At the time I really didn't feel a thing. I was a stranger folding his handkerchief, watching two people in bed. All that came to my mind was, they shouldn't have done it in my room. The bank book was in the same drawer with the handkerchiefs. I took the book, went out without saying a word; rode a cab to the bank, then another cab to the airport, and the next morning I was on a plane winging toward Hawaii....
Eddie was shaking me. “We're smart, sleeping in the sun. Feel baked enough to eat. Must be after three. They should be along to sack the copra. We'll need the dinghy to get the sacks back to the Hooker. You go back and row it down— and check the anchor. Ill help make copra here. I could use a little exercise.” He pinched his hard stomach.
I had to row the mile or so to the Hooker and back three times that afternoon, taking three seventy-five-pound sacks of copra each trip. By the end of the afternoon I was pooped and had drunk so many coconuts and oranges, I had the runs. Eddie went ashore, bought taro and rice at the Chinese store —after he explained his face to the storekeeper who gave him the usual “Lion Face!” scream—and made a thick fish gumbo which seemed to do some good. Then he suggested I try the stomach medicine and we both knocked off a few bottles and got high—and upset my stomach again.
Eddie and I had our mats atop the cabin and I was keeping an eye on the beach, but Nancy didn't show. Before I fell into a drunken sleep I kept telling myself she had a hell of a nerve. And by God I'd tell her off, let her know she couldn't walk all over me, scheme behind my back like I was a schoolboy.
I dozed off on this thought and the next thing I knew I was covered with stinking slimy slop. Eddie sat up, sputtering, yelled at me, “What the hell did you turn loose, you slob?”
“Me?” I managed to say, tasting something terrible on my lips. The night was clear and I saw the whole deck was covered with dripping slop and garbage. The stench was terrific. Eddie stoop up, shaking himself and cursing and as I got to my feet I was knocked flat in all this swishing, ripe crap and slops sliding over our decks ... as our stern gently bunked into the Shanghai, which loomed up over us like a cliff. While I scooped the garbage off the motor hatch, Eddie jumped into the dinghy and rowed like mad, trying to pull the Hooker away from the schooner.
Above us I heard a polite laugh and made out the flat face of Mr. Teng, heard his soft voice calling out, “Sorry, didn't know you were below us. You must have slipped your anchor.” This was followed by the laughter of the islanders who lined the rail.
Between strokes Eddie grunted from the dinghy, “I'll bet you didn't, you miserable crud!”
Eddie could barely move us with the dinghy. The heavy diesel coughed, then roared, and I was smothered with exhaust gas smelling worse than the slop. The Shanghai's anchor came up as she got under way, bumping us again and throwing me flat in the garbage—like a slapstick movie.
The slime and exhaust stink was making me sick so I dived in, swam over to the dinghy. With the two of us rowing we managed to move the cutter, then Eddie cursed again, said, “Stop rowing! Let's drift over the Shanghai's anchorage— must be a rocky bottom there to hold her.”
We spent the two hours before dawn huddled in the dinghy, mad and cold, and almost giving up every time we drifted in the lee of the Hooker. Eddie kept muttering about killing Mr. Teng, pushing Buck's pointed face inside out. Finally I said, “Aw, shut up! We're a fine couple of sailors—some anchor watch, both of us sleeping one off!”
“Ain't all our fault—there was a deck full of people on the schooner. Somebody must have glanced over the rail, saw us drifting toward them. And that was sure more than one pail of slops they dropped. Teng figured this out, all right!”
“All Nancy's fault for our corning to this crummy island!” I said like a kid. “She has to stick her nose into my business!”
When the sun came up we went aboard and threw out the mats and blankets we'd been sleeping on, started to clean up the boat. By noon we had her pretty well scrubbed down, although the odor remained. Luckily, nothing had run into the cabin. We made coffee, were just able to keep it down, when Nancy Adams, appeared on the beach, waved to us.
“Get ready to sail!” I told Eddie, jumping into the dinghy. I made the beach as if racing and Nancy looked at me queerly —I only had on a pair of badly torn, dirty shorts. She said, “I'm so sorry I forgot to send anyone to tell you I was staying the night at—”
“Forget it,” I snapped. “We're sailing.”
“Sailing? Edmond is expecting you for lunch.”
“Mrs. Adams, you're a passenger and as owner of the boat I am hereby informing you we're sailing!”
She looked startled. “Ray Jundson, you're being rude.”
“I sure am.” I pointed to the dinghy. “Coming?”
She went over and told a little boy something to tell Stewart, then I pushed the dinghy back into the water and Nancy took a seat, didn't say a word as I started rowing. Finally she said, “Mr. Jundson, you are an inexcusable boor!”
“I wouldn't speak of manners, Mrs. Adams. You've lied to us about not being on PellaPella in months—you were here several weeks ago. Also, I am quite capable of making up my own mind about settling down and asking your daughter to marry me without having a talking beard hand me a lot of gas!”
The old lady simply stared at me with hard eyes, then looked away. She stepped aboard the Hooker and sat on the cabin without saying a word to Eddie. While he tied up the dinghy, I worked on the motor. It took me about twenty minute to get it going, including taking some bits of fish bone out of the carburetor—and don't ask me how they got in there.
As we headed through the channel, out to sea, Nancy wrinkled her thin nose, announced, “Something smells.”
“Ray had the runs last night,” Eddie said, with a straight face. “But you're lucky—the copra bugs shut the door and your cabin wasn't touched.”
“Must you be so crude, Mr. Romanos!” Nancy said, going below.
Outside the reef a smart wind put the Hooker's port rail under and we sped away like a racing sloop as I cut the motor. Our decks were washed by spray and when I asked Eddie what the hell was the idea of straining the mast, he said, “I'm doing it on purpose—clean the decks.”
After a few hours the old lady came back on deck and started making lunch. She was humming to herself and seemed to have forgotten her huff. Eddie started telling her now he was going to break Buck's beak and then went into some bull about his ring career.
Matter of fact I was feeling pretty relaxed myself. The good clean breeze, the singing sound of the Hooker slicing the waves, the fact we had some copra, all made me simmer down and uncoil. It even struck me funny the way the Shanghai people must have watched us inching toward them, and start getting buckets of garbage ready.
Nancy made a simple lunch of roasted bread-fruit, crab legs, and opened a tin of sweet pears for dessert. As we were eating I told her, “Sorry I blew my top back there. We had an accident last night. The Shanghai dumped garbage on our deck, covered us both with slop while we were sleeping-drunk and—well—I was pretty hot about things.”