The radio ceased for a moment and Hooker asked, “Who was it, Billy?”
“Peter-from-the-market, sar.”
An odd tone was in Billy’s voice. The subtle expression on his face was plain. His mouth was drawn tight and inwardly he was thinking about other boats and people dying in them and a terrifying eater in the ocean.
“Trouble?”
“His boat, the Soucan, has just been hit.”
Hooker stood up quickly. “Where is he?”
Billy pointed to the northwest. “Twelve miles... there.”
“How bad is he?”
“He is taking water fast, sar.”
“What hit him?”
“Something came up from the bottom, Peter said.”
“Billy, he’s in over four thousand feet of water out there... no reefs, no nothing!”
“Something hit him, sar. He thinks his bottom has been bitten out.”
“Billy, damn it...”
But the Carib had turned around and pushed the throttles forward. His face was a subtle mask of concern for his friend out there, yet touched by the anxiety of time itself. Billy didn’t own a watch, but he could compute hours and minutes nearly to the seconds themselves, and now he was hoping they could make contact with the Soucan and get out of the area before the darkness owned the ocean.
Hooker could only shrug and get the binoculars out of the locker. For all he cared they could stay out here all night and he’d see what he could drag up on a deep line, but Billy would be a raving lunatic by sunup, so he’d just have to play by local rules. It really didn’t matter anyway. There was nothing else to do.
Billy spotted the dot on the horizon before he did and said, “There’s the Soucan, Mr. Hooker, sar.”
Following his direction, Hooker zeroed in on the boat. It was an other one of the oldies, a Matthews made back in the thirties. Probably about thirty-five feet, he figured. It was listing badly to port, its bow headed for home and a thin tendril of smoke from one exhaust tube showing that it still had some power.
Even as he watched, the Soucan seemed to lurch and the exhaust smoke stopped. A figure came out of the cabin, waved in their direction, then disappeared back into the wheelhouse again. Once more the radio blared on and the staccato rattle lasted for a full minute.
Billy half turned and said, “He is going down, sar. All power lost.”
“How long has he got?”
“Ten minutes, sar. There is a mattress stuffed in the hole, but it will not last.”
“We going to make it?”
“Yes, we will make it, sar.”
Hooker grinned and glanced up at the sky. “But we’ll never make it back before dark, will we?”
Billy Bright wanted to hate his boss man right then. He wanted to hate him very hard for that easy way he had when death could be only moments away. He wanted to hate him for not respecting the strange wild things that lived in the vast waters of the world, for not fearing them at all. But he really couldn’t hate him because Hooker was a good man. On the mainland he could have been a tough man, for the scars he carried showed he had met others in the deadly way and won because he was here. Yet he was good. An islander could tell if he was not good, and he was not so very bad.
“We will not make it back before dark,” Billy said.
“You scared of getting ‘et’?”
“I do not look forward to it,” Billy said, hoping Hooker would change the subject.
“What’s going to eat a boat, Billy?”
“Something ‘et’ five, sar. Peter will be the number six.”
Hooker could see the Soucan plainly now and put the glasses away. “He probably blew an engine rod right through his bottom.”
“Peter would have said.”
“Would he know?”
Billy nodded. “He is an engine builder. Not good, but he makes them go. He said something hit him. It bit a hole in his bottom.”
They closed in on the old Matthews, throttled back and headed into the breeze. The boat was going down fast, keeling far over on its port side. A tall, skinny native with a chubby kid beside him was braced against the rail that was nearly awash, and when the Clamdip edged in they both jumped; Hooker took them in over the rails, one in each arm, and deposited them on the deck. Almost formally, Peter-from-the-market bowed, shook Hooker’s hand and went to stand beside Billy.
Very slowly, the Clamdip circled the Soucan until they were looking at the bottom. Something inside the sinking boat made a loud, screeching noise, ripping at wood and metal, then the hulk turned completely over and exposed her barnacled underside for three long seconds before dropping into the total oblivion of the gulf, almost as if it were being sucked down a giant straw.
Hooker had seen it.
He wished he hadn’t seen it at all.
There, sure as the sun sets, was a big hunk taken out of the bottom of the boat, and where it looked like it was regurgitating steel springs and cotton out of its maw, Peter had jammed the mattress. But it wasn’t the mess of garbage that was sliding into the water that made the impact on Hooker.
It was those beautifully regular six-inch sawtooth marks on the top break of the wood that were clearly visible in those few instants that made Hooker feel as though a cold wind had just blown down on him from some northern ice field.
Quickly, he turned to see if any of the others had spotted it, but their eyes were studying the setting sun and the distant horizon. Under his breath Hooker muttered his disbelief, then opened another beer. He looked at the chart and saw that they were coming into the two-thousand-foot level.
It could have been his imagination, he thought, or the way old, water-soaked boards broke off around their supports. He tried to reconstruct his short visual sighting but found the image getting obscure. He took a sip of the cold beer and shook his head.
Man, he was getting as creepy as these crazy islanders.
Luckily, Hooker got the old tires over the side before Billy hit the dock. Usually, he was pretty adept at sliding the Clamdip into its berth, but this time he came in too fast, the reverse didn’t engage quickly enough in the ancient gearbox and when it did the boat was all out of position. The old hull slammed into the pilings with one hell of a jolt that could have been disastrous if the Firestone fenders hadn’t cushioned the shock.
Hooker saw it coming, sat on the beer box to keep it from spilling and let everything else go to pot. Tomorrow Billy would see what kind of mess he had made and would clean up without a word, the way he made everybody else do who pulled something stupid.
Crazy, he thought. Everybody was afraid of getting “et,” as they said here. He looked at the boats on each side of the Clamdip and finished the rest of the beer. They were all rotted hulks, held together with driftwood and rusty nails. Some of them sunk right there at their moorings in calm weather and sometimes they just plain came apart out at sea like a woolen sweater in a washing machine. And these people thought because they lost six of them there was something out there eating them up.
He threw the can in the trash box and reached for a fresh one.
Those damn tooth marks in the Soucan were still there in his mind like a bad dream.
The first half hour on the beach was a solemn time. There was the loss of a boat and a near loss of a friend, but most solemn of all was the story that had to be told, retold and embellished with every telling. The fifth time around, the solemnity was gone and the excitement had crept in, and if Hooker hadn’t made inroads into the cold beer, he would have sworn it was all a dull dream.