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Title: The Silent Reefs
Date of first publication: 1953
Author: Dorothy Cottrell (1902-1957)
Date first posted: June 28, 2013
Date last updated: June 28, 2013
Faded Page eBook #20130651

This eBook was produced by: David T. Jones, Paul Ereaut, Al Haines
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




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[Illustration: front_paper]

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The Silent Reefs


BY DOROTHY COTTRELL


William Morrow & Company • New York





This book has been serialized in the
_Saturday Evening Post_ under the title,
_The Secret of the Purple Reefs_.


Copyright 1952, 1953 by the
Curtis Publishing Company.
Copyright 1953 by Dorothy Cottrell.
Printed in the United States of America.
All rights reserved.
L. C. Catalog Card Number: 52-14118





_To Mac, with all my love._





The Silent Reefs




One


How may men follow the path of a ship where there are no paths? How
know the manner of disaster from its traces, two years late, when those
seeking within short days had found no trace? How might two fishermen
of Caribbee learn that which the navies, coast guards and air forces of
five nations had failed to learn? Yet they, Henri Henri Christophe and
Joseph Henri Christophe, great and bronzed French West Indians named
for a mighty king, for Henri Christophe, King of the North, threadbare
if honored sons of the Followers, must prove what had befallen or
betray the women and the little ones, even the island itself. Almost
the tangible weight of the island was upon their wide and young
shoulders as they walked now gravely carrying the stretcher of their
Aunt Caroline behind the coffin of their father to the cemetery under
the sea-grape trees.

Henri would have liked to have been carrying the coffin, helped only by
his brother, but Joseph had said no, because six of the old captains
had wished to act as pallbearers. "We have already said farewell
to our father," Joseph had said. "To the old ones, this is their
farewell--to him and to the old years. He remembered the great days
when the island fleets went north to the cold seas to bring the ice,
and south in trade to the Amazon and the great deltas--and there were
no captains like the captains of the island. Now he is dead and there
is in the world one less who remembers, so that now there are only six
instead of seven who may talk of those days. The old ones know that
soon there will be less than six--and one day only one with none to
whom he may say 'Do you remember . . . ?' And then in the world there
will be none, for the last is dead, and with him the years die." He had
put his hand on Henri's arm and the beauty of his slow smile touched
his eyes. "We must let them have their wish!"

So now the coffin tottered slowly between the graybeards in their blue
serge suits that were too large for the old frames, instead of moving
with measured solemnity in the hands of Henri and Joseph whose worn
cotton shirts and trousers bulged to the swell of their great muscles.
But Henri knew that as usual Joseph had been right and that this was as
their father would have wanted it.

Behind the brothers with Aunt Caroline, who was groaning on her
stretcher but greatly enjoying herself, came the population of the
island: Monsieur the Commissioner, perspiring in his full dress uniform
of blue and gold with cocked hat, the good man having made the supreme
sacrifice of donning it in memory of Captain Christophe and as comfort
to the family; the spade-bearded Follower elders and the gray-clad
women of the sect; the Negroes, led by giant Black Tobias; the lepers,
to whom a kindly message had been rushed so that they might not miss
the function, walking a little apart.

"Look where you're going!" Aunt Caroline shrilled.

"We are looking, Aunt Caroline," the brothers answered dutifully.

"Well look somewhere else! You're shaking my liver."

"Forgive us, Aunt Caroline," Joseph said.

The procession turned from the blindingly white road into the
dappled shadows of the cemetery that was a very friendly place. For
until recently it had been the island custom to bury the dead at the
cottage doors, planting the brightest flowers above them, but when the
government had forbidden this, the people had adopted the cemetery as
the place of meeting for community singing and the stately picnics
of the Followers, so that one member of a gathering might say to
another, "We will gather this time at the grave of my husband, we
sat with your wife as of last meeting," or "Today we are singing my
brother's favorite songs, let us be near him." And in this way none
of the dead were slighted or lonely. The people were particularly
kind, too, to those who had only markers in the graveyard, for many
of the beautifully polished and lettered slabs of mahogany bore such
inscriptions as "Beloved husband of Martha, lost at sea in the Great
Storm," or "Miriam and Able, aged five years, they blew away." And
while sometimes the people at the gatherings might fail to decorate the
graves beneath which dead islanders slept, it was a rare thing when
flowers were not dropped beside the markers so that the doubly bereaved
could know that those they loved were not forgotten.

One of the most recent of the markers read, "To the memory of Malcolm
Henri Christophe, dear husband of Daphne, beloved eldest son of
Henri Christophe sr. and brother of Henri and Joseph. Lost with
the motorship _Christophe_ and seven good men of Home Island under
unknown circumstances." And to young Henri it seemed to symbolize
the strangeness of the Caribbean whose pale jade shallows were so
crystal clear that often it was hard to tell where air and water met
and which when he had been a child he had believed to be so filled
with treasure that he had expected to see glittering gold through the
stir of every patch of brown seaweeds. He no longer hoped to find the
salt gold, but apart from the finds and fancies of a boy, treasure was
one with the Caribbean, so that every storm threw small quantities of
Spanish silver on the island beaches along with the great pink conchs
and the storm-wearied and irritated turtles; while the old captains
now believed unshakably that the finding of a great treasure was
responsible for the loss of the motorship. The marker stood also for
the great sorrow that Henri and Joseph had been pearl fishing in the
Pacific at the time of the disaster, that communications in the French
Pacific are of a terrible slowness and that they had finally reached
the Caribbean and their home only to find their father dying and almost
two years after the _Christophe_ had sailed on her final voyage that
was the island's tragedy. For without a ship there was no transport
for the little exports of lace or for the palm hats so marvelously
patterned that they might take a week to weave. Orange and purple
mangoes rotted beneath the trees. Copra was attacked by beetles. The
people, who in prosperous times made purchases of half a cup of sugar
or a needleful of thread or an ounce of coffee, could no longer buy
from the stores. If another ship could not be bought, the people would
grow ragged and walk hungry in the sun. And there could be no new ship
until the great mystery of the _Christophe_ was solved. For on a day as
calm as a duck pond the beautifully built, two hundred and fifty ton
motorship had left Main Town on Home Island on a routine voyage for
Tampa via the Isle of Palms, and she had never completed the voyage.

And had the ship disappeared in war or storm or on one of the great
oceans, many explanations would have sprung to mind, but the loss in
peace and in perfect weather and assumably within sight of a coast of
the Greater Antilles had constituted a seeming impossibility for which
the insurers had refused to pay, charging attempted fraud on the part
of owners and crew. In which there was something of sadness, for it was
because the Home Islanders make no written agreements and do not lie
and because the ship had been operated as a loved and guarded family
project that she had been insured as she was, orally and against only
specific risks. It having been the Home Islanders custom to place their
underwriting by word of mouth with Monsieur Chabrunn and his sons,
wealthy merchants of the Windwards, omitting the vast and seemingly
needless coverage of "perils of the sea." The Chabrunns were men of
high honor but strict dealing, who would pay instantly when convinced
that they were liable, but only when so convinced. And thus positive
proof of the ship's fate was needed before the insurance could be
collected. But at the end of two years of search begun by the navies,
coast guards and air forces of five nations and continued when all
others had ceased to search, by old Captain Christophe aided by Black
Tobias, a search that was perhaps the most exhaustive in the history of
the seas, the ship's loss was as utterly mysterious as on the day she
had vanished.

       *       *       *       *       *

Henri and Joseph had dug their father's grave last night, so deep
that even hurricane could not disturb it, but with fine view of the
brilliant harbor from beneath a giant sea-grape whose six-inch-wide,
perfectly round leaves were thick as green cowhide veined in red and
whose blue fruit sprays dropped berries in the white sand. And now the
lowering of the coffin by the old captains was more than Henri could
bear. He felt that he must do one more thing for his father, that if
he did not he would always regret it. And he set down his end of Aunt
Caroline rather hastily so that she squealed as he jumped forward to
take hold of the mahogany casket. Having done it, he knew that, as with
all things done for the dead, it was not enough. The ending between
himself and his father was still as sharp, the ache in his own great
chest, still as painful. His father's booming voice would never greet
him again as he returned from a voyage. Never again in this world would
he see the old man's pleasure at the tall can of tobacco that he,
Henri, had brought.

He remained kneeling by the grave for a moment, the great column
of his neck bent above it. Then he stood up suddenly. He could not
throw in sand when his turn came, but shook his head and passed the
shovel to Joseph. As the eulogies began he was fearful that he might
weep publicly, and he tried to turn his mind from his grief for his
father to the responsibility that had come to him and to Joseph. And
to place the matter in perspective, he must think of the Christophes
who were men of peace, yet the manner of whose naming was fiercely
strange as the Caribbean's self, and of the island that through a
hundred and fifty years had been a Christophe trust. For had not the
responsibility come to them from the very sword of the Great Marquis,
that young nobleman of France, who, having seen and revolted against
the horror of the treatment of slaves in the French West Indies, had
spoken passionately in the legislature, quarreled with his titled
friends, fought duels past counting and, as the rebellion of 1790
broke, taken up arms for the slave? The same marquis who, escaping
at the betrayal of Toussaint l'Ouverture to renounce his French
citizenship and his title, to sever in wrath his last ties with a world
that deemed itself civilized yet was capable of such treachery, had as
final gesture of scorn and of defiance renamed his family in honor of
Henri Christophe, black Emperor of Haiti, "For evil he may have been,
but born the slave, he became the king! And 'Arms and the man, I sing!
Arms and the man!'" Having written which, the self-named Christophe had
bought Home Island and its people, only to set the people free, and
had bequeathed to his descendants all his own precipitate enthusiasms
if not his precise convictions. By reason of which his grandson had
declared arms to be of the spirit, and, dividing the island amongst the
islanders, had founded the gentle sect of the Followers, who turned
the other cheek as ardently as the marquis had drawn the sword. And
always the Christophe sons were handsomer and the Christophe daughters
more beautiful and each sunburned generation was desperately poorer.
And perhaps because the Christophe men had remained sufficiently
French--despite the marquis' injunction against the speaking of the
language--to be most excellent husbands, so that in a hundred and fifty
years there had never been an unhappy wife beneath a Christophe roof,
the clan had formed a laughing and most harmonious whole; a little pool
of remarkable happiness in a largely sad world. To the Christophes all
the island had ever looked in time of disaster.

And now as the deep sound of the last amen rolled about them and died
to the soft murmur of the departing crowd, Henri and Joseph knelt
briefly, touching their fingers to the sand. "If we fail, it will not
be because we have ceased to try!" Henri said.

"Two things we have that the nations had not," Joseph said when they
had carried Aunt Caroline the eight miles back to West Town and the
plantation of Domremy and set their faces to the thorn forest. "Our
promise to our father and much knowledge of the Caribbean!" He held
aside a thorn branch from the cleftlike passage through the trees to
let Henri pass and, striding on, regarded his own great palm that was
calloused from the handling of ropes. "It is familiar to us almost as
the palm of this hand."

"We have also the fact that there are now but our four hands for the
feeding of thirty-one mouths of the family and that we must learn what
befell or our hands may not accomplish it," Henri said. "And where men
have said, 'We will leave nothing unlearned because it seems of no
bearing, but will keep the heart open because we are very ignorant,'
then often they have learned. Also, as when one seeks a pearl, one
looks in every oyster, if we question not only those who should know
of the _Christophe_, but all men everywhere whom we may meet, we may
learn something that our father did not learn. Meantime, we will know
at least a little more when we have talked with Black Tobias."

For the island's uninhabited windward shore belonged to the trade
winds, the silver thatch palms, the sea birds and Tobias, whose shack
stood on piles in the Great Sound that Henri used to think was the
loneliest place in the world. And it was to see Tobias at first star
time that the brothers now traversed the path through the thorn forests
whose matted crazy puzzle had withstood the hurricanes of centuries,
so that the solitary way was a twisting, head-high tunnel under the
fernlike, smoke-gray leaves. The scent of the thorn forest was of
delicate mimosa flowers and curing hay, while its floor was clean
with dry leaves. And it was said that within the forest the hidden
men--criminals wanted in other lands for murder and worse crimes--lived
out their lives safer than in any fortress. Here also when the moon was
gray and silver, the ghosts of armored Spaniards were said to clank
along the trail.

Nor were these old men's tales harder of belief than the
mystery--inexplicable even for the Caribbean that is the strangest
and most mysterious of the seas--that was heavy in the hearts of
the brothers and that had bankrupted the island and beggared the
Christophes; the most unanswerable mystery of the disappearance of
the _Christophe_, a loss less heralded than the more famous mysteries
of the sea, yet perhaps of them all the strangest. And true, the
Caribbean's very history is written in disaster and death, violence
and cruelty, so that the warmth of its crystal-clear waters might seem
almost the warmth of blood, the flame of its sunsets, the reflections
of burning cities, the eternal thunder, the echo of old cannon fire.
For though the gentlest, it is also the most savage of the seas, so
that it has smiled under soft trade clouds and boiled ash-veiled and
flame-rent to the loosed hell of Mont Pelee while from it great fleets
have sailed in pomp to be seen no more. But if at the end of so much
mystery and loss, the loss of an island motorship was perhaps a small
thing, it was still the least explicable.

       *       *       *       *       *

Striding through the miles of the thick thorn forest in the flat
heart of the island, the brothers were conscious of the vastness and
menace of the all-embracing sea that they must challenge. Then the
thorns threw up a last rampart and the path was amongst the mangroves
of the sound's edge and on the brown pools the fallen leaves floated
in autumnal colors, while overhead the sunset was shooting crimson
sparks into the richness of the mangrove foliage. And at the end of the
path, Tobias' calling-conch hung on a branch. Henri raised the shell
to his lips and blew piercingly. Ten minutes later, Tobias' dinghy
slid suddenly to their feet from a narrow channel. The great black man
did not speak but stood haughtily, with the long sculling oar upright
beside him.

"You were a good friend to our father, Tobias," Henri said. "We seek
your aid in his name."

Tobias wore patched blue dungaree trousers that showed pale against
the darkness of his skin that gleamed to the swell of muscles in his
huge chest and shoulders. Staring past the brothers in silent pride,
he seemed akin to the elemental passion of the hot air and the richly
blazing sunset. "For Cap' Christophe it is ended, the long search,"
Tobias said. Tobias' hair was like thick soot on a blackened stump and
his bowed face worked strangely, like midnight ripples in a dark tide.
He said again, "It is ended!"

Joseph said, "Only for our father, it is ended."

Tobias' chest labored and his belly muscles quivered against his heavy
shark belt and the clean blue dungarees that had been washed in sea
water and sand. "Two years late, you and M'sieur Joseph will not look!"
The words were an accusation that Henri and Joseph would have resented
except that Tobias' only son, a great, gleaming black lad, had been
lost with the _Christophe_.

Henri said gently, "Two years late through no fault of ours. We will
search, Tobias!"

Tobias stood with the immobile majesty of a black king of Africa, but
his eyes changed as if the sun bursting through storm had suddenly
lighted a dark mangrove pool. He said with a different note to his
deep voice, "You are welcomed to my house. We will have oysters as we
did when you, Joseph and my son were high as my belt. Neither must you
think, 'It is wrong to Cap' Christophe that the body hungers.' For Cap'
Christophe you must say as I have said of my son, 'The body must be
strong though the heart pains!'" He looked fiercely beyond them. "It
was not as the underwriting men said that the men of the ship stole
the ship away!" Tobias said and his deep voice shook rumblingly. "My
son had gone with his hand in mine since he was high as my belt and he
would have come home from the ends of the world! It was not as those
said who believed that the ship met disaster of the sea. My boy would
have reached the shores! He swam as other men walk, as far as he had
need to go."

With the brothers aboard, he worked the boat along a leafy tunnel,
under a final swish of branches, and suddenly all the space of the
world and all the softly pouring air of the world seemed about them.
Astern, the water widened in flame to the low, black line of the
island, on either hand the vast sound spread in lilac and silver to the
distant promontories where the thatch palms bent silver to the trades,
and beyond the far line of the seaward reefs the night was coming up.
Tobias' sculling oar made no whisper.

By looking directly down, Henri glimpsed through the sky-shine the
bottle-green world of the turtle grass meadows and the great red
starfish like satanic flowers. Where Tobias' shack perched on its piles
half a mile from shore, the men climbed to the pier that extended from
the seaward side of the building and at the end of which was a squared
rock platform topped by a charcoal pit glowing with thin flames. Henri
and Joseph seated themselves on the planks whose surface had been
turned to fluffy, gray silk by the weather. Within the shack, Tobias'
bed was covered with a red-squared, patchwork quilt and the bed Tobias'
son had used was still neatly made with sailcloth sheets and pillow
cases of flour sacking, while its quilt was white and blue.

Tobias took three well-washed oyster branches--yard-long sections of
mangrove root to which the small, sweet oysters were clustered to the
thickness of a man's arm--and laid them side-by-side across the coals.
Over them, he threw a blanket of wet turtle grass and in a moment
bursts and bubbles of salt and savory steam were rising in the still
crimsoning light. As the oysters cooked, Tobias cut mangrove forks and
handed Henri and Joseph small, tough-crusted loaves of potato bread
and wooden bowls of coconut butter and smaller bowls of sea salt and
freshly ground pepper. Then he raked back the seaweed and each man took
an oyster branch, on which the shells were now open, revealing the
oysters, curl-edged, juicy and plump. They forked the oysters from the
china-like interiors of the shells, dipped the exquisite mouthfuls in
coconut butter and sprinkled them with salt and pepper, then ate them
with a scrap of potato bread. The clean, faint flutter of the wind, the
small sounds of the fire and the whisper of water round the piles were
part of the meal. And when the oysters were finished, Tobias brought
pint fruit cans and filled them with black, Jamaican coffee, sweetened
with honey.

As they drank the marvelous coffee, Joseph said, "We come home almost
as strangers, and while we know the outline of what befell, there is
much in regard to the ship's last days that we do not know--all was
well, was it not, at her last careening?"

Everything was dark now except where fish rose to make circled ripples
that caught the last crimson of afterglow and where the firelight
struck up on Tobias' bent face. "She was sound as on the day of her
building," Tobias said rumblingly. "What befell was no fault of the
ship or her engines nor of the men upon her!"

"She reached the Isle of Palms in safety?"

"She reached the Isle of Palms," Tobias said, but there was a darkness
in his eyes. "For the rest, a hurricane had passed along the course a
week before, but even the swell was gone. Perfect, purely perfect the
weather was, as is weather after hurricane. Such days as those upon
which one says of every day, 'There can have been no other day so blue
as this!' Days too calm for sail, but for a motorship, most perfect.
There was no weather that was not fair between the Island and Tampa.
That was learned later from the men of weather and from the masters of
ships. There were not even thunderstorms--not even the young showers!"

"Explosion could hardly be with diesel!" Henri said doubtfully. "Yet
where there is machinery, it still might be . . ."

"With the _Christophe_, tended by my son, it could not be," Tobias said
harshly. "My son must show me the engines and the bilges often, saying,
'See how clean they are!' I had no love for bilges, but I loved my son
for thinking that I must."

Joseph spoke with troubled slowness. "There are many things that can
befall a little ship--waterspout, collision with a derelict, fire . . ."

Tobias said, "There were fifteen people upon that little ship, and
eight were islanders. There were good life belts and good lifeboats.
Had explosion come--and there was no explosion--it were not likely that
all were killed. If island men had but a board or their own arms to
swim, they would have reached the land, and all men know it! If there
were fire, they would have put it out, or if by miracle they could not,
they would have launched the boats. In that fair calm a cockle-tub had
reached the coasts of the Great Antilles or the Central Americas! Cap'
Malcolm Christophe was no fool to sail into a waterspout--and there are
no waterspouts without the storms! As for a derelict, island men do not
sail blind through day or night. But had they, still the _Christophe_
had strong bulkheads, thus had she struck a submerged hulk, she could
not have sunk swiftly. I do not have the thought she would have sunk at
all, but had she, still had someone reached the shore!" He stirred the
shimmering fire. "Of greater meaning, no ship sinks without a trace in
dead calm seas! Let there be explosion, there are fragments! Let there
be collision, there is oil and those many things that do not sink! Let
there be fire and there is charcoal and the trace of ash!" He raised
fierce eyes to stare at them. "With hurricane or with time such signs
will pass, but here there was great calm and here within short hours
the swift air forces were seeking her. Within short suns, the ships of
five countries sought for her. The little boats of all the coasts were
seeking her, and in them, men who know the currents and the tides, who
say, 'Let a ship sink here, the wreckage will be here!' Your father,
Papa Christophe, offered high reward for any trace of wreckage, for
any smallest thing that could be proved the _Christophe's_. Neither
along the Cuban Counter Current nor the Gulf Stream was one small thing
found--no board, no life belt, no little stick of wood!"

"It is the inexplicability of the thing that is worst," Joseph said
after a silence. "One cannot even say, 'I do not know that it befell
thus, but it could have befallen thus!' Instead one can only say, 'By
all evidence it could not have befallen, but it did!'"

Leaning forward, Henri asked, "With the _Christophe_ herself, was
anything--any smallest thing--different from all other voyages?"

Tobias looked at him gravely. "One thing was different! She was two
days late at the Isle of Palms!"

Neither brother raised the question of radio messages, for radio
was frowned upon by the Follower elders and while its carrying was
officially mandatory, no crew of Home Island would have sailed on a
ship on which the devil's voice was not rendered irreparably silent.

"A small delay could be engine trouble," Joseph said.

"There was naught amiss with the good engines," Tobias said. "Naught
was ever amiss with the good engines tended by my son! An engineer who
came once, told me that my son had the genius of machinery. But it
is hard for the black man to own or to create, hence my son was very
happy keeping Cap' Malcolm's engines brighter than all the engines of
Caribbee and saying to me, 'Father, see how beautifully this shines!'
For myself I have thought little of my skin, but it was strange to me
to look at the kind and wise hands of my son and think, 'They are still
the young hands of a black man!'" He raised his glance from the fire.
"The large and fair man, Webber, and the small and dark man with the
great chest, Ashby--they who were passengers from Home Island to the
Isle of Palms--said that Cap' Malcolm had delayed to seek survivors of
the wreck that the hurricane had thrown upon the Purple Reefs. But one
may not know if men from the world speak truth."

Suppressing a smile at Tobias' doubt of men from the world, Henri
asked, "The _Christophe_ herself stood off the Isle of Palms?" He knew
that such a course had been in no way unusual.

"That is truth. The hour was dark. The strangers had with them the
powerboat in which they had reached Home Island. Cap' Malcolm held no
contract at the Isle of Palms for outgoing mail, that going by faster
ships via Miami or Tampa. Thus Cap' Malcolm swung the strangers off in
the powerboat and they took in the mails as they went ashore. The men
of the port watched the _Christophe's_ lights pass onward and reported
her sailing to the keepers of the lighthouse on the Cape. She never
passed the light. Somewhere in that hundred and forty miles she ceased
to be. Yet within that hundred and forty miles, unless Cap' Malcolm
for unknown reason went seaward, she was within sight of land, she was
amongst the snapper cutters and the sponge boats, and upon the shores
are the shacks of old men who sleep little because the past is too much
with them. Yet after the Isle of Palms, none saw the ship." The organ
note of his deep voice vibrated. "The men of the ship were good men.
And for the ship herself, she harmed no man alive! She was of service
where service was much needed and she injured no man!"

After a silence, Henri said, "There have in the world been meteorites
that blasted all things where they struck--it is barely possible . . ."

Tobias answered fiercely, "The chance that anything upon the world
be stricken by a great meteorite is one in many million billions. I
asked the men of science from the museum. Also the Caribbean is filled
with the eyes of helmsmen watching the tall skies and none saw even
a shooting star." He gazed into the fire, then beyond it into the
night where otherwise invisible thunderheads were revealed by the glow
of inward lightning. "Jaques and Christian of the island--who went
to sponge hook off Gracias a Dios three weeks ere the _Christophe_
sailed--did not return and men say they were overtaken by hurricane.
But Jaques and Christian were men of wisdom in the ways of storms. The
_Christophe_ did not return and men speak of meteorites. But neither
hurricanes nor meteorites take account of the two unaccounted days on
the _Christophe's_ way to the Isle of Palms!"

Joseph said gently, "What is your thought for those two days, Tobias?"

"It is my thought that in them some thing befell that never befell
before and should I know its nature I would also know what befell the
ship! And I know that you say, 'Tobias is stranged!'"

Henri asked, "Is there record of the course our brother would have
followed from the Isle of Palms? I have been the way many times with
sail, but using motor power he would have gone more directly."

"There is record. But the course was followed by the men of five
countries and a hundred ships. Nothing they found. For there was
nothing along that course or beside that course. No little slick of
oil. No broken board or floating rope. Nothing in the Caribbean, in
the Channel of Yucatan, in the Straits of Florida, on the Ten Thousand
Islands, on the beaches of the Gulf. The navies and the coast guards
and the swift air forces searched. The men in small boats searched and
the men upon the beaches; for love and for reward they searched each
meadow of the Gulf-weed, every drift of flotsam, every rick of stranded
rubbish on two thousand miles of coast--even in the Bahamas and on the
Atlantic coast of Florida, they made search--nor were they searching in
wild seas, but with seas like a painted picture. There was nothing."

Neither brother commented upon this. But before their minds there
spread the Caribbean as it dreamed in its hours of rest, transparent as
glass, celestially serene as might be the mind of God. They visualized
also the nature of the search spurred both by the fierce love of the
Caribbean and the fierce poverty of the Caribbean. Before them at
the end stood two possibilities equally improbable; some unknown and
unimaginable catastrophe of nature or some equally unimaginable act of
man. And if an act of man, for what purpose? For what unimagined reason
could a busy and inoffensive little ship have become of such value or
menace to men that they would cause her to vanish without trace? And to
what men? Certainly not to the men who worked her. No reward or threat
of earth would induce men of the islands to cut themselves off from
their islands. No inducement of life would have taken grave Malcolm
from Daphne, his young wife, nor any Christophe from Domremy in whose
silver weathered walls the wild bees built so that honey ran through
the siding and whose pink cabbage roses, blue-fruited sea-grape trees
and coral-walled fields were the fairest in Caribbee.

If deliberate human motive and action had induced the thing, it had
come from without. And even as the motive must have been very strong,
the nature of the action remained unimaginable. And almost the mind,
baffled to credulity, went back to the ancient legends of whirlpool and
of monster, of ships seen at one moment and in the next nonexistent.

Henri said angrily, "Tobias is right! A ship does not sink without
trace! Where it has been said to happen, weeks or months have passed
before the loss was known, unknown storms might have crossed the ship's
path alone in the great oceans, or swept her a thousand miles from the
course she was thought to follow. But here the loss was known within
brief hours and the Caribbean is the dooryard of the seas!" He shook
his head fiercely.

Tobias stirred the coals round and round, and the red-gold light
beating up on his face and upon the hugeness of his extended arm made
the breathing darkness of the sea the greater and the older and gave
him the semblance of some vast and darkly brooding god of fire lifting
the West Indian islands in the passion of their own volcanic heat.

"Cap' Henri laughed at this," Tobias said slowly, "saying, 'Do not grow
stranged with the sea, Tobias! We must look for facts not demons!'"
He rose suddenly to his majestic height, standing with folded arms
as he gazed at the brothers. "You too will laugh, saying, 'Tobias is
stranged!' But it is not truth when men say the ship reached the Isle
of Palms in safety! The evil was with her then! It had boarded her
at the Purple Reefs--from the White Dunes of the Purple Reefs! It is
there still! I have seen it as I see this fire, I have touched it as
I touch this staff! The footsteps upon the dunes, I saw and touched!
Fresh footsteps where there were no men--and with them, the footsteps
of a giant! Twice I saw--once four months after the losing of the
_Christophe_, once three weeks ago!"

Joseph felt a sharp and terrible shock of pity. After a moment he said
gently, "Our father did not see this, Tobias?"

"He did not see it because we sought separately, each in our own boat,
meeting at places named," Tobias said. And again Joseph felt terrible
compassion in picturing an old white man and a great Negro seeking on
when all others had ceased to seek, searching in wild weather and fair,
each for a lost son. Tobias' voice rumbled with its own depth. "Though
he did not believe, when first I saw them he went with me, but a great
rain had washed all away. Then came men of a navy making observations
of weather and would let none go to the Reefs, since military men are
of a great importance. Only a month ago they went away. Three weeks
ago, there were the steps again, but I was alone--for Cap' Henri was
dying. I was seeking greatly, for it was my hope to go to him and
say, 'My friend, at the last we have learned something!' But when I
returned, he could no longer ask, 'What have you learned, Tobias?'"

Henri said, "We thank you for telling us, Tobias."

"I will not tell of it again," Tobias said softly yet terribly. "And
you do not believe it and M'sieur Joseph does not believe. But there
was that in the _Christophe's_ losing that was not of wind or sea or
the common fate of ships. Evil touched the _Christophe_ in the two
days and went with her. Evil out of the sea, taking good men, taking
my son. But if it were of men, someday I will find the men! And if
it were a devil, someday I will find the devil--and if it were many
devils, someday I will find the devils! One day my hands will be upon a
throat--if it be after death, if it be in the dark of the sea where the
red lights burn!"

Blue-white fire of lightning was turning the upper leaves of the thorns
to the semblance of silver flowers as Henri and Joseph started for home
and they quickened their pace to avoid having the balsa wood and fish
oil torch rained out while they were still amongst the thorns.

"Poor Tobias," Joseph said as they passed from the thorns into the true
jungle, where, while the tree-roof roared angrily, little rain came
through. "He does not say it, but he plainly thinks the same evil that
befell the _Christophe_ took Jaques and Christian though they were a
sea away!"

"Two men in a cockleshell are vulnerable as a ship is not. Yet they
were very experienced men," Henri said, puzzled.

Popeyed, pale blue land crabs scuttered ghostlike in the torch-light
before them. "If we are to have hope of learning what befell, we must
keep in mind that there must be simple explanation," Joseph said,
stepping round a clashing, twelve-inch crab. "That it but seems so
strange because we do not know." They plunged into the vertically
falling wall of warm rain where the jungle gave place to the
plantations of the village of West Town.

       *       *       *       *       *

Alone, Tobias loaded his seagoing catboat and considered the problem of
his own strangedness. Strangedness was very common and took strange
forms. But after weighing the matter he did not think that he could
be as stranged as he must be if he was stranged at all. He did not
wish to play into the hands of the unknown evil by being stranged and
not knowing it. But he believed he was right in believing that he had
seen what he had seen. He had seen it so clearly! In the giant's steps
the little sea snails had been crushed so that Tobias' hand had ended
the suffering of one little mollusk by snapping it between thumb and
finger. Surely strangedness would not have seen the little snail?

Letting the reefed sail of the catboat snap full to the black storm
wind as the first big drops pitted the sound, he was sorry that shyness
had stopped him telling M'sieur Henri of the boat that had come to the
Great Sound in the night--when with morning there was no boat. Surely,
there too, he had not been stranged for he had heard the engine miss?

As a great sheet of lightning revealed the bending silver shapes of the
thatch palms, he sent the catboat through the single passage of the
reef and set his course for the coast of Nicaragua, four hundred miles
away. It was his hope that he could prove the existence of the unknown
thing if he could prove that Jaques and Christian had not been killed
by hurricane. Somewhere might be a man who would say, "Jaques and
Christian of Home Island sheltered here through the storm."

Only when he was well at sea did he remember that he had forgotten to
bring food. But there had been many times when Cap' Henri and he had
forgotten it when a new thought had come to them. All that mattered was
that his friend, Cap' Henri, did not need food any more.

       *       *       *       *       *

Midnight had stilled the amiable pandemonium of the plantation of
Domremy--the sole piece of real estate reserved by Henri's and Joseph's
grandfather in his moment of largess--but Daphne Christophe came with a
candle from the great kitchen as Henri and Joseph entered.

She said, "Put on dry clothes while I bring you hot chocolate!" The
gray, homespun dress and muslin collar of the women of the Followers
were beautiful when she wore them, and the candle lit the bright brown
of her eyes and threw the shadows of her lashes on her smooth forehead,
then touched her dark hair as she gestured with the light. "Hurry for
the chocolate is good!"

"We are rough fishermen and unused to such spoiling, but it is very
pleasant," Henri said.

Moving with the lithely graceful, dark and golden quickness of the
French women of her native Martinique, she set down the candle and
stood before them with a hand on the shoulder of each. "Oh, my dears! I
am so sorry that you have come home but to anxiety and debts!" Reaching
up she kissed them upon either cheek while Henri smiled at her and
Joseph blushed to his black hair. "Poor lambs who have already done so
much!"

"Beautiful Sister, the financial situation is most desperate, is it
not?" Henri asked, placing a packing case as a chair for her beside the
hatch-cover table as they rejoined her in the once splendid drawing
room. "We do not doubt that it is bad, but we have been gone so long
that we are strangers to the full position."

"It is desperate--even for the Christophes," Daphne said, and her eyes
smiled with the beautiful tolerance that caused the Christophes--all
of whom adored her--to use the French term for sister-in-law even
when speaking to her in English. "To be strangers to the position
is a tempering of the wind!" She indicated the packing cases. "For
the search and for Papa Christophe's advertisements all things that
were movable were sold and all things that could not be moved were
mortgaged. We have tried very hard to keep expenses down, but the
family is so vast and there are so many little ones that we are a
millstone about your necks."

The brothers took her hands. "The family has told us of all that you
have done to keep the family cared for in the bad time," Joseph said.
"We are sorry that you have had to struggle so and we not here to help
you!"

Her young face showed the strain of anxiety and responsibility beyond
her years, but her eyes were tearless. She said, "Uncertainty is the
bad thing for it begets hope. It was hope that killed Papa Christophe.
I know that after these years hope is folly, yet I say, 'Lost men have
returned after many years!' and I hope again. Crazed people write as
they do after mysteries of the sea, saying that men of the _Christophe_
have been seen in this port and that, that the _Christophe_ has been
seen in this ocean and that, and I know that what they write is
nonsense, but I hope." Her face held the same stillness that had been
in Tobias' face. "If men were responsible for the _Christophe_, I would
know what men, and I would not have them go unpunished!"

Henri said, "If it was an accident of nature, we may not find out. If
it was an act of men and somewhere there are men living who know what
befell, we will find them!"

Moving round the hatch-cover to touch her shyly as he looked down
into her pale face, Joseph said tenderly, "If it can be learned, we
will learn. But you must not hope and you must not hate! You are too
beautiful for hate."

Henri's hands clenched as if he was suddenly infinitely older than
Joseph and must protect Joseph and the rest of the Followers as one
would guard trustful children from the cruelty of the world. His heart
beat with such love for Joseph that he could see its thumping through
the blue cotton of his shirt. And for a moment he could not speak,
then, meeting Daphne's eyes, he said softly, "If I can ever say, 'These
men harmed Malcolm, my brother, and broke the kind heart of my father!'
I can hate for both of us, beautiful Sister! Or if I should say, 'This
man harmed Joseph, who has little sense but holds our affections and
is very good!' then I would want my hands on a throat as Black Tobias
does!"

There was no more valiant man than Joseph in the turtle, shark or
pearl fleets of the Caribbean or the French Pacific, either with the
bright valor of daring or the quiet courage of cheerful endurance under
hardship, but the belief in violence troubled him. And he flushed now
in part from pleasure at Henri's love for him, in part because he knew
that Henri did not share his deepest beliefs.

"I am not good," Joseph said gravely. "But men have lived by the law
of vengeance from the beginning of laws, and it seems that but little
has come of it save ever greater hate and death. And when half a world
was wet with blood and tears, the chain was broken only by what might
have been at the beginning, and that was to forgive."

Aunt Caroline's distant voice shrieked for her medicine, and Daphne
rose. "The terrible documents which are our bills and the few which
are our receipts are in the crawfish pot on the wall. Now that there
is no desk, I have to keep them there so the little ones will not get
them. No! I can manage the door." But Joseph was opening one half of
the double doors and Henri the other. Turning, she looked back at the
great room against whose tremendous windows the storm was dying. "Even
with packing cases, it is still the most beautiful room in the world!
As Domremy is the most beautiful place in the world!"

Joseph said, "One thinks of it when one is away."

Moving quickly across the room to pick up a gray parrot that was
straddling down the stair with confiding nods of its head and obvious
anticipation of welcome, Henri touched his fist against the stair rail
that was carved in patterns of fruit and cupids, saying fiercely,
"Domremy cannot go for any mortgage!"

"No," Daphne said. "There would be something profane in anyone but
Christophes being here. Those to whom it might go might even be people
so unlike Christophes that they would not borrow to give--because they
could not give without borrowing--and who would not know that they
could not eat the fowls because all the fowls had pet names such as
Mrs. Cluck or Old Scratch, and so unlike certain young men whom I see
before me that, happening to see a parrot in a far city, they would
not do without waterproof coats they needed so that they might buy the
parrot because they maintained that it had told them it did not like
its cage and wished to go to Domremy."

"He did say so," Henri said, laughing. "He said, 'I have been hoping
for many years to go to Domremy, but there has been a little difficulty
when I tried to arrange my passage. Perhaps you gentlemen could be
kind enough to assist?' At least if that was not quite what he said,
his cage was terribly small and he was very sad." He went up to his
sister-in-law and put his hands about her face. "You are right that we
are impractical and it is a wonder you have put up with us, Daphne!"

"It is more than should be expected of any woman--and it has been my
best experience," Daphne said.

       *       *       *       *       *

Alone together, the brothers mentally contemplated the Christophe
household, which was a village in itself and, unfortunately, a
village of dependents; including Aunt Caroline, of great age and many
exactions; three distantly related widows with respectively, five,
eight and seven children, and one unrelated group of four children whom
Captain Christophe had taken in when their parents were killed in the
Great Storm. And while Daphne was the household's greatest asset, even
she had some small needs. "We need pen and paper!" Joseph said. Henri
found them in the crawfish pot.

"It seems that beyond the utmost we have made in the past we must have
an additional thousand dollars a year," Joseph said, figuring with
the pen that almost disappeared in the largeness of his hand as the
normal morning heat drowsed over the old house and the familiar scents
of gardenias and roses and of crawfish tails cooking in garlic sauce
filled the great room. On the polished mahogany of the ceiling, big
gray velvet spiders dozed as pale jade chameleons puffed pink throats
in and out on the jalousies. From without the golden buzzing of bees
and the clucking of guinea fowl sounded from amongst the milk-and-wine
lilies that stood tall as a man. In the courtyard, the Christophes'
pet donkey slept against the sundial with a half-eaten cabbage rose
sticking to a rubbery lip, and a file of Muscovy ducks waddled past
complaining of the heat of the flagstones. "At least none could be more
helpful than almost all try to be!" Joseph said of the family.

"But with the exception of Daphne, it were usually better that they did
not," Henri said with truthful affection.

Overwhelmed until he confused the small with the great, Joseph added,
"Also Aunt Caroline desires a wheeled-chair, having seen one in the
wish book."

Henri's mouth curled to a smile. "Aunt Caroline causes so much trouble
for so many persons as it is, might it not be a poor deed to make her
more active?"

"That is true," Joseph said seriously. "But she wants it so." He too
smiled.

Henri grinned. "She does so much enjoy persecuting the women as they
cook or wash, and it is a small pleasure for her! We had better try to
get the wheeled-chair. If we make a path, she might even be able to
render the women's meetings miserable as she used to." The brothers
smiled at each other, thinking of the consternation of the Ladies'
Gatherings in His Name as they beheld the horrible sight of Aunt
Caroline rendered mobile.

"The question is how?" Joseph said.

There indeed seemed little more that they could do that they had not
already done. Even before the loss of the _Christophe_, both young
men had accepted the fact that marriage was impossible for them until
they could restore the family fortunes. And with the exception of
withholding five dollars' spending money per voyage, which usually
ended up by buying presents for the smaller Christophes, both had
turned over to the family fund all that they had earned in all their
adult lives. They owned no clothing that was not patched and repatched
until its original nature was obscure. And, when on the island, on
Sunday evenings each withdrew six cents from the money jar to place in
the collection plate, while they economized in matches during the week
so that the ladies might be "fired" at the proper time; this seemingly
strange practice being rendered necessary by the fact that the chapel
was unscreened and thus small cans of Black Flag insect killer were set
beneath the seat of each female worshipper and ignited as the service
began, the resulting smoke and flame giving a faintly infernal effect
to the assemblies.

It did not for a moment occur to either brother that the
responsibility for any part of the present household was not theirs.
Christophes had never accepted charity or denied a debt and while a
Christophe could earn, no Christophe needed to ask him to share. The
four unrelated children were even particularly favored so that they
might not feel their lack of blood kinship. But the astronomical sum of
an additional thousand a year could come from no two men's catch-shares
or wages of Caribbee or the Pacific; yet it must come and continue to
come until the younger Christophes matured. And the smaller Christophes
had appeared discouragingly small as the brothers had driven them from
the doors to continue the present conference.

"It would seem we have three things to do: to prove what befell the
Christophe--which would solve all--and meantime to pay the interest
upon the mortgage and fill the mouths," Joseph said, raising troubled
gaze from his figuring.

"And find the Three Galleons, Joseph!" little Timothy Christophe
shouted through a gap in the louvers. "M'sieur the Commissioner has
pieces of gold from the Three Galleons."

"We have need to find a galleon's treasure, but meantime be quiet,
little Cousin!" Henri said. He added thoughtfully, "And all might be
done if we had but a boat--and none can be done if we have not!"

"A launch to run the mail routes?" Joseph asked. "One good enough would
cost all of two thousand dollars, though we cut her ourselves. And how
could we pay the storemen while she was building?"

"It would be hard to have to ask him, but Monsieur Latour would carry
us," Henri said, flushing. "For the rest, let us consult the family!
And who knows?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Consulting the family had a special meaning for the Christophes, since
it involved seeing what, if anything, each member could chip in toward
a common cause, and in this not merely their unity but even their vast
numbers had proved helpful in the past. There had never been a mean
Christophe and the quality of generosity appeared to be contagious
since it always transferred itself to Christophes-by-marriage. Hence
the present concourse listened gravely, Aunt Caroline on her stretcher,
adult Christophes on packing cases, medium-sized Christophes on the
floor and tiny Christophes on the knees of mothers or sisters. Henri
acted as spokesman, concluding, "As you will see, it is in the nature
of a venture, but the situation is in the nature of a difficulty."

"It's cockeyed!" Aunt Caroline said, shocking the family by her choice
of words.

Daphne went to Henri and smiled up at him. "For myself, I owe a great
debt to the House of Christophe. It gave me my husband and such
happiness as few women know. It has given me my home and never a
moment's sense that I was not welcomed . . ." A chorus of assurance
from assorted Christophes interrupted her. She was their treasure
and their joy. All that they had was hers. "I know that, you dear,
impractical darlings," Daphne said. "But since you have never permitted
me to pay for anything, I have almost two hundred dollars saved from my
embroideries and if you will use it now it will give me more pleasure
than anything upon which I could spend it. I have also these two rings
that came from my great-grandmother. They are not very valuable, but
they should be worth five hundred more."

"More fool you!" Aunt Caroline said.

Other Christophes contributed personal items and odd sums until the
astonishing total of an estimated nine hundred dollars was reached. A
groaning which even surpassed her normal efforts was now heard from
Aunt Caroline, combined with a vicious, snipping sound which had been
dimly registering itself on the family consciousness for some time. The
Christophes looked at her, to be appalled by what they saw, for as they
gazed, she appeared to lose her scalp, the superb mass of her snowy
locks coming away in toto, to be gathered into a ball in her aged hands
and flung at Henri.

"I hope you're satisfied!" she said. "There's my hair. White hair is
worth six dollars an ounce, eight dollars if it's long and wavy. The
hair dealer tried to buy it last time his boat was in. Now take me to
bed!"

The magnitude of Aunt Caroline's sacrifice inspired the other women
and even the little girls. And soon, Daphne's dark tresses lay shining
on top of the varied pile on the table, while the brothers, a little
alarmed by the response they had got, were staring at crop-headed women
and children who in turn stared at each other while all the Christophes
laughed softly and helplessly. "But Aunt Caroline's gift was the best
of all," Daphne said, "for she thought of it."

"We are poor men if we cannot manage the rest with forge and axe!"
Joseph said joyfully. He turned to his brother. "Henri, you are the
better 'dealing man.' While the family and I start the boat, you must
check mail routes and chances of contracts and arrange passage to
Jamaica to buy the engines. Now who comes with me to the forest to cut
frames?"

"We do!" shouted the family. "Who last lost the axes?"




Two


Arriving at the gangway to the iron shed on piles that was the port
authority building of Main Town, Henri found his path blocked by a
small donkey that bulged its cheeks and tried to kick him.

"Welcome, Henri! Ah, wait until I assist you!" Monsieur Latour, the
elderly and spade-bearded customs officer called serenely. With
Monsieur Latour pushing and Henri pulling, they backed the little
donkey off the plank. "Someday I will ask the government to appoint him
to the customs in my stead!" Monsieur Latour observed.

Actually, Monsieur Latour was customs officer only when he faced
west across the two-hundred-year-old desk, when he moved to the end
and faced south down the length of the room, he became assistant
commissioner and ruler of the island in the commissioner's absences.
When he went directly across the main street of Main Town at summons
of a jangled cowbell, he was the island's leading storekeeper; while
by crossing diagonally at the plaintive blowing of a conch shell, he
was the island's only dentist, usually making no charge for the latter
service. On Sundays, a great kindness was in his rather prominent
blue eyes and shaven lips, while the noble simplicity of his old face
suggested the faces of the Disciples in old pictures as he preached
humbly in the little church.

Seated now as customs officer, he asked, "What can I do for you, Henri?
Was it perhaps a matter of money?"

Flushing with the effort, Henri said, "I hate to ask it, but I came to
know if you could carry us while we build a boat. We would keep the
stores as low as might be, but with milk for the small ones and Aunt
Caroline, and kerosene for the lanterns to work at night the bill would
run high."

Monsieur Latour looked serenely over his head and only by his
cheerfulness could Henri guess that he was already carrying so much
of the island that the request was a difficult one for him to grant.
"I know when I have been kindly treated and Christophes have done me
many kindnesses. Never once have I been made to feel that I was a man
of the people and they descendants of the Great Marquis. It will be an
opportunity to repay obligation. Think no more of it!"

"It is good of you, M'sieur. But we know that payments have been poor.
It will cause you no serious strain?"

"None. My wholesale bills are not due for six months, and I do not
think that anyone would be unduly worried if they were not paid for
twelve. What is your plan for the boat? If you are thinking of running
the Christophe's mail routes, the distances are dangerously great for
a launch! I do not like to see you try it! But if I cannot prevent
you, the mail routes are open--the smaller islands still depend upon
occasional schooners."

"We will take precautions and Joseph is a very great seaman. To handle
the long distances, on the first run and every fourth run thereafter
we will carry fuel only and establish caches upon certain of the sand
bars, upon the Purple Reefs and on the Cape. M'sieur, if it is not
inconvenient, might I see the Christophe's cargo manifests and papers
for the last voyage?"

Monsieur Latour roughed his beard. "I too have thought, 'Something
in that last voyage must have been different from all other voyages!'
But there is nothing to prove it in the ship's papers! Nothing! In
the cargo, dyewood, honey, conch shells, braided hats, a little lace.
Nothing of danger or of value. I have been over those bills of lading
with a toothcomb." He went to the files. "Take all the time you wish."

Henri carried the papers out to where the giant silk-cotton tree shed
a green light over the ruined fort and yellow banana birds sang in the
wild papayas that cut off the road. He read slowly, seeking the unknown
amidst the known. But there was nothing in the ship's papers that was
not as it might have been upon a thousand voyages. The Christophe had
carried her usual complement of eight islanders, all men whom he had
known since his childhood and all members of the gentle sect of the
Followers.

In addition to the crew, there had been two first-class passengers for
the Isle of Palms, Thomas Webber, and William Ashby, both of whom had
disembarked safely, to testify that all was well with the ship up to
that point. The ship had also carried five deck passengers, all inland
Negroes of Jamaica, bound for Tampa under labor contracts, and all of
whom had vanished with the ship.

"You found nothing?" Monsieur Latour asked as Henri returned the papers.

"It can have no bearing, but what was the business of M'sieur Webber
and M'sieur Ashby in the island?"

"They were not even here of their choice. They, too, were victims of
misfortune of the sea. M'sieur Webber was owner and M'sieur Ashby
engineer of the steamship Webber that was wrecked upon the Purple Reefs
in the hurricane that passed a week before the Christophe's sailing,
and they made the island in one of the ship's powerboats. When the
Christophe arrived, M'sieur Webber arranged with your brother, Malcolm,
to give them transportation to the Isle of Palms--stopping at the Reefs
en route to inspect the wreck."

"Poor souls!" Henri said with quick sympathy. "It was a feat of
seamanship that they should reach here!"

"It was perhaps almost a miracle. Conditions had been such before the
Webber struck the Reefs that they were not even certain that it was the
Purple Reefs upon which she had driven. Martin Herera, the captain, and
four other Hereras of the Low Cays reached the coast of the Greater
Antilles two days after the wreck and still in fearful weather for the
storm had loitered, and, being the Hereras, became drunk, caused a riot
and were jailed for disorder. Six other seamen were lost. By M'sieur
Webber's story they lost their heads and bolted without an officer in
the boat."

"Poor souls," Henri said again, thinking of the loneliness of men dying
at sea.

"It was a year of disaster, Henri. The storm was a cruel one and took
many lives. Amongst them, Jaques and Christian of the Island who were
sponging off Gracias a Dios and though they were weather-wise men, must
in some manner have been overtaken--at least, they never came back."
He stopped, flushed, and in his very blue and intelligent eyes was the
half-shamed, half-childish fear of the sea that even if they derided
it was part of all men who knew the sea very well. "It was no mystery
such as that of the Christophe, and of a certainty there are a thousand
things that can happen to two men in a little boat, yet they were men
of experience and should not have become involved in storm. And still
the storm must have taken them. They never came back."

Henri experienced an irrational shock of fear of the sea's self, as if
the all-embracing sea was conspiring against the island. He shook his
young head angrily. Then, leaning forward, he asked, "Is there record
of where the men, Webber and Ashby, have gone? It is unlikely that they
have aught to add that might be of help, but they were the last to see
our brother and I would talk with them."

"There should be record in the Isle of Palms." Monsieur Latour's gentle
face was troubled. "M'sieur Webber was not a good man, Henri."

"You do not mean that he could have had connection with the loss?"

