he asked himself. Why don’t you think of them as murderers and have the righteous feelings that you should have? Why do you just pound and pound on after it like a riderless horse that is still in the race? Because we are all murderers, he told himself. We all are on both sides, if we are any good, and no good will come of any of it.

But you have to do it. Sure, he said. But I don’t have to be proud of it. I only have to do it well. I didn’t hire out to like it. You did not even hire out, he told himself. That makes it even worse.

“Let me take her, Ara,” he said.

Ara gave him the wheel.

“Keep a good lookout to starboard. But don’t let the sun bund you.”

“I’ll get my glasses. Look, Tom. Why don’t you let me steer and get a good four-man lookout up here? You’re tired and you didn’t rest at all at the key.”

“We don’t need a four-man lookout in here. Later on we will.”

“But you’re tired.”

“I’m not sleepy. Look, if they run nights along here close in to shore they are going to get in trouble. Then they will have to lay up to make repairs and we will find them.”

“That’s no reason for you never to rest, Tom.”

“I’m not doing it to show off,” Thomas Hudson said.

“No one has ever thought so.”

“How do you feel about these bastards?”

“Only that we will catch them and kill what is necessary and bring the others in.”

“What about the massacre?”

“I don’t say we would have done the same thing. But they thought it was necessary. They did not do it for pleasure,” Ara said.

“And their dead man?”

“Henry has wanted to kill Peters several times. I have wanted to kill him myself sometimes.”

“Yes,” Thomas Hudson agreed. “It is not an uncommon feeling.”

“I don’t think of any of these things and so I don’t worry. Why don’t you not worry, and read when you relax the way you always did?”

“I’m going to sleep tonight. After we anchor I’ll read and then sleep. We’ve gained four days on them, though it does not show. Now we must search carefully.”