“But why isn’t Cayo Francés flying patrols over all this all the time?”
“They made their patrol this morning. Didn’t you see it?”
“No. And why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you saw it. One of those baby seaplanes.”
“Shit,” Thomas Hudson said. “It must have been when I was in the head and the generator was running.”
“Well, it doesn’t make any difference now,” Antonio said. “But, Tom, the next two stakes are out.”
“Can you see the next two stakes, Gil?”
“I can’t see any stakes.”
“The hell with it,” Thomas Hudson said. “All I have to do is hug that next chickenshit little key and keep off the sand-spit that runs north and south of it. Then we’ll case that bigger key with the mangroves and then we’ll try for the old or the new channel.”
“The east wind is blowing all the water out.”
“The hell with the east wind,” Thomas Hudson said. As he said the words, they sounded like a basic and older blasphemy than any that could have to do with the Christian religion. He knew that he was speaking against one of the great friends of all people who go to sea. So since he had made the blasphemy he did not apologize. He repeated it.
“You don’t mean that, Tom,” Antonio said.
“I know it,” Thomas Hudson said. Then he said to himself, making an act of contrition and remembering the verse unexactly, “Blow, blow, thou western wind. That the small rain down may rain. Christ, that my love were in my arms and I in my bed again.” It’s the same goddam wind only with the difference in latitude, he thought. They come from different continents. But they are both loyal and friendly and good. Then he repeated to himself again, Christ, that my love were in my arms and I in my bed again.
The water was so muddy now that there was nothing to steer by except the ranges and the suction the ship made of water from the banks. George was in the bow with the lead and Ara had a long pole. They measured their depths and called back to the bridge.
Thomas Hudson had the feeling that this had happened before in a bad dream. They had run many difficult channels. But this was another thing that had happened sometime in his life. Perhaps it had happened all his life. But now it was happening with such an intensification that he felt both in command and at the same time the prisoner of it.
“Can you make out anything, Gil?” he asked
“Nothing.”
“Do you want Willie up here?”
“No. I see whatever Willie would see.”
“I think he ought to be up anyway.”
“As you wish, Tom.”
Ten minutes later they were aground.
XV
They were aground on a patch of mud and sandy bottom that should have been marked with a stake, and the tide was still falling. The wind was blowing hard and the water was muddy. Ahead was a medium-sized green key that looked set low in the water and there was a scattering of very small keys to the left. To the left and the right there were patches of bare bank that were beginning to show as the water receded. Thomas Hudson watched flocks of shore birds wheeling and settling on the banks to feed.
Antonio had the dinghy over and he and Ara ran out a bow anchor and two light stern anchors.
“Do you think we need another bow anchor?” Thomas Hudson asked Antonio.
“No, Tom. I don’t think so.”
“If the wind rises it can push us against the flood when it comes.”
“I don’t think it will, Tom. But it could.”
“Let’s get a small one out to windward and shift the big one further to leeward. Then we don’t have anything to worry about.”
“All right,” Antonio said. “I’d rather do that than run aground again in a bad place.”
“Yeah,” Thomas Hudson said. “We went into all that before.”
“It’s still the right thing to anchor.”
“I know it. I just asked you to put out another small one and shift the big one.”