"No! No! That were impossible. I meant only that he was unlikely to be
of help. A big and fair man of light conduct, he wore shorts and when
pleased he skipped like a fawn in the forest. He was also loud in his
opinion of the Island, for it seemed that he had heard of South Sea
islands and of island beauties for improper deeds and had expected
to find their counterpart here--where maids do not raise their eyes
even to lads they know!" Monsieur Latour's old face showed its shocked
distaste. "Hardly had he arrived before he had made such advances that
his face was well slapped. He also attempted to give my donkey an
apple hot from the oven. There was in him a joy in himself and a joy
in cruelty as of an evil child--yet one felt that he was at heart a
coward. Certainly, he was a most immoral man, and I doubt that he would
ever have observed anything save the jocular words pouring from his
own mouth and his own licentious wishes!" His face resumed its normal
kindliness. "Ashby, the small and dark man with the barrel chest had
little to say for himself upon any subject, but he had the eyes of a
good man though sad. He might help you, though it is hard to say how."

After a moment, Henri said earnestly, "One more question, M'sieur. A
problem of conduct troubles me. The Followers teach the turning of the
other cheek. If you were attacked, you would make no resistance?"

Monsieur Latour's sermons in the little church held a shining
gentleness, but he was a very humble man who, despite a blameless life,
held little hope that he would be amongst the somewhat sadistically
few whom the sterner Followers believed would be chosen. He answered
gravely, while his old face flushed a little, "I am a man full of
faults, Henri, and if I am saved, it will only be by Grace! But no, I
would make no resistance. It is better to be sinned against than to
sin."

Rising to lean his hands on the desk, Henri asked softly, "But if you
could prevent violence only by using violence, what would you do?
Imagine, perhaps, that you should see a murderer about to kill and
that circumstances were such that you could stay his evil only by
killing him, and tell me what would you do?"

Monsieur Latour was silent for a long moment. At last he looked up. "I
pray that God never puts me to the test, but I would pray to do as did
those in America who strove to follow as we and who prayed for humility
while the Indians scalped them and their families one by one! I do not
know that I could meet the test, but I would try to meet it!"

"I thank you, M'sieur," Henri said and his hands against the desk were
trembling. "I think as always that you are one of the good men of the
world, as I think that the people of our church are of the truly good
people of the world. Yet I have the thought that both our father and
Malcolm our brother were very good and very gentle--and I have had
the thought that in this matter there may perhaps be need for less of
goodness and of gentleness!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Tremendous sunset was shooting flame into the jungle and rumbling
thunderheads dwarfed the island and the sea as Henri returned from Main
Town with the commissioner's promise of the mail contracts. The wild
reflections glowed between the black stakes of the turtle crawls while
the turtles' flippers rose and sank darkly in the burning water. And
beyond the crawls, far out over the submerged grass flats, Daphne was
drawing a fish net.

Setting down the stores he carried, Henri waded out through the tepid
and waist-deep water to aid her. "Let me have the draw-rope, Beautiful
Sister. And M'sieur Latour has said 'Yes' and M'sieur the Commissioner
has said 'Yes' and I have arranged with Captain Royal of the hawksbill
schooner to give me passage to Jamaica to negotiate for the engines
for the launch! Also I said, 'We have a French woman of Martinique
who loves potatoes and who is very good and very kind!' And I was
extravagant and bought a sack of real potatoes for supper!"

"Potatoes? How fine!" Daphne said. "The little ones do not know how
good fried potatoes and fish can be." She smiled at him and pushed back
her cropped hair that curled from the water. As their hands moved over
each other along the wet rope she said, "I wanted you to search. Now I
am afraid to have you challenge that sea and sky in a little launch!"

"Few men know the sea as Joseph does. We will be safe, Beautiful
Sister."

"Try to be! I have been thinking of you and of Joseph, and thinking
that it is not true that humanity cannot be unselfishly good. It is the
story of the West Indies that men go out to labor endlessly for women
they hardly see, but it is still a good story. In imagination, I have
been watching men in far ports gazing into store windows at comfortable
clothes and boots that were not stiffened by the sea, and knew they
must be tempted, but that the little money went to buy gifts for
children and lonely women. I knew that it was not right that through
poverty it should be so, yet in contradiction I wondered if it was
perhaps only in the hardness of sacrifice that love could say 'I love.'
So that the Christ Himself could not have told his boundless love had
He not walked along hot roads to bring comfort, had He not forgiven the
pain of the Cross." With her hands on Henri's shoulder, she touched
her fingers to the worn fabric of his shirt and the large, man-made
stitches of its patching. "You and Joseph are very good to us, Henri!
And again I am sorry that you have come home only to burdens, poor
lambs who are so large and so young!"

Henri laughed. "All is well with us, Daphne! Do not trouble your great
age that is two years younger than mine!" He kissed her forehead where
the dark hair sprang from the brown satin of her sunburned skin. "As
Joseph said, we regret that there has been so much sorrow and we not
here to aid." Putting his hands against her ribs, he lifted her so that
her down-pointing feet cleared the bottom and her beautiful body hung
against his as the warm tide pulled about them. "Remember only that we
can learn only what befell, that anything more is past hoping! And when
you do not hope any more, try to remember that there is no finer man
than Joseph, who may not know it, since he loved Malcolm too, but who
has loved you since you came to us. Also, we would keep you always a
Christophe."

With her face washed in the crimsoning light, she said, "I know--and
you are both dear to me as my own--but I do not think that I could love
twice even if I wished it."

"Then someday be merely kind to him! Being kind and loving run very
close akin, and one might surprise you by growing into the other--and
he is worth both." He set her down. "Neither can we make the dead glad
of the touch of our hand at homecoming so that the heart sings. Or
make the hard thing easy so that when a man's body cries out for rest
the heart says to the tired muscles, 'It is for my dear one!' Or make
loneliness warm a thousand leagues away so that a man is glad saying
merely, 'At home, she is sleeping!' Or fill him with the large pride,
'I must care for me, for these common hands and this common life are of
wonder to her!'" He smiled at her. "Joseph has all things but words in
his own behalf, so that is why I say for him what he cannot."

They swung the wing of the seine towards the stake that held its base
as the westward side of the rounded ripples blazed with deepening
color, while through the eastward curves they looked down through
crystal to the varied jade floor of turtle grass that was set with
groups of lilac sea anemones like chrysanthemum flowers. Drifting
schools of fish passed about their limbs and bodies. And from far
inland came the sound of Joseph's and the family's axes, while hot
perfume poured from the honey trees. Then crimson thickened the light
and the turtle grass bottom was obscured by the murk of twilight, so
that suddenly the familiar sea seemed menacing. And it was good to rush
the bag of the fish-heavy seine up onto the dark turtle grass beach.

Carrying the fish and the stores along the jungle path, Henri said,
"Since their presence was accident and they had left the ship ere
disaster came, it can hardly have bearing, but what was your thought
of the men, Webber and Ashby, who were the passengers with the
_Christophe_? M'sieur Latour who dislikes almost no man, disliked the
big and fair man, Webber."

"He was detestable with the cruelty that laughs and skips like a wicked
child's yet is worse because it is a man's," Daphne said. "He was big
and fair and very handsome save that he was too soft and too pale, and
that one could not have borne to touch him! It was as if there was in
him such delight in himself that one wished to strike him." Her voice
shook with anger. "On one of the days he was here, I was walking the
path to Main Town, and the banana birds were racing each other through
the treetops and one had struck a branch and fallen. He was touching it
with his foot to make it beat its broken wing and he laughed in joy,
asking me with his eyes to join him--and he would not stop! I thrust
at him with a piece of broken wood and he stumbled, and I thought from
his eyes that when he stood up he would strike me. But others of the
women came and they beat him with their umbrellas and made him run. But
men do not sink ships because women have offended them! Nor do I think
he would ever have had part in true violence. He was too much afraid
for his white skin. He would rather have stood laughing in glee, while
other men were hurt in a prize ring or a sport, while, were crime to
be committed, he would have wished to be afar with a loud alibi. For
Monsieur Ashby, one was sorry, one did not know why."

"Beautiful Sister, it would be no answer to the how of it, but had
Malcolm or our father other enemies?"

She said, "It is not easy to hate quiet and truly kind men who
interfered with no man. Neither did any envy the mail routes to the
little islands where the great ships do not go, for none have used
them. If you would find motive behind what befell, you must find motive
other than hate or envy. And there one goes back to the beginning, for
where could there be motive? At the end as at the beginning is the
mystery."

He said, "As you are meaning it, there are no mysteries!"

But about them as they entered the village of West Town the darkness
had crept into the glittering and involved leaves of the breadfruit
trees, while the last flush of afterglow lingered on the pink and rose
cottage walls and the massed cabbage roses and bloody crotons still
held color between the ghosts of picket fences, as the cooking smokes
climbed in rose and silver to the single great rose of the sky. It was
the moment when the West Indies seem clinging to the safety of day.
Then, with a swoop like that of a great bird, the night was on them;
the only light was from the distant storms, and, against the will, all
mysteries seemed possible.

       *       *       *       *       *

During the next weeks, Tobias moved patiently up the muddy coast of
Nicaragua, explaining to turtle-crew and net weaver and to the dwellers
on stilted platforms in the swamps, "I am Tobias of Home Island,
seeking news of my son, lost with the motorship _Christophe_. Also of
Jaques and Christian of my island, believed sponging here before the
storm that preceded the _Christophe's_ sailing." Most men were kind,
a few derided; women insisted that he share the scant family meals;
but in two months he had verified only that Jaques and Christian had
been working the sponge fields shortly before the storm. "It is of the
storm's self that I would learn," Tobias explained. "I seek one who can
say, 'Jaques and Christian of Home Island sheltered here in the storm,
thus were not lost in it as has been thought.'" And at that, pity would
stand in brown eyes that said, "Tobias is stranged." On a fierce noon
he was sailing a little estuary whose water was brown and yellow like
a jungle cat's coat and was about to swing seaward, when he saw a lead
through the mangroves, and far in amongst the mangroves, the cormorants
perched, indicating a hidden lake. He had searched so many estuaries
and so many creeks that he hesitated, then knew that if he did not
search all things seen he could not say, "I have tried to find my son!"
He swung the catboat in where the mangroves made green shadows on the
brown-dyed water.

       *       *       *       *       *

During the same weeks on Home Island, Joseph worked eighteen hours a
day at the boat. Adult Christophes chopped, pegged, sawed and painted;
medium-sized Christophes sanded, polished, carried boards and ran
errands, and little Christophes got in the way. While in Jamaica,
through a combination of vehement bargaining, sleeping in the Botanical
Gardens and eating one meal a day, Henri succeeded in realizing enough
to buy two secondhand engines and the necessary hardware. And three
months and one day from old Captain Henri Christophe's death, the
family, though doing without coffee and sugar, owed three hundred
dollars to Monsieur Latour, but the launch rode proudly at the foot of
the Queen's Steps, half-buried in flowers thrown by cheering islanders.

Aunt Caroline broke an already cracked milk coconut on the bow, the
christening having been delayed for a lull in her liver trouble. "I
christen thee _Sea Lily_," the old lady shrilled, adding coarsely, "And
it should be Sea _Silly_!"

Henri, gaunt from his light eating in Kingston, and Joseph haggard
from exhaustion and lack of sleep, swung the Sea Lily free from the
stone dock to earn the livelihood of thirty-one persons and repay the
Christophe debts.

"Find the _Christophe_, Henri and Joseph!" the old captains shouted.

"Find the Three Galleons for us, Henri and Joseph!" little Timothy
Christophe yelled.

"We will try," Henri and Joseph answered, laughing at the little boy.
Joseph opened the throttle and the overladen launch was off, to follow
in deadly earnest the path of a little ship for which five nations had
searched in vain and by chance to run the course of three galleons lost
three centuries before.

And to the brothers, it seemed almost that the ghost of the
_Christophe_ throbbed before them, moving to unknown disaster somewhere
in the blue vastness of the sea under the reflected miracle of the
clouds.

"She is good," Joseph said happily of the launch.

"She has need to be," Henri answered.

Below fled a sea floor such as no other islands of the earth could
show: alight with blue sea fire, visible as if through air; deepening
to fantastic patchwork of phosphorescent azure and black cobalt;
vanishing in infinite blues. The launch slid into the shadow of a
cloud, rode from it across the deep blue of many fathoms, and suddenly
the sea was athrash with jacks, foam-slaps over all its surface, a
showing of a thousand fish-backs. Then only a hundred blues made up
the sea, laced with the tiny and seedlike forms of the sea-itch. Even
the island was gone.

"We have striven so hard for this that is the true beginning of
search, that it seemed in itself a great step toward learning of the
_Christophe_," Joseph said. "But now the sea looks very big. And we
must learn, yet even sky and sea would seem to say, 'How?' Thus far
we have known from men whom we can believe that all was well with our
brother and the ship. From here to the Isle of Palms, we know that men
who should have no reason to lie say that all was well. But we must
say, 'We are no longer completely sure of man, and must ask unanswering
sea and sky and bottom if all was well when our brother passed this
way.'"

"I too have thought, 'The open sea where there are no paths assumably
has little to tell us.' Yet, if we pass often enough, some thing of sea
or sky or bottom may answer us! And at least we know all that may be
learned from the island," Henri answered.

"Which is little," Joseph said sadly. His great hands changed the wheel
a fraction to meet more perfectly a larger wave and the launch rose
under them, cut the crest and slid down the farther trough. "True,
we know that two small things were not quite as always. There were
two strangers from afar and the _Christophe_ was two days late at the
Isle of Palms. But what of either? For the delay, the strangers gave
explanation that they can doubtless make clearer still."

A school of flying fish rose on the quivering rainbows of their wings
and beautifully re-entered the sea. "Both Daphne and M'sieur Latour
disapproved of the passenger, M'sieur Webber, and say that he will not
aid us. But pleasant or otherwise, he must have been a man of parts,"
Henri said, smiling. He gestured at the dancing sea. "In opposite
direction we are following the course of M'sieur Webber and the little
man, Ashby. It is long and hard. And they traversed it from a wrecked
ship through the after-whip of hurricane. Yet within hours of their
making land, the man, Webber, had energy for thoughts of amours. Almost
it would seem that he must have been such a man as the men of old, who
fought great battles, encountered mighty gales and deprived countless
captive virgins of their honor all upon the selfsame day." His voice
lost its mockery. "What is your thought for our brother's lateness at
the Isle of Palms?"

"I have had little time to think," Joseph said truthfully and without
self-pity. "I have had to keep my mind upon standing on my feet and
saying, 'Yonder is the nail. You have but to lift the hammer and strike
it!' Yet in truth, I am puzzled somewhat. For on his way from Home
Island to the Purple Reefs our brother had followed one route which
those from the wrecked Webber might have taken, and by proceeding on
his normal course from the Reefs to the Isle of Palms, he would have
followed another. It would not seem likely that he would search afar
for them until he had both failed to sight them on that route and
had learned that they had not reached shore. Malcolm was the only
Christophe of neat mind, and he carried mail and valued his schedule.
That he should be late by hours from having studied the wreck was
understandable. That he should seek for two days for men who might well
be safe ashore would seem strange. Unless there were special reasons
to think them drifting--such, let us say, as a message on the wreck
telling that the boats were stove and they had taken to the rafts." His
voice was doubtful.

"Men do not commonly leave ships unless they think them lost," Henri
said. "And then they seldom write messages to the fish. Still it could
be. And doubtless the strangers can tell us as we talk." He paused.
"But I could wish that our brother himself had made the report of what
befell!"

Joseph said slowly, "Again there was nothing unusual in that he did
not. Since he was late, it was most normal that he stood off the port.
Having the fast powerboat of the strangers aboard, he who had done them
favors, would well leave them take in the mails!"

"True. It is what he would have done," Henri said.

       *       *       *       *       *

For two days and nights the launch ran the open Caribbean, the brothers
taking six-hour watches. On the third afternoon they sighted the
Purple Reefs, their presence marked by a crestless lifting of the
swells and by great patches of sargassum weed, brown upon the surface,
wine-purple beneath glass-blue clarity of the sea. Joseph edged the
launch in over the tablelands of the reefs and they looked down upon
wonder, passing at last into a small, horseshoe-shaped crescent amongst
the spraddle of low dunes that formed the only place in which the reefs
broke water. Here, from the loneliness of the sea, the humped sand
hills rose perhaps twelve feet above tide-level and glittering beaches
reached to small sand cliffs topped by coarse grass and leather-leaved,
pink-flowered vines. Between the horns of the highest dune was a bay so
delicately green that it seemed a pale jewel set in the blueness of the
sea and the gold and purple of the great reef. Its floor was of sand as
fine as scouring powder and white as snow.

Over the whole enchanted place drifted the greatness of the salt air
and the changing patterns of the sky. And afloat in the bay, the launch
seemed hung in air, while the little fish that gathered about her
glowed purple against the aquamarine light. There might have been no
world save the minute world here in the enormous reaches of the sea.

The brothers surveyed the bay for possible sharks, then plunged
overboard and swam ashore, to sit at the edge of the ripples and scrub
themselves with the refreshing sharpness of the sand. Then they dived
to rinse, and finally walked, naked, to the top of the dunes where the
salt-encrusted grass bowed in dull silver to the wind. The place was
one that they had loved as boys, for to a boy there could be no more
marvelous hunting ground.

Sea birds made it a nesting place and in their season, fine eggs could
be had for roasting in the ashes. The telltale flotsam of the Caribbean
and two continents stranded on the windward beaches and the savage
Caribbean lightning, striking the sands, that were strangely of silica
here rather than coral, formed crude rods of glass through the sand's
softness. The finest pink conch shells of Caribbee were to be had from
the mouth of the bay and under weeded ledges were spotted cowries with
lips stained in purple. As added wonder, round, Spanish ballast stones
could sometimes be found in the ricks of dried turtle grass, or, more
occasionally, a piece of crude gold. For legend had it that it was here
that hurricane had overpowered the Three Galleons, that had touched
at Home Island, paying for water in the coins of gold that were in
Monsieur the Commissioner's museum. And once, as a lad, Henri had dug
up the beautifully fashioned hilt of a sword, from which rust crumbled,
telling of an ancient blade.

Standing now in the colossal loneliness, he understood the call of
treasure that lured the old captains. For while many of the ancients
were impostors and some had come to believe in originally faked charts,
many had strong support for their theories of enormous wealth waiting
the expert or fortunate search. The Christophes themselves owned an old
treasure chart of the Purple Reefs, but none of the family had ever
taken it seriously. Yet great treasure had been lost by ships of the
Spanish Main, and had not been found again. And while such countless
men had beggared their families and wasted their lives in futile search
that to call a man a treasure hunter was a West Indian synonym for
calling him feeble-minded, no West Indian was ever quite unconscious of
treasure. The salt gold itself was real, as was its mesmerism.

To believe in the finding of treasure was to be stranged, but in
dealing with the Caribbean, was the dismissing of the glitter and power
of treasure the dismissing of a vital fact? Being an unstranged West
Indian, he did not believe it and could not forget it. And looking at
the purple-spotted leopard skin of the submerged tableland, he wondered
if it was actually here that the Three Galleons had spilled their gold?
If somewhere beneath the brilliant waters within range of his vision
there did lie wealth beyond the dreams of men? His mind derided but his
heart beat faster and his hands tingled.

He said, "That must be the _Webber_." For to eastward where the
tableland dropped off to one of the great deeps, lay the shattered
hulk of a steamer, infinitely lonely in this the loneliest spot of the
Caribbean.

The area of the reefs between the dunes and the wreck was too shallow
for the launch, but Joseph said, "There is time. Let us swim out to
her!"

And presently they were gliding through the water beside the rusted
hull to a point where the green swells sucked against the violently
tilted decks, as the ship lay with her shattered nose only in the
shallow water while her afterdecks and stern melted into green-cobalt
obscurity. Fish fled like silver arrows and as the brothers drew
themselves from the water, hundreds of sea birds flew up. And to the
slow rhythm of the swells, a hollow booming followed by the hiss of
receding waters came from within the ship. Despite the pounding she had
taken, the rupture of at least some of her oil tanks had apparently
been small, for faintly iridescent oil slick still trailed from her
across the Reefs and out over the western deeps beyond the Reefs.

"I had not realized that she was as big as she is," Joseph said. "She
must have been a great loss!" He added ruefully, "At least, since she
was lost in hurricane, the underwriters cannot have disputed her loss."

Overside, the coral was already taking her, and from the depths astern
that were becoming murky green with shadow, the great forms of two
sharks showed. "The brasswork is still with her," Henri said. "With
simple diving rigs, we might be able to do a little salvage."

"I, too, was thinking of that," Joseph agreed. "If we are to meet the
debts we must make all chances earn for us and this is upon our course,
while there will be times when we are ahead of schedule."

"We might also find the chart and glance for the Three Galleons," Henri
said, and grinned, waiting for Joseph to deride him.

Perhaps as indication of his financial anxiety, Joseph said, "If one
sought as the _Artiglio_ sought for the _Egypt_, buoying off square
mile by square mile, one might settle the matter one way or the other.
And to make the search pay, one might gather conchs and fans--" He
stopped, alarmed. "But you are not imagining, Henri, that lost treasure
was in the loss of the _Christophe_?"

Henri laughed. "No, I am not thinking that a great treasure was
revealed as the _Christophe_ touched here and that therein lay motive
for such great crimes as treasure has spawned. It could be, but I would
have to run gold and jewels through my fingers before I would believe
it."

They swam back into the face of the westering sun and behind them the
wreck became a thing of gold against the sadness of the eastern sky.

Henri was a natural cook, and as they reached the dunes, he said, "I
will go to the bay and prepare the meal."

Joseph smiled at him. "Thanks. While you do it, I will walk the north
horn of the dunes."

Henri knew that Joseph was troubled by the immensity of their task
and as he ran across the sand-crest and swam to the launch for spear,
goggles and sack, he felt again the protective love for his brother
that made him seem older rather than younger than unasking Joseph,
who had labored all his life for others and had nothing for himself.
He decided that Joseph must have a very special supper. And with the
spearing equipment across his shoulder, he slid through the water
like a seal toward the mouth of the bay and soon had three large
pink conchs, four purple-spotted crawfish and a fine pink and silver
snapper. Then making a fire of driftwood on the clean sand, he set
water to boil and added onions, a bay leaf, pepper and salt, a dust of
sage from Daphne's herb garden, a sprinkling of dried parsley. Next he
cleaned and sliced the pinkish white flesh of the conchs and dropped
it into the steaming soup, allowed the mixture to return to the boil
and pulled the pot aside to simmer the conch meat to tenderness. The
crawfish he killed and buried whole in the glowing ashes. Last came the
fish. This he cleaned, stuffed with eggs, herbs and bread crumbs mixed
with grated coconut, basted with coconut oil and placed in a heated
camp oven which he buried under the coals. He then worked his way along
the shore until he found a weeded sand-bed set with the translucent
shellfish whose flesh resembled that of northern mussels, secured some
two dozen of the plump morsels and placed them on a bed of wet seaweed
over coals, added more seaweed to form a blanket, and then topped the
pile with coals. Overhead in the infinite blue, man-of-war hawks angled
curiously towards the thinly ascending smoke.

Joseph, bronzed and intent, walked slowly along the north horn of
the dunes where the military installations were already being taken
by the rust and the birds. As always on isolated outcroppings from
vast areas of water, there were strange and interesting objects on
the beach, and at one point a corked bottle caught his eye. He picked
it up, and a paper was dimly visible through the green of the glass.
He broke the bottle and something tinkled amongst the coral rubble.
The note said that the bottle had been thrown overboard from a cruise
ship near Panama and asked the finder to inform the writer of where
the bottle was found, a dime being enclosed for postage. Joseph
looked for the dime but could not find it, which annoyed him, since,
though the message was trivial it did not occur to him to disobey the
instructions, and he could ill afford the stamps.

On the eastern face of the dunes was record of the fury of the storm
that had swept the reefs two years ago. Great blocks of coral torn from
the living structure of the coral were heaped upon the beaches and the
sandhills, and Joseph considered them, thinking that in such storm,
things long buried could have come to light. And he wondered at the
freakishness of storms that can wreck a city yet spare a hut or that
might change a reef yet leave the wreck of a ship to rust slowly.

The great sky was becoming greenish gold and the clouds glowed angrily
in the west, while the wind had caught a lonely whisper, when Henri
at last heard the sound of Joseph's step in the sand and looked up
smiling. "We have a good supper!"

Joseph said, "The storm must have been of great violence. My only find
was a tourist bottle whose dime I lost amongst the coral. Now I will
have to spend a dime to mail the letter!"

Henri suppressed a smile and served the meal deftly in smoothly opened
tin cans and on sections of smooth gray driftwood. The conch soup
to which he had added their one can of evaporated milk was velvety
and delicately delicious. And he was pleased that Joseph's tired face
had lost something of its weariness. "You are a true chef, Henri!"
Joseph said. Henri smiled so that his teeth flashed white. He passed
his brother a piece of driftwood on which the grilled shellfish were
arranged on a bed of salty green sea lettuce, squeezed Mexican lime
juice over them, dotted them with coconut butter and sprinkled them
with pepper and salt. The shellfish had a nutlike sweetness and a
strange tang from the crisp weed. Next came the crawfish tails, peeled
of their charred shells and buttered and sprinkled with parsley and a
dash of chili. The shells had kept in every modicum of flavor, and the
clove of garlic with which each had been impaled added zest. "A king's
feast!" Joseph said.

Henri was critical. "Each should have contained a wild almond, but I
forgot to bring them."

"After such carelessness, I do not know that I care to eat!" Joseph
said smiling. At the sight of the fish, he groaned in earnest. "No more
is expected of me?"

"Taste it!" Henri commanded. Joseph tasted. The fish had a meatlike
richness and was smeared with its own brown gravy. The savor of the
eggs and herbs had blended with the flavor of the fish and the flavor
of the fish with the stuffing. It was the masterpiece of the meal.
The coffee--saved for them by Daphne--was from the Blue Mountains of
Jamaica, a product of which so little is marketed that it remains the
treasured delight of connoisseurs, prized for a flavor so rich that to
add milk would be high treason.

They drank it as the sky caught a great and bloody light and the
hollows of the dunes darkened to the night wind. One by one the stars
came out.

Henri stirred the fire to light, then he said, "I walked the south
dunes roughly while the conchs simmered. In a hollow toward the south
tip there is a bed of gathered and wired sponges that have been left to
rot."

Joseph looked at him startled. And Henri knew that in his mind he
visualized the slow disintegration of the skeletal structure of sponge
in this salt-saturated air. For it could be that the sponges had been
fresh and yellow as a flower garden two years before. None of the
searchers then would have noticed anything odd in their presence since
every sand dune of the Caribbean at times blossomed with this golden
carpet. Any persons seeing the drying sponges two years ago would have
thought the spongers busy at some outer bed and that they intended
to return. None would rob unattended sponges, for such robbing, if
detected, could mean death. And so lonely was the reef that after the
first flurry of the search none save the personnel of the military
installations might have noted the discarded and by then worthless
sponges, and for the military they would have held no special meaning.

To the brothers Christophe they had the possibility of great meaning.
Jaques and Christian were spongers. If this had been their haul it had
been strung out after the passage of the hurricane. Yet something had
prevented their gathering it. What? What unknown disaster under these
same stars, in these same whispering airs amidst these ever present
seas?

Joseph said slowly, "Many things, of course, may happen to two men
in a little boat: a sudden squall and upset where there are sharks,
an accident while diving, carelessness--and the drifting of the boat
beyond catching while the men are in the water."

"It is still a strange thing," Henri said. "Two men of the island were
absent sponging. While it was not thought that they were here, it is
not impossible that they had come here. Certainly men sponging this
reef were interrupted. They had a good haul, washed and drying. They
never returned for the haul. Nor did Jaques and Christian or the crew
of the _Christophe_ ever return."

They listened to the voice of the sea, hardly audible by day but all
about them in the darkness, and to the bowing of the salt grass in the
wind. "Suppose," Henri said, "that there was something here--its nature
we cannot guess--but something most unusual that was known to or had
affected the spongers; in pausing here our brother could have learned
of it or become involved in it . . ."

"But what, Henri? If he had found the spongers missing and perhaps
suspected foul play, why did he not report it in the Isle of Palms? Or
let us assume that at the time our brother paused here, no disaster had
befallen the spongers, what could then happen to destroy both the men
on the reef--so that they could not return for their sponges--and also
reach out to cause a ship to vanish hundreds of miles from here?"

Henri sighed. "Had the _Christophe_ never reached the Isle of Palms,
it would be easier! One might then assume that whatever unknown thing
befell, befell here, destroying both ship and spongers."

Joseph stirred the fire so that blue and lilac flame leapt from the
orange bed of coals. "As it stands, one would need to say almost that
here was death, remaining to strike down the spongers, and that also
our brother carried death with him from this place--which is quite
absurd! For what could be here that could also be there? What in a sane
man's reasoning could be in either place that could cause men to vanish
without trace, and with men, a ship?"

The black edge of the tide caught the reflections of the fire and
tapped softly at the sand. Henri said, "I do not know. But I believe
that it was here that the unknown thing first touched them." He smiled.
"Tonight I almost believe Tobias' ghosts and demons, but they may
vanish as, God willing, we learn!"

Joseph also smiled. "Tomorrow we will search more closely. Meantime,
since here is perhaps a stealer of ships and we cannot afford to lose
our small ship, we had best swim back to the launch and to bed."

They rose, Henri set the breakfast things in order, and then while
Henri laughed inwardly at his own distaste for the swim, they hurled
stones to scare away any possible sharks and plunged into the black
water that was warmer than the air and swam back to the launch.

Further search in blue and blowing morning revealed nothing save a
stronger impression of the fury of the hurricane that had swept the
reefs. Henri and Joseph established their gasoline cache and put up
a notice: Needed by the Brothers Christophe. Such little hoards were
almost invariably inviolate in the Caribbean, for no man knew when his
own life might hang on finding safe his cans of fuel.

With the work finished, the brothers looked over the lonely wonder of
reefs and dunes. "Joseph, it is your thought the sponge haul was that
of Jaques and Christian?" Henri said.

"If it could be shown that Jaques and Christian were not working
the beds off Gracias a Dios, I might think so. If they were--as we
believe--off a Dios, why in any reason should they have crossed the
seas to come here where sponge is scant?" Joseph asked.

"Suppose merely that Tobias and M'sieur Latour are right in that
Jaques and Christian were too weather-wise to have been caught
by hurricane--that they were safe through it. We have then three
mysteries. The fate of the _Christophe_. The fate of Jaques and
Christian. The lesser mystery of the unclaimed sponge. Three unrelated
mysteries are too many."

"That could be," Joseph said. "But if you would relate them by this
place, you have then a thing more strange and harder of belief than
unconnected loss. You must think that against reason Jaques and
Christian came here and for that reason were lost. You must think
that the _Christophe_ touched here and that for this death followed
her--that for something seen or known or done here, men were struck
down."

"I think merely as Tobias and M'sieur Latour think, that Jaques and
Christian were too wise to be lost in storm. And if they were lost
for unknown reason is it not more credible that the unknown thing was
in one spot rather than that it touched hither and yon across the
Caribbean?"

"But what unknown thing, brother?"

"I do not know. And I know that I sound stranged as Tobias, yet I
cannot shake away the thought that it was here that the thing began
that was not as it had aways been."

Joseph's quiet eyes regarded the morning sunlight. "As you know I am
a dull and unimaginative fellow. At things of the hands, I am good,
but for saying, 'It must have been thus or thus!' I must look to you,
Henri." He turned, smiling while the sun washed the strong beauty of
his body. "I am our hands and you our head."

"All my instinct says, 'Search here!'"

"For what, brother?"

"For conchs and sponges and sea things for the good doctor at the
museum in Tampa--and for what else the sea may tell us. For what may
be worth salvage from the steamer yonder." He grinned. "For little
Timothy's Three Galleons, who knows?--for I know not what. Here, at
least, for the first time the trail has said to us, 'That is most
strange!' If we can learn the reason for the little strangeness we may
have the key to the greater strangeness."

Joseph's eyes smiled. "I am child enough to find it easier to seek
conchs and starfish where legend says one might also find gold. And few
true divers have worked the out reefs in patience."

Ten minutes later, the launch was riding beautifully over a blue and
tumbling sea on her way toward the Isle of Palms. Forty hours later,
they sighted the first mangrove flanks of the Greater Antilles through
misting rain tinged with rainbows, and presently were threading their
course between the skirts of dripping mangroves and the gray sadness of
rotting beacons. And still it seemed that the ghost of the _Christophe_
went before them, rounding this beacon and that, throbbing down
rain-pearled estuaries. And, as always, that which upon the map had
appeared small and neat, expanded with reality to the endlessly vast,
the endlessly confusing. So that while on the map one could say, "The
course of the ship lay here and here--she touched only these points,
we will follow her!" in looking on the expanses of the sea and the
labyrinths of channels and green bays, it seemed, "A hundred ships
could have vanished within these few square miles--and we are searching
a thousand square miles, two years late!"

Pelicans slid on stiff wings and plunged, broad-breasted into the
rain-dimpled sea. Occasionally a creek showed small wharves and
drying nets of fishermen, or a haul of sponges were spread in gold on
age-silvered planks. In most cases the owners were away, but wherever
smoke showed, Joseph put the launch in and they chatted in Spanish over
cups of burnt-flavored Cuban coffee sweetened to syrup with condensed
milk. Many of the men had come to the swamps but recently and Henri and
Joseph could say only, "Spread the word that the Brothers Christophe
are seeking news of their brother and of all things pertaining to
the _Christophe_!" But one old man had joined in the great search.
Unexpectedly, he volunteered the information that Ashby, one of the
_Christophe's_ fortunate in that he had disembarked, was now living
some twenty miles to the north. The old man grinned. "He is now of the
retired. Wouldn't tell anyone but you local boys--though you won't
learn anything from him. He's just scared rabbit."

In the bays and creeks of the Caribbean were many of the retired:
French, German, American--a polished Englishman perhaps--living from
the teeming seas on some sweltering estuary or swamp-fringe and
vanishing into the mangroves at the approach of coast guard or naval
craft or police launch. Between them and the lands from whence they
came stood the crimes of theft or murder or treason. They lived for the
small scraps of news from the lands to which they could never return.
Yet, when those came who could bring news, the retired were afraid to
speak with them.

And when Henri and Joseph at last found the battered wharf and shack
up the hidden creek, they found it empty. Heavy rain had set in and
Henri stood on the dripping wharf and addressed the rain-bowed wall of
mangroves. "We are here as friends seeking information only. Observe,
we wear no uniforms and carry no weapons!" Leaden rain roared across
the swamp and ran as small rivers across the wharf. Then the leaves
parted and a small, wizened man with a disproportionately large chest
stepped onto the planks. "I was back in the woods," Ashby said rapidly,
looking from one to the other of them. "Guess you thought I'd cleared
out." He laughed to convey the absurdity of the idea. "Plenty of
retired men around the creeks. Run like rabbits." His manner became
that of recitation. "Now me, I only stay here because I like it. I can
go back to the States any time I want. You been in the States lately
to see how things are going there? Some time since I met a man from
the States." The desperate hunger of the exile stood in his eyes. He
recollected himself and said, "Come in! Come in!" He led the way into
the dark shack where the rain was like drums on the iron roof.

"We have not been in the States for six years," Joseph said kindly.
"But we are on our way to Tampa, and when we return, we will bring you
news."

Ashby's hands shook. "While you're there you might look up a Mrs.
Combs--knew her sort of casually once. Better not mention me. Just see
how she and the kids are doing. Youngest kid must be around ten now."
His hands shook so that he spilled the tobacco from his cigarette
paper. "She lives--used to live--on Wharf Street. Just take a gander at
her and the kids. Don't mention me."

"We will act with care," Joseph said, "and we will pretend we are
looking for another woman of the same name."

"Not important," Ashby said, flushing under his graying stubble. "Just
sort of curious." He cut himself a slice of raw conch meat and ate it
hastily. "Never get enough conch." He looked up. "What was that you
were asking me?"

"I am Henri Henri Christophe and this my brother Joseph Henri
Christophe," Henri said. "We are seeking answer to the loss of the
motorship _Christophe_."

Ashby stood up and his scarred hands gripped the table's edge while
his eyes darted between their faces and his constant shaking was more
noticeable. "The motorship _Christophe_? The lost motorship? Yes,
the lost motorship." His haunted eyes seemed again to be asking them
something, but what, Henri did not know. "Could have been lost myself
with the motorship!" Ashby said. His glance fled between their faces.
He began to eat conch meat again.

"It is because you were a passenger on the last voyage that we have
come. We are thankful that you disembarked and were safe," Joseph said.
"The voyage from the island to the Isle of Palms, was it uneventful,
M'sieur? We are seeking any smallest thing that was not as it always
was."

"Got through one shipwreck," Ashby chattered. "Could have been in
another! See? Could have gone on with her for Tampa!" He became
assertive. "Can go to the States whenever I want. Not like these
retired fellows . . ."

"We are puzzled that our brother was two days late at the Isle of
Palms."

"Late at the Isle of Palms? That was for looking for the men of the
_Webber_. Me, I got through the wreck of the _Webber_, but I could have
gone on with the motorship . . ."

"We are puzzled that our brother should have searched for two days for
men of the _Webber_ when he could not have known that they had not
reached shore."

Ashby struggled with his conch, then said rapidly, "Tom Webber, the
owner, paid him to search. Tom Webber, the owner, was concerned for
the men. Tom Webber, the owner, thought the men might be adrift." He
stopped and his sad eyes darted. "That was why!"

"All was well with our brother and the _Christophe_?"

"Never better! Never better! Fine man, Captain Malcolm. Kind man--spoke
well to everyone. Should not have been lost, Captain Malcolm!" To the
surprise of the brothers, sudden tears were running in the stubble of
Ashby's wizened cheeks. Clutching Henri's arm, he said fiercely, "Read
in the papers a ship sinks, but they don't know how it was, don't know
about kids waiting for presents that won't get presents. They don't
know how it was at all when men don't go home!" He looked down and
stumbled to the shelves to get salt for his conch.

After a moment, Joseph asked, "M'sieur, was anyone else at the Purple
Reefs when our brother touched there? Or was there sign that any craft
save the wrecked _Webber_ had been there?"

Ashby dropped the salt. "Other people than them with the _Christophe_?
No! Why should there be other people?"

"Near the time of the _Christophe's_ loss, two spongers of Home Island
also met disaster. On the dunes of the Purple Reefs are many sponges
that have been strung yet were not claimed. We would know their
story--you have not by any chance been to the Purple Reefs since your
passing with the _Christophe_, M'sieur?"

"I? Been to the Reefs? I got too much to do! Haven't even had time to
go to the States! Planning a trip to the States pretty soon now . . ."

"M'sieur, you are positive that there was nothing untoward in the
_Christophe's_ trip to the Isle of Palms?" Henri asked. "No most
trivial thing?"

"No! No! No! How many times do I have to tell you no?" Ashby shouted.

"Thank you, M'sieur," Joseph said. "And we will call upon your friend
Mrs. Combs."

Ashby flushed violently, paring his nails with his pocketknife. "Just
curious. Take it kindly." He looked at them and his eyes yearned.
"Around when you expect to be back?"

As they swung into the launch, Henri said, "Oh, one thing more. The
brass is still with the steamer. We had the thought we might make a
little with salvage. Do you know if any have bought the rights?"

Standing at the edge of the dock, Ashby shook with a sudden and greater
agitation and his face twisted strangely. "Don't work her! Don't go
near her! A cursed ship--a bad ship! All bad like the Hereras!" He
leaned to them across the rail of the dock. "A wreck isn't like it
gets in the papers. Good men go with ships--good men went with the
_Christophe_--good men, not just names. Captain Malcolm, a good man.
The big black boy, a good man. You boys both good men--good men who
will do a favor. Don't go near her! Let her alone!"

The brothers stared, astonished and pitying. "We will be careful,
M'sieur," Joseph said.

As they drew away from the rain-drenched creek, Ashby shouted after
them, "Don't go near her!"

From the mangrove bank behind him, two small figures had slipped to
join him, two half-naked and very wet little boys. Ashby tenderly took
a hand of each as he continued to stare after the launch.

"Poor soul!" Henri said softly.

"Madame Combs is doubtless his wife," Joseph commented. "And the little
fellows are children of exile--and now there is another reason that he
can never go home, whatever the first one may have been."

"Poor soul," Henri said again. "And I think M'sieur Latour was right in
that he is a good man."




Three


The launch slid on through the bottle-green water between the
bird-thick cays toward the Isle of Palms, the engines making a lonely
sound above the tinkling patter of rain. On every side the long, watery
lanes of mangroves spread, then sudden and verdured hammocks curved
from the sea and miles of low jungle, broken by isolated hill chains,
rolled in last gold. From the sea, a great cutter with ropes of yellow
sponges on her stays and wreaths of painted roses on her bow was
sailing into the light wind. A shower lifted to reveal huge royal palms
towering from tall cliffs and beyond them the mountains showed, pale
with the lighter green of vertical meadows or swept by gray deluges of
rain whose roar could be heard and whose passing left the white trails
of waterfalls. The _Sea Lily_ rounded a final headland, and the sails
of cutters rising above mangroves marked the still unseen river, while
the cream towers and red roofs of the town dimmed to the upsweep of
shadow as the sun vanished behind purple thunderheads. Deep evening
came suddenly with the sharks cruising through lilac and silver. Night
was a far whisper in the forests of royal palms as the launch entered
the river and everywhere the blue fires of lightning winked. Looking
out over the great estuary, it was easy to imagine the _Christophe's_
lights riding there as she had last paused to send in the mail.

"I wish to make an adjustment to the port engine," Joseph said when
they had completed the formalities at the ancient port authority
building. He counted the small amount of change in the sharkskin purse
and frowned. "I may even have to buy a three-eighths bolt."

Henri touched the hard warmth of his brother's shoulders. "Do not
plunge into the expenditure until I return, Joseph!" He gave Joseph's
arm a squeeze and crossed the room to the desk of the port officer,
who was a small and dapper man in a wonderful uniform. "Pardon,
M'sieur, but as you may guess, we seek all things pertaining to the
_Christophe_. Was it you, perhaps, who were on duty at the time she
last touched here?"

The port officer, one of whose sidelines was the collection of junk for
sale at exorbitant prices to distressed mariners, was equally noted
for his meanness in matters of money and for his haughty pomposity,
and having already shown his poor opinion of their patched clothes, he
now made notes in a small book and touched his small moustache without
bothering to answer. Henri unwrapped a flagon of the mango wine for
which Home Island was famous. Bowing, he said, "Perhaps this would
refresh you?"

The official changed his manner, and produced glasses from beneath the
desk. "For you only, M'sieur," Henri murmured. The official's eyes
showed that he was not sorry to have sole use of the golden nectar.
He poured and sipped. "At your service, Señor!" Despite his increased
cordiality, his glance still managed to convey the fact that Henri's
shirt was patched over patches.

"First a triviality, M'sieur. If it would embarrass you by entailing
too much bookkeeping and red tape, think no more of it! But I wondered
if we might purchase a bolt from the assortment yonder?" He indicated a
pile of bolts and rusty tools in a corner behind the desk.

"Embarrass me to dispose of a bolt? Are you Home Islanders children? I
control the complete finances of the port, Señor!"

"Forgive me," Henri said humbly.

"Take all the bolts and the old tools, too! I was about to have them
swept out."

"My thanks, M'sieur. M'sieur, the records of the landing of the
shipwrecked men, M'sieurs Webber and Ashby, perhaps you have them?"

"We have all records of all transactions!"

"As they are in Spanish and I do not read it well, you would perhaps
translate?"

The records and the port officer's recollections, while flowery, were
clear enough. The passengers, Señores Webber and Ashby, had brought in
the incoming mail and told their story of the loss of the _Webber_ and
of their arrival at Home Island, Señor Ashby seeming prostrated by his
experiences. It was said, by the way, that he was now in hiding as one
of the retired and had with him the little ones of a dance hall girl
who might or might not have been his wife but who had run off with
an American marine--the uniforms of American marines being notably
irresistible to dance hall girls. But returning to the appearance of
Señores Webber and Ashby at the port office, the port officer had been
able to inform them that the five Herera brothers had very definitely
made land at the little town some twenty miles to the northeast shortly
after the storm. They had been so drunk that they neglected to report
the loss of the ship, but instead had more or less wrecked the town and
been jailed for disorder, which had been awkward since the town had no
jail and they had had to be put in the city hall, which they took over.
Only from Señores Webber and Ashby had the port authority of the Isle
of Palms learned of the wreck of the _Webber_! Since no reports had
been received of any other members of the _Webber's_ crew, it had to be
presumed that six of her men were still unaccounted for. Señor Webber
had expressed great concern and had been assured that a search for the
lost men would be started instantly by the Navy of the Republic. Señor
Webber had listed the names of the still missing men of the _Webber_.
The six missing seamen had never been found--which caused one to marvel
at the wondrous ways of Providence, since to man's finite mind it
seemed that the Hereras must certainly have been a better choice for
the sea's bottom than the men who were lost.

"M'sieur, you had seen the lights of the _Christophe_ go onward?"

"Yes. Though, dealing with much shipping, I paid no special attention.
Many duties . . ."

"All was as always? She was on the Tampa course?"

"All was exactly as always or I should have recorded the fact! I made
record of the ship's touching here, officially reported the same, and
thought no more of the matter until the lightkeeper reported that the
ship had not passed."

"M'sieur, as a man of acute intelligence, have you any theory?"

The wine was well down in the flagon. The official winked. "We are
men of the world?" Henri nodded. "We know that all is not always
as it may seem?" Henri nodded. "We know that a man or men may have
reasons--particular reasons--reasons even if they are family men?"

"Yes, M'sieur."

The official leaned forward a little uncertainly. "Ship was never
sunk!" he said dramatically. "Been seen since off New Orleans--know it
because of my position." He regarded Henri cunningly, managed a final
wink and lowered his head upon his arms and was asleep.

Leaning over the desk, Henri shook him carefully by the hair. "M'sieur!
M'sieur! Is it known where Thomas Webber, the owner of the _Webber_
went?"

The official opened one eye as Henri hastily let go of his hair. "Eh?
Went home to the States, to West Florida. Near the southern tip of the
State, on river near a location by the name of the Bay of Jewfish. He
has long owned a great tourist resort for millionaires who fish and
hunt the deer. Charming man, the Señor Webber! Laughing from morning
till night. A true fan of the bullfighting and cock fights." He slept
again.

"We are lucky in that M'sieur Webber's home is almost upon our route,"
Henri reported to Joseph. "We may know more when we have talked with
him. Meantime, here is your bolt and assorted mechanical things with
the compliments of m'sieur the port official, who is an idiot who
believes the _Christophe_ still afloat."

"I have improved the carburetor of the port engine," Joseph said. "Such
simple things must be my contribution."

"That you are Joseph and a great strength at all times is your
contribution!" Henri said fondly. "Let us draw out to the ship
anchorage and wait for dawn. From here we must say, 'Somewhere now it
perhaps befell!'"

       *       *       *       *       *

With the first silver light, the _Sea Lily_ moved across leprous green
bottoms mottled with darker greens between the leaden ghosts of keys.
They had passed the place of the _Christophe's_ last known human
contact--to enter the absolutely unknown, where even in imagination
they could no longer be sure that the shadow of the _Christophe_ ran
before them. From some of these keys, the birds had seen the ship
passing, other keys perhaps she had not passed. At evening in darkly
rolling blue again, as sunset crimsoned the lighthouse of San Antonio
and the flying fish flashed up from the running swells to skim like
silver arrows, they knew that almost certainly the _Christophe_ had not
passed on the last journey. For here it had been Malcolm Christophe's
custom to run close to the light, signaling the keeper. On the last
trip he had not done this, either because the _Christophe_ had never
reached this spot or because he had kept far from his usual course.
That Malcolm Christophe had kept to sea was not impossible, but that
he had broken long custom for harmless reason, later to meet unrelated
disaster was beyond likelihood. Yet of all the lost ship's course, the
run from the Isle of Palms to the Cape was safest and least isolated;
with stagnation of calm to its seas, oppression of stillness to the
sky--where the lumbering shapes of pelicans had replaced the clean
lines of the frigate birds--day-long monotony of coast to eastward.
And always dotting the horizon or drifting across the shallows, the
countlessness of sails, proving the strength of the last stand of sail
in one of the earth's last strongholds of sail.

"Yet in our thinking, we must say, 'Almost certainly the unknown thing
befell ere our brother reached this spot,'" Henri said softly as the
lighthouse sank in the crimson and purple of twilight.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the meeting of the two differing seas of the blue and ancient
waters of the Gulf and the strange sea of grass and water that was the
Everglades, they swung to hug the coast of Florida, and to look with
awe upon giant mangrove forests where the normally low trees towered
sixty to seventy feet into the blowing air, and where, between the
mangroves, tunnels of green darkness wound toward one of the few truly
wild areas remaining in North America: a kingdom of the birds and the
alligator gars, oldest of fishes, and of the reptiles and the saurians,
the home of the bright-eyed otters and the walking place of cloud
shadows. From it, the southeast wind brought the sweet scents of the
thousands of square miles of the mighty swamp that was like no other:
a perfume composed of fresh water itself, of tremendous sunlight upon
growing things, of the flowers of wild lilies and of the richness of
seeding grass.

Fish hawks cut the loneliness of the brilliant sky and on the sand bars
that the launch skirted were vivid windrows of bright shells. From one
little key, a flight of pink spoonbills rose like a sunset cloud in the
noon sun. Then as Joseph twined the launch through sweltering mangroves
in late afternoon, a sound as of many birds came from beyond the
mangroves ahead, and, as they neared it, became the voices of children.
Sliding into a wider waterway, they saw a large, flat-bottomed boat,
so crowded with children that it seemed in danger of sinking. The
boat was drifting rapidly seaward but the children waved and cheered.
Jammed amongst the children, a sunburned, brightly golden-haired girl
of perhaps sixteen or seventeen years of age wrenched at the starting
cord of an outboard motor, at the same time shouting, "Hey! Hey, you in
the launch!" Joseph headed the launch toward her. And pushing back her
hair with her arm, she grinned. "We can't start it. You have a try!"
Turning, she pushed the children vigorously and cheerfully. "Get back,
you guys!"

The bow-ward collapse of the children revealed that she was wearing
fewer clothes than the amazed Henri and Joseph had ever seen any woman
wear north of the South Seas. Her bare-midriff playsuit had a tiny
skirt, but this was so short that it merely drew attention to the
short and skintight pants that hugged the firmly rounded curves of her
body. And Joseph's face expressed his disapproval, while to Henri the
suit gave her a curiously childlike innocence. The fractional suit, he
mentally admitted, was intentionally provocative, but the girl herself
was so smiling and so frank that it was as if she did not know the
nature of the provocation. Like a child bursting with life, she was
never quite still, and her hand when it touched his as he worked at
the engine was like the friendly and sunburned hand of a child. The
brown-gold hair on the nape of her neck was childlike and invited the
touch.

