The label said it was distilled from pure cane juice and aged in oak casks. That it had been distilled and blended by the Callwood family in the Caribbean's oldest continuously operating pot distillery in Cane Garden Bay, Tortola. The first sniff hooked me; two more confirmed its character. The taste was as close to ambrosial as anything I'd ever had. Nobody else seemed to find it as special as I did, which proved the dictum about personal preference.
Potter told me Arundel Estate had been in operation for four hundred years, the last two hundred in the hands of the Callwood family. It was the only distiliery still operating on Tortola, the only licensed one in the eastern Caribbean that used a single-pot still, and one of the few that made rum directly from sugar-cane juice from locally grown green cane. They manufactured both white and dark, the light kind mainly for local islanders. The thick, rich dark was what I'd tasted.
The next day I went to one of the larger liquor stores in Charlotte Amalie and bought six bottles of dark Arundel Cane, all they had in stock.
From the day of the Potters' tasting in 1979, I've never willingly drunk any other kind of rum. Iced usually, straight or with a little water occasionally. And never, never in punches or Collinses or any other concoction that would dilute and spoil the flavor.
The first private sailing lessons I took were from an acquaintance of Jack Scanlon's who skippered a private yacht for a local government official and kept a schooner of his own at Red Hook. After half a dozen sessions, I moved on to a grizzled ex-navy, ex-charter fisherman and working drunk who claimed to've sailed the Caribbean for more than forty years. Less than a month of him was all I could stand.
I felt I'd learned pretty well what little seamanship I'd been given, but I wasn't satisfied with the quality or content of the instruction. Practical enough, but dry and basic, lacking in detail and lore—skimpy value for the money I laid out. They paid Up service to my ability to absorb information and put it to use, but not for a moment did either of them act as though I had the makings of an equal. They treated me with the disdain, the thinly concealed contempt commercial boatmen have for the idle rich. Deaf ears when I tried to tell them I had no interest in racing cutters or sport cats or any other kind of craft, or in being a day sailor like Jack Scanlon or one of the aimlessly cruising weekend yacht owners more interested in partying than seamanship. Mocking little smiles when I said I wanted to be more than a hobby sailor, to eventually single hand my own ketch or yawl. And eyes that looked through me most of the time we were together, the way people had once looked through Jordan Wise.
So I went looking for someone reliable who'd teach me as I wanted to be taught. I'd been to a couple of the boatyards in the Red Hook area, to soak up the atmosphere and to look at the boats they had for sale, and the owner of Marsten Marine, Dick Marsten, had been friendly and unpatronizing. I solight him out. He didn't hesitate when I asked him for a recommendation.
"Bone's the man you want," he said.
"Who's he?"
"Fellow who works for me now and then. Does odd jobs, takes on day charters and gives lessons when the mood suits him."
'' Temperamental?
"Too strong a word," Marsten said. "He's his own man, marches to his own drummer. And there's no better sailor in this part of the world."
"Where can I find him?"
"He rents a slip at the Sub Base harbor marina. Ask anybody over there. They all know him."
"Bone," I said. "His last name?"
"His only name, far as I know. Just Bone."
The Sub Base harbor area, west of Frenchtown and named for the submarine base that had operated there during the Second World War, wasn't half as picturesque as the Charlotte Amalie or Frenchtown harbors. The Water Island ferry was located there, but for the most part what you saw were tramp steamers and charter fishing boats and sloops and schooners and ketches of various sizes and condition. Bone's boat was a forty-foot gaff-rigged ketch, old but well-maintained, humorlessly named Conch Out. C-o-n-c-h, like the shellfish. That was where I found him, on his ketch, giving the deck a coat of gray nonskid paint.
I don't know why I was surprised when I first saw him. His name, maybe. A bone is white, and I guess I expected a white man. He was black. The color of milk chocolate, actually. A Bahamian native, I found out later, from Nassau Island. Big man, not so much tall as broad and solid, beefy through the shoulders and torso and across the hips, with short legs and heavy thighs, like a tree split at the crotch into a pair of thick boles. There were flecks of gray in the grizzled beard he wore; otherwise you wouldn't have had a clue as to his age. His skin was smooth and unlined except for a few sun wrinkles around his eyes. He had two gold-crowned teeth, one upper and one lower, that glinted whenever he smiled. Which wasn't often, and not at all on our first meeting. Mostly his expression was flat and unreadable. I took this to be the usual stoic native reserve until I got to know him. In fact, he was neither stoic nor reserved; the expression masked an almost fierce dignity. Bone was an intensely proud man, and smarter than ninety-nine percent of the white men circumstances now and then forced him to serve.
I introduced myself, told him that Marsten had referred me and why I was there. He studied me for half a minute, squinting in the sun glare, taking my measure, before he said in his lilting Bahamian accent, "Where you come from, mon?"
"Chicago," I said. "But I live here now."
"St. Thomas?"
"Yes."
"Own a boat?" He pronounced it "bow-ut."
"Not yet. I intend to buy one, but not until I'm ready for the responsibility—not until I'm a good enough sailor."
Bone studied me again. Then he said, "Come over in the shade," and went ahead without waiting for me. He sat down on the mushroom bitt that the ketch's bow was tied to, took out a stubby briar and a cracked oilskin pouch, and loaded the bowl with tobacco as black as tar. The aroma, when he set fire to the shag, had a molasseslike sweetness. His movements were deliberate, economical, efficient. He used words the same way, as if he had a limited supply stored up and was parceling them out a few at a time.
"How much you been on sailboats?" he asked.
"Not much. Taking private lessons the past two months."
"Who from?"
"A couple of boatmen at Red Hook." I named them.
"Why you want somebody else?"
"They weren't teaching me what I want to know."
"What you want to know?"
"All there is about boats and the sea," I said. "I told you the kind of sailor I want to be."
"Let me hear what you learned so far."
"Everything?"
"Everything you know."
I told him that, too. I thought it would take some time; I thought I was crammed full of basic knowledge. But when I laid it all out, it sounded pretty thin. Just the bare rudiments.
"I know I've got a lot to learn," I admitted. "That's why I'm here. I'm serious about this, Mr. Bone."
"Not Mister," he said. "Just Bone."
"Will you work with me?"
"This ketch," he said, "she's a fussy old woman, sometimes. Hard to get along with. Some say the same about her cap'n."
"I'm not looking for an easy time of it. When I buy a boat of my own, it won't be new and it won't be fancy."
"So you say now."
"I mean it, Bone. What do you say?"
"You take orders from a black mon, no argument?"
"You're the master, I'm the new hand. I know my place."
He sucked on his pipe, thinking about it.
"I'll pay you well," I said. "More than whatever you usually charge for lessons."
"What I charge depends."