“I think that if they haven’t gone and if we make no move to act as though we were not aground they will come out to board the ship tonight. We do not look like anything except a pleasure craft. I’m sure they were inside the keys when it happened. They will feel contempt for us and they will be sure we are weak because they have seen only one man all day in the dinghy if they have watched.”
“We tried to play it that way.”
“Then if they find how things are on the turtle boat what then?”
“Ask Willie to come up here,” he said to Antonio.
Willie came up, still lumpy-looking from the mosquito bites. His scratches looked better, though, and he was wearing only a pair of khaki shorts.
“How are you, jungle man?”
“I’m fine, Tom. Ara put some chloroform on the bites and they’ve stopped itching. Those damn mosquitoes are about a quarter of an inch long and black as ink.”
“We’ve got ourselves pretty well fucked-up, Willie.”
“Hell. We’ve been fucked-up from the start.”
“Peters?”
“We’ve got him sewed up in canvas and some ice on him. He won’t bring anything in the market. But he’ll hold a couple of days.”
“Listen, Willie. I was telling Antonio what I’d like to do was get in to where the .50’s and the searchlight would bear on that hulk. But he says we can’t get in without spooking the whole ocean and that it’s no good.”
“Sure,” Willie said. “He’s right. That’s three times you’ve been wrong today. I’m leading you by one less.”
“Do you think they will come out and try and board the ship?”
“I doubt it like hell,” Willie said.
“But they could.”
“They aren’t crazy. But they could be desperate enough to try it.”
The two of them were sitting on the deck of-the flying bridge leaning back against the stays and the canvas. Willie rubbed the part of his right shoulder that had begun to itch again on the canvas.
“They could come out,” he said. “They did a crazy thing when they made that massacre.”
“Not from their point of view then. You have to remember it was when they had just lost their ship and they were desperate.”
“Well, they lost another ship today as well as a comrade. Maybe they were fond of the son of a bitch.”
“Probably. Or they wouldn’t have let him take up space.”
“He was a pretty good guy,” Willie said. “He took all that surrender talk and a grenade before he even made his play. He must have thought Peters was the captain because of his commanding manner and the way he spreched Kraut.”
“I guess so.”
“You know the frags went off below decks. They might never have heard them. How many rounds did you fire, Tom?”
“Not more than five.”
“The character fired one burp.”
“How loud did it all sound to you, Antonio?”
“It didn’t sound loud,” Antonio said. “We are downwind and to the north of it with the key between. It didn’t sound loud at all. But I could hear it clearly.”
“They might never have heard it,” Thomas Hudson said. “But they must have seen the dinghy running around and their ship careened. They’re sure to think she’s a trap. I don’t think they will go near her.”
“I think that’s right,” Willie agreed.
“But do you think they’ll come out here?”
“You and God know just as much about that as I do. Aren’t you the one who’s always thinking in the Germans’ minds?”
“Sure,” Thomas Hudson said. “Sometimes I’m pretty good at it. But I’m not so hot today.”
“You’re thinking all right,” Willie said. “You just ran into a bad streak.”
“We could set a trap over there.”
“You’re just as trapped as you’re trapping on her,” Willie said.
“You go over and booby-trap her while it’s still light.”
“Now you’re talking,” Willie said. “That’s the old Tom. I’ll booby-trap both hatches and that dead Kraut and the lee rail. You’re thinking your way out of it now.”
“Use plenty of stuff. We’ve got lots of stuff.”
“She’ll be booby-trapped till Christ won’t have her.”