"Thanks a lot," she said as the engine started. The children cheered.

"We will make certain that you reach shore," Joseph said coldly.

She laughed. "Reckon I don't want to wash to sea with this mess of
kids!"

The brothers Christophe followed the overladen craft into the winding
estuary and to within sight of an old wharf on the river bank, beyond
which a straggling road ran to a tin and clapboard settlement. The
girl stopped the motor. There was now something of anxiety and sudden
defiance in her manner. "Don't tell the folks I had the kids out! Kids'
folks are always fussing about something!"

"We do not know the parents," Joseph said. "Nor do we gossip." He
frowned. "Nonetheless, this is not a good boat to go to sea."

"We didn't go to sea." She grinned. "We were took. Thanks again for the
start."

"It was a pleasure," Henri said, smiling at her. "Mam'selle, is this
Jewfish Bay?"

The childlike fullness of her lower lids pushed the gold-brown lashes
together. "Right, mongsure!" she said impertinently, laughing at
her own attempt at French. She frowned in question. "What are you?
Frenchies from New Orleans?"

"No, Mam'selle, we are West Indians," Henri said. "I am Henri
Christophe and this is my brother Joseph."

She stood looking at them with a strange tenderness on her face.
"You're nice, you two!" Joseph blushed and Henri smiled.

"Mam'selle, we are seeking for M'sieur Thomas Webber. His tourist
resort is located near here?"

"Tourist resort? Rat's nest's a better name! You passed it. You got to
know the way in--I'm Tom Webber's niece. Tom isn't there."

"He will shortly return?"

She shrugged. "How you tell with Tom? He's in New Orleans. He may be
back in three weeks, maybe ten." Her face that changed as quickly as
the light on running water was flushed and angry.

"Should he return ere we do, you might tell him the brothers Christophe
are seeking him--to talk with him of the _Christophe_."

She nodded. "O. K. And so long! You're nice, you two!"

The launch turned back to sea. "She was charming," Henri said, smiling.

"She was indecent!" Joseph answered.

Henri smiled more widely. "A child is not indecent. She was like a
child."

Joseph snorted. "My sympathy is with the parents. She is not fit to be
with little children!"

"The little children were having a particularly nice time," Henri said.
"Perhaps those who are more worthy do not realize that little children
like to go boating."

       *       *       *       *       *

Red sunset two days later saw them running up Tampa Bay. Here they knew
that the _Christophe_ had not come on the last voyage. The unknown
disaster lay behind them.

The formalities of entry having been attended to, the _Sea Lily_ was
presently bumping lightly in black and oily water against a dark wharf
heaped with banana bunches. A large man with stubbled beard and a thin
man with buck teeth stood at the edge of the dock and regarded the
launch grinningly. In the door of a dimly lighted shed, four other men
lounged. "You boys got fruit?" the big man asked.

"Yes, M'sieur," Henri said. "We have a small deck-cargo of bananas."

"Where you get 'em?"

"We obtained them on our way to Cape San Antonio. We have paid duty and
the fruit has been inspected," Joseph said.

"Well you may as well tip 'em in the bay right now!" the big man said.
"There's a little banana trouble in this port and no one but our little
old banana company brings bananas in here!"

"Who maintains that save your company, M'sieur?" Joseph asked politely.
"We were not informed of any embargo by the authorities. We would wish
the statement of an official before we abandoned our bananas."

The big man shouted, "Hey, Rick! These boys want a 'official
statement'!" The men at the door of the shack parted and a uniformed
police officer came out picking his teeth.

"M'sieur, we were instructed to unload our bananas here," Joseph
explained as the officer reached the edge of the dock. "These men seek
to prevent it!"

"That so?" the officer asked the big man.

"Weren't doing a thing!" the big man said grinning. "These Frenchies
aren't acting nice."

"You hear that?" the officer asked Henri and Joseph. "You men start any
trouble and we know what to do about it!" He lounged back toward the
shed, turned at the door and roared, "Get going!"

"They wanted a official statement," the thin man said. He indicated the
bananas. "Where you going to tip 'em, boys?"

"Don't be hard, Bud!" the big man said. He made his voice sentimental.
"You just keep your bananas among your souvenirs if you want,
Frenchies!" He laughed unpleasantly. "Just don't try to unload 'em here
or sell 'em anywhere--or we'll learn who says not pretty quick! Won't
we, Bud?"

"Sure will," the thin man said and spat. He narrowed his eyes. "We
ain't too keen on foreigners around here nohow."

They turned and slouched back toward the dimly lighted shed. From the
door, the big man called. "Embalm your bananas so they'll keep real
good, boys! How's that for a idea? And while you're thinking it over,
we kind of don't like this dock cluttered up!" The big man and the thin
man laughed loudly and banged the door. Starry darkness took the wharf.

"We have a right to sell our fruit," Joseph said stubbornly.

"True," Henri said. "But from what we have heard and seen we are more
likely to do it by discretion than by right. Meantime we wish to see
Madame Combs, and we cannot leave the _Sea Lily_ here and we cannot pay
for a private dock."

Finally having found a small, deserted sandspit draped in black lace of
casuarinas, they anchored the floating banana bowl that was the _Sea
Lily_ and waded ashore. No highway passed near the spot and Henri said,
"All should be well with her until morning."

Under the first street light, Joseph got out the sharkskin purse. "Do
you think thirty-five cents each is too much to allow for such meals as
we have to buy?"

"I do not think we will grow overfat on it," Henri said. "By the way,
Joseph, I have good news for you. It will only cost you three cents to
mail your letter to the gentleman who placed the message in the bottle."

"Having lost his dime, I suppose I should return the change . . ."

"I think you might retain that as payment for service," Henri said.
Before a pawnbroker's window, Joseph stopped to study the glittering
musical instruments. Henri asked, "Why do you smile?"

"I was thinking how odd the human mind is," Joseph said. "One of the
few things I have ever really wanted was a flute--of all ridiculous
things!" He laughed at his foolishness and they went on through the
increasing crowd past a store that advertised _Bargain_ Specials in
Nylon Handkerchiefs. Belaced wisps of cream and lilac and pink filled
the window. Following Henri towards an inexpensive café, Joseph said,
"Daphne makes her handkerchiefs out of flour sacks." But Henri did not
hear him because a bus was passing.

The café was rich with scents of frying shrimp and liver and onions and
bacon and eggs. Its tables had gay red-checked cloths.

At the table, Joseph said, "I would only care for coffee." He rose.
"Would you excuse me a minute, Henri?"

Threading his way hugely through the crowd, he returned to the scene of
the handkerchief sale and looked long in the window. Passers-by smiled
at the sight of a grave and enormous young man counting his money.
Entering the shop he confronted the gum-chewing salesgirl.

"Mam'selle," he said, bowing. "Have you perhaps a handkerchief with
lace on it for not more than forty-five cents?"

"Gee!" the girl said studying his black hair, tanned skin and general
immensity. "Where have you been all my young life?"

"Pardon?" Joseph said, then smiled, comprehending. "I did not
understand! My brother and I are of Home Island in the Caribbean,
Mam'selle. It is a small island but very beautiful . . ."

"That wasn't exactly what I meant. But thanks for the geography! What
was it you wanted?"

"A handkerchief, Mam'selle, with lace on it, but not more than
forty-five cents, please."

The girl brought out a collection of cheaply sewn handkerchiefs with
minute appliqués of coarse lace. Joseph touched them dubiously. "They
are not right--the lace should be part of them." He glanced towards a
show case on the wall. "Something more as those."

"Those are ten-dollar handkerchiefs!"

"Oh! That would be too much--it wouldn't matter if there was not much
lace, but it should be good lace and part of the handkerchief. These do
not look like her . . ."

"What's she like?"

"She is dark and very beautiful and always, every minute of the day,
she is doing something for other people. When there is very little to
cook, she thinks of something that will be good and when other people
do foolish things, she knows why they have done them and she is not
angry. When the little ones have birthdays and there are no presents,
she makes presents and, at Christmas, wreaths and berry ropes, so that
always it seems as if the house was rich when it is not. She does not
have time to worry about herself, which is well, for she has little for
herself. She is one of those women who make all things better merely by
being there, like good material that stands all wear. I could not take
her a common handkerchief!" He thought, creasing his forehead. "You
have nothing that is really good but has been shop-soiled? I could wash
and iron it. Even perhaps something with a little burn that I could
mend . . ."

"You wash and iron it! Did you patch your clothes?"

Joseph glanced at his stitched shirt sleeve. "I was not taking trouble
with those stitches, Mam'selle. I can make very fine stitches and
almost all Frenchmen can wash and iron. If there was something slightly
damaged but good . . ." He firmly ignored the tittering crowd.

The salesgirl glared at the crowd. "He's got a right to say what he
wants, hasn't he?" She glanced at his huge hands and the resoluteness
of his stand at the counter. "I bet we do have what you want, too! Wait
while I look!"

"It cannot be over forty-five cents . . ." Joseph said.

"You mentioned that," the salesgirl said, vanishing between piled
shelves. In the sample room, she flicked through boxes and drew out a
creamy cobweb of nylon and drawn work. Hesitating as to whether Joseph
could get out lipstick marks, she gave up the idea of touching the
handkerchief to her mouth and stooped to rub it on the floor. "How
about this?" she asked, returning to show the handkerchief to the
waiting giant. The red of pleasure swept up Joseph's face.

"That is exactly right! Thank you a million times, Mam'selle!"

Getting out the sharkskin purse, he counted out the money. "Thank you
for taking the trouble to find it for me, Mam'selle!"

"You don't know the half of it!" the girl said. Joseph said, "Pardon?"

"Skip it!" the girl said. "Come in again--speaking for myself, it was
worth it!"

Turning, Joseph bowed to the audience. "My thanks for your patience,
Madames!"

"Was it not fortunate they had it!" Joseph said while his face shone
with happiness as he drank his coffee beside Henri. "The girl was most
kind and made search through the old stock."

       *       *       *       *       *

Tampa after midnight was an evil city, and Wharf Street, one of its
less desirable areas. Poorly lighted, much of it in complete darkness,
it was yet astir. Furtive feet moved in every wall shadow. The brothers
glimpsed a savage, silent and dusty fight between two great Negroes in
an alley. Everywhere was the sense of life and the smell of whisky and
rum came from the dimly lighted bars; but even the bars were almost
silent. Passing on through the tumble-down of colored rooming quarters,
the brothers kept to the center of the street. Then they were amongst
the ruins of onetime estates and banyans crowded overhead and dropped
jungle-like aerials. At the dead end of the street was a high iron
fence with an elaborate gate, but the driveway was blocked with a mad
growth of pandanus and banyans. The light of a match showed a narrow
path disappearing between the walls of vegetation. The gate was chained
and padlocked.

"This is it," Henri said. "It is not welcoming, nor is it the right
time to call casually upon a lady, but we have come so far . . ."

"M'sieur Ashby is also hungry for news of Madame."

They knocked on the iron number plate of the gate then called politely.
Birds woke in the matted treetops and rats fled through the pandanus
roots, one excited rat running over Henri's foot. "Let us go over the
fence!" Henri said. "We cannot waste tomorrow!"

Piled leaves crushed under their feet as they dropped on the inner side
of the fence and brushed along the path. Where starlight showed the
foundation of a burned house, they stopped and called again. Finding
the continuation of the path was rendered difficult by forests of
ornamental cane; but presently they were feeling their way under huger
banyans and between entanglements of thorny shrubs. The last rampart of
shrubs gave way to short, dry grass under banyans--and a grassy cliff
fronted on the river.

"Some tragedy must have befallen," Joseph said, glancing back toward
the hidden ruins of the house. A harsh, female voice said, "Get out
with your hands up!" The barrel of a shotgun gleamed in the starlight,
the roar of the gun split the night and a charge of shot passed over
their heads. The brothers stood with their hands up.

"Madame, we are trespassing, but honestly . . ." Henri said.

"Start walkin'!"

"We have a message from a friend!" Henri explained. The gun barrel
swung menacingly to point at his legs.

"What friend? You name him and I know him or I'll pepper your legs!
Could blow 'em off at this distance!"

"From your husband, M'sieur Combs--though he uses another name!"
Joseph said hastily, fearing for Henri's legs. The shotgun wobbled, a
flashlight shone in their faces and the harsh voice asked fiercely,
"Where's he at? What's he like? And who are you guys?"

"He is in the Caribbean. He is a small man with a great chest. We are
the brothers Christophe of Home Island, Madame," Henri said.

Above the flashlight's glow, a strange, lined face with deep-set eyes
and strong jaw regarded them from under the brim of a man's hat. A
briar pipe was clenched in the corner of the grim mouth but down the
furrowed cheeks the glitter of tears was running. "Where's he at?
What's he doin'? Is he took bad? I ain't known if he was dead or
alive--I ain't known!" She wiped her tears with her fist. "Where to God
is he? I just ain't known!"

"Madame, I have in a manner breached a confidence for I feared that
you might take aim at my brother," Joseph said. "Your husband is alive
and is in great concern for you, but he wished us to learn how you
fared without speaking of him. It is our thought that he is in sore
trouble . . ."

"He would be or it wouldn't be him!" Her eyes searched their faces. "He
ain't dyin'? He ain't crippled? If he ain't, what can ail him?"

"M'sieur Combs was strong and active," Henri assured her. "We do not
have his confidence save in the matter of ascertaining your welfare. We
owe you our apologies for troubling you at this hour . . ."

"Troublin' me? It's like gettin' a million dollars! Does th' little
fellow still eat raw conch? I'm called Ma. Everyone calls me Ma. I'm
sorry if I scairt you, but I got folks trained to stay outer here.
Come inside! There's coffee on the stove. Just watch th' steps." She
appeared to sink into the dark ground. From somewhere below their feet
her muffled voice commanded, "Come right on in!"

Parting a spread of banyan leaves, Henri and Joseph descended a faintly
rocking companionway into a leaf-hidden houseboat moored against the
cliff of the bank. "How nice it is!" Joseph said of the floating house,
in a farther cabin of which, towheaded children could be seen sleeping
in bunks made from packing cases.

"It is purty," Ma Combs said. "It's th' only shanty-boat with a estate
fence! Bought th' land for taxes after a big house burned down and it's
th' best place for kids! City tried to run me off after land began to
get valuable--but no one runs me off what's mine! I wouldn't change
this place for millionaire's row! Set down!" Her hands almost upset
the coffee-pot as she moved it over the flame of the kerosene stove.
"Where's he at? I don't want to act like this, but I ain't known if
he was dead or alive! Where is th' poor little fellow?" She came to
the table to set tin cups before them and relight her pipe. "What I
can't figure is how he's in any more trouble than he was! He . . . got
in trouble a long ways back. But he'd let me know where he was at--up
an' down th' islands, then workin' for Webber--an' send every penny he
could for me an' th' kids. Then he stops, just like that!" She snapped
her gnarled thumb and finger. "He stopped as if th' earth had swallowed
him! . . . He wouldn't do nothin' mean or cruel! He's a good man! He
wouldn't kill--he was too tenderhearted to kill a rat! . . . What's
happened to him? . . . It ain't that he don't care! He loves us, th'
poor little guy!"

"Perhaps he does not want to involve you in the trouble, Madame,"
Joseph said gently.

"Trouble's all he's ever involved me in! We've lived on trouble, an' I
gone on likin' it." Her smile made her face strangely beautiful.

"Perhaps if you talked to M'sieur Webber, the owner of the _Webber_,"
Henri suggested. "Though without your husband's permission it might be
best not to mention that we have seen him . . ."

"Talk to Webber? I talked to him till I'm black in th' face! He just
says everythin' was fine as silk! He just slaps my back an' says
there's nothin' he wouldn't do for my man an' me. An' it can be unfair
to say it like that." She grimaced, drawing on her pipe. "Seems I
did Webber wrong in some of it. I figured he'd throwed away his ship
for insurance. I got old Mr. Atterbury, the marine lawyer, who's my
friend, to learn how the insurance was on th' _Webber_. She weren't
overinsured. Webber'd give a bit too much for her, for he was green
with ships, but she was a good ship an' only insured for th' mortgage.
He lost money like he howls." Assisted by Henri and Joseph, she served
the coffee, announcing to the alarm of the brothers, "It's good an'
strong. It's been boilin' most all day." She came back to the table to
lay gaunt hands upon it. "I ain't askin' you to break your given word,
but can you just tell me where my poor guy's at?"

"Not without his permission," Joseph said. "I already breached his
trust."

"Then tell him th' kids an' me are fine! Tell him they're so purty
you'd think they couldn't be our kids. Tell him ever' one of them helps
all they can--we've never took relief! Tell him I don't care what he's
gone an' done. An' I mean whatever! Tell him I'm for him!"

"We will tell him, Madame."

"You will come back? You will tell me how he's doin'? I'll show you th'
customers' bell in th' bushes by th' gate. I sell 'shine to keep th'
kids. I make th' best danged 'shine you ever tasted! Let me give you
boys some!"

"We do not drink, Madame, but thank you," Henri said, rising. "The good
coffee was what we wanted. And we will see him and come back. And you
must remember that he loves you very much." He smiled down at her. "We
can see why. A man is very foolish if he does not love a great love."

As their footsteps echoed in the darkness of the predawn streets,
Joseph said, "What a brave, good woman, Madame Combs with her large
pipe and her little brood! One wishes that one could aid her with her
husband."

"One would also wish that one knew the reason for the strange thing
upon which Madame has set her hand. Monsieur Ashby who is also Monsieur
Combs and also, I think, a good man, has been an exile from his country
for a long while. But he was not of the retired. He had reasons for
being careful with the law, but they were not so serious that he hid.
He was openly with the _Webber_ as her engineer. The _Webber_ was
lost; he was shipwrecked and reached Home Island. He embarked with the
_Christophe_ and landed in the Isle of Palms. Since then he has been of
the retired--he is afraid. He fears the _Webber_. He hates the Hereras.
It is my thought that he is afraid of M'sieur Webber. Why? We do not
know. But between his service with the _Webber_ and his retirement
something must have befallen to make him afraid as he was not afraid
before! Men do not go to the creeks and the swamps without tragic
reason. Nor without reason does a fond husband cease to communicate
with his wife or a father to learn of his little ones!"

"He left the _Christophe_ openly at the Isle of Palms. Also fear may be
of many troubles that become too many rather than one great trouble.
Also do you not forget that in heart he is torn two ways--a thing that
is the tragedy of many exiles?"

"It is my guess that Madame's reaction to the sad little ones we saw
upon the dock would be as that of the great ladies of the earlier
Latin Americas, who made it their first morning care to be sure that
the illegitimate babes of their husbands had received their proper
quota of warm milk and were thriving as they should be!"

Joseph's voice from the darkness held a smile. "Perhaps while the
capacity of great women for love does not change, weak, modern man has
less of self-confidence in presenting such little ones to a wife than
had the hidalgos of old?"

       *       *       *       *       *

To their relief, the _Sea Lily_ still rode serenely in the mists off
the sandspit. In the morning, they peddled their bananas, receiving
many compliments both on the unusually good quality of the fruit
and the good manners of its vendors. By midafternoon they had been
appalled by the prices of new wheelchairs and had inserted a newspaper
advertisement, "Wanted by the brothers _Christophe_ a wheeled-chair
for their Aunt Caroline," the results of which they could learn on
the next trip, had bought the materials needed for a shallow diving
outfit and had made surprisingly profitable arrangements for the sale
of such sea fans and shells as they might collect. "Also the postal
authorities, who were very kind, believe that the little ports in
Yucatan and Nicaragua that the _Christophe_ served on her southern run
are still in need of mail service," Joseph reported happily. "Henri, it
seems that we should at least be able to carry the interest payments
on the mortgage and feed the mouths and begin the repayment of M'sieur
Latour--and it seemed so impossible such little while ago!"

"The business venture does go nicely, dear Joseph," Henri agreed.
"Also we have seen some of those whom we must see in seeking the
_Christophe_. This morning I talked with M'sieur Atterbury, Madame
Combs' marine lawyer. He is a man of highest standing and a kind man
and he is very positive that I owe M'sieur Webber an apology, for while
it seemingly could not have affected the _Christophe_ had there been
question in the loss of the _Webber_, I had questioned and it is well
to know. Now on our way south, we can seek the Hereras. To see M'sieur
Webber we will have to wait. But when next we come here, we will try to
go to Miami and see the men of weather and the Navy who were upon the
Purple Reefs."

"You cannot have doubts of the Weather Bureau or the United States
Navy? Or think that they would not have reported anything amiss?"

"I have no doubts. But they were upon the Reefs and may have seen
something the meaning of which they did not know, as they would not
know the meaning of the unclaimed sponges."

The bay was wild white under a slashing, purple shower as the _Sea
Lily_ flew through the north entrance with the savage tide and turned
for the Channel of Yucatan. Wild gray wings of rain swept the Gulf and
as the Tampa light vanished behind the downpour, the _Sea Lily_ was
hailed by an incoming launch. Apparently the men on it had combined
fishing with whisky, for they roared with song and the helmsman crowded
the _Sea Lily_ dangerously in the heavy seas. Amongst the drinkers
were the large man and the thin man from the fruit docks. Through
lashing rain and flying spray as the launches almost grazed, the big
man shouted, "Sure hope you boys didn't try anythin' foolish with them
bananas or you better hope we don't get to hear of it!" He threw up a
whisky bottle and caught it. "Yes, you sure better hope!"

The launches were past each other in the rain, but the laughter of
the men came down the wind. "I had not thought of carrying bananas
regularly," Joseph said flushing. "But the attitude of those men tempts
one!"

"Joseph! Where is my peacemaker?" Henri asked.

Joseph blushed more deeply. "They are so odious! One does not like them
to think they have had their way," Joseph said, taking the _Sea Lily_
over a crest.

"Meantime, cross your fingers that we find the Hereras without having
to go to the Low Cays!"

"You still think that something strange that affected our brother and
the _Christophe_ happened upon the Purple Reefs?"

"I am still not satisfied that our brother spent two days looking for
men from the _Webber_ who could have been ashore!"

Following the course that Malcolm Christophe had followed on his
southward journeys, they learned nothing in the little ports of
Southern Yucatan, British Honduras, Guatemala and Honduras save that
the motorship was much missed and that Malcolm Christophe had had no
enemies. And at last, reaching the entrance to the larger port on
the muddy River of the Angels where the _Christophe_ had been in the
habit of making her final contact with Central America before swinging
eastward for Home Island, they entered the faintly crackling furnace
of the iron building that served as port office some three miles below
the town. Old Mr. Houston, the frail and birdlike port officer, greeted
them warmly and listened attentively. At the end of their story, he
said, "I liked to think of myself as Malcolm Christophe's close friend,
and I too find it a strange thing that so many days after the storm
he should have delayed for two days to look for men who could have
been ashore. Malcolm valued his schedule. On his southern run, he was
always on time to the dot. I wish everyone was! Were I trying to solve
the mystery of the _Christophe_, I would stick like a limpet to what
happened on those two days." He smiled. "I wish I was of more help!"

"Perhaps we will understand the matter better when we have talked with
M'sieur Webber and the Hereras," Henri said.

Mr. Houston grimaced disgustedly. "You can ask one of the Hereras as
soon as he returns my mule. Their ship, the _John P. Riggs_, is upriver
now." He indicated a superb powerboat bumping softly beside the _Sea
Lily_ as the muddy current ambled through the soaking heat. "The launch
at the dock there is hers. Martin Herera came ashore here to go inland
over some timber deal and borrowed my mule, and since I am an official
and he treats my possessions with some faint semblance of respect, I
assume he will be back. If you want to question him, question him here!
He is wise enough to be superficially polite in my presence." He cocked
his head to listen. "Yes! That is my old mule coming now."

The Hereras, who had held undisputed possession of the Low Cays for
three hundred years, had perhaps the worst reputation in Caribbee,
and both their reckless courage and their cruelty were believed to
spring from the fact that they were part Carib Indian. Physically,
they ran to hawklike and magnificent men, and fat, frowsy and almost
half-witted women. And Martin Herera, thirty-five-year-old, youngest
son of hundred-year-old Geraldino Herera, appearing now to stand in the
doorway with one hand high on the doorframe, one hand on his hip, might
have been an artist's presentation of a buccaneer. The fact that he was
poorly shaved merely gave him a becoming touch of darkness through the
copper of his skin; his cheeks and lips had high color through their
sun tan and about his rather long, blue-black hair he wore a purple
silk handkerchief. And while his shirt and trousers were usual enough
faded blue dungarees, the shirt was a little fuller and the trousers a
little tighter than those of other men, the total impression being that
of elaborate fancy dress. "My thanks for the mule, Señor," he said,
smiling. "Which animal I did not override nor strike with so much as a
little leaf nor leave standing in the sun nor allow to eat poison-weed
nor address unkindly . . ."

"I am glad to hear it," Mr. Houston said. "These, as you know, are
Henri and Joseph Christophe. They would ask you some questions."

Martin Herera regarded them a shade too long for courtesy though his
expression was smilingly frank. "At your service, Señores!"

"We are puzzled that so long after her wreck our brother sought for
two days for men from the wrecked _Webber_ who could have been ashore
unless there was something in the leaving of the _Webber_ that would
make him think them drifting," Henri said. "Since you were serving as
master of the _Webber_ and were close to M'sieur Webber, the owner, we
wished your thought."

Martin Herera smiled while the refracted sunlight caught the red-brown
glints in his deep-set eyes. "The explanation could be that Señor
Webber was an humane man who wished always to do more for others than
was needed." He came forward to set his hands on the desk, his manner
appropriately grave yet indefinably insulting, as if behind his
polite face he derided both those of whom he spoke and his present
listeners. But it was said in Caribbee that an Herera could not ask the
time of day without making a man feel that he impugned his mother's
honor. "Señor Webber would leave nothing undone for poor shipwrecked
seamen! He doubtless wished Captain Malcolm to search, leaving no wave
unturned."

"What little I have heard of Thomas Webber suggested a passion for the
ladies rather than the humanities!" Mr. Houston said dryly.

"Moral men do not understand the good hearts of those who appreciate
the ladies," Martin Herera said. "Many people do not know the good
hearts of us Hereras!" He stood lightly erect. "As for the leaving
of the _Webber_, she developed engine trouble and drove on the Reefs
before the full storm struck, shattering her bows on the coral, as
you can see if the military men will let you close enough. It was my
belief and Señor Webber's that she must break up. I ordered the crew
to abandon ship. Señor Webber's concern for the men was great--you
misjudge him if you think otherwise. The six men who were lost became
panicked and bolted ere we could place an officer in their boat." He
shrugged. "They were, as you know, French. Señor Webber and the small
Ashby left in the smaller powerboat. My brothers and I left last. As
you also know, Señores Webber and Ashby reached Home Island, using the
boat's lugsail after their fuel ran out. My brothers and I reached
the Republic. The other poor souls must have tried for Yucatan, thus
becoming involved in the dangerous quadrant." He shrugged faintly.
"As to why the good Malcolm Christophe searched for two days, I can
only say that Frenchmen are notably unpredictable--begging the present
company's pardon--or again suggest that the action was prompted by
Señor Webber's concern. Señor Webber is noted both for his courage and
his tenderness of heart. My brothers and I indeed commented together
upon his generosity and his fearlessness!" His dark eyes studied them
as if he slapped them in the face. "My brothers and I are at your
order, Señores Christophe, Señor Houston. Good fortune with your
search, Señores Christophe." He moved backward with the grace of a
fencer, bowed and turned to drop to his boat, his purple handkerchief
disappearing over the edge of the dock. The powerboat's engine roared
and then its song diminished up the hot and dirty river.

"That is a splendid boat," Mr. Houston said. "The Hereras have
prospered in the last years. Be careful of Martin Herera, Henri and
Joseph! He is the handsomest and the worst of a bad lot."

"I can think of no reason why he should do us harm," Joseph said.

The old man smiled. "Nor I. But in my wildest imaginings I can think of
no reason that would make a Low Cays Herera do any man good!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The brothers were working up the three isolated miles of river between
the port officer's shed and the town, while the muddy stream draped
jungle rubbish and garbage in the mangroves, when the sound of engines
reached them from upstream. The channel was narrow and Henri swung the
launch over as round a bend half-a-mile ahead came the _John P. Riggs_,
her squat and false red-and-black funnel emitting oily exhaust fumes.
She was a ship of about the same size as the _Christophe_ had been
and, while she was old, the Hereras could have done well with her. But
though they were recklessly brilliant seamen, they were indifferent to
such matters as schedules or contracts and would work like demons or
go fishing as the fancy took them. Willing to attempt almost anything,
they might do it a month late or, if they had been paid, might not do
it at all. So that, though their names were linked with the most evil
trades of the Caribbean, even for evil they were unreliable.

The _John P. Riggs_ was now, as usual, cluttered with Herera women,
while oddly assorted laundry flew between her houses and crated
chickens and two goats showed upon her foredeck.

As Henri and Joseph first sighted the motorship, she was moving at the
three knots decreed for the river. But having rounded the turn, she
speeded up so that her muddy bow wave rose alarmingly. The launch was
now moving parallel and close to the ruins of an abandoned banana wharf
whose broken piles were crowned by roosting cormorants and whitened
with bird droppings. And unless the motorship slowed down the launch
was obviously likely to be smashed against the pilings. Joseph sounded
the horn. The Herera men were staring abstractedly at the farther
shore, but the Herera women leaned fatly over the rail, convulsed with
laughter. The _John P. Riggs_ continued to pick up speed, and in the
confined space, her bow waves were now small breakers. She was also so
close that she threatened to actually crush the launch between her side
and the old wharf.

"They mean to wreck us!" Joseph said.

He seized a pole to try and hold the launch off the piles. Many of the
Herera women were now rolling on the deck, kicking their legs; a common
expression of their amusement, highly embarrassing to the Followers
since it was always problematical what an Herera female wore beneath
her dirty silk gown or Mother Hubbard. Martin Herera, at the wheel of
the motorship, was still staring intently at the distant jungle.

The _John P. Riggs_ surged past, almost above the launch and the
trough of the bow waves revealed further menace in the form of broken,
below-water pilings and teeth of old reinforcing iron. With mighty
effort, Joseph succeeded in softening the impact of the visible
pilings, but as the trough of the waves sucked the launch downward
there was the crash of shattering planks and a rusty rod of reinforcing
steel sprang upward through the floor boards. The launch struggled
like a pierced moth, almost swamped in the secondary wave, then tore
herself gratingly up the impaling steel, to flounder, taking water like
a punctured bucket.

Tearing up the bilge cover to try to stop the worst of the leaks,
Joseph said, "Get her round the end of the wharf onto the beach!"

Henri attempted to, but the gushing water had both drowned the engines
and dropped the launch so that the irons still held her as she settled
on some submerged structure. Only now did the male Hereras look at them
and cut the ship's engines, while the _John P. Riggs_ came to a stop
and then began to back up slowly.

Martin Herera leaned over the bridge with the purple handkerchief
brilliant about his dark head. "Why didn't you sound your horn?" he
asked.

Henri was trembling through all his body. "You would perhaps have heard
it had your women not been laughing so loudly as you moved to the wrong
side of the fairway and speeded up to wreck us!" he said through white
lips.

"Speeded up? On the wrong side of the fairway?" Martin Herera asked,
raising black brows. "Everyone here will bear witness that we were
doing three knots upon our own side of the river! Why did you
deliberately run the launch into danger against a broken wharf? That
was poor policy!" His dark and bloodshot eyes mocked. "Or is she, too,
perhaps well insured?"

The Herera women rolled, shrieking and kicking fat legs upon the deck.
Henri's hand reached for the shark rifle in its oiled lamb's-wool case
on the cabin wall. But Joseph caught his arm. "Be still, Henri!"

"I'm afraid you've run yourselves into trouble!" Martin Herera said
innocently. "Can we assist?"

"You do not wreck us and claim salvage!" Henri said as Joseph's great
hands gripped his shoulder. "Keep clear, you sea scum, or you'll regret
it!"

Martin Herera's eyes narrowed slightly but his mouth smiled, showing
fine teeth. "Tut, men of peace!" he murmured. "Can these be those who
have turned the other cheek to pirates and their seats to the tar and
feathering?"

Both references were painful to the Christophes for in the last days of
piracy Home Island had been the victim of several raids of which Martin
Herera's great grandfather had been suspected, and Geraldino Herera had
once tarred and feathered a Follower elder who had visited the Low Cays
to claim a stolen boat.

The women howled like dogs and gobbled like turkeys while their fat
legs waved; their faces, down which tears of laughter ran, looked out
under the rail.

"The ways of God are strange," Joseph said quietly. "It is strange that
Hereras should have reached safety from the sea and poor seamen and
sponge fishers have perished!"

The loose mouths of the Herera women hung open questioningly, while
from the parted lips of one frowsy redhead a trickle of tobacco juice
slid. To the Herera men, a kind of stillness had come, and their eyes
were no longer joyous though their lips smiled.

"It strikes you as strange?" Martin Herera asked, lifting dark brows,
and his glance turned casually to a pile of lashed hardwood logs that
rose above the ship's rail directly over the launch, while two of his
brothers set careless hands upon the lashings of the great topmost log.

With a sudden twist and a thrust against his brother's chest that sent
Joseph reeling and splashing to one knee, Henri pulled out the rifle,
swung behind the cabin and sighted the rifle across the cabin-top at
Martin Herera's blue shirt. He said as quietly as Joseph could have,
"It is not a merciful Providence with which you deal here, but I, Henri
Henri Christophe! If you are thinking of killing us with an unlashed
log, think again, Captain! If a log falls or if one of you shoot or
knife me, the rifle can still go off! I am no good and gentle man such
as my father or my brothers. I am myself and my thumb is holding down
the hammer!"

"Logs? Guns? Knives?" Martin Herera asked, shrugging. "The poor fellow
is demented!" His grin broke. "But so are all Followers." His hand
reached for the engine-room telegraph. As the motorship's propeller
turned, the Herera men were again merely the personification of
malicious mischief, as if for a moment they had thought seriously of
some matter but then dismissed the thought.

The Herera women gobbled, the chickens cackled and the laundry flapped
as the _John P. Riggs_ moved down river. "Joseph, did I hurt you?"
Henri asked anxiously, continuing to hold the rifle as he stood
ridiculously in the muddy wash while the ship rounded the bend.

"I cut my knee, but it is nothing," Joseph said, holding a bloody rag
against his leg.

"I did not mean to hurt you," Henri said, splashing to him. "Joseph, I
am sorry." His fury blazed again. "I am sorry, too, that I did not kill
what I could of them!"

"That would neither save Domremy nor find the _Christophe_ nor repay
M'sieur Latour," Joseph said gently.

"Joseph, I am truly sorry I hurt you!" Henri knelt, still shaking with
anger, but frowning in puzzlement. "Oddly, it was you and not I who got
under their thick skins!"

"Perhaps even the worst of men like to feel their lives dear to God,"
Joseph said. "I should not have said what I did. But I do not think
they would have dropped the log. It was part of their playing."

"The Hereras do not have a god," Henri said. "I do not think they would
have dropped the log here where they must explain to M'sieur Houston,
but for a minute they were not playing!"




Four


Henri was so excited about the Hereras that he had forgotten the
deplorable situation of the launch, and Joseph had to place a hand on
his arm, saying, "The harm may not be too great. But we must get her
free before something else passes and the wash tears her to bits."

Reaching into the water, they surveyed the damage. Only two spikes of
reinforcing steel had torn through the hull and both had missed keel,
ribs and gas tanks. "We are lucky!" Joseph said gratefully. "We will
soon have it fixed."

Henri smiled at him. "It must be pleasant to have your disposition,
Joseph!" They were still struggling with the problem of how to raise
the washing launch from the spikes when a whistle sounded from upstream
and a neat and wide-beamed banana ship rounded the bend. Henri and
Joseph signaled wildly that she slow down, sweating until they saw
the froth of her propeller backing water so that as she finally drew
alongside, she was hardly moving.

The young Latin captain leaned over the bridge to ask, "You are pinned
in the old iron? How did it happen?"

"The Hereras crowded us, going fast," Henri said bitterly.

The captain's young face darkened. "The scum of the sea ride higher
than ever these last years! Let me try to lift you on the davits and
cargo hoists."

The brothers glanced at each other, fearful of the bill. But the launch
must be freed. "If you would--and let us tack on a patch to reach
shallow water," Joseph said gratefully. But when the launch at last
lifted free, the captain said, "The damage is not too big. It will
be easier to fix it while I hold you." Ample seasoned mahogany was
available from the old wharf, and at the end of two hours of frantic
work conducted from one of the ship's lifeboats and the interior of
the launch, the new sections of plank were in place and the _Sea Lily_
afloat again. Henri asked, "What do we owe you, Captain?" He was
inwardly quailing over the prospective charge. The Captain's gold teeth
flashed in a smile. "Nothing, my friends! Men of the Followers have
done all men of the Caribbean many favors and I respect men who follow
their belief--even if I do not share it. Also I would not add to the
Hereras' mischief by charging you. And as I pass the port office, I
will contribute what I can to the complaint you will make later. Not
that anything will come of it, since the Hereras will swear the fault
yours and the Hereras in court are impressive. Is there anything more?"

"You might tell those whom you meet that the brothers Christophe are
seeking news of their brother and of the motorship _Christophe_."

Profound pity was in the captain's dark eyes. "It is a vain search,
Señores, but my good wishes!" With a great splashing, the ship was off.

"People are amazingly good," Joseph said, his face flushing with
happiness.

"Dear Joseph!" Henri said fondly. "Now let us begin cleaning out mud
and drying out blankets and throwing out stores and trying to start the
engines."

With old Mr. Houston's infuriated assurances that he would do what he
could about the Hereras, and with the river and Central America finally
behind them, and only the long blue of the open sea that separated them
from Home Island ahead, they began the preparation of their diving gear
for use on the Purple Reefs. "Since all have been kind and allowed us
to set a long schedule, we will be able to spend at least a week on the
Reefs on each northward run," Joseph said. "We will mark off the worked
sections of the reef and try also to remember the coral formations so
that we will know where we were should our markers be swept by storm.
It will be very interesting to work a great reef bit by bit."

"We must not begin to suspect each other over the division of our
gold and jewels as do those men in books," Henri said, grinning. "But
the good doctor at the museum tells me that the Purple Reefs are a
graveyard of old ships and that if we find no more than old cannon,
pieced-copper ware and hand-forged anchors, there is good market for
all to the right buyers. He says that should we find old coins now and
then--and that there must be many hiding there--we must not sell them
for their silver or gold, but must let him tell us what to do. He also
says that the legend of the Three Galleons themselves is at least as
well substantiated as most of the old treasure tales and that so far
as is known their gold has never been found. It will, as you say, be
interesting to work off square yard by square yard saying, 'From here
to here no ship lies.'"

They were still working on the gear as the _Sea Lily_ cut through rose
and lilac evening. Tightening a clamp on the air hose, Joseph said,
"Will you do something for me?" His face was determined-looking and
redder than might be explained by the flush of sunset.

"What was it?" Henri asked, splicing a lead-line.

"Perhaps you would give Daphne the handkerchief--as if it came from
you?"

"It was not I who did without my supper to obtain it. Why should I give
it?" Henri asked.

Joseph grew redder still and gave signs of overtightening the clamp.
"I do not know . . . I would not want to embarrass her . . . I do
not know why, but I felt that it might from me." He set down the
clamped hose and his face lit with pleasure. "It washed and ironed
very nicely!" He went into the cabin and returned with a folded tissue
package. "See? One would not know that it had ever been shop-soiled. I
was afraid that it might have been ruined when the Hereras sank us, but
luckily I had it in the top locker and the mud did not reach it." He
passed the opened package to Henri and asked anxiously, "You do think
it will please her?"

"It is a truly beautiful gift and would please any woman. But you
should give it to her yourself."

Joseph frowned slightly. "I simply feel that it might embarrass her,"
he said, looking ahead into the warm wind.

Henri finished his splicing. "I, too, feel that it might. But there are
embarrassments that are very sweet to women. However, I will do as you
wish."

"Thank you," Joseph said, relieved and making himself very busy.

They ate supper in the cloud-veiled light of the enormous moon, and,
as always with night, the sounds of the sea grew louder about them;
frothing whisper of bow wave and churn of wake, small slap of spray,
vast whisper of the moving surface of the sea. The Caribbean was having
one of its rainbow moods where the long-spaced swells marched under
low-running, vaporous clouds that were the color of doves until they
crossed the moon, when they flushed to lunar rainbows, only to pale
again as they were past the moon. And even the flung spray and the dark
sea caught the color of black opals. Presently a large shark crossed
the shadowy moon track, its dorsal fin canting a little as it turned
lazily. And each time the shark crossed the moon path, the edge of the
great fin also caught a little rainbow. "He is a big fellow," Henri
said. "He makes one glad of a sound hull." The tinted sea was rising
under the warm wind and the crests becoming too stiff for a lashed
wheel. Joseph rose and went to steer. "It is good that in only three
days and nights, we will lift Home Island! We have made almost full
circle. Is it your thought that we have learned anything of that which
we must learn? To me, it would almost seem that we are farther away. In
every port, little and big, we have been told that our brother had no
enemies and that the _Christophe_ is missed. We know that none wanted
even a little of the little mail routes. We know that the Hereras, the
only men of evil repute who had been near a point our brother passed,
were jailed ere our brother even sailed on the last voyage. We are
still puzzled that our brother searched for two days for the _Webber's_
men, but since M'sieur Ashby, M'sieur Webber and Martin Herera all give
the same explanation and since they should have no reason to lie, it
would seem that he must have searched as they say at M'sieur Webber's
request. We found true strangeness only in the uncollected sponge,
but it should seemingly have no connection with the _Christophe_, for
if there was some danger at the Purple Reefs, she passed them and
proceeded safely to the Isle of Palms . . ." "Yet something odd led
to the abandonment of the sponge," Henri said, beginning the washing
of the dishes. "Meantime, if we could learn that Jaques and Christian
did not die in storm and could find some possible reason for their
having crossed a sea to reach the Reefs--so that we could say with some
certainty, 'The unclaimed sponge was Jaques' and Christian's haul. They
did not claim it because they could neither gather their haul nor come
home again--' we could then say, 'There was, it seems, something upon
the Reefs that was not merely strange but was very dangerous!' Second,
perhaps there are Tobias' giant's steps--to your knowledge, have
professional divers ever worked from Home Island or where Tobias might
be?"

"Probably not, but what has that to do with giants, brother?"

"To a man who had never seen the track of a suit-diver, would not the
track of a dressed diver's boots seem the track of a giant?"

Joseph looked startled. "They could . . ."

"I think they would. I think Tobias saw the track of a diver in
heavy suit on the sands. Suit divers are expensive. If there was a
professional diver there, someone was looking for something of value or
doing something that was of importance to someone."

"It would be a long search or task that took two years!" Joseph said.

"Suppose that he had begun it ere the spongers interrupted him, and ere
he, in turn, interrupted the spongers? On the heels of that came the
search for the _Christophe_, during which the Reefs were at least a
stopping place for the searchers. During that time, he was there once,
for Tobias saw his steps. Suppose that he stopped his work for the
search to end. Before it ended, came the weathermen and the military
men who let none go to the Reefs. There is a long interruption! But
hardly had the military men gone, when he was back and Tobias saw his
steps again." His mouth smiled at his brother, but his eyes between the
dark, Christophe lashes were intent. "Now go to the Hereras! Martin
Herera was normal in that he was merely insolent and dangerously
mischievous until you spoke to him. Do you remember what it was you
said? As I remember it, you said that it was strange that the Hereras
had been spared when the seamen had perished. M'sieur the port officer
at the Isle of Palms said the same thing--and it is likely that both he
and others had said it to the Hereras. But you also said what M'sieur
the port officer and others would not have said--that it was odd that
the seamen _and the spongers_ had perished. When you said it, the
Hereras were not merely mischievous for a moment. For a moment, they
thought of killing us--the Hereras are used to lack of compliment,
Joseph. Could it be that what you said of the spongers was what
affected them?"

"You think the Hereras were connected with the diver that was Tobias'
giant?"

"To my puzzlement, I think they were not. Martin Herera did not know
the military men were gone from the Reefs."

"It is very difficult, Henri!" Joseph said. "Henri, what could a diver
have been looking for upon the Reefs? Treasure hunting is legitimate
business and few expeditions able to finance a suit-diver are so
foolish as to operate without government permission and government
protection."

"I have racked my brain as to what he was looking for or what he was
doing. While we are planning to look for treasure in a modest way, I do
not think he was looking for treasure."

Sitting on the deck, he leaned forward with his arms about his knees,
and his face was tense with concentration. "Out of the tangle of the
mysteries, it would seem that there is one thing above all other things
we should hold in our thoughts. Under the conditions that prevailed
at the time of the _Christophe's_ last voyage, a ship could not sink
without the showing of oil slick; yet no slick was found. We do not
believe the old captains' dreams of pirate capture. We know that the
_Christophe_ was sunk. If we should answer the question, 'How could a
ship be sunk without showing oil slick under circumstances where slick
must have shown?' we would know what happened to the ship!"

"She could not have sunk without betraying slick," Joseph said
patiently.

"She did! It is our business to know how!"

"It is an impossibility, brother . . ."

"Yet it happened! Thus it must only seem impossible. Remember that you
yourself said if we were to have hope of learning what befell we must
keep in mind that there must be simple explanation, that it but seemed
so strange because we did not know! For the oil slick, there may be
only one way in which it might be done, but there must be some one way!"

"Your thought?"

"I have no thought under the wide sky," Henri said ruefully. "But when
we solve how it might be done, we should know also those who did it!"

       *       *       *       *       *

On the coast of Nicaragua, Black Tobias had found the little lake empty
of life save for the roosting cormorants, but a small sponge dock
and thatch hut showed that at times someone lived here. The little
harbor was only one of countless unnamed inlets, yet it was admirably
sheltered. It was such a place as men sponging on the coast might have
used to ride out a storm. He would, Tobias decided, return to it. And,
putting to sea again, he had noted the variations of the mangrove
forests and the exact entrance to the estuary that was colored like a
jungle cat.

North to the border of Honduras--for greater certainty, for a hundred
miles up the Honduran coast--then south again, making sure that he
had missed nothing through carelessness, he learned only of a half
thousand estuaries, inlets and bays where Jaques and Christian had not
sheltered. His lips were weary with framing his questions, his ears sad
with negative answers when he passed again under the arched mangroves
into the little lake. This time yellow sponges were drying on the
racks, a good Yucatan sailboat was moored at the dock and an old man
came from the thatch hut at Tobias' hail.

Tobias stood toweringly in the catboat and explained his mission in
slow Spanish, "I am Tobias of Home Island. I am seeking news of Jaques
and Christian of that island, known to have been sponge-hooking off
this coast just prior to the hurricane that preceded the motorship
_Christophe's_ last sailing . . ."

The old man's blotched pink face twisted in a dozen smiles and he
answered in a torrent of French. As a native of Martinique he cherished
such men as could speak French as came to this coast. While that great
idiot, the Great Marquis, had attempted to make Home Islanders speak
English, all Home Islanders used much of the mother tongue. Thus Jaques
and Christian of the Followers had been welcomed by him, often working
out of his little lake and drying their sponge-hauls on his dock.

"M'sieur, is it your opinion that Jaques and Christian were lost in the
hurricane?" Tobias asked, and his heart beat hard.

"How should they be lost in it? They were here until it passed! We got
no more than hard rain and gales anyway." He became peevish. "Sheltered
their boat here, used my hut. Supposed to be here for a three-months'
hooking--then sky was hardly clearing, and off they went! Sea still
rough and the hurricane surf still running. Sponges weren't properly
dried, but gathered up their sponges and off they went!"

Tobias trembled with excitement so that the great calves and thighs of
his legs shook. "M'sieur, do you know why they went? Had they enemies?
Did any follow them?"

"How would I know? All I know is they were supposed to be here for a
three-months' stay--then they up and off like a donkey that's eaten
fire-bush!" He puckered rheumy eyes better to see Tobias. "You mean
they're lost? They never got home? No one tells me anything except the
wireless--and ran my battery out flat in the storm--have to get another
battery . . ."

"My thanks, M'sieur! All the thanks I could speak!" Tobias said
earnestly as he raised the sail.

"Crazy! Crazy as bitten bats!" the old man shouted. "Are all Home
Islanders crazy?"

In Tobias was a great triumph, so that he was no longer tired but
filled with power of limb as if he were young again and the strongest
man in Caribbee. For whatever had killed Jaques and Christian, it had
not been the simple thing of hurricane! Jaques and Christian had been
living when the storm had passed them. Somewhere else in the wide
sea, unknown danger had met them. He, Tobias, believed it the same
danger that had met his son. Thus was it not as if a man trailing a
black panther from its kill in the forest and having lost the trail,
had found a second paw-mark far away and could say, "While I still do
not know where the trail leads or if I may follow it, here is a new
starting point from which to follow the large beast!"

       *       *       *       *       *

At Domremy the family was somewhat thinner and definitely more
threadbare, but it poured over the returning Henri and Joseph in a
cheerful tide of love. Even Aunt Caroline said, "So you haven't drowned
yourselves yet? I'm glad of it--more fool me!" The parrot tweaked in
hopeful smallness at Henri's trousers until he picked it up, when
it fluffed to its largest size and shouted rude remarks from the
commanding height of his shoulder. The donkey galloped kicking round
the garden and little Timothy Christophe ran about shouting, "'Fifteen
men on the dead man's chest! Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!'" At Main
Town, as Joseph delivered the mail to the post office in the lower
story of the tottering building known as Government House, Monsieur the
Commissioner leaned over the upper balcony and said, "Glad to see you!
I've been worrying as to whether I had aided and abetted suicide."

At the port authority building, Monsieur Latour rose to wring Henri's
hand. "Welcome home, Henri! All goes well?"

The old man was somewhat flushed and did not look well.

"All goes finely, M'sieur," Henri said. "But we are still able only to
bring a small amount on the debt--twenty dollars made from a good sale
of bananas. The mail money will come at the end of three months and we
hope this trip to sell sea fans and plumes and perhaps some older finds
from the Reefs."

Monsieur Latour put the money back in Henri's hand. "Keep it! You must
have cash to operate." He smiled. "Money owed by a Christophe is money
in the bank. I am not worried."

"M'sieur, half the island is owing you money, is it not?"

The old man looked down, playing with his official pen. "Times will be
tight until there is a ship to take the place of the _Christophe_ and
handle the little exports. I have suffered very little in comparison
with those who now have no market." He raised his kindly blue eyes
and was cheerful again. "But enough of all that! Tell me all that you
have done!" At the end he said, "It is very strange about the sponge.
But were it Jaques' and Christian's, what would have taken them there,
Henri?" He smiled, flushing. "After our last conversation, I kept
thinking of them and knew that I did not believe they had died in
storm. Being for the first time quite honest, I knew that I did not
believe they had died of the other normal risks of men in little boats.
They were too experienced. Seeking reason for which they might have
been far from where they were thought to be--and for reasons for which
men quarrel and kill--I thought of treasure. Men have killed even for
the hope of treasure, Henri! There is treasure in the Caribbean!" He
blushed. "At least, when business took me to Trinidad, where Jaques'
and Christian's widows are now living. I asked if their lost husbands
had been treasure-bitten. The ladies deny it angrily, saying that had
they been, they, the ladies, would personally have cured them. Thus my
thought led nowhere."

"M'sieur," Henri said, alarmed, "forgive me, but it was not to mortgage
your own properties that you went to Trinidad?" For it was to the banks
in Trinidad that the out-island property owners went for their more
desperate financing.

Monsieur Latour's cheeks deepened to their crimson flush. "There is
nothing alarming in that, Henri. Many men have had to use temporary
finance!" His hand on the pen shook slightly.

"M'sieur, for what it is worth, our debt will be off your kind
shoulders by next voyage!" Henri said.

"To keep your mind upon the search, that is the important thing! . . .
Henri, this may have no bearing, but when the steamship _Webber_ left
Trinidad for Tampa on the voyage upon which she was wrecked, she sailed
from Trinidad with a skeleton crew of five Hereras and the sad little
Ashby. And, of course, M'sieur Webber. The other six crewmen--the poor
souls who were lost at sea after the wreck--were taken on at Little
Nameless Island where, as you know, the port formalities are almost
nil. Nobody knew them there. Nor do any seem clear as to how they had
come there, perhaps because they were French and Little Nameless is not
a French-speaking island. There is merely the record of their names and
of their signing with the _Webber_."

"That is odd! But the Caribbean ships enlist odd crews whose papers are
in no seamen's hall . . ."

"I see no meaning to it. Seemingly it was simply unlucky for them that
they were there and that they signed." He looked up. "Henri, in trying
to solve an evil thing, to me it would seem that one should perhaps
keep asking, 'Who was the most evil man in any manner connected with
the tragedy? Even though it may seem he could not have been connected
with it, who was the most evil?'"

"Martin Herera would surely be that!"

Monsieur Latour hesitated. "The Hereras are capable of any cruelty,
but in a way their cruelty is like the cruelty of a natural force
that carelessly crushes that which is in its way. One does not say
that a natural force is evil in the same manner as one says that men
who should know better are evil--M'sieur Webber was very evil, Henri!
I hate to say it when one should not speak ill, but he was evil with
cruelty and self-love--and loving himself most of all because he was
evil and delighted in the contemplation of himself as cruel!"

"Evil or good, his contact with the _Christophe_ must seem most
innocent."

"True. He could not have had reason to hurt the _Christophe_. He was on
the _Christophe_ only by chance. Yet, I still feel that, searching, I
should say, 'Look always for the most evil man!'"

At Domremy, after the evening supper, Aunt Caroline chose to be lifted
to the great armchair whose condition was so ruined that the family had
been unable to sell it to the antique dealer. Henri was her favorite
amongst her relatives and pointing at him, she commanded, "Sit at my
feet!" With his youth settled at her aged knee, she patted his shoulder
and haughtily addressed the rest of the family, "You are not needed!"
Seeing some hesitance in their eyes, she banged suddenly on the arm of
the chair and shrieked with the Americanism gathered from her liking
for paper-covered detective stories, "Beat it! Scram! Take a powder!"
Leering malignly at the emptying room, she nodded. "That did it!" Her
old lips pressed together and her wrinkles worked across her forehead
and cheeks. "It is my one regret that I lived for so many years without
knowing of the retort, 'Oh, yeah?' 'Oh, yeah?' may someday save the
world, Henri! . . . It unveils hypocrisy, leaves cant naked to logic,
unseats the man on horseback! No argument of the great dialogues is
as unanswerable or as assertive of the individual human judgment. Yet
consider the beauty of its economy of words!" Her mood changed as she
ran her aged claw through his dark hair then tweaked a lock sharply,
demanding, "What have you learned?" He told her of his thought of the
oil slick. She listened, letting her head sway gently.

When she spoke her voice was without its usual ribald mockery or
shrill complaint. "I know nothing of the sea. I have hated the sea
all my life! But I know a great deal of men. If men did this, you
must look first for money--great sums of money! Say, 'How might the
sinking of the _Christophe_ have given much money to men? How might
the _Christophe's_ presence have endangered the making of much money
by men?' Then look where it leads you--no matter where it leads!" Her
eyes dreamed at the dying afterglow. "Money is a good thing--I have
wished often that the Christophe men cared more for money--but it is
strange that most of the world puts it above all else. All the money
of the world is not worth what many other things are worth. I tell you
this when I am too old to lie. When I am so old that one must say of
life, 'For good or evil it is lived! It is a written chapter and I can
rewrite no word of it.'" She met his dark eyes and smiled at him. "I am
so old that I cannot care as the young care. I did not lose my brother
as you lost your father. Death is not to me what death is to you--it
is a mere stepping into the next room. There is not time for the very
old to care . . . But I remember! And money is not worth many things.
It is not worth an hour in which men and women may say to each other,
'I would give you heaven!' And by grace of heaven may give it. It is
not worth the hour when a woman knows, 'Life is in my womb! Life of my
beloved.' It is not worth the hour when those who have loved long, may
say, 'We have come a long journey and we do not know where it leads,
but neither death nor life can take away the wonder that we have held
hands while we traveled.'" She put her clawlike hands about his face
and raised it while her eyes studied him. "You will know what to value!
That is why I love you." She released his face. "Meanwhile, while money
is not of the value of many other things, look for someone who made
much money by the sinking of the ship or would have lost much money had
the ship not been sunk!" Her impertinent head tipped and her wrinkles
flew into a new pattern of annoyance. "I worry for that fool Daphne,
Henri. A woman needs love as a rose needs the rain. She needs to know
each day, 'It is important to him that I am alive today!' She should
not be a statue watching over a grave."

He smiled at her. "Joseph bought her a handkerchief."

She nodded approval. "And what of you? Is there still no one with whom
the ordinary things would not be ordinary? No special voice--to hear
when there is no voice? No special face that you may see as Napoleon
saw the face of 'Josephine, Josephine, Josephine--in the skies of
Italy!'"

Henri shook his head, seeing a face whose gold-brown lashes were pushed
together in laughter by the childlike fullness of the lower lids and
hearing a voice that was the too loud, crowing shout of a child.

The old lady studied him keenly, the myriad wrinkles playing about her
pursed mouth. "Oh, yeah?" Aunt Caroline said.

He put his hand on her withered claw. "We have started search for your
wheeled-chair. And we are sorry we could not bring it this time, Aunt
Caroline . . ."

"There is no hurry," the old lady said gallantly. "Now carry me to
bed!" He rose and lifted her tiny old body. "No hurry at all!" the
ancient tyrant cackled. "What woman would not prefer a man's arms to a
wheeled-chair?"

"What more charming woman could a man have in his arms?" Henri said
laughing as he carried her down the hall. His voice grew fiercely
tender, "And you will not have to wait too long for your wheeled-chair,
dear! That is a promise!" Setting her down, he knelt beside the bed.
"Here, meantime, are three new detective books for you--all murders of
the bloodiest."

She took them delightedly. "I will read them first to myself. Then on a
night when the wind is in the chimneys, I will read them aloud to the
women so that they will be afraid to go to bed. There is nothing more
interesting than a large number of women afraid both to go to bed--and
to stay where they are!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The moon was making a pearly mist of light in the garden as Henri led
Daphne outdoors, where the heads of the milk and wine lilies swam like
water flowers on a lake of light. Night-blooming jasmine, gardenias,
roses and lilies scented the air so that it seemed that scent could
be lifted in cupped hands and poured from them. Above the mist of
light and scent, Daphne's hair was a short-feathered darkness and her
forehead seemed faintly shining with cool light. He picked a lily
flower and held it against her forehead but the flower had more of
pinkness than her skin. "They do not match," Henri said. "But I still
have a present for you!" He brought out the handkerchief. She unwrapped
it and exclaimed in joy as the cobwebby thing fell over her hand.

"How beautiful! It is not silk or linen. Is it the material they call
nylon? I have wanted to see it. How good of you, Henri!"

"Joseph bought it, doing without his supper to do so and having
the salesgirl make great search of the store to find one that was
shop-soiled but of good quality. He then washed and ironed it,
resembling an elephant engaged in needlework. He then asked that I give
it you as if it came from me." The brightness of tears was in her eyes
as he turned up her face with his hand. "He has a great love for you.
It is a pity to throw away a great love, Daphne! He has also had almost
nothing save service to others. He expects nothing. If I were a woman,
I think that I would think, 'It would be a rather wonderful thing to
go to a man who is very kind and very patient, and set my hand on his
shoulder and say to him something that would light his whole world with
joy--even if the fulfillment of happiness was still across the years of
waiting!'"

The tears spilled gleamingly down her cheeks. "I wish I could,
Henri! . . . If it were you, I might." She smiled and shook her head
as she saw his startled expression. "No! It would merely be because
you can laugh and take what is given and let the answers go. Joseph is
very grave and cares too much. He must have a young girl with whole
heart--or while he might not know that he would grieve, he would grieve
for a love that matched his own. Should we marry, I think he would even
trouble as to whom I would choose in Heaven should there be meeting
in Heaven, as old Grandfather Le Fleur who has had three good wives
worries as to which ladies he must hurt by choosing another."

"Women have been known to make men very happy all life long by a lie
that is all kindness and thus no lie at all," Henri suggested.

She smiled. "Again, if it were you, I might lie. To Joseph I could not
lie."

Henri sighed, then brightened. "Perhaps that in itself is a good sign
for the future! Meanwhile you had best be very pleased indeed with the
handkerchief--but do not let him know that I told you who gave it!"

"I am very pleased with the handkerchief! I am very selfish and am
so pleased with the handkerchief that I could weep in pleasure." She
folded the lovely square and tucked it into the bodice of her dress.
"When the world seems lonely, there is something very sweet in a fine
man thinking of one--even if one should wish that he did not!"

A little wind was shaking down the blue sea-grape fruit as they walked
back to the house. Henri sighed again. But he was pleased to think of
the handkerchief folded under Daphne's gray dress. He thought that the
handkerchief had a very sweet resting place.

"Does anyone know where the map is?" Henri asked later that evening,
referring to the family treasure chart. Several members of the family
recalled having seen it behind the honey crocks on the pantry shelves,
others remembered once rescuing it from the parrot. Unfortunately the
time elements were vague. That something could not be found was normal
rather than surprising, but Henri consulted Daphne.

The little frown of her concentration stood between her brows. "I
have not seen it for a long while. Not since I have been keeping the
accounts."

"Can you think, Beautiful Sister, when you might have seen it last?"

Daphne could remember only that it was supposed to be in the shrimp net
in the hall with other old papers of merely sentimental value. Search
proving that it was not there now, suspicion centered upon little
Timothy Christophe whose known passion for treasure made him a marked
man. Timothy bawled indignant denials, maintaining with some logic
that if he had taken the map he would still have the map. In this, his
accusers had to admit, he had a strong point in his favor; none of them
could imagine Timothy being parted from a treasure map save by the use
of force, if he had once got his hands on it.

"Little Cousin," Henri said, seating himself on the floor beside the
beleaguered mariner, "I believe that you have not got the map. But is
it possible that Captain Kidd or M'sieur La Fitte or the great Black
Beard may have it? I mean that they may have taken it while you were
them--or that you may have taken it before you were them--and they may
then have snatched it from you in mortal combat while you were both?"

"No!" Little Timothy bawled.

"Then our apologies to all of you!" Henri said. "Blow your noses!"

"While he is at times a terrible collection of pirates, I do not think
that when he was all of them any of him could have taken his map from
him," Henri said presently. "We will simply have to wait until the map
comes back."

While experience had shown that in the vastness of Domremy the theory
of the voluntary return of lost objects usually presented the best
hope, Daphne promised to continue looking for the map. "But do not
trouble to look too hard, Beautiful Sister," Henri said. "For what the
map is worth, I think we know it by heart from the time when we were
Timothy's size, and it actually marks a place upon the Reefs where
treasure most definitely is not rather than a place where treasure
perhaps is."

"All proper West Indian households have a treasure map. We must find
it!" Daphne said. "The story of our map has always pleased me for it
was so all things that a treasure map's story should be."

The story of the map was, indeed, all things that could be asked, and
it had been a pleasure to three generations of little Christophes.
For it marked the spot where, once upon a time, three fishermen of
the island had been sponge-hooking upon the Purple Reefs and through
thirty feet of airlike water they had observed what appeared to be
two strangely squared pieces of coral. In a skin-dive, one got a line
on one of the blocks and they hauled it up, hammered off the limey
jacket and found not the copper ballast they expected, but glittering
gold. The assumption was that somewhere in the reef, a treasure ship
was imbedded, that a storm, perhaps centuries after her wrecking, had
broken away something of her coral shield and flung the golden bars
across the shallow area of the reef.

Unfortunately the bars had been sold for their gold content only,
without effort to establish their age or identity, but both their
finders and all subsequent generations of Home Islanders believed that
they were part of the treasure of the Three Galleons, and the men who
had found them had spent the proceeds of the sale and the balance of
their lives looking for the ship or ships from which the bars had come;
their families finally becoming Christophe charges. So far as could
be ascertained, the searchers had been so mesmerized by the precise
location of the first discovery that almost all their efforts had
continued to center more or less immediately about it. When, however,
the last aged treasure-seeker lay dying, he had given the chart showing
the location of the original find to Henri's and Joseph's grandfather.
Their father, Captain Henri Christophe, had occasionally amused himself
by trying to work out the probable direction of the wind that might
actually have wrecked the galleons, thus, in turn establishing at
least their faintly likely position upon the reef. In an ocean subject
to gales, this might not have been a too difficult conundrum, for
by taking the course of the ships and the probable direction of the
gale, it could have been argued with fair accuracy that they should
have been carried onto the reef from such and such a point of the
compass. But hurricanes, for all their enormous size, were circular
storms revolving as they marched. Thus, even if the storm as a whole
was moving northward, a trapped ship could conceivably be grounded
from any angle. Even then, had the disaster to the galleons occurred
some centuries later, there might still have been a reasonable line of
probability, for Caribbean hurricanes tend to certain paths at certain
seasons and mariners, once knowing that hurricanes were circular, had
evolved the strategy of storms in which, if threatened by hurricane,
they endeavored to place themselves in the navigable quadrant; that is
to say on the left hand of the storm for one looking forward along its
line of advance, in which position its fury was usually at least merely
its rotational velocity minus its forward movement across the sea.
The Spanish captains of the galleons had, however, been unaware that
hurricanes revolved. Hence, for all their seamanship, they could have
been anywhere in the titanic whirlpool of the winds and have landed
upon any area of the great reef. "To our father, it seemed, however,
that since an unmanageable ship tends to be drawn toward the storm's
center, it might have been of interest to try to establish the course
of the hurricane that supposedly destroyed the galleons," Henri said,
"perhaps fixing its most probable line of advance upon the reefs by the
average path of storms from some island it was known to have crossed.
Since we plan to talk to the men of weather in regard to their recent
stay upon the Purple Reefs, I thought that we might also ask them for
the old storm records, catching their interest by showing them the map.
We will, however, be able to explain the situation well enough. And for
ourselves we know by heart where the gold bars were found."

By working far into the night at the ancient slave-forge, Henri and
Joseph finished the iron work of the diving helmet, their shadows
moving hugely above them on the braided palm roof that was as golden as
the bright plaited hair of fair women. At last returning to the house,
they found Daphne still up and in the great kitchen, baking rounded and
brown-crusted loaves of yam bread for their trip. The glow of the stove
had made her face as red as the cabbage roses and her hair stuck to her
forehead. She said, "One loaf has shrimp tails and chopped green onions
in it and will not keep, so you may eat it now with coconut cream
butter."

In blue dawn the brothers pulled out from the Queen's Steps for
the long run to the Purple Reefs, finally lifting the great marine
tableland in another frail hyacinth and silver morning in which the
salt grass on the dunes was silver tinsel and the water of the little
bay was so clear that it did not seem to be there. The white sands of
the beaches were free of tracks save for the tracery of the birds and
the agitated scrawling of crabs. The gasoline cache and its "needed"
notice were as Henri and Joseph had left them and, as always, only the
brilliant reefs seemed real and the rest of the world might not have
been. "I am going across the dune for firewood," Henri said. "Again,
Daphne has smuggled coffee aboard for us, which she should not have
done when she and all the family are doing without it. But a cup will
be very good with our yam bread and brown gravy dripping."

With the sand squeaking under his bare feet, he climbed the steep face
of the dune and looked into the rising sun and the sea-glitter that was
so great that it was like a shout of joy. The morning was so triumphant
that the great reef seemed not merely the safest and most joyful place
in the world but a treasure chest waiting only for the opening. He
could believe buried treasure in the sand beneath his feet and sunken
treasure under every ripple of the limpid sea. To look at the reefs
that were so like the washing coat of a gold and purple leopard, was to
know infinite excitement in saying, "We will play a boy's treasure game
and search the pelt spot by spot."

Yet here also was something for which the suit-diver had sought in
deadly earnest. Something of great value? Something of great danger?

Looking southward where the abandoned sponge haul had bleached
unnoticed in the hollow of the dunes, one must know that for the
spongers danger had been here! Here the spongers had come, and perhaps
on a day as bright as this some unknown thing had touched them and
they had been unable to claim their sponge. Here the _Christophe_ had
touched and gone on. But was it here that Tobias' unknown evil had
touched the _Christophe_? So that, perhaps unknowingly, she carried
with her a condemnation? But what could be here of mystery? What could
be here of danger?

As Henri returned with the wood and Joseph came from the bay, shaking
salt water from his hair and glittering with moisture, even Joseph
said, "There is a boy's adventure and a little prickle of the neck in
being here! It will be a wonderful thing to say, 'In this ten square
yards of the square miles there is no treasure--and no mystery!'" He
smiled. "Certainly the good doctor at the museum will never have seen
such sea fans and plumes. We must not hope too much, but it would not
surprise me if after paying M'sieur Latour and the mortgage interest
with the money from the mail contracts, we might even make enough from
the sea things for the first payment on the mortgage itself!"

From the practical angle, they planned to work the shallower areas of
the Reefs with water-glasses from little Timothy's dinghy, borrowed
for the occasion, and where the attached or floating sargassum weed
impeded their view or where the water became too deep for the glass
or where they noted particularly fine coral or plumes, they would use
the homemade helmet fed by the double-action handpump clamped in the
dinghy--an arrangement that was reasonably safe to the sixty-foot
level, and that, with risk, could occasionally be used to depths of
eighty feet.

Since they proposed to seek crisscross from west to east then from
north to south over the whole tableland, one starting point was as good
as another and the almost complete calm that had followed the morning
wind offered ideal conditions for working with the water-glasses across
the thirty-foot levels to the south of the dunes. And twenty minutes
after they had finished their breakfasts, their two mangrove-wood,
glass-bottomed buckets touched the surface that had seemed clear as
air, yet which suddenly opened new vistas through the bucket-bottoms.
The dinghy idled at perfect pace to the faint pull of its little sail.
Below, between the golden brown of the sargassum patches, the upper
plains of the reef were vast rock and sand gardens set with gold and
lavender sea fans and the richer, animal foliage of the drooping,
purple sea-plumes. Between the flower beds of the fans and plumes,
the sand showed as pale jade and amethyst in the dance of refracted
sunlight and through the perfect clarity of the water, through sun and
shadow, the fish swayed, black and yellow, pink and silver, gray and
blue. The almost invisible oil slick from the _Webber_ still trailed
an iridescent band across the Reefs--and out over the deeps to the
west--and occasionally blurred the water-glasses. Where the water
deepened toward the submarine cliffs to the east, the seascape changed
to formations of living coral that from the surface suggested a gently
rolling, autumnal countryside, but which was actually a labyrinth
of huge brain corals, fantastic coral-mushrooms, overhanging ledges
and purple caves, so difficult for a diver that it might take twenty
minutes of dogged climbing to traverse twenty yards.

It had been from the upper sea-gardens, three-quarters of a mile south
of the dunes that the three fishermen of Home Island had once brought
up the golden bars. But legend held that the sole survivor of the Three
Galleons had described the ships themselves as having foundered in the
wilderness of live coral on the reef's southeastern face, a location
also suggested by Old Captain Christophe's hurricane researches. And
there was also the possibility that in hurricanes such as that which
had torn the reef and wrecked the _Webber_, one or more of the old
ships might have been dislodged from its coral bed and thrown upon
the plain. In seeking the galleons, both in living coral and upon the
plain, what Henri and Joseph would look for was not a ship, but any
unusual variation of the normal contours of the reef, any dislodged
coral mass that might embrace what had once been a ship or part of a
ship.

After Joseph had made several dives to view odd formations or for
particularly good fans and plumes--which he lashed in bundles each
marked with a small balsa wood buoy to be picked up at the end of the
day--an added silkiness of the surface water and the tossing of what
appeared to be golden-brown leaves and berries showed dense sargassum
ahead, and Henri put on the makeshift helmet, smiled at his brother
through the glass and slid below. And, as always, he felt the utter
otherness of the underwater world that lay so close to yet so far
from the air-world of men. For while to look down was wonder, in a
manner one looked upon a world that lacked its third dimension, but
in slipping below, one suddenly became part of a three dimensional
fairyland whose sky was the surface of the sea.

Through some peculiarity of the currents of the great reef, the patches
of floating sargassum, many acres in extent, were seemingly an eternal
part of it. And their fields, that from the surface were flattened
carpets, became, for the diver, entrancing arbors of berry-clustered
vines trailing their foliage and fruit-like floats through green-blue
light against the flashing cobalt of the false sky. The floating weeds
tended also to hang above the heavier patches of growing sargassum,
so that, sliding deeper, Henri looked upon a wooded landscape in
which the attached sargassum forests were like small golden birch
woods, slender-stemmed and full of mysterious aisles that led under
the floating roofs of radiant foliage into the rich purples of the
distance. About the woodland growth of the weed forest, the sea-floor
lifted to mossy rock-slopes where the herds of the browsing fishes
grazed in place of cattle and the flowers were rose and lilac, crimson
and white anemones, while over all, the sunlight, broken by the ripples
of the surface, fell like golden leaves or flakes of pale fire. Then
as he entered the sargassum woods, the sunlight was shafts of gold
through blue-green shadow, or farther shafts of celestial lilac through
all the purples of Tyre. And even though the growing sargassum offered
little resistance, his movement through the enchanted growth was
necessarily slow, for as he edged his way inward, Joseph must maneuver
the lines and the hose through the masses of the upper weed-field,
and periodically the hose or the lines became entangled in the lithe
mass. For Joseph in the dinghy, the whole contest with the weed was an
exhausting struggle to man the pump while fighting endless yard-deep
masses of salt and slippery stems and leaves, combined with a constant
anxiety for his diver whom he could no longer "fish." But to Henri, on
the dappled surface of the reef below, the maneuvering of the gear
was an entrancing thing. Now he would be looking up only at a golden
and amber roof of stage-setting foliage, then Joseph would push the
masses apart, and blue of sapphires broke through, while, at the same
moment, showers of tiny fish and semi-transparent shrimps and crabs
scattered through the sunbeams. As suddenly, a myriad larger fish were
there, whirling and darting to an almost dancelike rhythm through the
bubbles rising from his helmet and between the weed-trails and over the
forest floor. Then Joseph would let the aperture close, the water of
the forest resumed its normal turquoise shadow and every fish was gone!
The whole thing was pure magic as if one walked through the golden
witch-woods of the fairytales of childhood, Henri thought.

He was exploring a particularly dense part of the wood, when he was
startled to see the gleam of seemingly pure gold between the weed
trails some twenty feet away. The impression of precious metal was so
strong that for a moment he did not reason that only in the mint could
gold have this perfect and virgin glitter. And he almost ran toward
it--only to see that it was a great, golden grouper amongst the darker
flock of its normally brown and mottled fellows. Hanging motionless
in the buoyancy of the water, the radiant but evil-countenanced fish
seemed almost alight, pure-coined as some Pagan image, and its final
retreat through the forest had the effect of a harvest moon sailing
between shadowy trees.

Henri had often seen the strange, golden giants in the Pacific, but
never before in the Caribbean, nor ever one as intensely metallic. And
he smiled, but accepted it as a good omen, even following it until it
drifted downward into the blue darkness that closed over the diver's
death trap of the reefs' western pitch.

       *       *       *       *       *

The process of systematic search was endless, beautiful and an exercise
of patience. While their steady collection of marine specimens
maintained a practical element in their labor, they encountered one
of the difficulties of the treasure-seeker in that through the mere
fact that they watched for the galleons, they had come to believe in
the galleons and tended to hurry toward what imagination pictured as
lying over the next ledge, in the next sargassum wood, just beyond the
immediate range of visibility. There was also the irrepressible hope
that the sea-floor might tell them something of what had befallen on
the sea's face by reason of which the sponges were not claimed, even
that they might learn what the suit diver had sought or done or feared.
Because the imagined find seemed so visible, the hoped solution of
mystery so certain, constant care must be used to avoid counting an
area as searched--and hurrying on--before the first area was truly
known. Hunches beset them. They felt the pull of signs and omens such
as children follow: the unexpected blowing of a blade of salt-grass,
the direction taken by Henri's golden fish. So that reason must warn
imagination, "Yard-by-yard! There may be nothing here but the little
finds of yard-by-yard! You must not hurry for what may not exist!"

The dancing, undersea landscape became more minutely familiar to
them than the upper world of air and sun and cloud in which serenely
burning days came up and died. And they worked from the first gleam of
steel-blue light to the last flame of sunset that dyed the sea with
wine, so that toward the west, the descending contours of the reef
seemed wrinkled crimson velvet sinking in port wine. And the sea told
them old and strange stories; as through an old anchor deep-pronged
in the coral and fastened to a two-fathom chain ending in a twisted
and broken link, speaking of a desperately dragging ship hurled who
knew whither by the winds; as in sand-buried, coral-bracted skeletons
of ships too old to be of record, but still too recent to be treasure
ships of Spain; as in bars of iron or copper ballast strewn by unknown
disaster. They found blue caverns cleaving the surface of the reef and
sinking between weedy and faintly sucking lips to depths beyond the
range of light and even the suit diver's resistance to pressure.

       *       *       *       *       *

At evening of the sixth day, they were hauling in their buoyed bunches
of fans and plumes, when a sail appeared to southward as a red-gold
spark in the great flame of sunset. The brothers stood dripping on
the sand and studied it through hands cupped like binoculars. "It is
Tobias' catboat!" Joseph said joyfully.

The approach of the sail was maddeningly slow in the almost unmoving
air and Henri said, "Let us start the launch and tow him in!"

The _Sea Lily_ and the catboat met as the sea took on its port
wine clearness, and as the boats rocked a few feet apart, Tobias'
close-wooled head and great shoulders were edged with fire from the
fiery sky. "I could not learn surely where they went," Tobias said in
his deep voice. "But Jaques and Christian did not die in hurricane."
He told them carefully of the matter, ending, "I sought to prove where
they went. But that waiting only for the gales to drop, they had left
in haste with their sponge haul, was all that the old Frenchman could
tell me. And missing you in Home Island, I followed to tell it." He
stopped, seeking words that would not seem a boast that he had been
right, and fearful also that through hope of proving Tobias unstranged,
he might still be wrong. "I have also a message from Madame Daphne. It
seems that the small Timothy has mentioned as further proof of his own
innocence that he does not believe Jaques and Christian ever returned
the treasure chart after Cap' Malcolm had lent it to them. Madame
Daphne says that you must not be angry with Master Timothy for none
asked him where he thought the map was, but merely suspected him of
having it." Excitement touched the organ notes of his voice. "M'sieur
Henri and M'sieur Joseph, the chart was of these reefs! Those who have
maps seek often after storm. Were it not very likely that Jaques and
Christian awaited the passage of hurricane to use the chart? Learning
that the hurricane from which they had been sheltering had crossed the
Purple Reefs, is it not very certain they came hither in hope that the
sea's violence had flung up trace?"

Joseph had turned sharply from his position at the wheel and Henri
was still with the tow rope in his hands while the dancing gold light
of excitement was in his eyes. "Thank you, Tobias!" Henri said. "We
must not hope too much, but out of the puzzles, you have brought us
our first answer! So that of one fragment of the large mystery we can
say, 'It was thus! Jaques and Christian were treasure-bitten and had a
map which their stern and practical wives would sternly have forbidden
their using. Thus they let it be thought that they planned merely to
work sponge off Gracias a Dios, while secretly planning to come here
after the first storm. Neither was there anything odd in our brother's
having lent them the chart if they desired it. They were men of the
Followers and if they wished to seek, he would know that they would
be honest as he with aught they might find. Almost we can say with
certainty, 'It was Jaques and Christian who had collected the sponges
on the dunes yonder and did not claim them!'"

"To me, it would seem that we might say it with certainty," Joseph said
thoughtfully. "Had the sponge fishers who came here carried sponge with
them, as Tobias tells us Jaques and Christian carried sponge, it solves
one other small thing that puzzled. For since the abandoned sponge on
the dunes must have been gathered after the hurricane, it seemed odd
that here, where sponging is poor and where it would be poorer after
storm, so much sponge could have been gathered ere the military men
came and barred the working of the reefs. But if the sponge-haul was
Jaques' and Christian's it would have been drying ere even our brother
touched here."

"And in that our brother doubtless knew of Jaques' and Christian's
plan to seek here after the first storm, we would also have reason for
his seeking sign that they were here," Henri said. "And should he have
found signs that they had been here and yet have failed to find them,
he would have questioned . . ." His voice trailed off. The two young
white men and the great black man wordlessly considered the problem of
the two unaccounted days of the _Christophe's_ last voyage.

"At the least, we owe Tobias great thanks for his great help," Joseph
said gravely after the silence. "He must also be hungry from the long
voyage."

On the beach as Joseph prepared the supper fire, Henri said, "We have
also had a thought in regard to your giant, Tobias." He knelt in the
level red light and drew in the wet sand, pressing in the pattern of a
footprint with his fingers. "Is that the large step?"

Tobias knelt upon both great knees to look long and closely in the
thick red-and-purple dusk. "It is the step," Tobias said. And the
hugeness of his chest swelled while his stomach muscles drew in and his
gaze swept slowly about the circle of dunes and sea.

"That is the track of a suit diver," Henri said.

And Tobias stood up so that he seemed black Hercules about to wrestle
the Hydra, while his lips stiffened and stood out like the lips of a
bull and he breathed as if he had been running. The last purple glow
lay across the bunched fans and plumes and was lilac on the sands of
the dunes against the darkening sky. Tobias asked, "It is your thought
that a suit diver was he by reason of whom Jaques and Christian, coming
here, did not come home again? He by reason of whom the _Christophe_,
touching here, went on a little way--and did not come home again? The
_Christophe_, bearing my son! I have never seen a suit diver, but it
cannot be that there are many suit divers in all the Caribbean!"

Joseph looked up sharply from the task of lighting the salty kindling
under the fire. Henri said, "We know only that the track of a suit
diver was here four months after the _Christophe_ vanished--as soon,
perhaps, as the slackening search for the _Christophe_ gave him some
slight privacy--and again just before our return. And that if the diver
were the same, that which interested him two years ago, interested him
still."




Five


As they baled the dried fans and plumes in the flickering light of the
fire amidst the great darkness, Tobias asked, "You think treasure or
the hope of treasure was in the loss of Jaques and Christian and of the
_Christophe_ that took my son?"

Beginning the packing of leopard-spotted, purple-lipped cowries,
Henri said wryly, "Save when I myself am looking for it, I do not!"
Rolling a magnificent cowrie in dried turtle grass he paused, puzzling
out his own thought. "By day, even when search makes one a boy, cold
reason says, 'Nothing but simple sun and sea and pretty fish could be
here. Great treasure finds are fancies of the stranged!'" He gestured
where all about them the sea and the reefs talked in the night and at
moments the night wind, cutting over the unseen knife-edges of the
dunes, whistled sadly. "At night imagination whispers, 'Yet we know
that Jaques and Christian came here--and did not come home again. We
know the _Christophe_ touched here, and went on a little way--and did
not come home again. Being West Indians, we know that the years and
the generations pass and the great treasures are not found. We know
how unlikely is even a hint of treasure. Yet the things that we know
happened with the _Christophe_ are not merely unlikely but seemingly
impossible. Suppose that Jaques and Christian, coming here to seek
treasure, did find treasure or strong indication of treasure? Suppose
our brother learned from Jaques and Christian of what they had found or
seemed about to find? Suppose that others learned--and believed? There
at least would be reason for greed to wish that Jaques and Christian
and those of the _Christophe_ were not! Or should it be that greed of
others had already harmed Jaques and Christian and that our brother
learned of this; there would be reason for both greed and fear to wish
our brother and those of the _Christophe_ were not! Men have killed for
greed! Men have killed for fear!'"

Pushing down the starched, purple lace-layers of the fans, Joseph
regarded Henri doubtfully. "What others, brother?"

"We do not know. But thanks to Tobias, we do know more than we did.
We know that it was here that Jaques and Christian came to meet
the unknown evil. We must try to know what it was! We know that
a suit-diver had secret interest here. We must try to know what
interested him!" He smiled at Joseph. "I know, if my brother Joseph
does not, that the Hereras were startled when Joseph spoke of the lost
sponge fishers. It takes a great deal to startle the Hereras--if less
to make them kill. But for a moment they were startled and considered
killing."

"The Hereras were in jail in the Republic ere ever Jaques and Christian
or our brother and the _Christophe_ reached here, Henri."

"The Hereras are not easily startled--and they were startled," Henri
said stubbornly.

"It is the suit-diver that most interests me," Joseph said
thoughtfully. "It could be that some thing that Jaques and Christian
found and the thing for which he seeks are linked . . ."

"Were a suit needed in regard to any find of Jaques' and Christian's,
Jaques and Christian must have found indication only," Henri said.
"Jaques and Christian had no suit. Thus if they found aught, they
must have found trace of some valued thing rather than the thing
itself--perhaps, as with the finders of the golden bars, an indication
that said, 'Somewhere still lies a ship from which I came . . . '"

"And we must seek without the indication," Joseph said.

"Yet the great coral beds where it seems likeliest the galleons lie--if
they lie--call for no suit," Henri said, continuing his reasoning.
"Thus, why a diver feeling a suit needed for tracing aught learned by
Jaques and Christian?"

Tobias spoke from where he knelt at the pile of sea urchins' skeletons.
"The hurricane here was of a great violence. That which was found by
Jaques and Christian could perchance have said, 'Here a ship was flung
up--and carried over.'"

"That could be. Of a certainty one sighs for our suits from the Pacific
whose sale paid our passage home," Henri said. "Meantime, we are
learning those spots where there is nothing that could interest anyone
save the good doctor at the museum. We are also piling up such good
sea things for him that one regrets wasting a day of the calm weather.
Joseph, should Tobias be willing, why do not you and Tobias continue
the collecting and the search while I make this mail run alone? The
Caribbean, the Channel, the Straits and the Gulf will all be like a
duck pond. The only long jumps are from here to the Isle of Palms and
from the Cape to Florida and neither will hurt me."

"One man in a launch is always danger, for little disasters for two are
great disasters for one," Joseph said hesitatingly. "Yet Tobias and I
could lay up many things for the good doctor . . ."

"I will not fall overboard with the engines running. Neither will I
break my leg nor develop the malaria," Henri said, grinning. "Let us do
it! I can deliver Madame Combs' messages to her husband, M'sieur Ashby
and attend to several matters in the Republic, then go to Jewfish Bay
and check if M'sieur Webber has returned. Thence I may be able to send
on the mails to Tampa while I go to Miami to do our business there. And
still I could be back in Jewfish Bay when you and Tobias reached it
with a load in Tobias' catboat. The _Sea Lily_ could tow the catboat
into Tampa--and we would be very rich! At least rich enough to be
utterly certain of paying poor M'sieur Latour. Tobias' share would, of
course, belong to Tobias."

Tobias, looking up from the delicate scraping of spines from the
exquisite skeletons of the sea urchins, shook his head. "I am comforted
to aid, for the aiding leads perhaps to knowledge of my son. But I want
no share. Money is very good when love may say, 'It will get this or
this for one loved.' But it becomes only very sad when the one loved is
no longer there. Let the money go to M'sieur Latour and to Domremy! I
have all I need, M'sieur Henri and M'sieur Joseph--and we will speak of
it no more!"

The brothers looked at him and respected his decision. "But I still do
not like you running the way alone, Henri," Joseph said. "A sailboat
sometimes a man overboard may grasp. With a fast launch, one little
slip of a foot on the deck that throws a man into the sea means he sees
the launch go away and dies very terribly!"

They argued for an hour before Henri and financial urgency won.

At midnight, with the _Sea Lily_ stacked with baled specimens, Henri
swung out from the Reefs. He had absolute confidence in his ability
to make the run, but as the faint pallor of the dunes vanished in the
night behind him and he was alone with the great dark of the sea, he
did sense the peril of a man alone on the sea.

He was pleasantly sleepy and rather pleased with himself when he
finally put the _Sea Lily_ into Ashby's hidden creek, only to find the
shack shuttered and both shack and mangrove banks silent to his hail.
Crossing the dock, he went into the mangroves to see if Ashby had run
for cover, followed a little path through the dense walls of green, and
came out on an even more secret arm of the creek.

Mangroves met completely over the water and another small wharf, but
there were signs that a rather large launch was normally kept and
serviced there. At one end of the dock was a weathered storage shed,
and looking into its interior darkness through a crack in the planks,
he caught but was unable to identify a rich gleam of copper. Ten
minutes of calling having produced no result, he wrote down Ma Combs'
messages. Then thinking of the little boys as they had stood holding
Ashby's hands in the rain, he added, "Monsieur, Madame, your wife,
loves you very greatly. While we said naught of the matter, it is my
thought that she would also love the little ones--for your sake and
theirs. Your friend, Henri Christophe." He slipped the note under the
door of the main shack.

Consulting the old man who had originally told them of Ashby's hideout,
he learned that the ancient surmised that Ashby had persuaded some
native woman on one of the creeks to take temporary charge of the
little boys and had gone away in his launch. Ashby had done this
before. The old man would like to have owned the launch, a work-boat,
but one of the finest and most seaworthy in the Caribbean.

Leaving the old man, Henri considered the fact that Ashby owned a fast
and seaworthy launch, that Ashby had shown anxiety at the thought of
Henri and Joseph working the Reefs--and wondered where Ashby now was.
Had Ashby's fear been for Henri and Joseph, as his words had indicated?
Or was it actually part of the fear that had driven him to the swamps?
In what manner could a kindly and unimpressive man become involved in
such horror that it cut him off from all he most loved and threatened
his reason? And what horror? Was it that Ashby knew what had befallen
the _Christophe_ and that the knowing was a very dreadful thing?

Fearing that he simply wasted fuel, Henri turned the _Sea Lily_ for
the little town where the Hereras had made their landfall from the
wrecked _Webber_, at last approaching the small port through the usual
wilderness of mangrove swamps and hidden estuaries--some of them very
deep in this area--that typified the Caribbean coast of the Republic.
The paintless little streets baked in the heat and a great sleep
was upon the place. But the alcalde, the small, fat mayor, woke to
apoplectic wrath when asked about the Hereras' sojourn in his town. As
Henri had previously been told, the town had no jail. And when the
Hereras had been arrested for drunken riot they had been placed in the
city hall. The effort at discipline had been notably unsuccessful. For
the Hereras had locked up the constable, obtained even more liquor and
taken over the building, transacting mock civic business of a most
shocking nature, including the crowning of a queen from amongst the
town's ladies of least repute. In his capacity as mimic mayor, Martin
Herera had made an official speech to the queen in which he thanked
her for her personal services to him during his campaign; having thus
cruelly embarrassed the actual mayor, since the speech was still quoted
by the town's coarser elements when they heckled him as he addressed
the townsfolk. Coinciding, as the Hereras' visitation had with a
stalling of the storm's forward march, during which the great terror
spun aimlessly, growing always in strength, the while the little town
endured long days of high gales, flying spindrift and great anxiety,
it had been too much. The mayor was now living only in the hope that
the sea scum would one day return to some strongly policed port of the
Republic, at all of which ports he had outstanding complaints against
them. But their abominable ship, the _John P. Riggs_, was giving the
Republic and its islands wide berth.

"M'sieur, have you record of the exact day upon which they left?" Henri
asked. The mayor needed no record. It had been upon the day the skies
became fully clear as the hurricane, having finally made up its mind,
swept far away over the peninsula of Yucatan.

Reboarding the _Sea Lily_ in the little, green-watered harbor, Henri
was trembling with excitement. For the time of the Hereras' departure
from the little town made it physically possible for them to have
been back upon the Purple Reefs when the _Christophe_ last touched
there. Whatever unknown thing had befallen upon the Purple Reefs by
reason of which Jaques and Christian had been unable to gather their
dried sponge, by reason of which, perhaps, the _Christophe_ had gone
on a little way but had not come home again, the Hereras had not been
behind bars when the thing befell. Yet, having allowed the physical
possibility of the Hereras having returned to the wrecked _Webber_,
surely their actions made it highly unlikely that they had done so?
Their interest in the _Webber_ had been so criminally slight that they
had failed even to report the wreck. They had shown no interest in
salvaging what was left of the _Webber_, and apparently held little
interest in the Purple Reefs, since they had not known that the
military men were gone. It was as if the possible cast of a drama was
taking shape; but what possible drama? How a plot fulfilled? Upon what
stage?

Hurrying his mail delivery in the Isle of Palms, he tried to turn every
power of mind and senses from the why to the how of the _Christophe's_
loss, passionately seeking answer to the seemingly insoluble riddle
that must have solution and whose solution must solve all the rest:
How might a ship be sunk under conditions where oil slick must have
shown, and yet have shown no oil slick? On the previous trip both
he and Joseph had been confused by the horror of retreading what
must have been the _Christophe's_ last miles. This time as the _Sea
Lily_ threaded the almost landlocked waterway that had been Malcolm
Christophe's course between the Isle of Palms and the Cape, he would
keep his mind fixed on the one question of the oil slick, asking of
every tepid estuary, every green channel or key-bounded bay, how--by
any combination of circumstances--a ship might have been destroyed
there without betraying slick? If a man put from his mind every
preconceived idea, so that his mind would not say, "It could not
happen!" but would ask of all the changing seascape, "How was the oil
hidden?" then, surely, mangroves and bays and estuaries must answer?

In most places the stagnant and leprous green bottom was actually
visible, so that even without oil it must have revealed a sunken
rowboat. While even from seemingly deserted keys and the stagnant green
hearts of swamps, the little cooking fires climbed, telling of watching
eyes and listening ears. And everywhere were sails of sponge cutters
or snapper boats or the nondescript and furtive small boats of the
retired; everywhere, as Tobias had said, the helmsmen watching the tall
skies and old men who slept little because the past was too much with
them. And as there was no mile of the run where eyes would not have
noted the wild glow of a burning ship, or men been startled by the
ground and water shock of explosion, even by putting aside these things
and assuming the impossible in granting that a ship sank invisibly and
soundlessly and where muddy waters would hide her rest, granting that
from unknown cause, her crew could make no trivial effort needed to
reach the always present land, assuming that no floating thing remained
or that all floating things were gathered up without the long labor of
such gathering being noted, there was still the betrayal of the oil
that could not be gathered up and must be seen! Accepting even some
version of the old captains' belief in pirate capture, the running of
a seized ship up some hidden creek, perhaps, where plank and iron,
machinery and men, were caused to vanish, still there remained the
inevitably escaping, seaward-oozing and betraying oil slick, smooth as
silk, delicate as rainbow, but shouting to men of the sea of disaster
of the sea.

As every mile of the hundred and forty miles opened before him, he
continued to ask himself, "How could oil slick have been unseen here?"
At the end of the hundred and forty miles, as the _Sea Lily_ took
the deep blue of the Channel of Yucatan, he knew that there had been
nowhere that oil slick would not have shouted its presence.

As the insurers had contended, it was as impossible that a ship had
sunk without trace on that course as that a ship could sink unnoticed
at her berth in a trafficked river and leave no trace. Yet the
_Christophe_ had left the Isle of Palms and had not reached the Cape.
Try then the theory that for unknown reason the _Christophe_ had gone
seaward. What unknown call, what unknown compulsion could have taken
her from her course?

With the launch breasting the dark whisper of the Straits of Florida,
he was still trying to think of reasons or compulsions that might
have taken Malcolm Christophe seaward. There were none that seemed to
him valid. Nor would even detour seaward and sinking over the greater
depths have placed a slow little ship so far from course or in such
conditions that the searching air forces and ships would not have found
the ever-betraying oil; the oil that would have reached the surface
wherever the ship sank and would have been found and had not been
found. And for the failure in whose finding there must be simple, all
solving explanation if the mind could grasp it!

He was exhausted by lack of sleep, yet filled with the strange joy
that he was about to see the girl again as the _Sea Lily_ threaded the
mangrove lanes leading to Jewfish Bay. There was shining excitement in
the winding green waterways that took him always closer to the girl,
strange and new mystery in the shadowed coves where floating mangrove
leaves made swaying carpets, friendly comicality in the familiar
pelicans that lumbered up before the launch. He was so eager to see the
girl who was a grown girl yet seemed a little girl that it was only
after twice falling asleep at the wheel and waking with a jerk as his
head nodded, that he put the launch into a sheltered pool amongst the
mangroves and stretched out on the deck to sleep.

Waking, as the mangrove shadows stretched long across the pool, his
heart beat hard against the warm planks of the deck. But the gray wharf
on the muddy little river was empty as he finally swung the launch in
under the bank, let the anchor go, then tied a sternline to the willows.

Suddenly, a pair of bare legs shot into view from the top of the bank.
"Hello," a rough, young voice said. "How's the rescue business?" And
the girl he had wished to see was laughing down at him. "I got a
glimpse at you where you come in from the bay." She dropped with a soft
plop to the deck to sit cross-legged, running her fingers along her
crimson toenails. "Where you heading for now?"

"Good day to you, Mam'selle. We have saved no one since we helped you
with the children," Henri said. "I came to learn if M'sieur Webber has
returned."

She did not look at him. "No. He ain't come back." She looked up and
her face was red. "I'm not at Tom's place now! I'm on my own. I'm
runnin' the café. I'm in business." Chattering like a happy child, she
told him repeatedly of the various features of the café. Her pride
and self-importance were touching. "I'm doing good with the café!" She
looked like a delighted infant. "Real good! They said I wouldn't."

"My congratulations. There is much pleasure in one's own business.
Mam'selle, you still do not know when M'sieur Webber will be back? It
is very important to me that I see him."

She looked down again, playing with her toes. "What you want to see Tom
for?"

"As I mentioned before, in regard to our family's lost ship."

"Tom doesn't know nothing! Tom wouldn't do you any good . . ."

"He may know something without knowing that he knows it," Henri
explained patiently. "At least, I must talk with him. Can you tell me
when he will return?"

Her eyes met his with a strange and pleading anxiety in them. "Tom
won't do you good. Tom's--bad medicine. You keep away from Tom!"
She jumped up and put her hands on his shoulders. "Don't go to Tom,
Henri!" Her face and voice were strangely urgent. "You want to find out
something, I'll ask--when he comes back. Tom's a funny sort of man."

He looked at her, puzzled. "Why should I not talk to him?"

"I don't know. Just don't! Promise me you won't talk to him, Henri!
He's just no good to you. Promise!" She was so excited that her lips
shook.

"I can make no such promise," he said. "As soon as M'sieur Webber
returns, I must talk with him, Mam'selle." He looked down into her
eyes. "He has not returned?"

"No! No! He ain't--isn't--back. You can't tell with Tom. He goes and
comes. I wouldn't fool you, Henri!" She moved backward pulling him
toward the bank. "Come and see the café, Henri! Come and have supper,
Henri! I'm a good cook. You can have beef hash and greens and hush
puppies and chocolate cake! Come on, Henri!"

He found her eagerness and her struggle with her English very lovely.

"The menu is most inviting, Mam'selle. But I do not have the money for
such luxuries and I cannot let a charming girl pay for my meal," Henri
said, smiling.

Her face fell. She sulked for a minute, then grew happy again. "Well
come and see my café. Come and have a cup of coffee! You can have a cup
of coffee! It's good coffee!"

"If I pay for it, then many thanks!"

Along the straggling street, she pattered beside him like a confiding
puppy. The men greeted her and the younger men eyed her overlong, but
the women ignored her. "They don't like strangers. That's why they
won't talk to me, Henri. They don't like my café and the boys liking my
café either! They just aren't friendly."

"You will forgive me, but since they seem conservative and in main
elderly women, could it be that they would be more friendly if you wore
more clothing, Mam'selle?" Henri suggested, smiling down at her bright
head.

"I wear less'n I did wear because they were so mean to me!" she told
him defiantly. After a minute she asked anxiously, "Would you like
me more in more clothes? Would you, Henri?" Her brown, child's hand
plucked at his sleeve. "Is that what you mean?"

"For me, you could not be more charming," he said, laughing at her
as she clutched his hand. "But too great lack of clothing may be
misinterpreted by conventional persons."

Her face was redly flushed as she looked down. "Your brother didn't
like me, did he? You won't let your brother or anyone turn you against
me, will you, Henri? Things the women say are just because I'm a
stranger and they're not neighborly, the old cats!--the hateful,
scratching old cats!" Her anger cleared. "There's the café! It's nice,
ain't it?" Her face was beautiful with pride as she looked at the
rickety structure.

"It is truly fine," Henri said, touched.

"I'll make coffee, fresh! Do you like your coffee strong?"

"Monsieur Talleyrand said that it should be 'noir comme le diable,
chaud comme l'enfer, pur comme un ange, doux comme l'amour'--'black as
the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.'"

She puzzled with the quotation, her hands busy at the urn. Even in late
afternoon the café was swelteringly hot and beads of sweat glittered
on the rose-flush of her forehead. "It isn't the busy time yet, but
it gets real busy when the loggers come in. I do all the work, even
the dishes, Henri. It's hard work, but it's not too hard. I don't mind
it." She pushed her wet hair back with her fist. "The loggers want to
help with the dishes but they clown and break them--I haven't told you
my name. My name is Rue. I guess my mother was sorry she had me." She
worked briskly at the urn. "Here's your coffee!"

The coffee was good, though he regretted the nickel for it. But her joy
and his own pleasure in watching her exuberant youth were compensation.
Feeling something of the treachery of one who seeks information from
a happy child, he also wished to make sure that she did not know when
Thomas Webber would be back. "Mam'selle, since you are no longer at
Monsieur Webber's Landing, you would know if he had returned? When he
goes to New Orleans, he perhaps comes and goes in his powerboat?"

She caught the last part of the sentence and her laughter rang, pushing
her lashes together. "Him go to New Orleans in a powerboat? We was
fishing once an' it blew a bit so we had to be towed in and he was so
scared he took to his bed for two days!"

"I had thought he was a great seaman."

The genuineness of her laughter could not be doubted. Then her face
pouted as a truck stopped outside. "The loggers . . ."

"Mam'selle, it was delightful," Henri said, rising as the first group
of loggers stamped in. "And my thanks for the pleasure of seeing the
café."

In the street that was growing cooler now, he puzzled over the report
on Thomas Webber's seamanship and considered the problem of why the
girl did not want him to talk to Thomas Webber. She was so altogether
openhearted, so disconcertingly frank, that he could not associate her
with cruelty or deceit. Yet she did not wish him to talk with Thomas
Webber. If he had not liked and trusted her, he would have said that
she was afraid, and for herself. Her anxiety had been disproportionate
to any simple cause such as a young girl's shame over a perhaps gross
relative. He also thought her free of the little pretensions of
schoolgirls. Under her play, was a suggestion of fierce strength; the
courage that had made her radiantly happy in the heat and hard work of
her café.

At the small general store he learned that he could send the _Sea
Lily's_ mail on to Tampa with the combined mailman and iceman, who
would also give him a ride at dawn to the Tamiami Trail where he could
catch the bus for Miami. He could leave the _Sea Lily_ with an old man
by the name of Pop Watts who cared for boats like babies. It was his
hope that by the time he got back from Miami, Thomas Webber might even
have returned; and the girl had made him more anxious than ever to talk
with Thomas Webber.

He was untying the stern rope of the _Sea Lily_ preparatory to catching
a fish for his supper as the girl's legs, clad this time in blue
slacks, again appeared over the top of the bank. On her feet were
scuffed and surprisingly small tennis shoes. Above the slacks, she wore
a long-sleeved white shirt. "I made a deal with the camp cook to feed
the boys. He'll use all the butter, but I don't care." She mopped her
face. "Where you heading for now?"

"I am about to fish for my supper," Henri said.

She smiled her radiant, artless smile. "Take me along!"

He said, "I am alone, Mam'selle!"

She stared at him, then laughed delightedly until her face went red and
tears were on her lashes. "What did you say?"

"I meant that I would not wish to embarrass you by in any way
compromising you . . ."

"You won't!" she said and her face was suddenly unlaughing. "If that's
all that's bothering you, let's get going!"

The launch dropped down the mangrove channels and headed out between
the bird-thick islands. Where the nature of the keys changed and little
white beaches appeared, Rue suddenly jumped to her feet. "Pink shells!
Let me get them!" She pointed to the sand riffles where shells like
pink moths lay amongst the coral fragments. Henri edged the launch in
and jumped into the thigh-deep water. On the beach, he gathered all
that he could find of the fairy shells, then waded back with the bright
heap in his cupped hands. "These were what you wished?" As he put them
into her hands, his own hands touched hers.

She laughed with pleasure. "Thanks! When I get enough I'm going to make
a shell necklace. They look like pink flowers in a real thick pink
necklace."

Where sand bottom showed like jade between tall brown weeds, he dropped
anchor and baited the lines, handing hers to her. "Lower to the bottom
and then pull up until the sinker clears." Hardly were the lines down
when he caught a fine grunt and she pulled in a muttonfish. When her
line needed rebaiting, he slid on a fresh shrimp tail for her, his
hands deftly large about the scrap of flesh as he knelt on one knee at
her side. When she had caught two more grunts and he three, he told
her, "I have enough now. I would not have needed as many as this save
that I am cooking some to carry tomorrow. But perhaps you can use more
fish for the café?"

"I sure can!"

They fished until the light turned to lead-silver and the sea between
the reflections of the sky was sullen green. As they headed homeward,
he said, "Hold the wheel while I clean the fish! Cleaning them is hard
for a woman's hands but easy for mine." Surprised, he saw that her eyes
were full of bright tears. He smiled at her. "Watch the sand banks!"

"What would happen if we hit a old bank?"

"We would be out all night until the morning tide," Henri said,
flicking the silver scales from a pink fish. Beside them the mangrove
walls slid by, black-green with coming night. To westward, the water
was momentarily flushed with rose and pearl, but where the ripples
from the launch altered its plane, it showed green as ink, all at once
suggestive of danger. Henri began to wash the fish in the warm water
beside the launch. Suddenly the _Sea Lily_ checked, reared heavily,
almost swamping her stern, lurched sideward and stopped. Henri sprang
to his feet on the tilted deck and saw that the girl had steered
on the wrong side of a channel marker. She was now staring at him
wide-eyed, her face so pale that, leaping to cut the engines, he said,
"Do not look so frightened! I should have been watching the markers."
Glancing astern, he knew a horrible moment in which he believed the
_Sea Lily_ might swamp completely, and then thought of mud imbedded
iron and possibly stabbed gas tanks that could result in fire. He said
calmly, "This is mud bottom. We should not be hurt and may be able
to push off." The further tipping of the launch indicated that this
was unlikely. Dusk was deepening and the falling tide pulled strong.
Hurried readjustment of the baled fans raised the stern. But in a few
minutes, it was plain that they were stuck for the night. Henri lit the
lantern, which did not contain much fuel, then waded for mangrove roots
and branches for a smudge fire. He said cheerfully, "We may as well
cheat the mosquitoes. Let me move this bale to make room for the smoke
pot!"

Perched on the gunwale and chattering like a myna bird, she asked,
"Frenchies are great love makers, aren't they, Henri? I guess I should
be frightened, should I, Henri?"

Holding a bale of fans, he stood still. "I trust that Frenchmen are not
deficient in love, Mam'selle." His face grew red with anger, "But if
your meaning is what I think it is, I do not seduce young children!" He
turned his back upon her, swinging the fans to the cabin-top. "Though
you doubt it, there are also some standards of conduct in regard to a
woman with whom one is accidentally placed alone for a night!"

"It--weren't accident, Henri. I ran the wrong side of the marker on
purpose."

He whirled to face her. "You what?" Rage stopped his voice.

She was down off her perch to throw her arms round his shoulders, her
head pressed into the curve of his shoulder. "Henri, I didn't want to
go back!" Her arms tightened. "I just didn't want to say good-by! I
just wanted to go on seeing you! I wanted most to have you talk to me.
No one ever talked to me like you--like I mattered . . ."

He lifted her, somewhat violently, back to the gunwale. "Do you know
that many people depend on this launch? Do you know that you could have
wrecked it had there been old iron or roots in the mud, that a gas
tank could have been pierced and fired, that I am responsible for the
launch and that, were it lost, I could not look my brother in the face?
Mam'selle, how dared you . . ."

She mumbled, "I'm sorry . . ." Her gold head dropped on her knees
and she wept. The tears were not, he decided, a woman's appeal for
sympathy. They were disproportionate and complete despair. She sobbed
as if she was heartbroken, with choking, gulping sobs that became a
sort of crooning of desolation. He knelt down beside her and lifted
her face. "Do not weep so! You should not be, but you are forgiven."
The desolate sound continued. Tears in surprising flood ran steadily
down her cheeks while her face was puckered as little Timothy's in his
moments of misinterpretation by the family. "I didn't mean to hurt
the launch . . . I never thought about it might turn over or catch
fire . . . I only wanted to stick it!"

"You are probably incapable of thinking of anything and should not be
blamed. It has not turned over or caught fire."

"You hate me!"

"I should and do not! I simply set you amongst the mysteries."

Her eyes were swollen almost shut, her lashes stuck together in spikes
and her nose and cheeks were red as those of a weeping child, but the
beginning of a shaken smile quivered on her lips. He stood up. "Do you
know how to work a Primus stove?"

Her head was still bowed. "No. But I can mix good pancakes--you light
the stove . . ."

"Very well." He knelt to light the stove. "Perhaps you can show me some
new ways with pancakes?"

She was utterly happy again.

They ate pancakes and crisp-crusted fried fish amongst rolling smoke
into which the mosquitoes still fought. From misting smoke, and
drinking coffee that tasted of mangrove smoke, she said, "This is the
nicest time I ever had, Henri! You are nice, Henri! No one ever baited
hooks and got shells for me before. Tell me about the island, Henri!"

He told her. And of the family and Aunt Caroline's hair; of Domremy
that was steel-blue dawns when the roses dripped with dew, and where
beyond a kind woman in the doorway, smiled the laughter, the kindness
and the childishness of the generations.

She said, "My folks were sharecroppers, then fruit tramps. We never
stayed."

"Domremy is very poor but the house was planned by the greatest
architect of France. It is our hope to paint it again as it was in the
days of the Great Marquis, pink to match the roses and white to match
the jasmines. But even without paint, the family loves it and the
little ones learn their bows and their Latin and are growing up with
good manners and learn to sing the little French songs."

"My ma and pa and then my ma and step-pas fought-it-up and the manners
the kids learned was keeping out from underfoot and dodging a belt on
the head. Fruit tramps move too fast for manners. It must be nice to
stay and to matter, Henri! There wasn't time for me to matter."

To a child-loving Christophe there was something almost incredible and
terribly moving in an unwanted child getting out from underfoot. He
said gravely, "I am sorry, little Rue! Little children should matter."

"I got to school six months in Mississippi. The teacher was a pretty
lady with black hair. She said I was pretty and smart, but we moved
along. I'm learning to speak good, Henri. I'm learning to read and
write good, Henri. I can read even long words now." Her laughter
bubbled. "The first book I read to myself there was a man in it called
Joseph. I thought it was Jopeth. I used to spell out with my finger
'And Jopeth said . . . '" She dropped to the deck to sit curled
confidingly beside him, her voice a prattling torrent. "I always meant
to be someone, Henri! Not just a fruit tramp. I always said, 'I won't
be like the girls that go out with any fellow any moonlight night!' I
said, 'I'll wait 'til someone matters and I matter to him!' I never
even let a fellow kiss me, Henri! I never even let anyone get fresh!
Cross my heart I didn't, Henri!"

"That was both wise and admirable," he said, smiling at her.

"Who is Daphne, Henri? What is she like? Do you like her?"

"She is like a tall lily flower and soft music and all the words that
a man would wish to hear a woman say in love. She is the widow of
Malcolm, my brother, and I hope one day will be the wife of Joseph, my
brother."

"What am I like, Henri?"

"You? You are like a little barking puppy-dog that runs."

"A puppy-dog is more fun than a lily, Henri! A puppy loves you more
than a old flower!"

"No one loves more than Daphne," he said. "Also she has a great soft
laughter--but puppy-dogs are very nice." Laughing at her, he was
pleased to have decided what she was. It was a playing puppy.

"Henri, take me to the island! Take me with you!" She reached up and
caught his face between her hands, lifting herself until she put her
lips lightly against his, and her lips were soft and sweet. She smelled
of wood smoke and sunlight and soap and healthy life. "Oh, you Henri,
with your funny ways and your packet of fish to carry on the bus!" With
one of her lightning changes, she was now, he thought, a woman and
beautifully tender. She put her hands flat-palmed against his cheeks.
"Funny Henri, dear Henri, I love you! Kiss me, Henri!" He kissed her,
and her lips were all kindness and promise and astounding sweetness.
Then he broke the kiss and was on his feet, so that she stood with him.
He said, "Mam'selle, I have nothing to offer any woman. We are very
busy and I am very poor and there are very many things that must be
done for very many people before I can even think of love. Neither I
nor Joseph can marry until our work is done and the family safe, and
Joseph must marry first. I shall probably have a very long beard ere I
walk to the altar."

"You love me, Henri? You do love me a little bit?"

"It is strange and it is not proper, for we have not yet known each
other for five hours," he said wonderingly. "But as of the moment, I
think I do! And I wish I did not, for nothing must come of it--for
your sake and for mine! You understand that, little Rue? There is no
marriage for Joseph or for me until far in the future. By which time
you will have forgotten that you ever had a foolish minute in which to
put the launch ashore. You are a dear little puppy-dog and you will
have forgotten me before you expect it. Perhaps before I have forgotten
you. Now you must behave yourself and be no more trouble."

"I will not forget! I love you! I never loved anyone but you, Henri!
You are good, Henri! When I touch you, I touch goodness. Take me to the
sea island, Henri! Let me live there! Let me wait!"

"We cannot properly feed the mouths that are there already, dear. Also
you are a sea-struck child. Also you know nothing of me as I know
nothing of you. This is of youth and the big stars and the night, and
if you do not know that it is nonsense, I do! And that is well for us
both--and now you must be a good child and talk no more nonsense. How
old are you, Rue?"

"Sixteen," she said with her soft-haired head pressed against his
throat.

"I thought as much! Now you must behave."

"Kiss me to say you are not angry, Henri! Kiss me!"

She pressed her lips to his cheek as he turned his head away. He said,
"I do not kiss you because I am not angry--and because I have always
thought the Followers too stern, but now I know that they may be very
wise!"

"But you love me? You said you loved me!"

"I hope to be wiser with the dawn! You are too young to be expected to
be wise, but I am a man and I am hoping that God will permit me not
also to be a fool!"

"If you aren't no wiser in the morning--and the other mornings,
Henri . . . ?"

"Then I will be sorry for myself, since it is not pleasant to know
oneself without sense!" he said. "And it will otherwise make no
difference, for you are to forget all about this! Do you understand,
little one? This is a very big piece of nonsense. And if you love me
even a little, you will remember that when there is work to be done,
one does it, but that at times the days are hard, since a man wishes
for his own fire and the sweetness of his own woman beside it and too
much wishing stands in the way of the work." He put his hands about her
smooth face. "Since I have work to do, do not make the work harder!"

She sighed and stood back from him. "Henri--if you had not work to do,
would you marry me?"

"As utterly foolish as it is, I believe I would!" he said. "And
doubtless we would make each other wretched to the end of the world!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The _Sea Lily_ came off the bank, undamaged, on the blackness of the
morning tide. Stern-faced, Henri caught a bus as dawn was breaking over
the Tamiami Trail. As always, his manners were perfect, but he carried
a carefully wrapped package of fried fish which smelled appetizingly
through its newspapers and worked on the morning hunger of his fellow
passengers so that they began to sniff.

On his principle that if one is looking for a pearl, one looks in every
oyster, he struck up a conversation with the passengers, explaining
that the brothers Christophe sought word of their brother and of the
lost motorship. But no one on the bus had ever heard of either.

Through the confusion and aggressive newness of Miami, he went first to
the file rooms of the leading newspaper, where an elderly Englishman
in a wheelchair, who was amusing himself with the issues covering the
Florida Boom, remarked that he did not know what was making him think
of fish and chips in London. Since nostalgia is a sad thing, all too
familiar to the men of the West Indies, Henri bowed. "Perhaps, M'sieur,
you would enjoy a fillet?"

The Englishman, slightly startled, said, "By George, I believe I
would . . ." Regarding the very large, immaculately shaven and neatly
laundered but amazingly patched young man, he said, "Dudley Markham.
Have to live in the blasted sun--Bahamas, Miami--damned places fairly
indecent with flowers!" After that he simply pulled his plump and
rosy chins, studied Henri with intelligent popeyes and said, "Eh?"
or, "H'm." But before a liveried black man came to ask, "Ready, Sir
Dudley?" Henri had told the red-faced man the story of the _Christophe_
and of what Mr. Houston, Monsieur Latour and Aunt Caroline thought and
of his own idea about the oil slick, and even of the advertisement for
Aunt Caroline's wheeled-chair, which would have to be a very old chair
that they could do up.

"Damned interesting about your ship!" the Englishman said. "Offhand,
I'd say your old lady was on firm ground in telling you to look always
for 'much money'--some way in which the sinking of your ship could have
been worth a lot to someone or in which your ship's remaining afloat
could have cost someone a damn big sum! From the mechanical angle,
you're right about the oil. How it was done? Why it was done? One of
'em might jolly well explain the other! Find someone who stood for a
big gain or a big loss--or someone who could simply have worked the oil
trick--and whoever he is, if he's either, you can be pretty sure he's
both chaps!"

With his dark eyes grave between the amazing Christophe lashes, Henri
explained, "Apart from the fairytale chance of treasure, it had seemed
that the one source of great money--or chance that her presence might
have cost men great money--with which our little ship could have had
remotest contact was that there might have been some large insurance
fraud in connection with the steamship _Webber_. But apart from all
other things in the way, it seems that there was no shadow of fraud.
M'sieur Webber, the owner, lost heavily."

"Don't know enough about the other things in the way to give an
opinion, but intentionally wrecked ships haven't always cast shadows
of fraud either before or behind them! Seems to me there was something
about the _Campello_ case. Can't clearly recall it, but might be worth
your while to look it up." He stared with popeyed ferocity at Henri. "I
used to be one of the Chairs."

"Pardon, M'sieur?"

"One of the underwriters at Lloyd's, you young idiot! Not a piece of
furniture." He poked a finger into Henri's flat midriff. "What I'm
driving at is that usually when a ship is thrown away, the owners put
all their eggs on the seeming legitimacy of the wreck itself to make
the claim stick. Very occasionally, they don't. They don't bother so
much about making the sinking look good, but play it from the angle of
seemingly taking a loss. Your man seems O. K. from both angles--you
can't fake a hurricane! But, you read up on the _Campello_! Didn't
work. But basic idea was one of the nicest bits of fraud ever thought
up. Remember when I read it I was almost sorry it was spoiled by
little bits of carelessness--using Old Captain Fiery Lake, that sort
of thing." His popeyes stared aggressively. "If I was going to throw
away a ship, I'd certainly read up on the _Campello_ case and make a
few little improvements and damned well collect! Not impossible another
chap with a criminal mind like mine reasoned the same way! Read up on
it! Damned interesting! I've got to be off!"

With the black man wheeling the wheelchair, Henri went to bow the
Englishman into the elevator. A girl with an armful of papers smiled
and said, "That was Sir Dudley Markham, the owner of Asiatic Oil."

Henri said, "He is very nice, but homesick."

He was working through the files for the first account of the
_Christophe_ as overdue, when the black man came back with the empty
wheelchair and a card on which was scrawled: "You will please give the
'wheeled-chair' to Aunt Caroline as a small peace offering for the
sometimes questionable things England has done to France. D.M. P.S. If
I can help you in any way with the matter of the _Christophe_, call on
me or on my attorneys."

"You better take the chair, suh," the black man said. "Sir Dudley, he
has a terrible temper. Also he got several more chairs at home and
swears at 'em all fierce." He saluted and left.

Henri sat down on his own chair rather weakly. He tried to think what
Joseph would have done--Joseph was prouder even than he. After a minute
he smiled, set his packet of fish on the seat of Aunt Caroline's
magnificent wheeled-chair and knelt beside it to let his hands exult in
the chromium wonders. For once, he was agreeing with Joseph about the
wonderful goodness of people.

Through the balance of the day, reading carefully through the papers
which covered the dates between the first announcement that the
_Christophe_ was overdue, to the statement that official search had
been abandoned, he skipped only the social notes and the editorials,
but read the fishing notes, the lost and found columns and studied
the pictures. Girls peeped in to comment smilingly on his bent, dark
head and his great young figure in its threadbare clothes, but he did
not look up. Having reached the notice of the official abandonment
of search without having learned anything that was not already known
to him, he obtained the papers for the next three months, in one of
which a picture caught his eye. It was captioned "Garden Umbrella or
Hat?" And it showed a bright-faced small boy holding over his head an
outsize palm-woven hat and standing beside a pile of other enormous
hats heaped one on the other beside a canal. The boy, it seemed, had
been fishing far to the west along the Tamiami Trail and had sighted
a bunch of floating hats, still tied together with thatch-palm string
but considerably the worse for submersion, the hats presumably having
fallen into the canal from a passing truck. At the time the photograph
had been taken, the small salvager was attempting to sell the hats for
ten cents apiece to passing motorists.

Staring at the photograph, Henri was trembling with excitement. On the
_Christophe's_ last voyage she had carried such hats as those shown. It
had been for some possible trace of the _Christophe_ that had not been
recognized as a trace that he had sought . . . Was it possible that in
a bunch of foolish hats the one tangible thing from the lost ship had
been found? But how had it been found where it was found? Beside a road
in Florida, whose coast, on the last voyage, the _Christophe_ had never
reached? Having searched all the places the little ship had been, must
they now look for her--or for signs of her--in the Gulf she had not
entered?

The contention of the editor's elderly and female secretary that
the editor would not be interested in seeing Henri was incorrect.
The unexpected appearance of a threadbare young giant wheeling a
newspaper-wrapped package of fried fish in an extremely expensive but
otherwise empty wheelchair interested the editor at once. "M'sieur,
you must forgive my coming in this way," Henri said, gently holding
the secretary aside. "But if Joseph and I cannot prove what befell the
_Christophe_, Domremy may be lost; we cannot pay good M'sieur Latour
and it is a great problem how we may even feed the mouths!"

The editor, whose heavily modeled face suggested that of a sea captain,
shook hands strongly. "The _Christophe_ was my own pet mystery! I've
wanted to meet one of the family who owned her."

"Thank you, M'sieur. My present wish is if possible to see one of the
hats mentioned in this story."

The editor took the paper, but his eyebrows were restless. "Just for
the record, before we get down to it, who are you wheeling in that
wheelchair?"

Henri smiled. "It is a gift for Aunt Caroline." He told the editor of
Aunt Caroline's hair, clipped to help build the _Sea Lily_. "And she
has wanted a chair for so long so that she may again make the Ladies'
Gatherings in His Name as miserable as she used to!"

"One of the odd problems of the results of human conduct," the editor
commented. "Sir Dudley performs a kind act and a thousand miles away
innocent and Christian women have no premonition 'Aunt Caroline--on
Target!' H'mm . . ."

At the end of two hours of telephoning the editor had been able to
establish only the place at which the hats had been fished from the
canal, an ex-staff photographer remembering it because it coincided
with a fine bass hole. The family of the boy who had made the find had
moved, leaving no forwarding address.

"M'sieur, I cannot promise to pay you until we learn what befell, or
find the galleons. But would it be possible to run in the paper a
small advertisement seeking buyers of the hats?" Henri asked, blushing
to his black hair. "If I could but see a hat, I would know absolutely
if it was of Home Island. Could I show or describe a hat to the
weavers, they might even know if it was of those in the _Christophe's_
last cargo, for they tie off differently for different years and
months."

"We'll run the ad until we get a bite or until I know we won't," the
editor said. "There won't be any charge."

"I cannot thank you," Henri said. "M'sieur, would it be possible not to
say why we seek the hats?"

"Every newspaperman wants to solve mysteries," the editor said. "We'll
mark it 'Top Secret!'"

       *       *       *       *       *

Arriving at the Weather Bureau, still wheeling Aunt Caroline's chair
which he had been afraid to leave at the newspaper offices in case
the editor might forget his promise to save it first in the event
of fire, Henri looked about him with wonder and smiled at the chief
meteorologist. "It is strange to be here, M'sieur, and find neat
offices that might be those of draftsmen, yet know that in hurricane
the agony of oceans beats in this little room! Strange also to find
you a man who might be any kindly and ruddy man of business, when to
the islands and the seas your voice is so often the voice of life and
death!" He parked the wheelchair and moved to speak earnestly across
the desk. "As have all men of the sea, I have already so much for
which to thank you that you must forgive me for asking still another
favor--but was there anything of secrecy or of importance in the
weather observations with which I hear the bureau cooperated and that
were made upon the Purple Reefs some two years ago?" He smiled with
grim ruefulness. "It is one of the evil things of a search such as my
brother and I make that one sees phantoms where none exist."

Smiling, the chief meteorologist assured him that the observations had
been routine, agreeing with Black Tobias that the Reefs had been closed
simply because military men were of a great importance. He summoned a
towheaded young observer who had participated in the tests. Grinning,
the young man said, "If you are wondering if there was anything there
that might have interested 'an unfriendly power,' forget it! There was
nothing more secret than that the sun rises in the east!"

"Thank you, M'sieur," Henri said, returning his smile. "As I have said,
one becomes so deranged that while to seamen the men of weather are
almost dearest friends, I even came here thinking, These men too had
been upon the Reefs where our ship touched ere she did not come home
again. Could these men be guilty?'"

"The Hotel Men's Association would back you on guilt! We issue
hurricane warnings," the young meteorologist said dryly. "We are,
however, innocent of treasure plots or scuttlings."

"Thank you, M'sieur. One question that may be of great importance to
our search. While on the Reefs, did you note a quantity of drying
sponge there?"

"Sure did," the cheerful young man said. "It was a fine soft bed to
take a sun bath on!"

"No one came to seek to collect it--and perhaps was not permitted to do
so by the military men?"

"No one. I wondered about it. Only people who tried to come near the
Reefs at all were your father and the big black man."

"M'sieurs, this is the last question. It is my understanding that in
the southwestern Everglades, the flow of water is toward the southwest?
Could that be temporarily reversed by a hurricane striking from the
southwest as the second storm of the year of the _Christophe's_ loss
struck? So that were some object stranded on the beaches or in the
mangrove swamps of the Gulf it might be borne inland, perhaps halfway
across the peninsula?"

"With the water-level high, water could drive anywhere with the wind.
Particularly in a very wet storm and the second storm that year was a
soaker!"

At the Naval Air Station, the gray-haired captain who had supervised
the weather tests upon the Reefs was as kindly as the weathermen and
as certainly not a man to sink ships. Like the editor, he had closely
followed the case of the _Christophe_. He confirmed Henri's thought
that the depth in which a ship was sunk could not cancel oil slick. Sea
search had been one of his own specialties. Something of oil came up,
and up was the surface of the sea. Had the _Christophe_ sunk within any
area she could have reached from the Isle of Palms in the time elapsed
between her departure from the Isle of Palms and the search, there
would have been oil slick and the searchers would have seen it.

"Yet, M'sieur, they did not."

"Then, while I wouldn't put any store in the usual sea-rumors of her
having been seen afloat here, there and everywhere months later, it
would be my opinion she didn't sink in any area searched! And as every
area was searched that she could have got into--and as she would
have been seen if she was still up and going--that doesn't help you
much. . . ."

"Joseph, my brother, who is a great strength, says that all that befell
must be very simple--that it but seems so strange because we do not
know," Henri said earnestly.

The captain had noted the washed and drying sponges and, while his
instructions had been to keep the Reefs closed during the weather
tests, he had been ready to pay the owners of the sponge-haul its full
value should they come. No one came.

The public library owned a book dealing with the case of the
_Campello_, but the book was out. And the librarian suggested a small
marine library in Tampa where even better histories of the case should
be available.

At ten o'clock, Henri and the wheelchair entered a moonflower jungle
on a vacant lot near the river to spend the night. A few yards away,
automobiles whizzed past but the open-air bedroom was private, perfumed
and shining with large white blossoms. It also commanded a fine view of
the sky. And having eaten the last of the fried fish, Henri lay on his
back and watched the low silver clouds sail across darkness and stars,
and flush pink and green as they passed the neon lights. He found
that he looked most often to the west toward the little settlement
where a girl who was a child would be closing the café with the noisy
importance of a happy child. Suddenly and with alarming tenderness, he
thought of her as she would be when she would have a child of her own.
Playing with a baby of her own, she would not sing it soft songs. She
would shout at it and shake it and laugh loud at it and the child would
laugh back at her, loving the crowing shouts and the laughter and the
youth of her.




Six


The Everglades were not a blue and running sea, but they too were
a sea--of water and of grass: limitlessly sprawling, shining with
light; each foot of their thousands of square miles rotting cleanly,
growing passionately as they had from the morning of time. Tremendous
sunlight beat upon them as Henri finally succeeded in loading the
wheelchair into a battered canoe in such a way that the canoe would not
capsize, and set out to trace the course along which water, driving in
hurricane, might have carried the floating but sodden bale of hats.

And having rounded the first turn of the widest channel that wound
generally south and west through the saw grass toward the Gulf, he
might have been the only man in a primitive world where the oceans had
not yet fully divided from the land. And he wished that the girl, Rue,
sat in the stern of the canoe as the first woman to splash young brown
hands in the amber water.

Once into the swamp, it was also easy to understand how men and whole
parties of men unfamiliar with sun and stars, had entered it and
had not been found again. Everywhere about him the little streams
and reedy lakes were blue with reflection of sky and dyed with the
stain of towering grass stems. Turtles paddled in dappled sun and
shadow. Alligator gars--of type so infinitely ancient that he had
been told that some scientists regarded them as the forerunners
of the serpents--fed voraciously, bonnets pushed up exuberant
leaf-piled-upon-shining-leaf and the yellow flower buds thrust
vehemently through their own leaves. Vast bullrushes quivered in the
sun and 'Glades hawks glided into the ribbon of blue above and zoomed
upward at sight of his craft. Yet, violently varied, all things were as
if one had seen them before. There were no landmarks.

As the great loneliness grew menacing with evening, he caught a fine
turtle, and where the reeds stood black against the wild orange hair of
sunset, made camp on a flat-rocked promontory, to cook a stew of turtle
meat and onions, using the turtle shell as his cook pot. With darkness,
a cold wind came up, but he thought of Rue who was golden warm as
sunshine. Her face would be very beautiful across a fire that would
light the perfect lines of the junction of neck and cheek and ear. The
proud roundness of her neck would gleam softly to little flickers of
gold.

On the third day, an Indian helped him by mapping in the mud an
unexpected southing in the direction from which the hurricane tides
came when a wet storm had flooded the swamp's arterial maze of creeks.
And toward evening of the third day he knew that he was near the coast,
for flights of pelicans replaced the 'Glades hawks while the water
in the rushy streams was salt. Always it seemed to him of increasing
importance where he would come out of the swamp, though reason told him
that there would doubtless be nothing but beach or mangroves to mark
the spot.

Then where the arm of a broad bay swept in a great circle between faded
reeds and wind riffles ran over salt water, pelicans struck the water
broad-breasted, to lift large bills, gargling a fish. And a wharf and
a group of buildings showed; one very large two-storied building and
twelve cabins, all paintless. Beyond the gray buildings, the marshes
spread, streaked with patches of small, blue flowers, but far down the
estuary and across it, a colored woman hung laundry by a small hut.
Nearer at hand, about the rickety wharves, tin cans littered the mud
and empty beer bottles were mixed with fish heads. Nothing suggested a
resort used by millionaires for fishing and the hunting of the deer,
but above the door of the large building was a faded sign: _Webber's
Landing_.

On the edge of the main wharf sat a large man with hair the color of
pale, new gold. He wore only a pair of tattered shorts, but his skin
was not sun-tanned but pale as a sheltered girl's. From a distance, he
was extraordinarily--quite astoundingly--handsome; then one noted the
paleness of the eyes whose blue seemed mixed with milk, the too-fair
skin, a sensual coarseness in the low-bridged nose and the overful
lips. Looking at him, Henri could understand both how his suggestion
of exuberant life and his blazing fairness would fascinate the port
officer of the Isle of Palms and how his pallor and his self-delight
would make Daphne Christophe feel that she could not have borne to
touch him. A less discerning woman might very readily fall in love with
him. Into the mind came certain of the ancient figures of Bacchus, that
were at once beautiful and corrupt. Returning Henri's gaze, he grinned
widely, showing blunt but strong teeth.

"Hello, hello, hello!" he called loudly.

"Good afternoon, M'sieur," Henri said. His own heart was beating fast
and he was trembling with suppressed excitement. For here certainly
was one of the last men to see Malcolm Christophe and the men of the
_Christophe_ alive. Here, so far as the balance of evidence went,
should be a perfectly innocent man, whose word could be trusted for an
account of that last journey. Yet it was to Webber's Landing that the
one frail clue of the hats had led.

The man reeled in his line, making flipping, overhand movements with
it, so that it circled in the air. "Welcome to Webber's Landing! Step
ashore! 'Home is the sailor, home from sea!'" He extended his hand,
while his mouth smiled grinningly.

As Henri swung to the top of the dock and they stood face to face, the
West Indian was only a little the taller. The large, fair man laughed
exuberantly. "Webber, Old Barrel of Fun, that's me!" His blunt white
teeth gleamed as he hit Henri violently upon the back, then threw a
heavy and well-muscled but silk-pale arm about him. "Old barrel of
fun!" he repeated, with his pale eyes and strangely fair-skinned face
close to Henri's. "A Frenchie, eh? From New Orleans?" His eyes were
sharply still with a question in them.

Trying desperately to appraise the man, Henri could not. Almost the
man seemed an offensive clown, yet under his fool's clowning was some
quality that could not be dismissed. But one could not tell wherein the
quality lay. It was a reversal of the shock of picking up something
that one expected to be heavy and finding it feather-light. Thomas
Webber should have been a flashing-fair nothing, yet he was much.

Disliking the close proximity of the man without knowing why he so
violently disliked it, Henri said gravely, "My name is Henri Henri
Christophe. I am the brother of Malcolm Henri Christophe, captain of
the lost motorship. It is of the ship and of Malcolm, my brother, that
I would talk with you."

A change as indefinable as the man's extraordinary personality passed
in Webber's pale eyes. But continuing to smile, he said, "A Froggy?
A Frenchman, eh?" He released Henri's shoulders and whipped up the
balance of his line. For so heavy a man, he was curiously light on his
feet as he stepped back as the line came in. He sang, off key, "Froggy
was a Frenchman, ate frog's legs . . ." He danced lightly about on his
legs that had so much irritated Monsieur Latour, and turned suddenly to
hit Henri between the shoulders. "Take no notice of me! Just Old Barrel
of Fun! Place is yours!"

"You are very kind," Henri said. His own trembling excitement
continued, so that he found it hard to keep his hands steady and to
keep his eyes from showing the knowledge, "Here is a man who, if he
would, might tell me!" He tried to feel what Webber was as he had tried
to feel the presence of animals in the jungle. He still could not.
Certainly there was nothing in Webber's manner to suggest the panic of
Ashby or the sudden thoughtfulness of the Hereras. Henri wondered if he
looked into the eyes of a gross and thoughtless but fundamentally an
honest man, or into the eyes of an accomplished natural actor?

He said, "You have a pleasant location and fine water here."

"Had big plans for it," Webber said, grinning up at him as he knelt to
unbait the line. "The loss of the old _Webber_ sank 'em, and the second
storm that year beat the camp up badly." He came bouncingly to his
feet. "Let's have 'one ham sandwich, all the way'! Then fire ahead with
what you want to know!" Henri followed him through blowing air and the
stink of fish heads toward the main building. The suggestion of large
plans suddenly arrested hung over everything about the place. Every
open space, every lean-to and even the outer walls were hung with so
odd an assortment of objects that only an insane jaybird seemed likely
to have gathered them.

Lounging against the wall so that she partially blocked the doorway,
was a frowsy girl with bleached hair. Webber put his arms about her but
she shrugged away from him sulkily. Whereupon he gave her buttocks a
resounding, flat-handed slap, and roared with laughter when she spat at
him like an angry cat as he went, laughing, into the room. Henri held
the door open and stood back to let the girl enter. But she shook her
head. Suddenly she shouted after Webber, "Why can't y' be po-lite like
him?"

"Me a damned, door-opening Froggy?" Webber said, and laughed as Henri
blushed.

The main room of the big building was hideous with a sickly shade of
pale green picked out in raucous red, while on the walls were displayed
the less-dressed samples of calendar art: fair girls thinly draped
in swirls of blue chiffon, dark girls ogling from leopard skins,
old photos of Mae West bursting bustily from evening gowns. "She's
something! Isn't she just something!" Webber said almost reverently
of Miss West. He turned back to the calendars. "Oh, what gals!" He
hit Henri on the back. "You Followers don't know what you miss!" He
explained what they missed and what he did not miss until the back of
Henri's neck blushed red. Webber roared with laughter, then turned
suddenly to face book-cases crammed with biographies and anthologies,
whose titles contrasted strangely with the room's color scheme and
the calendars. "Didn't expect to find them in a flophouse on a creek,
eh, Frenchie?" Webber asked. "Didn't get to finish high school--got
thrown out for chasing the girls--but know what those books say?" He
abstractedly crossed the room to the kerosene stove and was suddenly
still with a skillet in his hands and a strangely rapt expression on
his pale face. "They say, 'It doesn't matter a blank damn! If a man
can _think big enough_, he can get what he wants!'" He looked through
the high window at the evening sky. "They say, 'Believe it or not, one
of these days, even the old boys in us books would like to say they'd
known Old Barrel of Fun when!'" He touched the skillet softly up and
down on his extended palm. "One of these days, Frenchie, you'll say, 'I
knew Old Barrel of Fun when he was just a broke cracker in the swamp!'"

"I do not doubt it, M'sieur," Henri murmured politely.

Webber lowered his pale gaze from the sky and moved from his
wide-legged stance. He winked. He was suddenly laughing widely. Henri
could not tell if he had been laughing all the time.

When the meal of huge slices of underdone ham and canned beans was
ready, Webber shouted for the girl. She slammed into the room and
carried her food to the stove, where she ate with her back toward them.
Over her shoulder she said, "Someday I'll shoot him."

Webber ate like a wolf and talked with his mouth full, but he talked
of books and of history, of Machiavelli and _The Prince_. Henri was
astonished by his knowledge. At times, contemptuously and without
turning round, the girl said, "Huh! Says him!"

After the meal, Webber heaped the dishes in the already piled sink and
moved lightly to a chair opposite Henri. "I'm a bit of a clown and I
like the girls, but I know what it is to lose a ship! What do you want
to know, West Indian?"

"M'sieur, you were one of the last two men to see our brother alive.
Was there anything in any smallest manner strange in the _Christophe's_
last journey to the Isle of Palms? We have, for one thing, been greatly
puzzled as to why our brother searched for missing men of the _Webber_
ere he could know they were not ashore."

Looking full at Henri, Webber wrinkled his forehead and leaned his
pale chin upon his hand. "You know about Ashby and yours truly getting
to your island?" He grinned. "Where Old Barrel of Fun wasn't exactly
popular!" He grew grave, looking earnestly into Henri's eyes. "Well,
Old Webber has a lot of faults, Frenchie, but he doesn't like the
thought of men dying at sea! I asked your brother to look for the men
in case they were drifting and in bad shape. He said what you say, that
the sensible thing was to get on to the Isle of Palms and see if there
was word of them." He shrugged with self-deprecation. "I still wanted
him to look."

"Big-hearted Boy, that's him!" the girl said as a vaguely mumbled
Greek chorus. She got up unsteadily and made a vague gesture at Henri.
"Listen mister! I don' know what he's talkin' about--an' I don' care!
But if his mouth is opening, he's lyin'."

"Thank you, Mam'selle," Henri said, somewhat at a loss as to a suitable
reply.

"Open the door for me!" she commanded.

Returning to the table, Henri asked, "M'sieur, were two sponge
fishermen of the Island, Jaques and Christian, perchance upon the
Purple Reefs when you touched there with the _Christophe_? Or, if
not Jaques and Christian themselves, a trace that had indicated to
our brother that they had been there?" There was a slight silence.
But Webber's face was frank and undisturbed as he shook his head.
Henri's gaze searched his face. "I also wondered if the Hereras had
for any reason returned there after leaving the little town they had
frightened . . ."

In Webber's pale eyes there was a change, they narrowed and his pale
face grew startlingly paler, so that he looked like a man sick with
hatred. Looking with narrowed eyes above Henri's head, he spoke
softly, but with lips that were having difficulty with the words.
"The Hereras, eh? There's going to be a reckoning between the Hereras
and me one of these days! Oh, yes, Frenchie, there's going to be a
reckoning!" He stood up to walk lightly up and down the room while his
face worked and livid indentations marked the outline of his nostrils.
Pausing by the table, he gripped the back of a chair and the chair
shook under the grip of his hands. His face was vicious as the girl's
had been as she spat. "Think they can laugh at Tom Webber, do they?
Think a bunch of illiterate half-breeds off a filthy sand bar can get
in my way? But we'll see who laughs last! Oh, yes! We'll see! We'll
see!" Sweat streamed down the putty of his skin. Henri stared at him in
astonishment. He wondered if everyone connected with the mystery of the
_Christophe_ was slightly insane.

Webber appeared to return his attention to him from a long way off.
His eyes became more rational. "Sorry to keep you waiting, Frenchie!
No, the fine Hereras weren't on the Reefs." He shook again. He offered
rapid explanation. "Sorry to cut up." His lips curled inward against
his teeth and he breathed fast. "If it hadn't been for those bloody
pirates, I'd still have my ship! The little old resort here would be
finished! I wouldn't be living like a wharf rat in a marsh!" He grinned
palely, wiping his face. "No. They weren't on the Reefs, I haven't seen
them since they beat it from the wreck."

"The Followers have little reason to love the Hereras, M'sieur," Henri
said. "But they seemingly could not be blamed for hurricane or for the
ship's becoming disabled. With all their faults they are very great
seamen."

Webber looked over Henri's head. "They were drunk on duty. If they had
not been drunk, the Webber wouldn't have been lost!"

"You surprise me. I would not have thought that they would drink at
sea--least of all in coming storm!" He stood up so that they leaned
toward each other across the table. "M'sieur, forgive me, but I speak
to you out of the distress of a great loss and the confusion of a great
mystery. Because there is strong reason to believe that Jaques and
Christian of Home Island were upon the Purple Reefs, and because they,
like those of the _Christophe_, did not come home again, it would seem
that for someone it was perhaps a thing of life and death that none
make report of what befell upon the Reefs . . ."

"What are you getting at, Frenchie?" Webber asked. They looked at each
other above the hurricane lamp on the table.

"M'sieur, I will tell you the naked truth. My own thought was this:
That the most likely form of gain from the sea that must have no
witnesses is the throwing away of a ship. The ship upon the Reefs was
your ship, the _Webber_!"

Webber's face in the upslanting lamplight was undisturbed, even
ruefully amused. "I'd like you to get this straight in your own mind,
Frenchie, because I don't want you barking up the wrong tree! I asked
your brother to take us to the Purple Reefs on his way to the Isle of
Palms! Men in their right minds don't ask men to go where they have
something to hide!"

"I know that you asked that my brother take you to the Reefs, M'sieur.
The reasoning in my mind is that when he took you, all might not have
been as you expected it to be. I know the difficulties, M'sieur! And
that the _Christophe_ went on to the Isle of Palms, that you and
M'sieur Ashby left her there and still she went on--a little way! But
I know, too, that Jaques and Christian of Home Island were upon the
Purple Reefs between the blowing of the storm and the coming of the
military and the men of weather! Jaques and Christian never came home!
The _Christophe_ went on the little way and did not come home! M'sieur
Ashby, who was an exile but was not hiding ere he went with you and
with our brother to the Purple Reefs, has hidden since and is said to
be stranged with fears which appear to center upon you, M'sieur, and
upon the Hereras and the _Webber_ and the Reefs."

"Sorry to hear it!" Webber said. "I'd do a lot for Ashby! Where is he?"

"He fears so greatly that even his good wife does not know. There is
also the strangeness that Martin Herera, prospering greatly, made
jest of the loss of the _Webber_--and jest of you, M'sieur." Webber's
nostrils quivered and the whiteness showed round them again. Henri
spoke slowly. "The Hereras continued to mock until Joseph, my brother
spoke to them of Jaques and Christian the sponge fishers. Then they
took thought! It even seemed they feared." He paused. "If in all these
things that have troubled me, I wrong you, M'sieur, you must try to
forgive me! I might never have said them save for two more things
that puzzle. One I would not yet wish to tell you. The other was your
own anger against the Hereras. Also that I thought that you, like the
little Ashby, were afraid of them."

They looked at each other across the lamp. "I'm not mad at you,
Frenchie," Webber said. "I'm sorry for you boys! I can see why you're
chasing the wrong rabbit. Now I'm going to answer you two different
ways. First I'm going to answer you like I would if I did know what
happened to your ship. I'm going to say what I'd say in a court: That
you're a cockeyed islander trying to collect on an insurance fraud of
your own that the insurers won't even listen to any more unless you get
some halfway evidence! I'm going to say you're trying so hard to get
some evidence that you're catching as catch can and you've picked on
some crazy idea of fraud about the _Webber_ as a motive for the sinking
of your tub. I'll say you made a bad choice because the _Webber_ was
sunk by a hurricane and men throwing away ships pick nice calm water
near a handy coast! And I'll say you made a bad choice because the
_Webber_ was one of the few ships on which the owner _couldn't_ make
a red dime out of the insurance if the insurance was paid! And that,
to top the works, your ship was A one at Lloyd's and afloat and going
about her business--which was fraud--when Ashby and I left her at
the Isle of Palms! I'm going to laugh in your face as I collect for
defamation!"

He moved the lamp slightly, smiling. "That's what I'd do if there had
been anything crooked with me or the _Webber_. Now I'll play it the
other way--from the truth--which is that we both lost our ships, that I
know there wasn't any fraud with you, any more than there was with me.
That I'm damned sorry for you and I'll answer anything you ask and I'll
answer it straight! And you'll get further if you believe me, for if
you get off the wrong man you may get on the right one!"

Henri sat down. "M'sieur, I have asked your forgiveness if I wrong you.
I know the seeming improbabilities of which you speak . . ."

"And keep your eye on the biggest one of all, Frenchie! If you proved
I'd a hundred reasons for being afraid of what your brother could
say, you're still at scratch, for you couldn't show that I'm such a
cockeyed fool as to have let your brother get to a port where he could
have reported what he knew! Which should be pretty plain to any twelve
good fools and true!" He looked full at Henri. "Let's go all the way
and suppose I knew he knew something that he himself didn't yet know
he knew. Suppose he got to the Isle of Palms without knowing, but left
with the means of the ship's sinking in the ship! You still couldn't
show how it was done without trace!" He leaned forward across the
table. "Raise your hat when you meet an impossibility, Frenchie! The
_Christophe_ wasn't sunk without the heck of a mess of oil!"

"That is of all the physical mysteries the greatest," Henri agreed.
"But could we know the motive, we might know the way!"

They faced each other in the intimacy of the lamplight. "Look,
Frenchie, I'm a bad man by the standards of you Followers. If I
could have sunk the _Webber_ and made a profit--well, I might have!
I couldn't make a profit. The _Webber_ was a war surplus ship that
had cost a million dollars. She was sold to a bunch of crooks for
twenty-five thousand dollars--supposed to be 'war damaged.' Which was
maybe! The company that bought her from them gave eighty-five thousand.
She went through the hands of three different corporations before I
got her, with the price going up every sale. I got her for twenty-five
thousand cash--all I had in the world--and a hundred and fifty thousand
dollar mortgage. The insurance she carried when she was lost covered
the mortgage--nothing else. When she was lost, I was out what she was
earning and my twenty-five thousand cash!" He looked Henri in the face
with a bold and convincing frankness. "The only things need looking
into are what the government sold her for and my head!"

"I think I believe you, M'sieur," Henri said slowly. "One last thing.
Everything was peaceful with our brother when you reached the Isle of
Palms? He spoke of nothing amiss? Above all, he gave no indication of a
change from his normal course?"

"All was peaceful with Captain Malcolm Christophe," Webber said with
almost strange but impressive emphasis. "He said nothing. He gave no
indication of taking a new course!"

"Thank you, M'sieur."

"Exactly what you boys doing now?" Henri told him. Webber's eyes
narrowed as he laughed. "Wouldn't like to see you tangle with the
banana boys! Hope you weren't taking in bananas?"

"We took in one load from the Republic, but while we did well from it,
we have given up bananas," Henri said, smiling.

"Sure glad none of the boys learned you'd sold 'em!" Webber said. He
looked down at the table, tapping his fingers on it. Then looked up.
"Take my advice and quit on the _Christophe_! If nature did her in, you
can't prove it. If she was deliberately sunk, you're likely to find you
aren't around if you ever get near to proving it."

"We could not promise our father that we would learn, M'sieur. We
promised him that while we lived we would never cease to seek."

       *       *       *       *       *

Alone in the cabin where Thomas Webber had insisted that he spend
the night and that was clean, with a cement floor and furnished with
a single iron bed and a washbasin, Henri experienced reaction and
disappointment. He had waited for so long to meet Thomas Webber that he
had expected some great result from the meeting. He knew only that he
had met an extraordinary personality. Sitting on the bed, he put his
head in his hands, only to be brought to his feet by a faint scratching
sound as if a kitten clawed uncertainly at the wood as the door opened
fractionally. Through the crack, as he reached the door, the girl
with the bleached hair said secretly, "You wash out f' him!" Her
bleach-stiffened hair hung partly over her eye. What was visible of her
face nodded with even greater assumption of wisdom. "I don' know what
he's thinkin', but he's thinkin'!" She nodded. "You put a chair un'er
your door!" The pupil of her one visible eye slowly narrowed to an
expression of astonishing hate. "Someday I'm goin' t' shoot him!" With
her finger uncertainly on her lips she pointed with her other hand at
her temple. "Bang!" She looked at him for his approval then retreated
unsteadily from his view. He felt terrible pity for her and for the
foolishness of her attempt to be important.

Having blown out the lamp, he raised the blind and looked into the
windy moonlight. Webber was standing on the dock, looking down
thoughtfully at Henri's canoe. Even in the moonlight, his curled gold
hair glittered. His figure was strangely immobile, his clenched hand
supporting his chin. From the darkness Henri watched him. Webber was
thinking, concentratedly, silently, in some strange manner, alarmingly.
For almost twenty minutes he stood there without motion. Then he looked
up and he was suddenly smiling. He walked quickly back toward the main
building.

Before Henri lay down, he placed one of the heavy chairs under the door
handle so that the door could not be opened from without.

       *       *       *       *       *

The mists were so thick as he paddled the canoe down the estuary next
morning, that he could not see the isolated cabin of the Negress and
could only keep his course for Jewfish Bay because the mist was gold
toward the east and pearl gray toward the west. But he managed to find
and pick a great bunch of the azure dog's-tooth flower spikes.

The lovely vapor still drifted blindingly over the old dock of the
little settlement as he swung himself up to sit on the drenched planks
and stooped to tie the canoe. Suddenly there was a cry of gladness
and Rue was on her knees beside him, her arms round his neck. "Henri!
Henri! I weren't sure it was you for you were using the paddle instead
of oars." Her mist-wet cheek, fresh and silken as a child's was against
his. Involuntarily he put his arms round her and the joy of holding her
was the greatest delight of homecoming that he had ever known. He said,
"Silly little Rue, what are you doing here?"

"Every morning before I open the café I been coming here! I said, 'Some
morning, Henri will be here!' And you are! But, oh, I waited so!"

He said, "That was a very foolish thing to do."

"Every evening just before the loggers come, I run down--and after I
closed up at night! Every time I waited half an hour, but you didn't
come." She knelt back from him, running her fingertips lightly down his
shoulders and arms. "It's you! You're real!" Her arms went round his
neck again and he put his hand on the soft-curled head pressing against
his shoulder. Hiding her face against his shirt, she begged, "Henri,
ask me to marry you! I don't care if it's a thousand years to wait! I
only wants to think, 'Someday I'll be Henri's wife! Someday we will go
to the Island!' Everything I do, I think, 'Would Henri be pleased?'
If I get sad I think how good you are--an' I get happy! I just wants
it all to mean something because I'm going to be your wife. Say it,
Henri . . ."

He took her face between his hands. "Do you know it may be years of
waiting? And only poverty at the end? That I am not in the least the
good man you think me and that islands are very lonely and island wives
very much alone?"

"I only wants to know you love me!"

Tightening his arms about her, with his cheek against hers, he said,
"I love you, little Rue! If you are foolish enough to wish it, someday
will you marry me?"

Drawing back, she was quiet before him, but her lips trembled and her
eyes were wide. "Thank you, Henri! Thank you!"

He laughed. "Thank you, my darling! You have made a poor bargain."
Holding hands, they knelt in front of each other in the drifting mist,
smiling marvelingly at each other. He said, astonished, "I had meant to
say none of this. And perhaps I am doing a very wrong thing in letting
you love me, but I do love you, little Rue, as much as a man can love a
woman!"

"Only love me, Henri! Just love me--so I can think, 'Henri is a lot of
miles away in his boat amongst the islands, but he loves me!' or 'Henri
is far off in Tampa with a crowd of folks, but really and truly I'm
there too, because he loves me!' I just want to know, 'Maybe, Henri is
thinking of me!'"

"To judge from the great trouble it has caused me not to think of you,
it would seem you can very safely think that so long as I am alive!" he
said.

She jumped up, pulling him to his feet. "You haven't had breakfast.
Come to the café and have breakfast, Henri!"

He laughed down into her eager face. "I still cannot afford
restaurants, little Mam'selle. I still cannot let a little girl give me
meals without charge."

Her face was desolate as her name. "Please! To please me! Oh,
Henri, even coffee tastes different when we drinks coffee with each
other . . ."

He smiled at her, and held her tightly against him as he looked over
her shoulder. "Someday I will take you to Tampa--on a cold night when
all the stars are out. And we will go down the street and catch the
good smells from the restaurants and you will choose which one smells
the very best. And when we go in we will not choose the thing on the
menu which is economical, but the very nicest thing! And we will sit
there very royally and drink our coffee and watch the people, not
feeling that we must hurry because we had ordered very little!"

"Dear Henri! Oh, dear Henri!"

After a moment, he said, "Since M'sieur Webber is your one kin, we must
tell him of our betrothal, Rue. Also I wish to be able to say, 'I speak
for little Rue as her betrothed . . . '"

She drew back from him and all the color and glow drained from her
face. "No! No! No! He mustn't know! You mustn't tell him!"

He stared at her with puzzled eyes, then took her face gently between
his hands. "Why are you so foolishly afraid of M'sieur Webber?"

"Just don't tell him! Don't talk to him! Don't tell anyone about us,
Henri! . . . If you love me, Henri!"

His face was troubled and serious. "Little Rue, dear little Rue, do not
look so frightened!" She simply looked at him while her lips trembled
wildly. He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
"Tell me what troubles you." She seemingly could not speak. Trying to
reassure her, he laughed fondly at her. "What is it? Did you once steal
a dolly? Or perhaps took another little girl's hair ribbon?" He could
not make her laugh.

"Just don't talk to anyone about us, Henri!" Her face was imploring. "I
want it our secret! If you has a lovely secret, you mustn't tell it,
Henri, or it's spoiled! Henri, when I go to bed at nights I want to be
all happy! I don't want to be frightened so my hands hurt, Henri!"

"Dear little one, I could not think of you frightened in the night. If
I had my wish you would never be frightened in all the world! Merely
tell me, as I am sure, that you are not frightened because of anything
at all to do with the _Christophe_, darling!"

"Just I want it a secret, Henri. You mustn't tell a secret!"

He loved her the more for her foolishness. They had three days of
bliss made of fishing expeditions during the slack hours of the café,
of moonlight expeditions into the strangeness of the 'Glades, of
occasionally shared cups of coffee in the café. Everything she told him
of her life made him love her more.

On the fourth morning as he came on deck on the _Sea Lily_, Joseph and
Tobias were poling Tobias' catboat out of the mist that was drifting
gold across the river. "Joseph! Tobias! Come see what we have to
surprise Aunt Caroline!" Henri called.

After the wonders of the wheelchair had been admired, Joseph said,
"Henri, if the galleons were ever upon the upper tablelands of the
Reefs, I grow reasonably certain they are no longer up but over."

"Then over go we! Which means a suit and for convenience a small barge,
for which we could find old planking on the Reefs," Henri said. He
blushed deeply. "Amongst other things, while I waited for you, I did
up the canoe for sale and gave the _Sea Lily's_ fans and plumes their
fresh-water washing."

"It might be well if we washed and repacked the catboat's load here,"
Joseph suggested. He smiled. "I also see that Tobias wishes to try a
canoe."

Tobias agreed to trying the odd craft not because he wished for the
experience but because he much desired to know the exact route into
Webber's Landing in case he should ever need to return there swiftly
through fog or darkness should it be learned Thomas Webber knew aught
of Tobias' son. And he was memorizing the curves and distances of the
estuary when the large Negress spoke to him from the porch of the
lonely cabin. "Good morning, colored man. My name is Mammy." Tobias
looked up, frowning at the interruption. With pride in the independence
of her status, she explained, "Mister Webber and I has what might be
called a business arrangement. I was here before he came but the land
wasn't mine. He bought the land. Return for staying, I watch his place
when he is absent. He is absent now. So may I ask your business?"

"With M'sieur Henri and M'sieur Joseph, I look for my son and for the
lost motorship, _Christophe_," Tobias said.

She gave him a literally golden smile. "You just looks hungry to me!
It's 'most noon and the fried chicken is a crime for a widow-woman to
have to eat alone."

Tobias intended to refuse the invitation. But instead he answered
wonderingly, not having spoken of gentle things for a great while, "I
am a widower--it is very bad when for the first time one sets one place
at the table."

Unexpectedly seated at her table in the tiny kitchen that smelled
wonderfully of good things about to be eaten, he watched, astonished
that he was there to watch, as she made giblet pan-gravy and her
starched lilac dress and her starched white apron caught the sun and
the sea-gleam from the estuary and her face glowed over the stove. She
had nothing of the majestic beauty of many of the elderly colored women
of the islands. There was an amazing amount of her, but it was all
comfortable and kind. Tobias sat very straight in the polished kitchen
chair with his feet and knees together and the white napkin placed
neatly on his knees. It had been twenty years since he had sat tidily
while a clean, kind woman waited on him. He did not wish to shame her
by any table lapse. Yet it was as if they had known each other for a
great time as in comfortable silence they ate crisp-crusted chicken
with brown gravy, mashed potatoes, buttered green string beans and hot
biscuits with honey. The coffee was hot and rich with creamy top milk
from the white goat in the yard.

"My man was a good man," Mammy said as she served apple pie. "Tell me
about your wife."

Leaning forward, he told her earnestly, "My wife died when my son was
born. My son went with his hand in mine from the time that he was high
as my belt. But I would find it hard when I measured him against the
wall and was glad how he had grown, because my wife was not there for
me to say, 'See how he has grown!'"

She nodded in sympathy. "I know. It's the little things gets you. After
my man was gone, I'd be agetting on better, then it would be washing
time and there wouldn't be any big man's socks in the tub and not a
single big man's shirt cookin' over the fire an' I'd have to set spang
on the ground it left me so weak . . ."

"It is bad, too, that though one goes to the grave every Sunday when
one is not at sea, the face grows harder to remember, so that sometimes
one cannot see it," Tobias said. He had never been able to tell any of
this to anyone--even his son.

Mammy nodded. "I know. It used to hit me hard. Then I found there was
somethin' I always could remember. That was how my big old man would
put his hand on my head when I fussed an' say, 'Don't you fret, Honey!'
It was as if he said it when I fretted because I couldn't remember
him like I had, when I began to enjoy things again and felt sort of
wronging him. Just he'd say, 'Don't you fret, Honey.' I think everyone
who's loved someone would say that. It's as if lovin' all over was like
a one big good wish."

He told her also of the mystery of the _Christophe_.

Bowing hugely at the door as he said good-by, Tobias said wonderingly,
"It was as if the clock turned back and the world was good again with
none who have done wickedness who must be punished!"

"Redressing wrong is a powerful strange thing. Seems like the Lord
demands we give Him a boost in the business. But we has to be mighty
careful it isn't the devil we're shovin' up by doin' more than is
required!" she said.

       *       *       *       *       *

As the laden _Sea Lily_ towed Tobias in the laden catboat up the coast
toward Tampa the next morning, Henri steered and stirred the beans,
which the Christophes regarded with detestation but ate for reasons
of economy combined with a racial pride which led to the belief that
if beans did not poison Americans, Frenchmen were of even more rugged
constitution. Joseph, doing the laundry, listened to the details of
Henri's night with Thomas Webber. "He seems to speak truth. He even
seems kind, for all his grossness," Henri said. "There would appear to
be no reason for fraud on his part in the loss of the _Webber_. Nor
does anything in M'sieur Webber's way of life suggest sudden wealth."

Joseph sighed. "Against all evidence, I had come to believe that you
might have been right and that there might be insurance fraud with the
_Webber_."

"Yet M'sieur Webber is, I think, afraid of the Hereras. Certainly
M'sieur Webber hates the Hereras with an almost insane hatred. M'sieur
Webber swears that our brother was at peace and planned no change
of course when M'sieur Webber landed in the Isle of Palms--yet I
believe those hats were of Home Island! It would seem they were of all
likelihood hats the _Christophe_ carried. Seeking where they might have
come from, it was to Webber's Landing that I came!"

"The hats also could be quite innocent, Henri," Joseph said gravely
across the suds. "Even should they be hats the _Christophe_ carried,
M'sieur Webber could have bought them from our brother."

"The _Christophe_ did not leave the Caribbean, a man with a jay-bird's
passion for collection did. M'sieur Webber. The port officer of the
Isle of Palms described M'sieur Webber as having left the _Christophe_
with his sole possessions in a handkerchief. It was to give us
opportunity to check upon that that I refrained from telling M'sieur
Webber of the hats."

"Were there not so much of tragedy here, even slow I would find
something of comedy in the thought of a man with a yard-thick bale of
palm hats up his sleeve, Henri," Joseph said gently.

"I do not think that M'sieur Webber took the hats ashore at the Isle of
Palms--in his sleeve or otherwise. But baled hats do not fly from the
Caribbean to the Everglades! Yet hats that may be the first tangible
thing of the _Christophe_ are found in the Everglades of Florida. The
explanation may be innocent, but I would know it." He sighed. "It
can be that I clutch at a straw hat rather than at the straw of the
proverb."

"Because your mind goes very fast and mine plods very slowly, I tend
to think so," Joseph said, soaping the worn shirts. "I smiled when you
thought the Hereras more than playful. But as Tobias and I came north,
two sponge boat captains told us that the Hereras had been making
careful inquiry as to our schedules." He regarded Henri with grave
eyes. "They had told the captains that they had business to discuss
with us."

Since each knew what the other was thinking, they were silent as Joseph
rinsed and hung the shirts and Henri served the beans.

"Thank you, brother," Joseph said, dipping his spoon and struggling to
look as if he enjoyed the result. "Henri, could this be? That the wreck
of the _Webber_ was as innocent as it seems. That the unknown thing of
value or of fear upon the Reefs might be something entirely else? You
believe that both the little Ashby and M'sieur Webber hate and fear the
Hereras. From the suffering little alcalde of the town they wrecked,
we know that the Hereras could have been back upon the Purple Reefs
ere our brother and the _Christophe_ reached them. The Hereras are at
least capable of any lawlessness. Assume thus that through accident
they had learned of something they desired upon the Reefs, something
of very great value. Or that Jaques and Christian had learned of it
and the Hereras had learned of it from them. One hates very greatly to
think it of any men, but the Hereras are capable of killing for what
they wish! Assume then upon valuable knowledge and guilty act, the
added complication of the _Christophe_ comes. Our brother guesses and
cannot be silenced except in death. Assume the Hereras--who are wild
as natural force--running wild, should silence him and those of the
_Christophe_ . . ."

"Something of enormous value on the Purple Reefs? Something whose
possession was endangered by the presence of witnesses? But what,
Joseph?" Henri asked, grinning without mirth as he made Joseph say it.

"Treasure," Joseph said, blushing.

"I only wanted to make my practical one say the word," Henri said
grimly. "But why, then, would not the Hereras silence M'sieur Webber
and the little Ashby, since you assume them innocent?"

"Could it be that for some reason we do not know they could be sure
that the little Ashby and M'sieur Webber dare not speak? Could they
know that the sheer fear of the Hereras would keep M'sieur Webber and
M'sieur Ashby silent?"

"I, too, have wondered that. At the end of wondering, I cannot see the
Hereras trusting to men's fear when they could use the sea's certainty.
If they should let two witnesses live when they had reason for wishing
no witnesses, it would seem they must have had great need of those whom
they let live--and what need could there be, brother?"

Joseph groaned. "As always the impossibility!"

"It is now my turn to blush for the saying of something that sounds
most foolish, Joseph. The niece of M'sieur Webber, little Mam'selle
Rue, thinking it merely a matter for laughter, told me that M'sieur
Webber is so much afraid of the sea that going once with her to fish
and a small storm coming up, he was so very much afraid that he spent
two days in bed after the Coast Guard had rescued and towed them in.
How then, after a voyage of real terror, was he as a playing fawn upon
Home Island?"

"The girl must be mistaken," Joseph said, positively.

"The girl, I do not think mistaken!"

"But, Henri, the fact stands, at the end of a voyage to test any man,
M'sieur Webber, in the words of M'sieur Latour, did skip as a fawn in
the forests!"

"Unless there is some great error in what we think fact, brother . . ."

"What error, Henri? He made the desperate voyage! He skipped!"

"Probably it is merely another contradiction sent to torment us. At
least the thinking of it has helped us eat the beans."

"That is true," Joseph said, surprised. "My plate is bare and I hardly
knew that I was eating them!"

The rain showers were rosy against dark clouds to the east and Tampa
Bay a great rose of evening as the _Sea Lily_ and her tow docked at the
foot of the old brick-paved city. The customs officer informed Henri
and Joseph, "The _John P. Riggs_ was in for a load of bulls--the usual
floating menagerie! And Martin Herera was asking at length about your
schedule. The pirates had evidently expected you to be here."

"We would have been had business not delayed us," Henri said. "At that,
I had sooner meet the Hereras here than elsewhere."

With the sea things unloaded, Tobias said, "I will leave now." He
looked at the sky that was green and streaked with last rosy clouds.
"There will be good wind tomorrow. I will have collected many fans and
perhaps have learned something when you return to the Reefs."

"I do not like it that you should be alone on the Reefs, Tobias!" Henri
said, frowning. "We want no more men who do not come home again!"

"It was not Tobias whose words might perchance have troubled M'sieur
Webber," Tobias said. "Neither is it for Black Tobias that the Hereras
are asking in the ports."

They watched his catboat drift through shimmer of rose and green past
the lilac silhouettes of the great phosphate docks. "At least the
Hereras can hardly be delivering bulls to the Reefs," Joseph said.
"And they would have to be very much interested ere they would make a
special journey there."

"Were they interested enough, it is also difficult to know what all
three of us could do about the matter should we meet them in a lonely
place!" Henri said grimly. "Though why they are interested is beyond my
imagining."

       *       *       *       *       *

Tobias, approaching the Purple Reefs and the undulating sand dunes
from the north in the glitter of a hot morning, was tempted by the
thought of a bath before circling the White Dunes to the little bay.
So, anchoring the catboat where the swells were not quite breaking,
he removed his clothes and swam rapidly ashore. The white scrubbing
sand was less plentiful here, but he walked along the bleached coral
fragments to where a ribboned wash of the rare silica sand came down
from the inner dunes. Here he sat at the edge of the ripples and
scrubbed the majesty of his dark body and even his close-wooled head
with handfuls of wet sand. His flesh tingled to the pleasant sharpness,
and when he had rinsed, he walked to the dune-crest squeezing the
salt water from his hair and glowing with the good feel of fierce sun
through salt moisture. The sun and the wind were like caresses, and the
sky so blue it seemed that the frigate birds must disappear in its dye.
And while Tobias had no illusion that his son was with him, but because
it was his habit to speak to the memory of his son, he said, "It is a
fair day, my son."

His view toward the south and west was blocked by higher, wind-ridged
waves of sand, but to east and southeast, the submerged tablelands
spread into the sea-glitter of the east and the passionate colors of
the south. For a moment he simply fed his eyes upon pink and purple,
sapphire and gold. Then he looked more intently into the sun-path
that was blind-silver and strangely empty where, far out, the small
silhouette of the wrecked steamer should have risen from it. Wondering,
Tobias said, "The _Webber_ has gone!" He forced the salt water from
his eyes with his fists and looked through cupped hands as if
through binoculars and argued the matter aloud. "Perhaps she was more
precarious than she seemed or perhaps a line squall whipped up a fine
swell--yet I had thought she was pinned until the rust ate her or a new
hurricane blew and I would wish to sail round to see!" Tobias said.

Two hours later he was climbing back into the catboat, where the little
craft rode wildly outside the eastern surf, and was rehearsing what he
would tell Henri and Joseph of that which he had seen at the spot where
the _Webber_ had lain. He chose the words he would use, for he did not
wish to give false impression. "She has gone into the great deep. There
is a sluiceway where she lay. The green swells were pouring clear and
strong, thus having anchored my boat outside the breakers somewhat to
the north, I rode a breaker in to wade the foam along the shoal, well
nigh falling in the sluiceway ere I saw it. She may simply have carried
the coral with her as she slipped, but the coral is much torn and there
are flung fragments. It is my thought that she was dynamited from her
bed."

Having expressed the thought, he saw the foolishness of his belief. For
who would have done the thing? Salvagers? In view of the _Webber's_
location, the only thing worth taking from her would have been her
brass and for that no dynamite would have been needed. Neither would
any of the coast guards of the nations have troubled to remove her.
An explosion from natural causes, then, of some gas accumulation in
the ship's ruined hull? Impossible! Deliberate destruction of the ship
because it was in some manner a link with the unknown evil? But why
now, after so long?

"Perhaps because M'sieur Henri and M'sieur Joseph would study her
should they salvage her brass? Yet what might M'sieur Henri and M'sieur
Joseph have seen that the men of the insurance did not see? Wherein
might M'sieur Henri and M'sieur Joseph have been different?" Tobias
asked, his hand holding the tiller, his eyes regarding the white swells
of the dunes with new wariness as the catboat sped.

For if the unknown evil had again been here, it might still be here.
If it was here, he would not wish to walk blindly into its power, lest
justice never be done for his son and for Cap' Henri. And he knew the
exultation of the hunter closing perhaps at last upon the great beast
long hunted; the moment in which there is danger the hunter throws away
the caution of the years of hunting. Making himself reason, he knew
that since the southwestern bay was the natural entry to the Reefs,
were evil still here, it might well be within the bay. Thus he should
look down upon the bay before entering it. And presently he was wading
beside the catboat as he worked it up one of the small creeks of the
northern shore between narrowing five-foot cliffs of sand and sedge.
When the boat was completely hidden save from one looking down directly
from above, he dug the anchor into the sand and swung himself up the
little cliff, then cautiously and rapidly worked his way toward the
top of the nearest dune. Irritatingly, he was followed by wheeling
sea birds whose curious groupings broke up as he stayed still, only
to re-form as he moved again. And so that they would not too greatly
advertise his presence, he had at times to pause for perhaps ten
minutes until they went about their aerial business. Nearing the top
of the dune, he crawled on the snowy and wind-rippled sand. Before
looking over the final knife edge, he poured white sand on his dark
head. As his eyes came slowly above the crest from which the tiny,
endless streams of sand were blowing, he stiffened. Below him, the
dune swept down for perhaps a quarter-mile, ending in a small cliff,
below which was the circular beach of the bay. On the transparency
of the bay itself a fine powerboat rode. And on what little of the
beach he could see, was a litter of cooking pots, bottles, discarded
cans and disarrayed blankets. From under the lip of the little cliff,
bare human feet stuck out--some belonging to legs that were casually
crossed--while the faint blue of cooking smoke drifted in the sun.
Because of the sounds of the wind and the whisper of the blowing sand,
Tobias could catch no hint of voices, but the occasional movements of
the tiny dots of the feet, then a flung bottle, indicated that the men
on the beach were awake.

From his present position it would be impossible for him to draw closer
without too great risk of being seen. But some hundreds of yards to the
south, the crest of a dune swerved toward the beach and a much steeper
pitch of the western face led to a small pocket of salt grass fringed
with a low sprawl of sand vines. Tobias worked back from the crest,
then rose to run parallel with it until its sand summits swung bayward.
He was surprised to see that the columnar flight of sea birds was now
wavering over the dunes to the east.

Having reached the section of the crest above the salt-grass pocket, he
again peered over. This time he could hear the sound of men's voices
but could catch no words, while the men themselves were completely
hidden by the raised lip of the sand pocket at the cliff edge. Even in
the small hiding place of the sand pocket, there would be great danger
of his being seen. But he had searched empty sea and empty dune too
long to fling away the chance of closeness. He hoisted himself over the
crest and started on his belly down the pitch of snowy and squeaking
sand. Little avalanches rolled before him, but he landed in the salt
grass hollow without having attracted attention. And cautiously lifting
the vine tangles onto the sand-lip so that there would be less chance
that a man standing on the beach would see him, he tried to make
himself into the mere power of hearing as his straining ears recognized
three of the voices as those of Martin, Philip and Diego Herera. But,
to his chagrin, they were speaking in Spanish. And only when Martin
Herera and Diego Herera, unshaved and unwashed but gorgeous as to
handkerchiefs and earrings, rolled out from under the little cliff to
sprawl on the sand and it was easier to hear their words, did he learn
with astonishment that they were debating as to who had destroyed the
_Webber_? Why had someone destroyed the _Webber_? They, themselves, had
seemingly delayed the delivery of their bulls in South America--the
animals being unhappily parked with the _John P. Riggs_ in the Low
Cays--and had come here to check some matter in regard to the _Webber_,
only to be dumfounded and for some reason worried by finding the
_Webber_ gone. Being here, though bored, they were waiting for someone
or something that should have been here ere this. (Tobias assumed with
fright that they referred to Henri and Joseph.)

Old Geraldino Herera's deep voice sounded from under the cliff for
the first time. "Bah!" For it was said that the old man spoke five
languages, but chose English when he was angry. "Chatter! Chatter!
Yabber! Yabber! Have I begotten sons or old women at a cake-bake?"
he bellowed so that his voice echoed round the bay. "Once men acted
instead of talked! Now what pass as men talk instead of act! It
causes me surprise that my grandchildren are not dictionaries and
my great-grandchildren parrots!" He came into view as he rose,
clad in faded blue, short-sleeved shirt and blue dungarees, yet
more spectacular than his sons, a huge and dark old man with the
incredibly seamed face of a Polynesian chief and a humorous blandness
of expression that was belied by the known record of his appalling
cruelties. "Little girls, old women, chattering myna birds, be quiet!"
Lowering his voice, he mocked spitefully from his myriad wrinkles.
"'Who did it?' 'What was it?' . . . Is it perhaps the game 'Animal,
Vegetable or Mineral' we play?" He closed his great fist. "There is
only one question for men! 'What do I do about it?' And for a proper
man, that is a short question!"

"The money we brought to the Low Cays at least was long!" Martin Herera
said, grinning and also speaking in English. "Very and pleasantly
long . . ."

"Baboons!" Old Geraldino said, clapping him ringingly over the ear.
"And were you not baboons who played as baboons, we were not now
roosting on a sand bar!" He spat and moved stoopingly and hugely toward
the bay. And Tobias' eyes, turning momentarily to the sky behind him,
noted that the topmost eddies of the remote column of sea birds were
now farther to the north. So that he experienced a new fear, for the
thing that the sea birds watched was moving toward the catboat! The
number and persistence of the birds suggested that the moving thing was
no casual creature of the Reefs. And sick at heart, Tobias assumed that
some one of the Hereras must be absent from the group by the bay and
that even now, some Herera brother or cousin might be approaching the
catboat! But why so slowly, so cautiously? And if one of the Hereras
had been upon the eastern or northern dunes, why had they not come in
to report Tobias' coming, his excursion to the scene of the wreck? Was
it the thing the birds watched that Tobias should have been watching,
rather than the Hereras by the bay? Terrible anxiety filled him. But,
with the Hereras no longer against the little cliff, he could not get
back up the dune. He had trapped himself.

This filled him with even greater fear. For what if Henri and Joseph
should be unsuspectingly nearing the Reefs and he could not warn them?
He pictured the _Sea Lily_ as even now in view and he, Tobias, useless
as a jungle fowl pretending to be fallen leaves! Anguish made him
foolish. His hand exerted unconscious pressure upon the forward rim of
his sand basin and a strong rivulet of white sand flowed down upon the
beach as the forward lip of the basin began to lower before his eyes.
Old Man Herera walked toward him. "What have we here?" On their feet,
the Herera men pressed behind their father.

Tobias attempted to fling himself up the rooflike pitch of the dune,
but sliding sand defeated him. As he slipped ignominiously backward,
Martin Herera leaped to grasp him by one foot, the other Herera
brothers seized Martin, and with a combined heave, they jerked the
great black man over the collapsing edge of the little cliffs to fall
with a violent thud upon the beach. About him, the Hereras laughed,
pointed and commented delightedly as they would have laughed at the
capture of some large animal. "A pity it is not the old days," Old
Geraldino said. "He would have brought a thousand pounds on the slave
blocks of Cayman!" He toed Tobias in the side. "Get up, boy! What are
you doing here? And why were you spying?"

Tobias rose gravely from the sand as Martin Herera held the razor-keen
point of a shark knife against his belly and Philip Herera delicately
pricked the small of his back with another. "I gather fans and plumes.
I was hidden to see who was upon the beach."

"Where is your boat?"

"I have no boat. The boat is my partner's. He has taken our haul to
market." The lie came clumsily to him.

Martin Herera said, "He is lying." He struck Tobias flat-handed on the
ear. "Where is your boat? Who dynamited the ship?"

In Tobias' eye was a redness, but he said, "I have no boat, M'sieurs. I
do not know what befell the ship."

"He is a boy of Home Island," Old Man Herera said. "Old Captain Henri
Christophe's black. Boy, when do Henri and Joseph Christophe come? And
what do they seek here?"

Tobias was silent.

"He will talk," Martin Herera said, and smiled at the fire.

"He may or may not," Old Geraldino said indifferently. "In my father's
day, at times they told the hiding places of the other runaway slaves.
At times they did not and died, if those questioning them were careless
enough to destroy valuable properties."

With Martin Herera holding the shark knife against Tobias' stomach
and Philip Herera's knife still delicately pricking the small of his
back, Dominico Herera tied Tobias' wrists and ankles. The cord, Tobias
noticed, was good Manila instead of Caribbean thatch-palm rope and it
spoke of the Hereras' prosperity through the money of which Martin had
boasted. Tobias did not like being tied, but he was better off tied
than with knife wounds in back or stomach. And he stood still, looking
gravely downward at the sand. Neither did he struggle as a half dozen
of the Hereras seized him to dump him, sitting, by the pale ashes of
the fire. Martin Herera thrust back the ashes with a prong of driftwood
so that the ash-veiled orange and rose of the quivering coals showed,
sending out a small wave of heat. The other Herera brothers pressed
close, some upon one knee, some kneeling with hands on knees as men
gather about a game played on a pavement. Their lips moved and their
dark eyes danced as men's do at a cockfight. Giant Old Geraldino stood
by in casual interest.

"When do Henri and Joseph Christophe come?" Martin Herera asked. "For
what do they seek here? Was it they who dynamited the ship?"

Tobias' eyes looked past him at the green edge of the tide against the
white sand and at the bay in which today was a wide drift of sargassum
like gold filigree on jade. Because of the bigness of Tobias' hands,
Dominico Herera had not made the cord as tight as he might have and
Tobias was straining outward on it so that the muscles of his arms
bulged iron-hard under the dark skin. Old Geraldino smiled and spat
at the fire. The cord gave fractionally so that Tobias' big, dark
hands turned palm upward as if in supplication. Stooping suddenly, he
thrust his hands, scoopwise, deep into the hot ashes and little coals
of the fire and swung his filled hands to fling ash and coals--three
times--fast!--ignoring the agony in his hands, so that coals and hot
ash flew over the close-pressed circle. Shouting, the Hereras pawed
at their ash-covered faces, clawed madly at their hair and down their
shirts. They rolled and kicked, bellowing. Tobias jammed his wrists
down on the coals so that the cord flared, jerked outward on the
cord, and his wrists were free. He flung himself over and between the
swearing, shouting and rolling Hereras, and was on wet sand, into the
water. He did not wait to free his ankles, but swam fishlike with tied
feet. Behind him, about the fire, the ash-covered Hereras still clawed
at scorched hair, slapped out burning clothing, reached, yelling,
down their shirts for coals. Old Geraldino laughed jeeringly, rocking
backward and forward as he stood with his hands at his belt.

Tobias, swimming with all his strength, was into the first drifts of
the sargassum, which lay heaviest about the south sand-horn of the
bay but extended almost across the bay's mouth so that the powerboat
would have to circle it. Once into the shelter of the weeds, he
dived, swimming below the weeds and coming up only for air. Having
rounded the south sand-horn and with the Hereras still not in sight,
he surfaced and swam fiercely again, passed the first small permanent
water meadow of sargassum weed, and had reached the vast tangles of
the golden growth, when he heard the powerboat start. He dived and
swam beneath the thicker weed, then fought his way up through its
matting for air. Getting his breath, he dived again--and again. From
the bay came shouting and the roaring of the powerboat's engine. Deep
into the weeds now, Tobias came up softly, deflated his lungs to the
usable minimum of air, let his legs hang downward into the green light
of the water, tipped his head back and drew a covering of wet yellow
weeds across his face. So long as he was not troubled by sharks or
barracudas, he did not think the Hereras would find him. But if they
found him, he presumed that they were certainly angry enough to kill
him.

Against his eyes, the leaves of the weed shone pure gold and through
the interstices of the weed he could glimpse that the launch had
rounded the dune and that the Hereras were searching the smaller weed
patches for him. But if they did not assume that he had drowned, they
would guess what he had done and come to the great weed patch where
he was hidden. Yet, having guessed, they still could not bring the
powerboat under power into the great sargassum meadows for its screws
would foul instantly. They could enter the great meadow only by poling,
and could discover him only by laboriously parting the weed masses or
by prodding for him with the pole. He could still make it quite hard
for them to find him.

They were trying the first and smaller meadow now. It was some distance
away and he raised his face fractionally so that he saw more clearly
between the delicate golden, leaf-sprays of the weed. The Hereras
had the powerboat pointed at the swaying carpet of the weed as they
intently studied every foot of its surface. There was also something
on the bow of the powerboat that Tobias had never seen before and that
had not been there as the boat lay in the bay. Tobias thought it was a
fat telescope on a tripod, but Martin Herera who gripped the thing, did
not seem to look through it. And suddenly the thing emitted a slashing
blast of sound that was almost like sharp laughter, while from where
a small hump had shown in the sargassum meadow the swirls of foam and
torn weed flew upward as the startled flights of the little fish broke
water.

Tobias still did not know the thing's name but he knew what it was
doing as the Hereras whirled it at those humps of the meadow that
might mean that a swimmer sought air beneath the weed or chased those
stirrings of the weed carpet that might mark a fleeing fish or a
swimming man. He tried to think what he must do when it turned on his
own hiding place. But his head was aching with the too many thoughts
and emotions of the day and his hands were stiffening to hardly usable
agony. And while, as he thought, he was working frantically at the cord
about his ankles, so much of the tips of his fingers was burned flesh
that he had difficulty in telling what his fingers did. Yet he must
live to warn Henri and Joseph that the Hereras waited for them!

And then the cord was free. And as the powerboat spun toward the larger
fields of sargassum where he hid, he steadied himself so that no ripple
should mark his place and sank with back-tilted head so that only his
lips were above the water under the watery weed. Once the hiss and
splash and the torrents of the little fish bombarding his body told him
that the laughing gun had slashed at something near him, perhaps at a
swirling barracuda. But he resisted all tendency to move, and presently
could relax a little. And then, after taking the boat on one great
circle round the great meadow, the Hereras grew tired of hunting the
despised animal that had angered them. And as the freshening wind began
to toss the gold of the weeds, he worked so far into the sargassum
meadows that he did not think the Hereras would find him even by
poling. Actually, they did not even try this, perhaps believing he had
drowned or that their bullets had caught him.

From their distantly seen actions, he also judged that they were in
considerable pain and vile temper from their burns and that their
patience with their whole project had run out. But before they left,
they did a strange thing. They, who hated work, went out to where
the _Webber_ had lain, and moved, wading and stooping back and forth
through the water and sometimes staggering toward the edge of the deep!

When they finally left, it was to the southwest, on the course for the
Low Cays. And he felt great relief, for he had feared that they might
have gone to intercept Henri and Joseph in the _Sea Lily_.

He was so weak from pain, emotional strain and submersion, that, having
gained the shore, he could hardly stand. It also occurred to him
that he had not eaten at all today. But he had reached the point of
tiredness where he could not eat. Noting in bitterness that the notice
that had read _Needed by the Brothers Christophe_ had been insolently
changed to _Taken by the Brothers Herera_, he saw that both the cache
of gasoline and little Timothy Christophe's dinghy were gone, while the
emergency supply of water had been upset. Then, stumbling and falling
like an old man, he began the long trek back across the dunes. Often he
had to lie down, and having lain down, would fall asleep. So that it
was rosy evening with the night wind whining as he came out at the head
of the little cleft where he had left the catboat.

The catboat was gone!

Tobias stood swaying in the dusk. This was the place. There was the
same trail of pink-flowered vine hanging by the same twist of withered
gray roots. Peering, he could see the same horned and bleached conch
shell he had almost stepped on as he drew the boat into the creek. But
the boat was gone and the Hereras had not taken it!

The little, lonely wind sighed out of the lilac of the east. Shadows
rose round his feet. The dusk could not deceive him. The catboat had
been here and was gone.

Who had taken it? What had taken it? Was it not a man but a thing that
the birds had circled? Whatever it was, he was marooned with it under
waking stars and falling night. Turning slowly, he looked about him.
But there was only the pallor of the dunes and the leaden silver of the
blowing salt grass and the great sound of the sea.




Seven


Henri and Joseph, having said good-by to Tobias in Tampa, had
confronted their usual problem of what to do with the _Sea Lily_ while
transacting their business. "I could wish we did not have to leave
her anywhere!" Henri said. "Yet we are so pressed for time, we must,
and since we are out of the banana trade, there should be no local
grievance against her. It would also be ironic if hiding her off a
sandspit to foil bad banana men, we delivered her to a small boy
playing with matches." He hesitated. "Yet I am afraid whenever she is
alone! In truth, I am an old woman!"

Having irritated the dock watchman by requests that he ceaselessly
guard the _Sea Lily_, Henri set out to see Dr. Clifford while Joseph
went to collect their personal mail and to seek a diving suit at the
marine salvage company. And hurrying through the old streets, where
tonight the West Florida fog of mist and pine smoke crept thick across
neon signs and down black alleys, Henri again had the thought that of
all American cities Tampa was perhaps the most mysterious in dusk or
darkness, so that it was of America, but alien. He was glad to reach
the shell-cluttered innocence of the museum, where Dr. Clifford was
delighted by the inventory and even more pleased that they planned to
work the Reefs at lower levels, from which the museum had difficulty
in obtaining specimens and for which specimens he could pay at higher
rates. "The amount of the present check is so good that I can hardly
believe it, M'sieur. It has tempted me to an extravagance that I would
like to commit tonight . . ." Henri told him. "Would it be too much to
ask for a five-dollar advance in cash?"

"I could make it more if you want it," Dr. Clifford said. "What is the
extravagance?"

"Joseph wants a flute. If it is still in the pawnshop, I am going to
try to buy it for him. Joseph has had very little."

The flute was still in the pawnbroker's window. The pawnbroker, an
elderly and bearded Syrian, was behind the counter. Henri bowed,
producing the five dollars. "M'sieur, it is my understanding the price
of the flute in your window is fifty dollars, which is too much. Since,
however, I must offer you a proposition of trade rather than cash, we
will accept the too high price of the instrument . . ."

"We will accept cash or nothing!" the pawnbroker said, turning his back.

"Then, M'sieur, part of us will lose the best bargain ever offered
him!" Henri said.

"He will take the risk!" the pawnbroker said. ". . . What bargain?"

"M'sieur, for the flute, I will pay you five dollars in cash as binder
of the deal. I will place in your hands as security a chronometer worth
one hundred dollars cash in any port. In the next two nights I will
paint your ceiling with which you are making little progress."

"Two nights' work are not worth forty-five dollars and I do not wish my
ceiling painted."

"Two nights' work of mine are worth forty-five dollars, as you will
see! But were they not worth the amount, it would but make them match
the flute . . ."

"No!"

"M'sieur," Henri said, leaning his hands on the counter, "in all
fiction of the world the poor young man desiring to make a purchase
offers to trade his labor for it. The kind owner of the business is
pleased by his industry and initiative. We know that it has never
happened. That the kind owner throws the young man out--if the kind
owner is large enough--or shouts him out if the owner is a small man.
M'sieur, would you not like to be the first actual kind owner of a
business who accepts the poor but honest young man's proposition?
Always you could say, 'I am the man of business who really made a trade
with the poor but honest young man . . . '"

"Also I could say, 'I am the man of business who presently sends for
the police to rid his shop of a nuisance!'" He looked more intently at
Henri. "Parlez vous français?"

"Oui . . ." They relapsed into the more suitable tongue of commercial
bargaining. They alternately whispered accusingly, pointing at each
other across the counter, shouted and gestured simultaneously, or
sneered mockingly while moved to lightly ironic laughter by the
opposition's statements. At one stage the Syrian gripped Henri by the
collar. Periodically they produced the sound effects of a large group
of persons talking at once. Obviously their mutual respect and liking
grew. "I am worn down!" the pawnbroker said, raising his hands three
quarters of an hour later. "Three nights' work and the chronometer as
security and the five dollars down, and the flute is yours! My voice
can endure no more."

Short of breath but both highly stimulated by contest with a worthy
opponent, they completed the deal. "It is one of the sad things of the
New World that the making of a bargain was an art left in the Old,"
Henri said.

"In Damascus, one might discuss a business matter involving one sou for
three hours!" the pawnbroker said.

With wrapped flute, Henri overtook Joseph as he was emerging from the
salvage company. Joseph's face was alight with pleasure. "I have found
a good suit that needs only a little patching and with a really good
compressor and even a marine telephone, though that will not work. Best
of all we can hire it for ten dollars a month. There was also a thank
you letter in our box from the gentleman to whom I reported the finding
of the bottle he had set adrift. It seems his hobby is ocean currents
and, guessing that we might have been upon the Purple Reefs to seek
old ships, he has sent us a chart showing the less known effects of
submarine currents upon objects washed over or sunk near large reefs."
His face sobered. "There is also a letter for you from your friend, the
good editor in Miami. He has secured one of the hats and is mailing it
to you. But I would not have you hope too much from it."

"I will not," Henri said as they fell in step. "Meantime behold our
fine check from the good doctor! And here is something for you, Joseph."

Joseph took the wrapped package, with puzzled pleasure. Undoing it, he
was, Henri knew, ready to be pleased with whatever was within. Seeing
the flute, he stood quite still and the red of astonished delight
swept up his face. "The flute!" Joseph said wonderingly. He touched it
lightly and with much care with two stiffly held fingers of one hand,
as if it might vanish. "I have so often looked at flutes, but never
thought to have one! But you should not have done it, Henri!"

"The cash cost was but five dollars, my spending money. The rest is a
deal that does not concern you, prudent one," Henri said. "Go get the
caulking materials and fastenings needed for the diving barge, then
make horrid noises with your flute! I go to the library and then to see
Madame Combs."

At the little marine library, with the battered volume for which he
had sought at last in his hands, Henri was almost fearful of reading
lest the reading prove yet another blind lead. But while the book's
title suggested piracy, it was actually the strictly factual account of
certain of the world's more famous insurance frauds. Through it, "the
Greek owners" moved, frantically seeking privacy to sink their ships;
across its oceans, Captain Fiery Lake left his astonishing trail of
blazing vessels; in its manifests, cargoes of rare fruits and spices
proved baled rubbish and leaves, a three hundred and seventy-five
thousand dollar shipment of gold turned into bars of iron and
singularly unfortunate shipmasters had the odd experience of colliding
with the one protruding rock in leagues of sea, later to be embarrassed
by having left available the charts upon which the exact location of
the rock was most carefully prenoted.

The case of the _Campello_, which Henri's kind Englishman had advised
that he study, had first attracted the underwriters' attention
through the seemingly odd selection of Captain Fiery Lake himself
as a caretaker to see that the ship was kept safe from fire while
moored in the James River, a task in which the flame-haunted captain
somewhat predictably failed, when the ship was destroyed by burning.
The true interest of the case centered, however, in the fact the
further investigation--which might never have been undertaken save
for the identity of the caretaker, since the ship had not seemed to
be overinsured--revealed that the ship, whose original cost had been
around a million dollars, had been sold at a forced marshal's sale
for, incredible as it might seem, forty-seven hundred dollars, the
lucky purchaser shortly reselling her for fifty thousand dollars, the
company that had bought her for fifty thousand dollars, as promptly
disposing of her for seventy-five thousand dollars, for which last
amount a mortgage was accepted, payable over a ten-year period. In view
of the amount of this mortgage, the ship's insurance of eighty thousand
dollars seemed in no way excessive. The method by which the employer of
Captain Fiery Lake had stood to gain by the ship's destruction had come
to light only when it was revealed that (with some minor co-operation
from friends) he was actually the ship's buyer at the original forced
sale, the ship's buyer from himself at fifty thousand dollars and
the corporation to which he had sold her for seventy-five thousand
dollars and from whom he had accepted the seventy-five thousand dollar
mortgage, insured in his favor. Had the insurance been paid, he would
thus have stood to profit by the difference between the forty-seven
hundred dollars for which he had bought the ship and the eighty
thousand for which she was insured, the series of faked sales having
been merely a means of concealing the amount of this potential profit.

Reading the story, Henri felt a shock of disappointment. For while the
_Campello's_ history did reveal a very unusual type of fraud whereby
there might be great and hidden profit for a ship's owner at her
wrecking, the outward story of the _Campello_ was so like the outward
story of the _Webber_ that the mind must doubt whether any man would
risk making the hidden stories equally like . . . Surely no man would
risk too closely paralleling an already recorded case of fraud? Yet had
Thomas Webber actually been all owners and also the mortgage-holder
of the _Webber_, he would have stood to profit by some hundred and
twenty-five thousand dollars at her wrecking, or by the difference
between the twenty-five thousand dollars for which she had originally
been bought and the hundred and fifty thousand dollar mortgage for
which she was insured. Under which circumstances, salt gold, if in more
modern form than that of which the old captains dreamed, had certainly
lain upon the Purple Reefs at her wreck!

       *       *       *       *       *

In the smoky depths of the houseboat, Ma Combs' face beamed with
delight as she hugged Henri's young shoulders. "Oh, am I glad to see
you, boy! Did you see him?" Her clawlike hands dug into his shoulders.
"Whatever's amatter with him, Henri?"

"He was away in his launch, Madame. But I left a letter for him,
telling him of your love," Henri said gently.

She sighed and her hands shook as she filled her pipe and stuck it in
the corner of her mouth. "I guessed you'd told him that! Thank you.
Thank you kindly--but what can he be runnin' from, th' poor little
fellow? What can be the matter he comes like a ghost in the night
ashamed even to talk to me?"

"You mean he came here and left some message, Madame?"

Her face wrinkled with a strange--and strangely sweet--expression. "I
reckon you could call it a message. What it's said ain't told much!"
She patted the packing-case-framed bed. "Set down, boy!"

Accustoming himself to the odors of smoked fish and corn liquor, Henri
sat, noting the familiar shotgun by the companionway. Seeing the
direction of his glance, she said grimly, "They'll all get as good
as they give if they ever bother me! Revenooers or zoning board--or
brother Webber! He was here last night apesterin' me again like a pale
shark to know where my poor little guy is at. I told him I wisht I
knew but it'd take a better man than him to get it from me if I did.
Reckon he believed me. He ain't been back today." She grinned, then
was intent. "Henri, I don't know how or if any of it ties, but it's
said Tom Webber is thick with the Maffia, which some say controls th'
city, and as he has some of th' police in his pocket. It's said he was
in half th' little and middle-sized rackets here before he moved south
and started his grand resort. A man as thinks he's a little Napoleon
but can't fill Napoleon's pants is a real dangerous man, Henri. More
dangerous someways than a bigger man because he's always riled up he
ain't coming out quite what he thinks he is." She added tobacco to her
pipe and snorted smoke.

Rising to stand before her and look down at her gently, Henri said,
"Madame, as you know, mystery is bitter and Joseph and I also have a
mystery of why Malcolm, our brother, did not come home. I try to say
that I wish to ask you things that it may seem impertinent to ask.
Perhaps to tell you something that it may seem a breach of trust to
tell. I dare because we both have a great trouble."

The sudden film of tears stood in her reddened eyes. The smoke snorted
from her old pipe. "What you want to know an' say, Henri?"

"What was your husband's work before he had the . . . difficulty that
first took him from you? And what was the nature of the difficulty?"

"He was the best damned diver in the Americas!" she said fiercely.
And Henri's mind suddenly identified the gleam of copper that he had
seen in Ashby's shed. He also believed that he knew the identity of
the suit-diver who had been upon the Reefs. But why? He could not
see Ashby as motivated by anything save fear. And what could Ashby
fear upon the Reefs that he could reach or hide or prove only with a
suit? "And he weren't never bad!" Ma Combs said. "Just sort of a bit
outside the law. Like workin' for treasure companies that go for th'
rich suckers--with him the diver--so he'd keep 'finding' just enough
treasure to keep the backers happy. Nothing to hurt anyone. But then
the treasure outfit he was workin' for made a mistake of takin' a
mighty smart cookie for a ride. He up and proved the 'galleon' was a
tug wrecked in the 1935 storm an' my poor little guy drew a two-year
stretch for his part in it. He couldn't be shut in an' he broke out. In
breakin' out, another guy with him wounded a guard an' said my guy did
it. So he changed his name an' went down the Caribbean, takin' whatever
work he could get as did no harm. Like throwin' away a fancy yacht the
owners was tired of off Jamaica or sometimes just bein' real engineer
for around nothin' because his papers was fake. Months, there wasn't
no job at all. That was how it had been when Webber come to me to put
'em in touch. Seems I was wrong, but I supposed it was a throwin'
away. A diver is mighty handy to look over underwater damage to be
sure it's O. K. before the insurers sees a wreck. Seems I was wrong on
th' _Webber_ . . ." Her face puckered in changing lines and her keen
eyes searched his face as if questioning for the last time how far she
might trust him. "But someone--I don't say it had to be Webber!--but
someone knew the _Webber_ weren't never goin' to reach Tampa, Henri!
My poor little guy had changed his name, but he couldn't never have
showed his face open in Tampa. When he sailed on the _Webber_, he must
have knew the _Webber_ wasn't comin' all the way! 'Less, of course,
he was plannin' to leave her en route, which ain't likely in midsea!"
She stared at him earnestly. "I don't know who else knowed, if it was
Webber or the Herera guys or someone else altogether! But my little guy
knew! An' still he wouldn't have meant no harm!"

"You shame me that I did not think of that, Madame! He must have
known!"

"Maybe I've just thought of him more . . . Henri, I don't know what
happened to him. I just know he didn't expect it to be bad, but it must
have been awful bad! Henri, ain't you even got a guess what he's afeard
of? Why he can't talk to me or send fer us?"

Hesitating, he looked down at her worn, fierce face. "Just how much do
you love him, your husband, Madame? And how much do you know of life?"

"More than everythin' else I ever have loved or will love! Take all the
things that's good in a stinkin' world--bacon in the mornin's, fried
fish when the frost is comin' with sunset, a kid's voice laughin'--roll
'em all in one, an' he's more! As fer life, I been kicked around so I
know all there is to know--an' some more!"

"The reason that he does not let you go to him is not perhaps all
danger--and I violate a trust in telling you this! It is that he was
alone and the days were long and there was a dance girl who left him
when better chance came, so that he cares now for two little children.
If he were as many men, he would leave them. But he is, as you say, a
good man. He cannot leave what would not have been save for him. It is
a very old story of lonely men . . ."

She looked at him, then covered her face as her shoulders began to
shake, so that Henri stared, appalled. As she lifted her face, he saw
that she was laughing. She rose and he thought her ugly face very
beautiful as she reached up to hug him. "You big, gentle, young fool,
thank you! Thank you, Henri!" She kissed him on either cheek. "When you
catch up with him, you tell him if he had ten children I'd love 'em
enough for twenty! But it looks like he believed that letter you left
him, Henri." She beckoned and he followed her into the smaller cabin.
In it, amongst the plump tow-heads, two small, brown-headed boys were
sleeping. Henri had seen them last in the rain in the mangrove swamp
near the Isle of Palms. He touched their hair that had been carefully
washed and combed. "They was the most of the message he left," Ma Combs
said. "The rest was a note, 'They're mine, God help me, Ma! And God
forgive me for the worse I done.'"

Henri said, "Madame, you are a good and great woman and I am proud to
be called your friend!"

Smiling as she stepped back into the main cabin, she asked, "You got a
girl of your own, Henri? The girl that gets you is a lucky woman!"

He flushed, smiling down at her, but so happy that he could not resist
telling of happiness. "It is a secret, Madame. I have not even told
Joseph, my brother . . . But I have found my girl! The little niece of
M'sieur Webber, Mam'selle Rue!"

Her mouth opened as if she would speak, and closed again. She moved
to sit at the table while her eyes that were like intelligent loquat
seeds, studied his face with an expression he could not read. When she
spoke, she said, "This world is tough for women, Henri! Terrible tough!"

"That I believe, Madame!" he said gently. "Women love very much, and to
love is very often to be hurt."

Her foot in its old, man's boot swung thoughtfully and the smoke
snorted from her pipe. "One thing we needs to remember--man or woman!
We expects to love people for what they do--for bein' good an' kind
an' fine. It don't work that way! We love people because we love 'em.
So we don't want to say, 'He's not worth lovin'' or 'She's not worth
lovin' because he or she has up an' done so an' so!' If we love him or
her, him or her is worth everythin' there is to us, no matter what they
done! An' if you ever need help--no matter what--you ask old Ma!" He
looked at her, puzzled by her words.

As they said good-by, she said, "Remember it must be something awful
bad my poor little guy is afearful of, it must be something awful has
him, Henri! But tell him to come home an' face what he's afeared of!
And remember this is a wicked city!"

Whether because of her words or because of the clouded darkness
that was alive, Henri did not know, but making his way toward the
waterfront, for the first time in the search, he had the sense of
imminent physical danger. And as black shadow became a man smoking and
waiting without movement in a doorway--for what?--or onto battered
porches of dark frame houses, silent groups of men stepped to be
admitted into unlighted halls, he moved fast, keeping well away from
doors, while the muscles of his back were pricklingly alert under the
fabric of his shirt, as if the darkness was hunting and he the hunted.
His fears for Joseph and the _Sea Lily_ became so acute that when
occasional cars crammed with young, Latin men roared past and the men
were doubtless quite innocent young men returning to Ybor City from
some party, they seemed darkly menacing, and he knew absurd relief when
they did not turn toward the docks.

Very near the docks, a car passed him, coming from the docks and going
fast, with one man in it. He stopped and looked after it as it turned
south. He could not be sure if it was merely his mood that tricked him,
but he thought the man in it had been Thomas Webber. Continuing along
the way the car had come, he looked down the line of dock entrances,
and some hundred feet from the dock he was about to enter, a group of
perhaps twelve men were gathered under a light. Henri believed that the
man in the car had been with the men under the light. One of them was
now seemingly talking with the old watchman from the dock where the
_Sea Lily_ was berthed. The others were looking in Henri's direction
as if they had been waiting for him. As he began the long run down the
dark dock, he remembered Daphne's statement that Thomas Webber would
never willingly have part in true violence, he was too much afraid for
his white skin, but would rather stand laughing in glee while other men
were hurt in a prize ring or a sport, while were crime to be committed
he would have wished to be afar with a loud alibi.

Glancing back as he ran, against the faint light of the street, he saw
the men come through the gate, running silently but somewhat clumsily
because several of them carried things that swung. Before him, from the
_Sea Lily_ came the sweet tones of the flute. And as he landed on board
in a flying jump, Joseph looked up, smiling in the cloud-dim night. "I
have had my nicest evening," Joseph said. Wonder touched his smile. "I
never thought that I would own anything so beautiful." He realized
that Henri's method of boarding was not normal. "What is it, Henri?"

"I think trouble is coming!" Henri said, breathing loudly as he swung
into the cabin and noted that Joseph had finished the ironing so that
the blue shirts and tan trousers were neatly hung against the wall.
Pushing the garments aside, he reached for the shark rifle--to find it
gone. He called, "Joseph, where is the rifle?"

Joseph was at the companionway. "A police officer took it a little
while ago. He was making a search for stolen weapons and said it would
be returned. What is the matter, Henri?"

"There are men coming down the wharf. I thought I saw M'sieur Webber
leaving them," Henri said, grabbing up two small, stout oars and
jumping past Joseph to the deck. On the dock, the shadowy shapes of
the running men were almost to the launch. Whatever they carried,
occasionally clanked. Thrusting an oar into Joseph's hands, Henri swung
onto the dock to plant himself before the baled fans. Joseph too was on
the dock, saying, "They are doubtless crewmen from the ships . . ."

Setting down what they carried, and still running, the group of men
split up to form a rushingly closing half-circle about the Christophes.

"Good evening, M'sieurs," Joseph began pleasantly. The men did not
answer, but crouched, moving in purposefully. Henri shouted, "Help me,
Joseph!" He charged, using his oar: an unexpectedly effective weapon
when swung edgewise as a goosewing against human shins by a powerful
and spinning man, or plied as a rapier at shadowy faces by a trained
fencer--and fencing for sport with masked blades was a Christophe
memorial to the Great Marquis. So that for a moment Henri produced
astonished groans, oaths, stumblings and face-shielding amongst the
attackers. Forced backward, he used the oar overhead as an edged club
aimed at individually darting heads and shoulders. Trampling, grunting,
groaning and shouting echoed in the night. With a backward kick, Henri
sent Aunt Caroline's wheeled-chair into the bay.

On one of the ships far down the dock, a searchlight snapped on and
flashlights winked. "Help, Joseph!" Henri shouted. Joseph hesitated.
And some six of the men darted in, their arms gripping him about the
body and by the arms while fists beat his face and head. Henri glanced
distractedly toward Joseph. And clutching, striking men were upon him
too. Pulling violently backward, then hurling himself forward and down,
Henri broke free, shouting, "Into the boat, Joseph! They mean to fire
her!" He tried to get to Joseph.

Fists struck his head dizzyingly in shocks of pain, hands clutched his
clothing, tearing his shirt from his body. He tore free and whirled,
striking furiously about him with the oar, sending the men backward.
From the direction of the ships, flashlights were coming fast, like
glowworms under the blue sun of the searchlight. Bringing the oar
blade down edgewise on the backs of those who beset Joseph, Henri got
Joseph free. But between them and the launch were the men. And two
of the heavier of their number sprang at Henri's shoulders, throwing
him to his knees. Joseph held the oar in his hands, but he did not
use it. Instead he stood with head bowed on his great neck while the
corded muscles of his shoulders trembled and his chest rose and fell
gaspingly. The men laughed with a low, ugly sound and were onto him,
their fists thudding on his unguarded face, their legs tripping him.

With his head locked under a man's arm, Henri saw that Joseph was on
his knees again, with blood gushing over his face. His mere strength
was giving the men trouble, but he still did not defend himself.
"Joseph!" Henri shouted imploringly. And Joseph swayed and lifted the
men who attacked him but did not strike them. So that the men attacking
Joseph laughed with the sound of cruelty becoming a little mad. Through
the unreal glare of the searchlight and the staggering shadows, Henri
saw a boot kicking at Joseph's stomach. Joseph's face twisted in sudden
agony and he went down. The men were all over him, kicking and beating
him. Henri struggled to reach the men who beset Joseph, but he was
held by the men clinging to his legs and the man on his shoulders was
pushing his thumbs into the veins of his neck and trying to twist his
head sideward. Behind him there was a clinking sound of metal and of
liquid pouring. From the _Sea Lily_, sudden flame rose. In the wild
glare, the men from the ship were arriving on the run as a red-faced
ship's officer shouted, "What goes here?" From about the furiously
burning launch, men scattered and ran, covering their faces. With a
final rain of blows, those attacking the brothers also sprang up and
darted away. But the _Sea Lily_ was flaring like a torch. Staggering
to his feet, Henri stood swaying and gasping for breath as he stared
at her helplessly. The ship's officer shouted, "Get down! The gas
tanks . . ."

Stumblingly, Henri dropped to the planking of the wharf, putting
his arm across Joseph's bloody head. Under him, the great planks of
the wharf shivered to the shock of twin explosions. A great ball of
mushrooming smoke and fire shot upward, to fall as raining fire.
Gropingly, he beat out fire on his clothing and on Joseph's clothes
and hair. Wild light flickered from burning gasoline on the water.
The ship's officer and his men were spraying Foamite on the fire. As
Henri got up again, only fire marked the place where the launch had
been moored. The desolation of the small, leaping flames where the trim
beauty of the _Sea Lily_ should have been was almost too much for him.

Joseph raised himself on an arm, his head drooping weakly. "Henri . . .
are . . . you badly hurt?" he asked in an anguished voice.

"No," Henri said, trembling with fury. "No! But the _Sea Lily_ has gone
and we could have saved her if you would have fought!" His face swelled
with passion. "To turn the other cheek may be matter of question. Aunt
Caroline's hair you should not have turned!" He choked with trembling
rage.

"I am sorry," Joseph mumbled, getting from his knees to his feet as
he tried to wipe the blood from his face with his hands. "One cannot
hold a belief all one's life and abandon it when the first test comes,
Henri! Or one would die of self-contempt . . ."

"Thus you have let the _Sea Lily_ be lost, thus Domremy may be lost,
thus M'sieur Latour will not be paid! Had you but used the oar, we
had held them off!" Henri shouted. His fists clenched and the veins in
his forehead swelled. "How dared you betray us? With an enemy, one may
deal, with a traitor, one cannot deal!"

"I could not give up the belief of a life--I may be mistaken, but you
must not speak to me thus, Henri!" Joseph said.

Raising his hand, Henri struck Joseph flat-handed and resoundingly
across the cheek. Joseph swayed, whitened and stood quite still. Henri
turned away and went furiously to the edge of the dock. Only little
flicks of flame now rose amongst the piles. Spraying the last fire, the
ship's officer shouted above the confusion, "What happened?"

"It is a very long story--in part of an idiot!" Henri said through his
teeth. "Forgive me, M'sieur, I am distrait!" He pushed his hands over
his face. As the fire went out and the ship's crew crowded about him,
he explained about the bananas and the threats of the large banana man
with the stubbled beard and the thin banana man with the buck teeth and
of the support given them by the police officer who had been on the
fruit dock on the _Sea Lily's_ first trip. "Whether these men tonight
were fruit men, I do not know. Much happened quickly, but I recognized
none of them. Whoever they were, had you not come, I think they meant
to kill us. One set of hands upon my neck was trying to choke and turn
it. Yet beating or choking with hands would seem a most clumsy method
of killing."

"Could have been pretty effective if--er--both of you had held the
same views," the ship's officer said; having learned of the Followers.
"Could be they thought you did. Rotten thing to beat a man who won't
hit back, no matter how cockeyed it is not to hit back! And seems
they'd made insurance doubly sure by getting rid of your rifle." The
ship's officer's pleasant red face puckered with indignation. "Burning
a boat--that's going pretty far!" He kicked the wharf edge angrily and
Henri understood his professional viewpoint in which the destruction
of a good boat was the capital crime. "I mean, they're a rotten enough
bunch who've been trying to tie up the banana trade here. There've
been beatings and fruit thrown in the bay--but burning a boat! That's
going pretty far! Or killing--you boys can't think of any other reason?
Anyone who could want to do you in, making it look like a banana fight?"

Henri hesitated. "Only one that is so unlikely that it could hardly be
a reason! And that might be that while to us it seems we have learned
little of a lost ship, to others it might seem that we have learned too
much!"

He pushed his hands against his head attempting to think. The ship's
doctor, like a small, friendly and staring prawn, was before him as he
opened his eyes. Henri said dazedly, "Or it might all be a matter of
another ship, the _Webber_!"

"Of course, of course," the doctor said. "Now we'll just stop the
worst of this bleeding, then you come with me to the ship." He swabbed
Henri's face and began to tape cuts.

Sympathetic small boat owners and sailors crowded the dock, advancing
theories as they jammed the wharf edge where a coast guard cutter was
playing searchlights on the water where the _Sea Lily_ had vanished;
men shouted; floodlights blazed. The doctor burrowed in his kit for
more adhesive tape. "The telephone . . ." Henri said and left through
the chattering crowd toward the wharf sheds. Unable to find him, the
little doctor spied Joseph who was holding to a hoist with his head on
his arm. Men pressed more closely as the coast guard cutter began to
fish for the _Sea Lily_. General and angry suspicion of the banana men
filled the crowd. Witnesses who had not been there, were certain they
had seen members of the banana gangs. Indignant men who had never met
Henri or Joseph increased their indignation by recounting Henri's and
Joseph's fine characteristics. Chains rattled and winches squealed.

"Ah, there you are!" the ship's doctor said exasperatedly some ten
minutes later as Henri staggered from the telephone booth to the dock.
"Now if you'll come with me to the ship, we'll patch you up!"

Holding to the door frame, Henri looked past him down the dock on which
the crowd still thickened by the moment as further groups of men
arrived from the street. Through the running men, running lightly, his
gold head shining under the floodlights and his body big even amongst
big men, came Thomas Webber. He ran with an extraordinary grace that
was yet strangely animal, so that while he did not skip it seemed that
at any moment he might skip. His pale face was intent.

Henri's own cut and bruised face swelled darkly. "M'sieur le docteur,
I cannot be treated now! I have one to talk to," he mumbled thickly,
stepping forward and almost falling. Thrusting through the thicker
crowd by the dock edge, Thomas Webber looked into the strangely lighted
faces, blinking against the cutter's searchlights. "What's up here?
What happened to the Frenchies?" Men pointed toward the wharf sheds.
Lights whirled, chains rattled faster, men shouted. Webber came quickly
toward the shed. Recognizing Henri who again held to the booth as the
ship's doctor felt him for broken ribs, he stood very still for an
instant while the unreadable expression passed in the depths of his
pale eyes. "Tough luck, Frenchie!" Thomas Webber said, slowly. "Who did
it? The banana boys? I warned you to watch out for those boys!"

"'Tough luck,' as you say, M'sieur," Henri said through adhesive tape.
"But we are not, as perhaps was intended, dead as the seeming victims
of a waterfront beating! And perhaps the banana men and perhaps someone
for whom, as in the children's game, we grow 'too hot' in the matter of
lost ships!"

"Hold still, young man!" the doctor said. "You can get into all the
rage you want when I'm through. If you'd just come to the ship I could
make a job of this . . ."

Shaking with rage and uncertainty, Henri stared between ridiculously
swollen eyelids at Thomas Webber. "It was even my thought, M'sieur,
that I saw you near the docks just ere the men attacked us!"

"If you go on like this, you're going to see the inside of a hospital,"
the doctor said, taping ribs. "And, for your own sake, you're in no
shape for a debate!"

"Looks like this time you are in bad shape, Frenchie," Thomas Webber
said coolly, returning his stare. "I've been playing gin rummy in the
hotel since seven o'clock. I came down here when we heard the explosion
and there was a news flash that a launch, believed to be the _Sea Lily_
of Home Island, had been blown up." He met Henri's eyes. "I can only
tell you I'm for you boys and you can't be more wrong about me."

"Nothing broken in the ankle," the doctor said. "Now I want to take
another look at your brother's jaw. Where's Stubbornness On the Hoof,
Addition Two?" He relocated Joseph.

"If I did not know that I might be wrong, you might not now be alive,
M'sieur," Henri said, trying to keep his eyes from swelling shut as
he regarded the paleness and glitter of Thomas Webber. "As there is
absurdity in the sight of a grown man trying to solve a little child's
riddle, there is great difficulty for an honest man in speaking to a
man, M'sieur, and trying to know at the one instant, 'This still may be
an innocent man!' 'I should kill this man!'"

They leaned toward each other alone in the midst of noise, crowding
movement and light. From behind Henri's shoulder, Joseph said,
"Henri . . ."

"The poor fellow's off his head!" Thomas Webber said.

"That I wonder myself, M'sieur," Henri said savagely through the
adhesive tape. "But lest I am not, a wise and kind friend who was
once a Chair of the Room of Lloyd's has just suggested via the long
telephone that you be informed, M'sieur, that he has placed the
question of the true identity of the steamship _Webber's_ varied owners
and of her mortgage holder in the hands of his attorneys to learn if,
perchance, all owners who followed the government and also the last
mortgage holder might prove to be in fact one man! My own thought
had been that no man planning the throwing away of a ship would risk
so close a repetition of a recorded fraud. But our friend differs,
contending it might well be risked could the loss of the second ship be
made to seem unquestionably an act of nature--if the ship were, let us
say, sunk in hurricane, M'sieur!"

In the wildly changing lights, Thomas Webber's face was still but
his lids had narrowed and about his nostrils was livid indentation.
Henri sought to know what looked back at him from Thomas Webber's
face. Astonishment? Fear? A furious revamping of plans? Incredulous
outrage that something small had got into the way of something big?
Merely violently concentrated thought? "So now you have it figured I'm
half a dozen corporations and a mortgagee! And that I can get men to
throw away ships in hurricane! Congratulations on your imagination,
Frenchie! Congratulations!" Thomas Webber said. "But do you know too
much imagination can make trouble for little men, Frenchie?"

"Perhaps, M'sieur. Yet it is of interest how great a percentage of
Caribbean hurricanes follow a course that give the Purple Reefs at
least great gales. Thus could one solve the problem of inducing men to
throw away a ship before advancing hurricane, that were a singularly
well-chosen spot. And should all owners of the _Webber_ have been
in fact one man, there was much money on the Purple Reefs as the
_Webber_ lay on the Purple Reefs. And how, or if, our brother might
have endangered possession of this I do not yet know"--watching Thomas
Webber he pressed what might be advantage or absurdity--"but I have
also had the thought, M'sieur, that no man in the Isle of Palms saw our
brother. They saw only the ship. I have reasoned, 'Might our brother
have been in duress, might our brother even have been dead ere the ship
touched at the Isle of Palms?'"

This time Thomas Webber's whole face paled lividly and his eyes shone.
But an innocent man could pale before an accusation of murder as
sharply as a guilty man from guilt. Henri could not tell if it was
merely through his own fancy that it seemed to him they struggled
suddenly for possession of some still unknown weapon, vital to both;
almost it was as if Thomas Webber had answered him before from violent
abstraction, but now fought him with all thought centered upon what was
between them.

"Suppose it if you like, Frenchie!" Thomas Webber said as his lips
smiled. "You'd still have those who had possession of the ship taking
such a fool's risk no fool would believe they'd take it! I'm no
seaman, but a seaman would tell you, 'Anywhere on the long approaches
to the Isle of Palms the ship could have been stopped--by a coast
guard cutter, by a naval craft, by a fish boat or a sponge boat or
a dinghy!'" He mocked. "The _Christophe_ was loved, remember? The
_Christophe_ carried messages. The _Christophe_ carried passengers
without charge when they couldn't pay. The _Christophe_ was the
little Boy Scout and the poor man's friend! The ship was known in the
Caribbean, Frenchie, so that those stopping her would have missed a
single member of her crew! It would have been, 'Where is such-and-such
a good boy?' 'Where is kind Captain Malcolm Christophe?' Or, 'Captain,
why are you acting strangely?' It wouldn't have worked, Frenchie! And
the pretty theory won't work!" Henri's mind admitted the truth of this.
Thomas Webber narrowed his palely shining eyes still further while his
mouth jeered. "And even if your little-pirates-that-weren't-there had
taken the risk they wouldn't have taken by bringing her into the Isle
of Palms, _after_ the Isle of Palms, what do they do? It was the good
Captain Malcolm men set their clocks by! Remember? What happened when
men saw the good Captain Malcolm off to sea on a bender? And at the end
of the fairy tale, how was your ship sunk without oil slick, Frenchie?
Crew or pirates aboard doesn't alter that! And _'til_ you answer that,
you're right out of luck, Frenchie! Right out of luck!" Smiling, he
brought his face closer to Henri's as in the pale and narrowed eyes
the unreadable expression changed and became suddenly readable as
startling rage and the hatred born of rage. "And remember, Frenchie, it
doesn't always pay little boys from little islands to fool with other
people's business or to make enemies of men who can think above their
paper! It doesn't pay to make an enemy of Thomas Webber! If a man can
think _big_, he comes out on top and anyone who bothers him gets hurt!
Remember that, Frenchie! Anyone who tries to hurt him, gets hurt!"

"Remember also, M'sieur, that the tracing of anything of fraud in the
story of the steamship _Webber_ cannot now be stopped by aught that
might befall Joseph or myself and that very many men know that it is
not impossible that you might have reason to wish that something befall
Joseph and myself! And that therefore it might be well that nothing
more befall us, M'sieur!"

With Thomas Webber gone suddenly into the crowd, Henri clung to the
doorframe, pressing his head on his arm. His mind tried dizzily to
grasp something that seemed to him of great importance, hinging on
a contradiction. Thomas Webber could be guilty of fraud with the
_Webber_. Yet it had not been the sudden likelihood of the exposure
of fraud with the _Webber_ that had caused Thomas Webber to pale most
lividly. Yet Thomas Webber's argument in regard to the _Christophe_ was
unanswerable.

By dawn the gutted skeleton and engines of the _Sea Lily_ had been
fished up; also Aunt Caroline's wheeled-chair, the latter unhurt save
for soaked cushions. The baled sea things on the dock were almost
undamaged and Joseph's flute rested safely where he had placed it
between two of the bales. For the rest, the caretaker of the dock swore
that he had failed to recognize any of the attackers, one of whom had
suddenly threatened him with a knife so that he had been unable to
give the alarm. He was emphatic that he had seen no man in a car with
the attackers. He declared that he had never seen Thomas Webber. The
police officer who had been with the banana men on the Christophes'
first visit, denied that he had ever seen the Christophes. The police
department denied any knowledge of the removal of the shark rifle or of
a search for stolen weapons. The only thing that the police force was
looking for at the moment was a large quantity of dynamite taken from a
construction shack just south of the harbor a week before.

When at last the brothers Christophe were alone in the wet mist of
sunrise, Joseph, who was slow with figures, asked timidly, "Will the
insurance that was upon the _Sea Lily_ and the money from the museum
carry the large mortgage payment and repay M'sieur Latour?"

"Since the _Sea Lily_ was insured only for what it had cost us to
build her in Home Island and since time will not stand still while we
rebuild her there and as the mail contracts went with her, they will
not!" Henri said bitterly. "As you know, the first payment of principal
on the mortgage is almost due and it had been my thought that were we
short, we could have mortgaged the launch to pay it and to pay M'sieur
Latour, counting upon the mail contracts and the sea things to carry
the increased monthly payments." He looked at the bay rather than at
Joseph. "As it is, the insurance and the museum payments should make
the large mortgage payment, give the family a small amount to eat and
provide a tub to get us back to the Reefs. Nothing to M'sieur Latour
on the debt we owe him. He said that lending money to Christophes was
like having money in the bank--I hope he may not have too much reason
to regret it!" The misery of Joseph's beaten face made him feel a brute
and made him still angrier. "If you had but used the oar once . . ."

"I am sorry, Henri!" Joseph said, turning crimson.

Henri crushed an impulse to reach out and touch Joseph's swollen hand.
Instead he said merely, "Perhaps the best thing for us to do is to
obtain a ride with a logger's truck to Jewfish Bay where it will cost
us nothing to live while we do up a very bad sailboat that is very
cheaply for sale at the boat yard. Once back upon the Reefs with the
diving suit, we can get rarer sea things that may carry the monthly
payments and the family's current bills. For the next large payment and
the repayment of M'sieur Latour, we must trust we find the galleons!"

Blushing for the reproach in Henri's words, Joseph said, "Perhaps that
is what we had best do."

"Agreed then," Henri said coldly. He rose. "I now have an obligation to
fulfill ere I can leave Tampa. Perhaps while I am fulfilling it, you
can collect the diving suit and obtain such things as we will need for
reconditioning the sailboat? And may I beg that, since you will not
defend yourself, you go nowhere where it is remotely possible you may
come to harm? Martyrdom is a great and beautiful thing, but if possible
I would not have M'sieur Latour and the family too completely ruined in
its process!"

Joseph's face was painfully flushed with hurt and despair. Ignoring
it, Henri set out for the pawnbroker's. His anger was increased by
his distress that Joseph had been so happy with the flute. His agony
of rage that Joseph had been beaten and his shame over having struck
Joseph, made him ever angrier with Joseph. He knew that hitting Joseph
and reproaching Joseph were the crudest things he would ever do.

"Have my good ceiling painted by a corpse that wobbles? Never!" the
Syrian said. "Come back when you will not endanger my property!" He
tucked the five dollars paid on the flute into what remained of Henri's
trousers' pocket and thrust the chronometer into his hands. "Do not
embarrass yourself by explaining that you cannot take them because
you wish to make a further deal for a weapon to replace the rifle. I
already know it!" His dressing gown trailed after him. "Here are two
rifles. I must try, if vainly, to protect my investment. We must have
new ammunition! If any trouble you on your Reefs and you arrive in
Paradise, do not be disgraced by arriving without company!"

       *       *       *       *       *

At Jewfish Bay when Henri had snatched a moment with Rue in which she
wept satisfactorily over his beaten face but was so delighted to see
him that she planned a fishing trip with the children for the next
afternoon, the Christophes began work on the, by West Indian standards,
atrocious sailboat for which Henri had negotiated. "Since we are using
sawn frames where the old frames are broken, it should not take long!"
Joseph said anxiously. The gasoline lantern hanging on a mangrove
branch above their camp on an old flood-control bridge half a mile
from the settlement lit Joseph's tired face and Henri knew that he was
trying past his strength to repair the disaster for which Henri had
blamed him. But Henri could not overcome his own coldness of anger.
Kneeling to free a broken rib from the keel, Joseph said, "I am puzzled
as you were by M'sieur Webber. He is offensive and full of pride. But
he is right that it would have been insanity for anyone to take the
_Christophe_ through the waterways to the Isle of Palms were anything
amiss with our brother or the crew. And your words to him would not
make an innocent man gentle."

"The reason for our search and the direness of our position both place
us beyond consideration for M'sieur Webber's feelings," Henri said.

"I suppose so . . ." Joseph said, flushing again because he had again
been reproved.

"Joseph," Henri said softly, "I am sorry that I hit you! It was the
worst thing I have done and it has been because I have been ashamed of
it that I have continued to be angry with you." He put his hand on his
brother's shoulder. "Oddly, while I think your belief insane, I perhaps
love you most of all for your beliefs and I am ashamed as I have never
been ashamed that I hit you!"

"I have helped to bring such disaster, I could hit myself," Joseph
said, looking down ruefully. He clenched his hands upon the boat-frame
and raised despairing gaze to meet his brother's. "Yet if the thing
came again, I still do not know what should be done, Henri! One looks
upon our people, the Followers, and knows that they are good as few
people are good and happy as few people are happy. And that it is
because they harm no man and forgive. One knows that all beliefs are
worthless lest they be followed when the following is hard. Yet having
done what I believed to be right, I have harmed you, the _Christophe_
may not be found, Domremy may be lost, M'sieur Latour's confidence may
be betrayed."

"Perhaps the great difficulty with martyrdom is that it is so very
difficult to be a martyr alone," Henri suggested gently. "Dear Joseph,
I am not laughing. It is a fearful problem."

"Be patient with me," Joseph said. "I am in a dark place. Until now it
had seemed so very clear . . ."

"Joseph, have you thought that all officers and crew of the
_Christophe_ were men of the Followers? It has haunted me since good
M'sieur Latour told me that had he been able to prevent violence only
by violence, he would have sought to do as those in America did who
stood with bowed heads as the Indians scalped them one by one! I
cannot think why any man of earth should have sought to do those of
the _Christophe_ harm, but had they, what might have befallen were
too horrible to think on. Thinking of a ship, one thinks, 'Men would
hesitate to attack a ship!' But here were brave men and strong men, but
men who would not raise their hands to defend themselves if attacked."
His voice shook. "They would have stood as lambs, Joseph!"

"It is a dreadful thought!" Hope, which Henri found touching in view of
Joseph's beliefs, lit his face. "But the deck passengers, the Negroes,
would have fought, Henri!"

"They were all inland Negroes, Joseph. They would have been helpless
with seasickness." He looked away. "One must also know that men
base enough to harm men such as the Followers who would not defend
themselves would also be men who would have made jest of such a faith
and thus have known of it."

"It is a dreadful thought! It could also be in part an
explanation--but, Henri, I still do not know what is right . . ."

Henri hugged his brother's great shoulders. "Meantime know only that
you forgive me!" He rose. "And it is time we had coffee and ate the
crabs I have boiling."

As they ate, seated on the coral with the occasional scent of lilies
blowing in and the soft smoke rising to the stars, a dinghy came out of
the darkness and a soft voice said, "Good evening. I is Mammy. Is nice
big colored man here?"

"He is in the Caribbean and at present is doubtless worrying very much
as to why we are not," Henri said. "He told us of the fine dinner you
gave him."

Her voice was remote. "I wouldn't want anything to happen to that
colored man!" Her eyes caught angered pride. "Addition, I don't like
people telling me to keep my mouth shut or they beat me. What I say
or don't say was not part in my business arrangement with Mr. Thomas
Webber. Mr. Thomas Webber say he beat me if I talked about it, but
after Mr. Thomas Webber lost his ship, the men that look like pirate
pictures in the school books came several occasions to see him. When
they come, I would hear him aroaring and araging and when they left
they would be like the cat giving transport to the dickeybird."

"Thank you, Mammy," Henri said. "And we will not let anyone know that
you told us."

"I am not afraid of Mr. Thomas Webber," she said. "Mr. Thomas Webber,
on the other hand, is terrible afraid of something. He been a worried
man since you, young foreign man, visited him. He come back from
Tampa last night pretty near a mad man, so he beat poor girl with the
bleached hair because she got in his way as he gets things. He left
again white round the nose like a mad horse with what is worrying him.
Before he left, he came pounding to my cottage to ask if big colored
man had told where a man called little Ashby is. I do not like to be
asked as he asked." She was silent a moment, her face turned toward the
dark water. "That Tobias, he the only man I ever saw was bigger than my
man. He surely was a nice big fool of a colored man!"

When she had gone, large and proud, into the darkness, Henri stood
staring after her. "Why, Joseph, should M'sieur Webber fear to have it
known the Hereras came here, so that he told me they had not come? One
would also give much to know why the Hereras were pleased and M'sieur
Webber was not and if it was because of the meetings that the Hereras
had seemed rich and M'sieur Webber poor? It is our thought that there
was fraud. But how might there be fraud in which they would benefit
and he would not? It is as if the things we know kept saying to us,
'Henri and Joseph Christophe are so thickheaded that they do not know
what they know!' For surely some simple thing we know must cover it
all! Yet what?" He checked his thought on his fingers, beginning with
his "straw," the hat which had reached him from the Miami editor and
was now with Dr. Clifford for safekeeping. "The hat was of Home Island,
Joseph! The method of its tying off may prove the baled hats from which
it came were hats carried by the _Christophe_. In all likelihood, the
hats were swept into the 'Glades from Webber's Landing . . ."

"To me it still seems that much else is of more import," Joseph said.
"That someone knew the _Webber_ would not go to Tampa, at least that
the little Ashby embarked upon her knowing he could not go to Tampa.
That you think it was M'sieur Webber you saw ere the launch was burned.
Even that M'sieur Webber seeks so earnestly for the little Ashby."

"No, Joseph! All else--save perchance M'sieur Webber's fear over the
Hereras coming here--could be of the _Webber_ and because of the
_Webber_! The hat is the straw, true. But, if it ties, it alone ties
solely with the _Christophe_!

"Meaning that the _Christophe_ did not reach the Channel of Yucatan.
That the Hereras are supposed to have had no contact with the
_Christophe_ on the last voyage and that M'sieur Webber is supposed
to have had no contact with the _Christophe_ after leaving her at the
Isle of Palms; yet if the Hereras had had no contact and M'sieur Webber
did not have the hats as he left the _Christophe_ at his last known
contact, there might have been later contact of which we do not know?"

"If the hats were part of the _Christophe's_ last cargo, they assuredly
did not journey from the Caribbean to the coast of Florida without
help!" Henri said. He stared unseeingly at the enormous moon that was
biting a slice from the edge of the dark water-prairies. "For the
place of the _Christophe's_ sinking, I do not know. I am increasingly
certain that neither we nor the first searchers have yet looked where
it befell! The fact that the first searchers found no oil slick should
have told us that."

"You mean that there could be truth in the old captains' dreams of
pirate capture and the ship sailed far away? Or in the insurers'
thought of a stolen ship that was never sunk? Henri, are you ill?"

"The book the good Englishman had us read tells of a stolen ship
trading half the world, but it is not a stolen ship or sailing pirates
my mind gropes for. Rather some moving of the pieces on the chessboard
of the sea so that the piece sought was not--was never!--where it would
be sought! How or where or why it was, I do not know. But if one seeks
to hide a thing, is not the surest way that it simply be not there?
That somehow, it be not there at all?"

Joseph regarded him thoughtfully across the fire. "Were you not my
brother and did I not know you to be very sane, I would say that is a
statement of a man stranged by the sea!"

"I know. Yet ask, 'How came the hats where the hats could not have
come?' Say, 'Why does M'sieur Webber fear to have it known the Hereras
came here when it would seem most natural they should come?' Say, 'A
ship was sunk. A ship does not sink without the showing of oil--yet
there was no oil slick!'"

They were silent as Joseph finished his coffee and Henri threw a stone
to make firelit circles on the dark water. For several minutes he threw
single stones. Then he tried landing a second stone into the heart of
the circle made by the first.

"Joseph!" Henri said, rising to his feet and staring tensely. "The
stones had more sense than I! They have shown me how a ship could sink
without showing oil slick!"

"How, Henri?"

"Watch!" Henri threw a stone. The spreading ripples began. Joseph
peered questioningly. Choosing a point some yards away, Henri quickly
threw two stones, landing the second of the two in the center of the
circle of tiny waves made by the one that preceded it. The circles made
by the single stone and those made by the two stones were--to any who
would not suspect the throwing of two stones--indistinguishable. "If
she was sunk where there already was oil slick--where men would expect
oil slick--it would be as if she sank without slick!" Henri said in a
shaken voice. "That is the one and sure and very simple way it might be
done!" They stared at each other.

Joseph said, "In that way it could be done--yet I recall no wrecks
having been caused by the hurricane along the _Christophe's_ course
from the Isle of Palms to the Cape . . ."

Henri did not speak. As always, his thought was returning to the Reefs
so that in imagination he saw them howling with gray spindrift under
storm, gold and purple on the days of utter stillness, or with white
sand dunes pallid under the mystery of the stars. Most clearly of all,
he saw them as he and Joseph had seen them at the beginning of the
search, with the wrecked _Webber_ lying in rusty gold as roosting place
for the sea birds and across the Reefs and the rippled sea, the long
iridescence of her oil slick.

He said, "There was still oil slick from the wrecked _Webber_ even when
we saw her . . ."

"That means little, brother," Joseph said. "Remember our brother
reached the Isle of Palms--what conceivable reason would he have to
return to the Reefs?"

"None. But on the Reefs there still existed the one condition that
would solve the greatest of the physical mysteries! At the Reefs, there
was already great slick that none would question!"

"Do you not think that you perhaps think too much of the Reefs simply
because they are so strange?" Joseph asked gently.

"The 'two lost days' that M'sieur Houston bade us check are tied with
the Reefs. M'sieur Latour's 'most evil man,' M'sieur Webber was upon
the Reefs. With fraud in the loss of the _Webber_, there was upon the
Reefs Aunt Caroline's 'much money.' Upon the Reefs existed a means
of hiding the place of the _Christophe's_ sinking. When we reach the
Reefs with our suit, you may dive for the galleons, it will be for the
_Christophe_ I dive!"

"Meantime we had best go back to the sawing of frames! If we work hard,
we can perhaps sail by tomorrow night," Joseph said, practically if
doubtfully.

       *       *       *       *       *

Late afternoon's gold flamed over angry women crowding the dock at the
foot of Jewfish Bay's one street and routed children fled toward the
settlement, as Henri sent the canoe up to the old wharf and the clamor
of hubbub. At the edge of the dock, with her back to the water, stood
Rue, her face flushed and her childishly dimpled fists clenched as she
stormed at the women who stormed at her. He caught the words, "Old
cats! Scratching, mean old cats!" "Hussy!" "All I done was taked them
fishing! They sure loved to go fishing!" "There's some as is not fit to
take innocent children fishing! As some was warned . . ."

Swinging onto the dock, he said, "Hush, Rue! What is the difficulty,
Madames?"

As she saw him, Rue's face expressed not happiness but terror. She
shouted, "Don't listen to them, Henri! Don't listen!"

"Be quiet, Rue," he said gently.

"Don't listen!" she shrieked. Her arms pulled at him. "Let's go
fishing, Henri! Let's go away all evening!"

A kind-faced but worried small woman with a white apron over a dark
blue dress tried to say something. But a large and fat woman with
a cruel mouth, the one tooth of whose lower jaw flickered over the
puckering of her lower lip, demanded of him, "And who are you? And
she's the difficulty--that better be out of town by night!" Her large
and folded arms bounced on her stomach. "She that was at Webber's
Landing, a-asking men out in front of us now, is she? And who are you
and what do you know about it, I'd ask? Or maybe she has you fooled
like she's tried to fool others . . ."

Rue collapsed suddenly to the planking, rocking her face from side to
side against her knees and sobbing hopelessly. Pale with anger, Henri
asked the fat woman, "What are you doing to her? How can you be so
cruel?" Dropping to one knee, he tried to soothe Rue. "For the rest, I
am Henri Henri Christophe of Home Island. Mam'selle Rue asked me to go
with her because I have asked her to marry me. And she is rather young
and rather innocent to fool anyone, Madame!" He smiled tenderly down at
the top of Rue's bent head. "A foolish little one, perhaps, but still a
very small child." He stood up. "For what I know, she is an orphan and
M'sieur Webber's niece and she is working very hard to be independent!
And M'sieur Webber is not a good man--but is it not cruel that you who
are doubtless good wives and kind mothers should persecute a young girl
for her relatives?"

Flustered pity was in the eyes of the small woman with the kind face.
From a gold and purple thunderhead, the first large drops of an evening
shower pitted the dust and splattered on the wharf.

Over the silence of the women and the voice of coming rain, the fat
woman laughed loud and cruelly. "Thomas Webber hasn't got a living
relative in the world, young man! The which I took the trouble to find
out!"

He said, "That I do not believe, for Rue has told me otherwise!" Rue's
arms went about his legs and he felt her face and the softness of
her hair pressed spasmodically against his knees. "And now perhaps,
Madames, you will go home? Your children will not be taken fishing
again and I give you my word that Rue will not remain here!"

"Which she better not as should have her face slapped!" The fat woman
moved menacingly at Rue and Henri held her shoulders as thunder shook
the dock and a rush of darkness rolled before the storm.

"Come away, Em!" the small woman said, pulling at the fat woman's great
arm. Rain broke in foam across the river and slashed in a drowning
downpour as the women covered their heads with their aprons and ran for
shelter with their skirts billowing like sails. Violence of rain cut
the dock off from the world. He said, "It is true, is it not?"

Rue came to her knees and her arms clung wildly. "Henri, do not reject
me! Henri, no one will ever love you like I love you! Kill me if you
wants to, Henri, but don't look at me like that, Henri!"

He said, "You have lied, lied, lied to me until I do not even know you!
You have lied so amazingly that I do not even know where to look for
what I loved. There is no one thing for which I have loved you of which
I can say with certainty, 'It was so!'"

"Some things I told you was true, Henri! It was because I loved you
that I told you lies, Henri! It were that I wanted to be like I said
I was--for you, Henri! Henri haven't you never wished that something
was so until it seemed like it might be so? If I done wrong, I been
punished, Henri. When I couldn't fool myself and knew I weren't
what you thought, my hands would get all cold with fright, Henri!
Henri, my hands ached and ached when I would know I wasn't what you
thought . . ."

Lifting her, he studied her face frantically. "Perhaps he took you by
force? Perhaps you thought you loved him and he deceived you? But why
did you not tell me?"

"It were I didn't never expect to love anyone, Henri! I never loved no
one in all my life but you, Henri, and a little bit the pretty girl
teacher that said I was smart and pretty but then we moved on. It were
for a place to stay put so you could tidy it up. I thought, 'I can
scrub all the cabins and make curtains,' Henri. I didn't even _see_
him, as it were--I was so beglamoured by a place to stay . . . When I
did see him, I hated him--an' I knowed I had to move on . . ."

"He should be killed! But you . . . with one at whom you did not
trouble to look . . . 'for a place to stay!'"

"You got to love something 'fore you can know things, Henri. When I
loved you, I knowed things. But I thought if I were what you wanted for
every day from then on, it made it right!"

"Did you perhaps believe in the treasure on the Reefs? Was it perhaps
that you thought it worthwhile to lie to me until you saw if the
treasure might be real? Or did you lie to me to learn for him? Was he
really here when you told me he was not ere I went to Miami? Have you
even known of our ship when you have told me that you knew nothing?
What _do_ you know?"

"All I knowed 'bout ships was he had expected money from a ship 'round
two years ago--long 'fore I knew him--an' he didn't get it, Henri, I
didn't think it could have to do with you, but I told him he weren't
ever to harm you or I'd tell. It's 'cause I think he tried to harm you,
I can tell you now. 'Fore that, though he's bad, I'd been in his house
and couldn't tell and I didn't think it had to do . . ."

"Then there was fraud! And had we known it we had been on guard and
might have saved the _Sea Lily_! But how may I know that you did not
laugh with him when the boat was burned and Joseph and I beaten?"

She dropped her arms, sobbing as she crouched again on the planks.
"Don't say that! Say anything but that! Don't say I would have had you
an' Joseph hurt, Henri . . ." She looked up through tears and streaming
rain. "Don't turn on me, Henri! When you spoke to the old cats, I
thought you wasn't going to turn on me and I loved you so, Henri! Oh, I
loved you so beautiful much . . ."

He said, "One does not publicly repudiate a woman, even though she be
a stranger! And for the Followers, betrothal is not broken." Wild hope
touched her face. But amazed anger made him cruel. Even then he could
not let her think that he thought she had harmed the children. The
thought that she should have been blamed for taking out the children
filled him with such terrible pity that for a moment his heart almost
softened to her. He said coldly, "It is also our effort to be just and
I believe that you did the little children no harm but showed them much
kindness. For the rest, if it serve you, I will marry you as instantly
as the law allows--as honor of my word. I will let you hurt our search
still again by taking you to Tampa tonight to Madame Combs, a kind
woman who will care for you until you can find honest employment--if it
is honest employment you wish! Support you now, as you know, I cannot.
But when it becomes possible for me, I will make regular wife's payment
to you. But I would not wish to see you again in this world--and to
Domremy you shall not go!"

"I don't want support, I wants you to love me, Henri! I didn't want the
treasure! I wanted the island, Henri, and the big house that stayed
there always and to help paint it pink like the roses and white like
the jasmines!"

"Proud and honest women have stood in the doors of that house,
Mam'selle. I am only glad that I did not take one who lies endlessly
and utterly where there is proud memory of good women!"

She came to her feet. "Tell your good, proud women it's easy to be good
an' proud when people thinks you matter! Tell them if they'd never
mattered to no one, they mightn't be so proud and good! Tell yourself I
wouldn't have hurt you like you done me, not no matter what you done!
But if you'd put out your hand to me, I'd have took it to pull you
up--not to push you down!"

The knowledge that this was truth tore at him again. He said, "I have
offered you what I may. It is obvious you cannot stay here. I will take
you to Tampa tonight . . ."

"I won't take your offer! I don't need your offer! I wouldn't let you
marry me yet even if you loved me, 'cause I wouldn't burden you--an' I
knew Ma Combs in Tampa an' I can get to her myself. Oh, Henri, Henri
I loves you so!" She flung herself face downward on the dock and her
voice became an unintelligible soft crooning of grief through the great
sound of rain. The last thing he saw as he walked into the rain was
the gay red shoes turned in toward each other as a crying child's turn
inward. He had thought that his striking Joseph was the worst thing he
would ever do. But as he strode away from her he knew that this was
the crudest thing of his life. And he knew that he would lie awake in
the nights with his forehead pressed against his arm, thinking of her
and knowing that she was in pain and in despair that he could end with
a single touch of his hand. His own suffering for a shattered dream
drove him on. He thought with agony of pity of her efforts with the
café--that had ended in nothing. The very childishness of her hope that
her deception would not be discovered, tugged at his heart.

He ran back through the rain for none of these reasons but simply
because he could not endure the pain of leaving her. Kneeling beside
her he turned her over and put his arms about her. "Do not cry, little
Rue! I love you, dear, and you shall go to the Island and the big house
that stays and I could not live without you!"

She sat up and pressed her warm, wet cheek against his as he soothed
her. "I won't go yet, Henri. I have plans, Henri. But don't feel
different to me, Henri!"

He said, "I love you." But his heart was weeping for a golden child,
lost forever, never having existed. Coldly and without haste, as the
correct time came, he also planned to kill Thomas Webber.




Eight


"Give it up, my dears!" Daphne said when the brothers Christophe had
rather miraculously brought the old sailboat into Home Island on a
night of far thunder some four weeks later, to be wept over by a family
who had feared them dead. "You are growing thin and old! Do not throw
away the good sun and the sea and the beautiful now, for something
that cannot be undone! Do not attempt the impossible even for Domremy!
Perhaps mere mortals are not meant to have permanent title to paradise.
So long as the family is together we will make happiness somewhere
else."

"All is well with us, Beautiful Sister," Henri said, smiling down at
her as she stood before him in the lamplight. "And it can be that
we have met difficulty because we are succeeding, though we may not
seem to be." He kissed her. "We are sorry that you have all been so
frightened and we hurried so much to set your minds at rest that,
having had to check a matter on the coast of the Republic, we came
directly thence to Home Island--thus missing the Purple Reefs, where
Tobias is now doubtless worrying exceedingly. And now I must go to
shine Aunt Caroline's wheelchair so that we can surprise her with it
before she goes to bed."

"Joseph, it is not vengeance you are seeking?" Daphne asked. "I would
not have you darkened with vengeance, Joseph!"

He took her face gently between his hands. "No--merely to learn what
befell good men. And, if it be possible, to win some security for the
mouths."

"Joseph, we thought that you were dead. I thought, 'I will never see
Joseph again. Neither his large hands that make things deftly nor the
wideness of his shoulders as he gives rides to Timothy and the little
ones!'" She moved to the outer door. "I looked at the courtyard and
thought, 'The lilies and the stars are just the same but something of
human goodness may not come again, for Joseph may not come again!' The
court and garden were poorer, Joseph."

As they walked into the garden, he said, "I hope you were right. It
seems to me now that perhaps the hardest thing on earth is to know
what is right! In forgiving a wrong, does one only make evil stronger
everywhere? I am very much a man without a light, Daphne!"

"Perhaps the answer is to resist evil without hating the evil-doers?"
Daphne said. "Perhaps the answer is merely to continue to try very
earnestly not to be wrong. I do not know what God asks, but I think
that all I would ask in a man is that he tries very hard not to be
wrong--perhaps that is why you are so dear to me that when you did not
come for these weeks it was as if the world was suddenly quite empty."
Joseph stood very still as she looked up at him in the starlight. She
put her hands on his arm that trembled under her hands. "I did not know
how terrible it would be--and you cannot know how terrible it was--to
think, 'Perhaps in all my life I will never see Joseph again! Perhaps
the handkerchief he gave me, pretending he did not give it, is all of
Joseph I will have.'"

He said, "I would ask very little except to be of service to you,
Daphne."

"It was because you are worth more than very little that until now I
would have said no to you. I was a little girl when I married Malcolm
and it was a fairy tale of happiness in which a kind and wise man
brought a little girl to this fairy place. And I loved him all the more
for the twenty years between us that made him wiser than I. The little
girl to whom he was so kind still belongs to him. But I am a woman now
and the woman I have become loves you, Joseph, with all her heart, for
all our lives if you wish it."

"I had never thought that such a thing as this might happen to me,"
Joseph said wonderingly. "I will think, 'Joseph Christophe, you may
seem to be a very foolish man, but actually you are the most valuable
man in the world--for Daphne loves you!' I think that I know also
another thing. Where one is trusted, one defends. Wherever right may
lie, to my poor heart it cannot seem to lie in leaving innocence naked
to the wicked and courage unaided before the wicked! But for good or
evil, while I live, I seek to stand between you and any hurt--with
arms, be they needed, through violence and to death! Neither would
I again let any man beat me, for a man is not alone himself but is
property of those who love him--and Daphne's property, I will let no
man harm!"

She put her arms about his great neck, gently touching her fingers to
the short-curled darkness of his hair. "We do not know when we may have
more, my dearest. But if it is any joy to you, you may know, 'Daphne
thinks herself so fortunate in her property that she cannot believe her
fortune!' Oh, Joseph, be careful that all the wonder does not end in
the sea! I am not brave enough to take a memory in place of you!"

He put his arms about her and promised, "Such as I am, you will have me
always, dear! Until, perhaps you are very bored and say, 'That Joseph's
beard! Its particular shade of whiteness has annoyed me for fifty
years!'"

"Oh, Joseph, I so want the years to grow bored in! Do people know how
fortunate they are when they have the years in which to grow bored?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Tell England that France accepts his gift!" Aunt Caroline said of
the wheelchair. Having mastered its workings at cost of considerable
French wordage which the Christophes had never heard before and feared
was profanity as she jammed her fingers, she insisted on touring alone
through the vast reaches of Domremy's lower floor, and at her bedtime,
could not be found. Henri, at last locating her in one of the great
cloak closets, found her weeping. "It is nothing," the old lady said
as he sat on the arm of the chair in the cedar-scented privacy of
the cupboard. "It is merely that when one has waited with reasonable
composure for something that one very much wanted and did not really
expect to get, suddenly getting it, one suddenly knows the amount
of composure one has used--and is overwhelmed by one's goodness! It
is a nadir of self-pity that is one of the most satisfactory human
experiences. There is also only one creature more objectionable than
an old woman so engaged--that is a young man who looks as pale and as
betrayed as you do since this return! What's the matter?"

Playing with the tiny claw of her hand, he said, "Perhaps I forgot
something that another wise woman, Madame Combs, told me. Darling, is
it possible to love someone and lie to them? To lie exceedingly, I
mean?"

"This isn't for general consumption or for the younger generation,"
Aunt Caroline said. "But do you suppose that man or woman could
possibly love someone and be cruel enough to speak the truth? One must
of course use self-control. Even our best impulses should not run
amuck. But it takes time and experience to learn proper moderation in
falsehood. Also there is the matter of provocation. An astounding love
might produce an astounding lie."

Tipping up her face that was like that of an irritated and impertinent
parrot, he said, "You are a wholly vile character and a great joy to
this house and a greater joy to me! Now cross your fingers for me that
I can live through the waiting until I may tell one I love that I am
sorry I have thought I did not love them, even if they did not know
it!" he stood up. "Why do we cause ourselves such loss when there is
such wonder merely in saying, 'How I love you!'"

"Perhaps because one cannot have two forms of delight at one time.
If we are too occupied in saying, 'How worthy am I!' it is difficult
to say 'How I love you!' Both are pleasant, but 'How I love you!' is
best. To think, 'My darling! My darling!' is the best of thoughts." She
studied him with her frail and myriad-wrinkled shrewdness. "Also do not
throw it all away by planning to kill the one for whom you thought you
hated your love! Vengeance is sweet, but the price can be too high." He
made no answer. He had refound his tenderness for a child tricked by
its passion to play house, never having known anything but brutality.
He could think, "My darling! My darling!" But he had found even fiercer
hate for a man who would so trick a child. The old lady looked at him
with anxiety. "I hope your love is a lovely love, Henri. But be happy!
A woman will almost always be what a man thinks her if he but thinks it
with sufficient articulateness."

"I am trying only to know how I can wait until I may begin to be
articulate! Now shall we race down the hall so fast the walls whiz?"

"'Burn rubber!'" Aunt Caroline said. "'Pedal to the floor-boards!'
Henri, what is the pedal? And does the rubber burn? Both things happen
in the get-away car in which the boys 'beat it!' But it cannot be finer
or faster than my own vehicle!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Morning light fell through the green louvres of Government House. And
Monsieur the Commissioner, listening intently to Henri's reasoning,
said, "Let me straighten this. You believe there was a great insurance
fraud with the steamship _Webber_?"

"It would seem certain, M'sieur. On this trip we came down the coast
of the Republic, seeking to find the little Ashby who hides. At the
Isle of Palms was a radio message from the kind Englishman, Sir Dudley
Markham. His attorneys have established that M'sieur Webber was
actually all buyers of the _Webber_ and her mortgage-holder. M'sieur
Webber thus stood to profit by some hundred and twenty-five thousand
dollars at her wrecking."

"Granted he could have stood to make a whale of a profit if he threw
the ship away--and Sir Dudley's attorneys should know what they're
talking about--and granted he did throw the ship away, how would
that involve the _Christophe_? Offhand, I'd say you could probably
prove fraud with the _Webber_ and that you have strong evidence that
someone, most probably Webber, afraid of the fraud coming out if your
search wasn't stopped, burned your launch and tried to kill you,
making it look like a banana fight. For the loss of the _Christophe_,
you have only a just possible motive to set against a battery of
impossibilities! This fellow, Webber, did ask Malcolm Christophe to
go to the Purple Reefs, showing he wasn't afraid of having him there.
He did leave the _Christophe_--still presumably A1 and certainly
afloat--at the Isle of Palms! As he says, he wouldn't have let Malcolm
Christophe reach the Isle of Palms if he'd been afraid of him. He's
right that only a bunch of raving lunatics would have taken the
_Christophe_ into the inland waterways to the Isle of Palms if there
had been anything even odd aboard!"

"M'sieur, the hat found in the Everglades was a hat carried by the
_Christophe_! Its tying-off was of the year and month! M'sieur Webber
did not have the hats when he landed in the Isle of Palms. Neither were
they in his powerboat. The port officer of the Isle of Palms recalls
clearly that they were not!"

"Granting the hats did not get to Florida alone, granting you
have evidence the second storm of the year carried them into the
Everglades--or whatever the place is--from this Webber's Landing,
granting that either Thomas Webber himself or the Hereras were the
most likely persons to have taken them there, they could still have
picked 'em up innocently as the bale drifted in the Caribbean after the
_Christophe_ sank!"

"And failed to report the find, M'sieur, when all the Caribbean cried
with pleas for news of one drifting thing that could have been of the
_Christophe's_ cargo?"

"You could prove criminal indifference--no more."

"M'sieur, we have on the Purple Reefs a possible motive for a great
crime--the much money for the _Webber's_ wrecking whose possession
could perchance have been endangered by the presence of ill-timed
witnesses. Of those witnesses known to have been upon the Reefs as
the _Webber_ first lay there, not one came home! In the hats we have
strong evidence that those who could have profited from fraud with
the _Webber_ had some contact with the _Christophe_ that they conceal
and that cannot therefore be innocent. I believe as I believe in God
that the contact was at the time of the _Christophe's_ sinking and
that the _Christophe_ lies upon the Purple Reefs in the oil slick of
the _Webber_! For long reasons, I think it not impossible that divers
willing to work an evil place can prove it. My fear is that we are
likely to fail to prove it because, should we be right, we are likely
to be no longer there ere we prove it."

"What you are wanting is that I ask my superiors to send a gunboat
to the Reefs while you try to prove your theory?" the commissioner
said, tapping plump fingers on his papers. "Well, I can't! Personally
I'm certain that you're wrong--and afraid of what may happen if
against evidence you're right. But consider my official position. 'The
commissioner of Home Island requests police or naval protection for
the Purple Reefs!' 'Why does he wish it?' 'Because he thinks there
may be evidence there of foul play with the motorship _Christophe_.'
'What evidence has he?' 'That young Henri Christophe thinks the
_Christophe_ herself is there!' And at that point the governor jibs,
'The _Christophe_ was lost between the Isle of Palms and the Cape!
Even if she had about faced and hightailed it back for the Purple
Reefs, it is physically impossible that she could not have reached
them before the searching party from the Isle of Palms reached them
to look for the men missing from the _Webber_!' They were there, you
know, probably fishing rather than searching, but there, for almost
seven days. And before that seven days ended, you couldn't have sunk
a bucket in the Caribbean without someone who was looking for the
_Christophe_ herself having seen it!" He stood up. "I'm granting you
there may have been fraud with the _Webber_ and that Thomas Webber may
have tried to put you out of the way before you turned it up--but now
it's in the hands of Sir Dudley's attorneys you yourself don't think
he'll dare to try again. You don't think it's because of the _Webber_
that he's hunting for William Ashby, but to stop the man testifying to
a much worse thing. You don't think the Hereras were ever worried about
the _Webber_--assumably believing they could make a story of personal
innocence stick even if fraud by the owner came out--but that the thing
they are afraid of is that you may be on the track of a far worse thing
that resulted from their being caught red-handed in the fraud. But
where is the evidence of any worse crime? Assuming there was all hell's
fraud with the _Webber_, her wrecking was over and done while Jaques
and Christian and the _Christophe_ were seas away! No! I can't ask for
a gunboat until you give me something better. Even a junk of Spanish
treasure would give me an excuse! As it stands, there's strong evidence
Thomas Webber didn't have anything to hide when the _Christophe_
reached the Reefs and none that he did! There's a time element that
proves the _Christophe_ couldn't have been sunk at the Reefs and
nothing but the convenience of the oil slick to suggest that she was!"
He grinned unhappily. "I know that's not very satisfactory from your
viewpoint, since what you're worrying about is being the convincing bit
of evidence."

"As something of satisfaction, if we do not come back, will you send a
gunboat and divers, remembering what I have thought, M'sieur?"

"Oh, if you don't come back I'll give you every kind of action! True
official protection of the citizen. Just be murdered and we'll be there
to protect you right away!" the commissioner said wryly. He added,
frowning, "And show me one bit of positive proof that any foul play
occurred there and I'll not only have the Navy out I'll have every one
of those birds arrested on suspicion of murder!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The Purple Reefs were black and silent as the brothers Christophe
approached them in the bumbling sailboat. No prick of light marked
a campfire nor was Tobias' catboat in the little bay. Henri said,
horrified, "Tobias is not here! I had begun to worry when we learned
that he had not gone to Home Island to see if they had news of our
delay." Anchoring close to the starlit beach, they jumped into
waist-deep water, Henri holding the rifles high. In a moment, they
stood further appalled, before the robbed cache of gasoline and the
insolently altered notice. Joseph said in a choked voice, "Give me one
of the rifles!"

Henri cupped his hands to his mouth and gave the West Indian call of
the centuries, "S-a-i-l _ho_! . . . Tobias! . . . S-a-i-l _ho_!" He had
the profane sense of shouting at the dead. Gripping Joseph's great arm,
he said, "Let us think! If they left him marooned upon the dunes, what
would he do?"

"Survival is a very old art of the Caribbean. Marooned men and fleeing
slaves knew it long ere the armies did. What could be done, he would
do."

"If he was unhurt . . ." Henri said and stumbled on the unlikeliness of
the hope. "If he could obtain fish and shellfish, he would live a long
while on juice of fish and conchs, but it is hard to live as long as he
may have been here. He would hope for showers and to catch water. The
best chance of catching water would be the old military installations."

The skeletons of the buildings and their few remaining sheets of iron
were black against the stars as the brothers topped a last wash of
dune. "Tobias!" Henri called despairingly. From the darkness, darkness
detached itself. "M'sieur Henri and M'sieur Joseph!" Tobias called
rumblingly. "I was fearful that it was not you! It had been the _Sea
Lily_ I have listened for." His voice became anxious as they ploughed
through the sand to greet each other. "The boat you came in? We must
not leave it!" His voice shook. "The unknown evil has been here again,
taking my boat, removing the _Webber_ . . ." He collapsed to the sand.
"M'sieur Henri have you water? I have rationed my drinking to two snail
shells full a day . . ."

"Forgive us! Here!" Henri said, unslinging the gourd he had brought
from the boat.

"But the Hereras? Was it not they?" Joseph asked, oddly regarding the
rifle in his hands.

"Let us go back to the bay!" Tobias said, staggering to his feet. "I
do not believe the evil here now, but it was here and took my boat!
For the Hereras, they had come--it is my thought at old Geraldino
Herera's bidding--to see the _Webber_. Why I do not know. But the evil
had destroyed the _Webber_ so that she was not there. The Hereras were
much puzzled that she should be destroyed and believed that you might
have done it and thus in some manner harmed them. Why they should
think thus, I know not." So troubled for his lack of competence that
he walked with bowed head, he explained what had befallen with the
Hereras. And Joseph said softly, "A moment ago I looked at the rifle
shocked that I might have shot them had we met. The devils! The cruel,
playing devils!"

"You are certain you understood them, Tobias? Certain that it was not
they who sent the _Webber_ into the deep? Nor they at the end who took
your boat?" Henri urged as they plodded, sliding, up the last dune that
shut off the bay.

"_They_ believed that it might be you who had destroyed the wreck,"
Tobias said stubbornly. "I have told with care that which I know or
do not know. Ere they left, they even gathered flung coral that most
clearly showed the _Webber_ had been dynamited. Nor was it they who
took my catboat from the creek. It was that which the sea birds watched
that took my catboat!" He stumbled with weariness in the sand. "The
Hereras are evil and may be a part of the large evil. But another--or
others--were here of which the Hereras do not know! It was not the
Hereras who robbed me of my boat. From the time that the Hereras hunted
me in annoyance with the laughing gun, they were within my sight or
in the little bay, whence they could not have crossed the dunes to
my catboat without my seeing them!" He put a large hand earnestly on
Henri's arm. "The Hereras will come back--which may not be an easy
matter with which to deal--but the thing the birds watched will come
also and is worse for it is unknown and we know not what it is or what
it wishes!" He regarded the sailboat with relief as it became dimly
visible to them through the starry darkness and the increasing silver
of his hair shone faintly in the starlight above the dark earnestness
of his face. "It is my thought that it came first in the night to Home
Island ere ever the strangers, Thomas Webber and William Ashby, came to
Home Island from the storm-wrecked ship and ere ever the _Christophe_
sailed from Main Town for the last time! It came to the Great Sound and
the thorn forests in the night in a powerboat, when with dawn there was
no powerboat in the Great Sound. I too wondered, 'Is Tobias stranged?'
But I do not feel that Tobias was stranged for I heard the engine
miss." He put a great hand on Henri's shoulder. "Those who came could
not have been the Hereras nor the large and fair man, Webber, nor the
little Ashby, for this was but soon after hurricane was posted and the
steamer _Webber_ was then steaming northward before the storm, bearing
them all!"

The brothers stood, astonished, and Joseph asked wonderingly, "Henri,
can it be that all we have followed has pertained to the _Webber_ only?
That in looking for those who harmed the _Christophe_ we must look for
person or persons of whom we have not even thought? Could the thing of
great value upon the Reefs really have been treasure?"

"Meantime, we had best follow Tobias' thought and spend some part of
the time they have given us in arranging what welcome we may for the
Hereras when they have delivered their bulls and return!" Henri said
grimly. "Whether or not they have aught to do with the _Christophe_, I
think they plan little good for us."

"At least they will assuredly be late," Joseph said. "They have never
had a mail contract but they lost it by going fishing and they carry
only their strange cargoes since shippers know they may divert to a
port half a sea away because it is carnival or Mardi Gras."

       *       *       *       *       *

Four days later, they put the finishing touches to the small and
dangerously crazy diving barge, tested the compressor and were ready
for the first deep dive. And as the diver must now face the slow and
tedious business of decompression-staging after every descent, the
location of every dive would have to be carefully chosen. "You still
believe the _Christophe_ lies here, do you not, Henri?" Joseph asked
regarding his brother worriedly.

"Yes," Henri said.

"Should we not for the search's sake acknowledge M'sieur the
Commissioner right that one impossibility outweighs any likelihoods?
Dear Henri, where'er the _Christophe_ sank, this is a place it cannot
be!"

"I may be stranged, but I believe it but seems impossible that
she is here, that some fault in our reasoning but makes it seem
impossible." He touched Joseph's hand. "I may be wrong as you and
M'sieur the Commissioner believe me. But bear with me to think what
men having committed a great crime and in great haste to dispose of
its evidence--that is a sacked ship--might do! Oil is the betrayer of
sunken ships, but here is already great oil slick. How could they use
it? To eastward of the wrecked _Webber_ was great depth, seemingly
a good place. But the eternal current sets from east to west across
the reef. Thus were the . . ." Visualizing the matter, he could not
name the _Christophe_. "Thus were a second ship sent down too far to
eastward of the wrecked _Webber_, an observer might later say, 'Why
oil slick to eastward when the current runs west?' Immediately astern
of--almost literally under--the _Webber_? A good place, perhaps, had
they known how deep it actually was, but perhaps they were not sure
or were not divers and there was the chance that the _Webber_ herself
might slip backward there and thus the chance that her insurers might
send down deep divers who would say, 'What is here? We have the
remains of two ships?' Those using the oil slick, would, I think, go
down the oil slick where the current carries it across the reefs and
the backwash holds it in a gathered spreading against the reefs. They
would wish to sink the ship deeply. But the reef there is not vertical
but pitched and stepped, and they would not wish to go so far to the
west that the second slick might show as a separate slick. They would
use the first deep that they assumed to be safe from an enquiring
suit-diver . . ."

"Which would be all too safe from us."

"Scuttlers could miscalculate a ship's actions below the water, Joseph!
Surface sailors know little of the submarine currents of reefs. We know
something of it from our diving in the Pacific, but your friend to whom
you sent the message from the bottle has taught us much more. I think
the men scuttling the ship in the oil slick did miscalculate or that
there was reason to think they perhaps had done so!"

"Dear brother, why?"

"Because I think there was but one diver with them, whom they ignored.
The little Ashby. I think he was a good man involved in a great sin
against his will, but after the commission of the sin, a terrified man,
terrified not only for himself but for what might befall his loved
ones should the sin be known. I think his mind said forever as the hot
stillness choked the swamps or the sad rain beat the swamps, 'What if
those scuttling the ship _did_ miscalculate? What if she lies in reach
of a suit-diver?' I think he had to know and came back to try to learn."

"And if so, did not learn, since he was still seeking two years later.
And since, were he the little Ashby, he was by his wife's statement a
great diver, it would seem the thing cannot be learned."

"Were he Ashby and were he acting as I think, he had been too fearful
to ask a professional tender to help him but had taken insane risk by
using native boys from the creeks as tenders. A tender is half a diver.
I think he was right in his great fear and ineffective in his search."

"At least," Joseph said, relieved if unconvinced, "it is the western
downpitch that you wish to search and that is where the better marine
growths are. And were the galleons ever wrecked to the east, ever torn
from their old beds to be flung upon the tablelands, then carried over,
it is approximately down the oil slick that they might lie. So let us
make our first soundings for the first dives to the west and down the
slick."

Previous soundings had revealed a sloping and chasmed wall,
steep-pitched as a church roof, terminating irregularly in drops into
the depths the lead could not plumb. While at some points the great
submarine cliffs appeared to be undercut for the lead line swung inward
with some below-surface current. The first problem in search for trace
of ships, old or new, was thus to determine upon what degree of incline
on the dizzy battlements of the reef dropping wreckage might have
clung? In the case of ancient galleons, upon what unstable resting
place could a mass largely composed of coral cling upon an underwater
slope? In the case of a ship newly sunk, would the submarine canyons
act as catchments unexpectedly bearing her inward as she sank?

"And to settle it, we had best choose a steep incline and see where
objects rest and a deep canyon to see how the currents set," Joseph
said. "Let me take it, Henri, I have done more incline work than you."

"And you are a better man at fishing your diver, which is what we may
need," Henri said. "I will go."

Joseph looked troubled but it was true that in dangerous conditions the
tender's ability to fish the diver, to keep steady contact with him
through the lines at all times, was of vital importance, particularly
where a diver might slip. So Henri put on the suit, took a last
glance at the morning of celestial blue light and gently undulating,
cornflower blue water, then slid below. Dropping through the color
changes and decreasing light of depth, he became increasingly conscious
of the forbidding character of the sloping face. Landing, his weighted
shoes skidded not merely from the steepness, but on a spongelike marine
growth, brown, pliant and slimy, which covered the reef's formation.
He could move only by clinging with his fingers and digging in the
toes of his boots. About him, down dark mountain sides, ran eroded
valleys as of the older sierras; vast, blue canyons cut backward
into the hills and to the tilted surface clung torn masses and great
coral blocks and small, round boulders threatening the possibility of
submarine avalanche. And because of the difficulty of working his way
cat-footed around the piles, he signaled Joseph several times for more
line, knowing that Joseph sweated as he gave it. Another difficulty was
the amount of movement in the water, in which some countercurrent or
watery back-draft kept him continually swinging, while at times colder
surges from the depths threatened to carry him off his feet altogether.
He even saw one great boulder stir to a heavy surge, and wondered how
many more might be poised in the blue-green invisibility above him
ready to descend?

Moving across and down the slopes and semi-precipices, steadily
gathering marine specimens, he struggled with facts, long known or
recently learned. A powerboat reasonlessly present in the Great Sound
of Home Island in the night as the steamship _Webber_ ran north
before the hurricane. Thomas Webber expecting a great sum of money
but without money. The Hereras strangely rich. A ship seemingly
thrown away not merely before hurricane where men would not throw
ships but in circumstances so desperate that six seamen die. Thomas
Webber skipping as a fawn in the forest after fearful voyage. Yet
Thomas Webber a craven coward before the sea. Thomas Webber hating
and fearing the Hereras and seeking Ashby. The Hereras seeking Henri
and Joseph Christophe. Ashby terrified of both Thomas Webber and the
Hereras and hiding from all men. So much that said the _Christophe_
lay here; and the seeming impossibility of her lying here, where he,
Henri, stubbornly believed she lay. An impossibility so complete that
both Monsieur the Commissioner and Joseph believed him demented, the
while he admitted that she could not be here and was certain that she
was here. So that he admitted that Joseph and the commissioner were
right--and hunted steadily for the resting place of the _Christophe_.

Below the last belt of the seaweeds, in the lead-violet of depth, the
spongelike growth still continued, darker here, so that it appeared
black-purple, its surface even slicker. Then about him were pale and
skeletal ferns that he assumed to be animal in nature and knew to be
desired by the good doctor. But the angle of the slope was extreme
and the finer massing of the pallid bracken beds sprouted below
precariously piled rocks. With infinite caution, watching the rocks
above him, he began uprooting the animal sprays. . . . Put from the
mind the impossibilities. Assume the _Webber_, ripe for the wrecking,
cruising the Caribbean, waiting for hurricane. The manning of a ship
entirely by one family or by close associates invites question. Six
seamen are shipped. A storm is posted. The ship steams north, allowing
the storm to gather force behind her, seeking the logical place for
wreck, some lonely and dangerous reef upon which she will be said to
have been driven. This is to be the perfect wreck. Not merely will the
ship be lost in storm, but for added authenticity the owner himself
will be on board, escaping through conditions so desperate that six
lives are lost. But the owner is a coward and no man to risk his own
fair skin. There is distinct and pre-existent probability as to what
general course a storm moving from this storm's location at this
season of the year will take; perhaps by now the barometric pressures
are even laying down an almost certain course before the storm? In
either case there come into existence certain logical landfalls that
the owner might make from the wrecked ship. There is nothing save lack
of thought--and this owner reads Machiavelli and _The Prince_--to say
the owner and a witness, the ship's engineer, should not make one such
landfall before the ship is wrecked, there to wait out the proper
period of time. All that will be needed is such a place as may be
approached privately by a powerboat in the night, such a place as a
lonely sound and a deep thorn forest that will not be searched because
a simple people fear Hidden Men and Spanish ghosts. A place such as
Home Island where--at the right time--a story may be told of desperate
voyage from shattered ship; and a simple people will not question the
story, the while the story-teller laughs at them for their simplicity!

From practical angle, so far a possible explanation of a man skipping
in the forest, the solution of one small mystery. Yet suddenly his
heart was pounding with the sense that for the first time his mind was
fingering solution, still just beyond its reach; that somewhere the
facts were offering him some new thing to show a long-sought error
in his reasoning. . . . Under his abstracted and sideward stepping
feet the rock gave way and he was falling into vacancy! The skeletal
ferns that fringed the drop were almost beyond his reach, then his
hands were tearing up the pale and skeletal ferns as his feet hammered
against the undercut face of the rock. For a moment that seemed
eternal, ferns and sponge continued to strip under his fingers. Then he
had a protuberance that did not give. When he had regained his perch,
he looked beyond the fringe of ghostly growth into the gloom of depth
and knew that if he had gone over, even Joseph could hardly have caught
him and he would have died in the oddity of a squeeze, in which the
sudden increase of pressure minus compensating air within the suit may
ram a diver upward as a bloody mass of bones and flesh into his own
helmet.

He sat sweating in the coldness of his suit and steadied the thumping
of his heart. Then he began to follow the edge of the drop as it cut
eastward across a submarine plateau. The great, cold current of the
depths came up at him, also setting east up an underwater box-canyon or
fissure such as might trap the reef-wreckage of centuries--or be used
for the scuttling of a ship that must lie deep but near the reefs. He
was still trying to find a point at which the lip was not undercut and
where the surge would not be so violent as to endanger his lines, when
Joseph signaled that it was time for him to come up.

On the barge, lifting the helmet from Henri's head, Joseph was jubilant
because he had got the marine telephone working, an added safeguard
that they had not expected from their ancient equipment. "So I called
you a little early so that I might fit it to the suit!" Joseph said.
"Also Tobias believes his unknown is back upon the dunes." He smiled
fondly at the great black man. "I still have to be convinced that
Tobias did not fail to anchor his catboat so that it merely drifted
and that it is not a blowing paper or wandering turtle that the birds
watch. But the birds have been circling."

Tobias stood as a black colossus staring at the dunes over which
a columnar flight of birds was slowly dissolving. The day was all
blue and white and from the knife-crests of the distant dunes, the
little streams of sand were blowing. As Joseph undressed him, Henri
also watched the dunes. Suddenly there as a minute movement and tiny
flash as the sun caught some shining object. "M'sieur Henri!" Tobias
whispered fiercely. Henri stared intently, but the flash was not
repeated. Joseph was looking up from the removal of Henri's boots.

"Something moved at the top of the dune and made a flash," Henri said.

"Perhaps a bit of glass blew?" Joseph suggested.

"Perhaps," Henri said. But he experienced the unexpected sense of
danger in the sun. He said, "If you can spare me, I will go and
see--no! Do not come! Stay and fix the telephone!" He glanced at the
water below them. "If aught is down there on any sort of incline and
if we are to have chance of finding it, we must make haste. Even now
there are great stirrings across the face. In storm it must boil as
a caldron--also, I think that I may have better chance of learning
what is on the dunes alone. We are also so admirable a target here,
should any one wish to use us for it, that I can hardly be a better one
ashore."

"No," Joseph agreed more thoughtfully than Henri had expected. "We are
committed to so much of danger that about danger itself there is little
that we can do. And if there is someone yonder--which is uncertain--at
least no one has shot at us today." He smiled with salt-dried lips.
"Neither, I suppose, do we own the Caribbean. Should we find anyone
and say, 'M'sieur, you are upon the Purple Reefs!' he could retort,
'M'sieurs you are upon them!'"

"It is an awkward scene," Henri said, grinning to reassure Joseph. "And
it could be prolonged. 'M'sieur, I charge you with looking over a sand
dune!' 'M'sieur, I charge you with walking up one to look over it!'"

Ashore, he began the long tramp up the sliding sand hills. As he neared
the crest, he flattened to look over carefully. From the knife-edge
of the crest the sand was drifting away in its usual small stream
and on the windward face, sand patterns were beautifully forming and
re-forming to the clear sweep of air. Below him and to left and right,
the tossed landscape was empty as was the brilliant sea. But the
usual tiny sand runners and beach-crabs were absent. Trying to find
an explanation of the flash, he dropped back and knelt between the
small salt bush and the tuft of dead grass where he had observed it
and sifted the upper sands through his hands. No scrap of glass or
crumpling of silver paper came to light. Lacking a fast boat to circle
the Reefs, a complete search of the dunes and of the small sand-creeks
into which a boat of shallow draft could be run would take days and any
person wishing to leave unseen could do so from behind half a dozen
sand-horns while they were ploddingly searching others.

He stood up and stepped boldly onto the top of the dune. His sense
that he was not alone upon the dunes swept at him more violently. He
felt his chest a target. Looking at a point above the horizon--so that
he would not obviously be looking at any wrong place amongst sand and
vines--he said clearly, "Come out, Ashby! It is I, Henri Christophe. I
have many messages from Madame, your wife. Do not be afraid!" He waited
in the lovely sun experiencing the sense of absurdity of one who has
perhaps spoken to an empty landscape. He smiled confidently and said
again, "Do not be afraid and do not make me pull you out!" In one of
the less luxuriant, therefore less suspect trailings of pink-flowered
vines, there was an upheaval of the sand and William Ashby rose,
shabby, haunted and ridiculous with sand. "Didn't know who was here.
Can't be too careful!" Ashby muttered, sitting on the sand to dust off
sand. At his belt he had a large, Spanish revolver and a shark knife.
From the vines he drew a dilapidated pair of field glasses, presumably
the origin of the flash. Henri went up to him and dropped to one knee
before him. "First, Madame sends her love and has all tenderness for
the little ones. And she begs that you come to her and tell--and
face--what has befallen. For us, M'sieur, we have sought to befriend
you. Tobias is a good man as his son, the big black boy, was a good
man. It was a very evil thing that you should take Tobias' catboat and
maroon him here."

"A bad place, a cursed place! Took boat so he'd go away. Came back to
see if he was all right and to pick him up," Ashby said distractedly.
"His catboat's all right; in old rumrunner's tunnel. Came back to pick
him up. You believe I came back to pick him up? Wouldn't have hurt
him! Wouldn't hurt you fellows! You been good to me. Good. Didn't mean
any harm with the catboat--dozen times I been close to pick him up but
thought the Hereras were maybe still here. Shouldn't run afoul of the
Hereras! Better get going before the Hereras come!"

"M'sieur Webber is seeking you and will find you!" Terror moved in
Ashby's eyes. "You will 'run afoul' of the Hereras! Your one hope is to
let us help you and to let Madame, your wife, help you. When a man is
very frightened, he does the wrong things. It was not of help to you
to blow up the wrecked _Webber_." The pitiful eyes showed astonished
terror at discovery. "It even made the Hereras very angry, for they
know that the reasonless blowing up of a wreck must say to men, 'There
was something wrong with the wreck of the ship!'"

"I better be going now," Ashby said, scrambling to his feet, as Henri
also stood. "I better be leaving . . ." His trembling hand reached into
his pocket for a gritted slice of raw conch. Throwing his body against
him, Henri threw him to the sand, feeling the pity of one tripping a
child or a frightened animal. Ashby struggled with unexpected strength
and for a minute they rolled, gasping. Then Henri had the revolver and
the knife. As his own chest heaved and Ashby sobbed, he said, "To go,
I cannot let you! We are your friends, that is truth, M'sieur. But you
cannot be free to come back and cut our barge adrift. And you must
tell us what befell with the _Webber_ and the _Christophe_ so that we
may see justice done! You must also speak for your own sake ere either
Thomas Webber or the Hereras find you!"

"Look!" Ashby said, clutching his hand on Henri's arm as they moved
toward the top of the dune. "Look! Were things wrong about the
_Webber_! I'll tell you about the _Webber_, Henri! Then I gotta
go--come away from here, Henri! Can't be here when the Hereras
come--any time they may come up over the sky there! They'll shoot you
fellows, too, Henri. They have machine guns. I'll tell you all there
is about the _Webber_, Henri. Then let's get gone before they come!" He
pulled Henri's arm as Henri halted at the top of the dune where Joseph
could see that all was well. "I don't want anything to happen to you
fellows, honest. Gotta get away before the Hereras come. They'll kill
you if they find you here! They'll kill me if they get me. Look, I'll
tell you about the _Webber_! The _Webber_ was a throwing-away. That
pale, shark's belly devil, Thomas Webber stood for a heap of money if
he could throw her away so the insurers wouldn't guess. Thought he
was a genius, Thomas Webber. Well, he hears of the Hereras and they
was to work the ship 'til a storm showed up--then throw her away in
front of the storm. I was her engineer to make a witness they knew
couldn't turn. Nothing real wrong in throwing a ship away, Henri! On
the long chance she wasn't smashed enough, I was a diver that could
fix her underwater 'fore the insurers came." His eyes searched Henri's
face. "I'm telling you truth, Henri! You gotta believe me it's truth!
Hereras got a mighty lot from Thomas Webber for trying a throwing-away
in front of a storm and more coming when it would be done. Their own
ship, the _John P. Riggs_, was to pick 'em up after the _Webber_ was
on the rocks--had to be lonely rocks, so the insurers would believe
men wouldn't throw-away there. Thomas Webber thought it all. Thought
he was a genius, Thomas Webber. An' th' _Webber_ trades around 'til
comes a storm an' then the _Webber_ comes north, waiting for a place,
with the _John P. Riggs_ just over the sky so folks wouldn't notice 'em
together. . . ."

"What of the extra seamen that would make men say, 'They would not have
shipped strangers had there been throwing-away afoot?'"

"I'm not holding back. Extra seamen was just more Hereras. Hereras got
more fake papers 'an you can shake a stick at! No poor seamen lost
from the _Webber_. Just looked good, that's all. I'm not holding back,
see! How it was with Thomas Webber was as it gets certain where the
storm will go, him and me takes one powerboat and lands private in Home
Island, so he can say he near died in the wreck but won't be within
holler of no wreck. Truth was, the _Webber_ stood within five miles of
the island to put us off! Sort of cheap, making folks think you'd been
in wreck. But weren't no real genuine harm. Well, so we just lays low
in the old thorn forest 'til would have been time for us to reach the
island from the reefs they'd chose. Couldn't be dead sure which reefs
it would be, so Thomas Webber says things were that bad we couldn't
be dead sure where we'd struck. I'm telling you what I know! You do
believe me, Henri?"

"So far, I believe. What happened as the _Christophe_ reached the
Purple Reefs?"

"The _Webber_ was on the Purple Reefs like they'd planned if the
storm's course held right. She was smashed enough underwater, so wasn't
no need of me for diving. Thomas Webber pretended he was worried for
the missing seamen. So--so he had Captain Malcolm look. Then we come
on with the _Christophe_ to the Isle of Palms." He twisted his shaking
hands together. "That's how it was!" His gaze searched Henri's face
more desperately. "I--I got to, figuring they might do me in when
the insurance was paid. So I laid low. They'd told me they'd kill me
if fraud about the _Webber_ should come out. I did know about the
_Webber_, see? But not about the _Christophe_! The _Christophe_ went
on! I wouldn't hurt you fellows. You been good to me--good." He looked
everywhere but at Henri. "But I worried you might learn about the
_Webber_ if you took her brass, so I pinched th' dynamite in Tampa an'
blew her up. She was a bad ship, a cursed ship. This is a bad place,
a cursed place! Come away, Henri, before the Hereras come! You can't
learn about the _Christophe_ here!"

"We are your friends. But we know that you know of the _Christophe_.
You must show us where the _Christophe_ lies--down the oil slick
yonder!"

"No!" Ashby said. "No! The _Christophe_ went on to the Isle of
Palms . . ."

"It has not been for the fraud with the _Webber_ you have been so
afraid! It was not for the _Webber_ that you were diving here! It was
not for the _Webber_ but for that to which the _Webber_ might lead that
you blew the _Webber_ from her bed! It was not for Tobias, but for what
even Tobias might find that you stole his catboat!"

Astonishment at discovery was in the hunted eyes again. "Diving?
That was for treasure--thought there might be treasure!" Ashby cried
wildly. He held Henri's shoulders. "All over with the _Webber_ fraud
'fore the _Christophe_ got here! _Christophe_ isn't here! Don't know
anything about the _Christophe_--don't look here! Come away! It was
treasure, just treasure I dived for . . ." He gripped Henri's shirt.
"_Christophe_ went on to the Isle of Palms! I tell you the _Christophe_
went on to the Isle of Palms!"

"And I tell you that there is truth you do not tell us! And that it
pertains to Jaques and Christian and the _Christophe_ having come
when there was some matter with the _Webber_ that must not be seen!
And if you do not tell us, we will still be seeking when the Hereras
return--and while we will do what we may, how many of us live past
their return is open question!"

"Worse things 'an death," Ashby muttered. His small figure with the
great chest of the deep diver was touched with a sudden and tragic
dignity. "Things a man can't tell. Things a man can't talk of if he
dies for it."

Completely puzzled, Henri said furiously and despairingly, "Then we
await the Hereras!"

"Hard to handle machine guns with rifles," Ashby said calmly. "But
worse things 'an getting shot. I'll try to help you when Hereras come.
I got some dynamite. But things a man can't tell."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Can we trust Tobias not to harm him as he guards him?" Joseph asked
when they had established Tobias and Ashby aboard Ashby's powerboat,
extracted from a one time rumrunner's hiding place roofed with planks
and covered with sand and vines in one of the sand-creeks and where
Tobias' catboat--with unshipped mast--and a quantity of dynamite were
also hidden. "And what can it be that he cannot tell? Or has done? I
cannot think he would have part in harming men. And, Henri, in one
thing do you not think he speaks truth? For, Henri, the _Christophe_
cannot be here!"

"Tobias can be trusted. What the poor Ashby will not tell, I do not
know. That something that he fears is here, I know! As I said to him
the _Christophe_ lay here, he looked down the traces of the oil above
the canyon where I slipped. But let us merely say, 'Can we once get
into the canyon, we may learn what he fears!'"

"What makes it so difficult of access that you believe the little Ashby
failed to get in?"

"The gradient is severe and the footing slick. But the large difficulty
is the surge. One swings on the slopes and the canyon walls cut back so
that attempting a direct drop one could be swung beneath the undercut
and the lines would sever--and further from the walls are coral
columns."

"If one could find the main head of the canyon there might be a
gradient down which one could work without danger to the lines."

"I do not want you down there, Joseph!" Henri said. "That head of yours
still spins."

"If it had not been a foolish head, it might not," Joseph said, his
face calm in the sunset. "And we alternate the diving--or we neither
dive!"

       *       *       *       *       *

For sixteen days they gathered fine specimens, found many small traces
of old ships and ships less old, gained access to a dozen shallower
canyons but found no way into the main canyon. The seventeenth day
rose in glassy calm, with great lilac and silver cumulus about the
sky. Joseph gave Henri a smile as the helmet was lowered over his head
and screwed in place. Then he was underwater and below him was only
the descending line vanishing into nothing an incredible distance
down. Then the dim forms of the slope rose at him; a purple shadow,
a marine sierra gathering color, a strange and swaying mountainside
about him. He gave the signal to check, swung above the dizziness of
the downpitch, and landed, skidding, on the slippery, all enveloping
growth.

Today the slope was touched with dark purple and lilac, as if it had
caught the colors of a great storm darkening a jungle; the valleys
were clear-cut, and his eyes picked out what above water would have
been the descending, boulder-filled bed of a dry river. With delays
as Henri jockeyed the barge into new position, Joseph followed the
bed downward. Then beyond a dam of flat rock was a drop of perhaps
thirty feet to a continuing floor of round stones, but mossy and
much littered. Their enemy, the current, was present here, but not
unmanageable. And having been swung to the lower level, he went forward
through the semi-darkness, though much more slowly, for everywhere
about him were strange shapes: piled conch shells, green with time,
the storm-and-current-collected trash of ages. Then he was in the lea
of some large mass but the opaque gloom made him uncertain, so that it
was only as his hands were on it that he knew it a ship. A ship. Not
very old, the hull shattered and torn to maze of planking. But what
ship? He knew of no wreck of recent years that should be here. And he
experienced the diver's excitement at contact with an unknown ship. And
was suddenly dizzy so that his head throbbed painfully, and knowing
the pain an aftereffect of the beating on the docks combined with the
pressure of depth, he knew that he must be careful to avoid excitement.
He edged his way cautiously along the ship that seemed enormous in the
obscurity. And, passing beneath the stern, he used his light, climbing
upon the piled rocks to reach up and rub off the coating of sediment
from the raised letters of the name. In his reeling head he had the
sense of a flash of light and rolling waves of darkness. "Henri!" he
said into the telephone. "Help me . . . I am dizzy . . . Henri, I have
found the _Christophe_!"

       *       *       *       *       *

On the barge, Joseph's face was white against the golden tans of the
diving suit. Kneeling beside him, Henri asked, "Joseph, are you harmed?"

Joseph put his hands against his face, shaking his head. "I am
well. . . ." He returned Henri's gaze. "She is there in the canyon
near the drop to the great deep. It is the _Christophe_, I rubbed the
growths off her name. Even had I not grown dizzy, I do not think I
could have brought myself to look within her."

To the east were dark storm clouds while in the west was sunlight and
from overhead a shower was falling so that the great drops flashed like
diamonds against the eastern clouds. Out of silence, Henri said in a
choked voice, "It seems a terrible thing to speak of haste, but having
found what is below we should not needlessly await the Hereras. The
weather is changing and lest change of currents in hurricane should
carry her into the deep, we must have M'sieur the Commissioner's naval
divers as witnesses that the _Christophe_ sank here. And if we talk
with the sad Ashby now, I think he may be our witness against those by
whose act she lies here."

Breathing hard and trembling, they knelt at the edge of the barge.
"The _Christophe_ lies here--yet she cannot lie here!" Joseph said
wonderingly. "And still for what reason was she harmed?"

"The _Christophe_ lies here--and she cannot have _returned_ here! And,
Joseph, I think that the reason for her harming was simple as that the
Hereras were late! In thinking of our brother coming to the Reefs,
we have said, 'Though there was great fraud with the _Webber_, the
_Christophe_ could not have endangered it! Too much time had passed.
Thomas Webber, the owner, even asked that the _Christophe_ come to the
scene of the _Webber's_ wreck!' But, Joseph, Thomas Webber knew only
the time at which the Hereras had promised to wreck the _Webber_. He
did not know the true time of the wreck. Only the Hereras knew the true
time of the wreck."

Looking at their faces as they entered the dark cabin of the powerboat
from rain that had increased to a downpour Ashby said with the calm of
despair, "So you found her. So it'll be known now--known." He sat with
his hands clenched between his knees as Henri knelt on one knee before
him.

"We have found the _Christophe_, M'sieur. And we must go at once in
your powerboat to M'sieur the Commissioner and thence to Tampa and you
must be our witness to why and by whose act the _Christophe_ lies
here!" Henri said as Joseph readied the engines and Tobias stowed the
things of the cabin for sea. "For, M'sieur, was it not thus? That the
Hereras had promised for great fee to throw away the _Webber_ as the
great gales were rising before hurricane, when the genuineness of a
wreck could not be doubted--and when they would not have done it.
Actually they planned to parallel the storm and throw the ship away in
the first safe moments of after-whip. It had not been as satisfactory
from the owner's viewpoint, for always there was the chance a passing
ship might later say, 'The _Webber_ driven by hurricane on the Purple
Reefs? We saw the Reefs empty as the storm was dying!' But it should
have worked. But the storm grew, crowding the _Webber_ to the coast of
the Republic. But it could still have worked, for the Caribbean was
filled with flying rain and flying spindrift. The ships were fleeing
as they could and sheltering as they might. The little boats were gone
into the rivers, the people of the swamps had fled for the high ground.
And none were pausing to check the identity of a storm-sheltering ship.
But the storm loitered, growing always in force, giving long days of
drowning rain and flying drift--and boredom. And the Hereras, having
waited two days, so that later they might say they had come from the
wrecked ship, were very bored and left the _Webber_ in the swamps and
went ashore in the powerboat to the little town. But Martin Herera did
not make his captain's complaint of wreck, for as yet there had been
no wreck. And they would not mean to spend days, perhaps merely a few
hours, but being Hereras of the Low Cays, they were arrested and were
drunk ere they broke out, and jesting as they always jest, delayed to
make further mischief ere they left. So that ere they left, the storm
was rolling from the Caribbean. And they were late! Was not that the
simple beginning of disaster, that laughing scoundrels were late? For
being Hereras still, they gambled for the balance of the promised
payment and went to carry out the wrecking, not before the storm as
they had promised, not in the spindrift and swell of after-whip as
they had planned, but in weather like an angel's dream of peace!" His
voice shook. "And so lonely are the Reefs, and so long had the storm
itself delayed, that the wrecking should still have worked. But on
belated fulfillment of the fraud, Jaques and Christian and then the
_Christophe_ came, endangering the whole fraud--that still could work
except for Jaques and Christian and those of the _Christophe_! And
the Hereras killed many men and often in the hijacking wars of the
rumrunners. They have killed many poor Chinese when pressed by the
gunboats. They will not hesitate to kill many men, but perhaps the
wickedness on the Purple Reefs grew when our brother guessed harm to
Jaques and Christian and the covering of fraud became the covering of
murder--was it not so, M'sieur?"

"Yes," Ashby said in a dead voice. He pressed his forehead upon his arm
against the wall.

"We have waited very long to know of this, M'sieur," Henri said. "We
would be sure of what befell when the _Christophe_ came to the Reefs
that day!"

Ashby spoke almost in a whisper. "Tom Webber has asked Cap'n Malcolm
Christophe to bring him by the Reefs to see the wreck of his ship.
He's said he was plumb certain it was the Purple Reefs they'd struck
when they had to 'bandon ship, but he's left it open a bit case the
Hereras has had to ditch her somewheres else. He's been all the
owner--feelin' bad. Then the _Christophe_ is at the Reefs and rounds
the North Dunes--and there are the Hereras still faking storm damage
on the _Webber_ where they'd thrown her away and the _John P. Riggs_
standing by to pick them up! And Tom Webber goes white and looks at
Malcolm Christophe and says, 'Well, Follower Saint, what do Followers
do if they see too much? I've heard they don't go to the law--but I'm
wondering!' And Cap'n Malcolm Christophe's face is dark but he looks
back at him and says, 'It is true, M'sieur, that the Followers leave
the punishment of crime to God--but it is also true that they do not
turn away without learning the fate of friends! And the broken catboat
upon the sands yonder is that of Jaques and Christian who may also have
seen too much. And I must know where are Jaques and Christian now?'"

"And, to cover murder, there must be more murder?" Henri whispered.

Ashby rocked his face against the wall and his voice was a cry of
protest against life. "Man means no harm. All at once, it goes wrong.
Me, I meant no harm. An' all at once the devils from the Low Cays are
killing and the pale, fair devil, Tom Webber as hasn't meant killing
but loves pain an' killing when his own skin is safe, is standing off
laughing like a fox in his eyes! All at once, good men will not go
home . . ."

"And they stood as lambs!" Henri said so softly it was a breath.
"Strong men and brave men--but men who would not defend themselves!"

"Somethin' awful an' somethin' beautiful to believe like that!" Ashby
muttered. "But somethin' awful to use a man's belief. Awful to hit a
man as won't hit back. Haunts a man by night to remember men hit as
won't hit back . . ."

"M'sieur Thomas Webber laughed?" Tobias asked through the drum of rain.

"Like I says, he hadn't meant killing. But he wasn't going to be
stopped for killing, an' when killing starts he loves the killing, eyes
laughing like at the bullfights--like killing was a sport! His eyes
bright, so I wanted to kill him. But I ain't what it takes to kill.
Only to wisht I was dead!"

"I will go now and prepare my catboat," Tobias said. "Do not wait for
me. I will place flowers on the water then sail my catboat."

Joseph moved from the engines to the wheel and turned the boat for Home
Island as Henri continued to crouch before Ashby.

"Some things from the _Christophe_ they wanted," Ashby said, staring.
"Looted the ship like vultures. Like vultures picking th' bones of the
dead! Put things on the _John P. Riggs_. Hereras took th' lace. Pale
devil fancied the hats for they was like South Sea islands an' women.
That's what happened--don't make me talk no more! Not no more! Some
things so bad a man can't talk of them! Sooner die than tell the rest
on it!" He hid his face in his hands as the boat swung to the open sea.

Putting his hand on Ashby's knee, Henri said, "There is still a thing
that might free guilty men. With the _Christophe_, all search began
with the thought, 'She reached the Isle of Palms . . .' Questioning if
evil befell our brother here ere the ship went on, the mind knew, 'None
had taken the risk of taking the ship on if all had not been well!'
Even knowing, 'The _Christophe_ is here. She could not have returned
here, thus she never left here!' the mind thinks, 'But she reached the
Isle of Palms!' But did not the answer begin with the very simple thing
that the _Christophe_ delivered mail from the tiny islands to the Isle
of Palms, but did not take mail out, since this went by the Republic's
ships to Tampa or Miami? And thus our brother very often sent in the
mail by little boat to avoid entering the river. And was not the rest
of the answer the very simple thing that for guilty men, even with a
ship sunken where oil cannot betray her and where all save a diver
think her too deep to reach, it is better if all search be made afar?
And thus another ship went on, and if noted by the way, she was what
she was, the motorship _John P. Riggs_, that trades hither and yon, but
by night her lights are the lights of a motorship such as is common
to the islands--and by night passing on the _Christophe's_ course,
with men presently bringing in the _Christophe's_ mail, she is the
_Christophe_?"

"Should have known it must be known!" Ashby said into his hands.
"'Personating the dead was what we were! Too awful to talk about,
'personating the dead! Man couldn't have his kids know a man had did
that. Couldn't have his old woman know. Man's done blasphemy, he only
tries t' go on living 'cause he's afraid to die 'case someday his
old woman or his kids might need something he coulda done he were
alive . . ."

The brothers looked at each other, startled by the strangeness of the
human mind's evaluation of sin, but recognizing the genuineness of
despair. With his hand still on Ashby's knee, Henri said, "M'sieur, we
are very close to what befell and we know that you wished no part of
it, but feared to die because of little ones and a good woman. But do
you not see that if you will be witness you begin the undoing of the
wrong? And that it is more likely that you live for the good woman and
the little ones if you help us bring evil men to justice?"

For the first time rational hope looked back at him from Ashby's eyes.
"You ain't turned on me? You reckon I could get back with the old
woman?"

"If you will be witness! And we will have both M'sieur the Commissioner
and Sir Dudley Markham and also the good Doctor Clifford speak for you!"

"Ain't jail I been afeared of. When a man's done blasphemy he thinks,
'Why didn' I know when I was well off in jail, afore I got in this?'"
Ashby said.

       *       *       *       *       *

Tobias, having made a wreath of the pink-flowered vine, placed it upon
the rain-pitted water and said the flower service for the dead, set his
course not for Home Island, but for the Isle of Palms, where he learned
that Monsieur Thomas Webber had again been seeking William Ashby and
had also been attempting to sell his millionaires' resort in Florida to
certain wealthy Latins. Having failed, he had now returned to Florida
to meet a buyer there. Monsieur Thomas Webber, it seemed, planned to
move to the Latin Americas himself. And Tobias gave up sleep and drove
the catboat day and night through wind and rain.

A Negro fisherman off Cape Sable told him, "You wish to see Mister
Thomas Webber, you better hurry, boy! He sold his fishing camp
an' packing." Tobias hurried, for he did not wish to have to seek
Monsieur Thomas Webber through the years and the Latin Americas. In
the mangroves of the approaches to Webber's Landing a white boatman
answered, "I reckon you're too late. Tom Webber was loading his station
wagon as I came by from the 'Glades some time back." And Tobias plied
the large sculling oar until the catboat surged between the mangroves
in the rain and the muscles of his great arms burned. He arrived in the
estuary in increasing rain and leaden gray of evening but the large and
clean colored woman saw him. "Big colored man, where are you going?"
she called. Studying his face, she said, "You has learned of your son?"

"I have learned of my son," Tobias said sternly. "I go to speak with
M'sieur Thomas Webber. He is at his landing?"

Her eyes flickered toward the landing, from which came the far sound
of raised voices. In a voice that was suddenly weak, she said, "He is
there. He does not leave until tomorrow. Help me, big colored man! I
is ill . . ." With her hands against her large bosom, she sank in her
scrubbed doorway. Tobias looked toward the landing. But the kind woman
was sobbing for breath and he must help her. "My heart it is!" Mammy
gasped. In agitated hugeness, Tobias tried to save the kind woman,
getting her upon her neat bed, getting her the many things for which
she asked. It was only as her eyes, looking through the little window,
changed suddenly in expression, that he too followed her gaze and
saw a large and fair man backing a loaded station wagon from behind
the buildings of the landing. Beside the station wagon, a girl with
bleached hair clung to the door so that she was dragged. And in far
pantomime the man brought his fist down on her hands on the door and
tried to fling her off, then, stopping the car, opened the door, jumped
out and struck the girl, flinging her from the way so that her head
sagged sideward. And the girl pulled the tiny shape of a gun from under
her dress and pointed it at the man and the toy sound of a shot came
over the water as the man convulsed at the feet of the girl who leaned
forward while the toy sound of shots came again and the man was still
as the girl collapsed in the rain.

Before Tobias in the cabin, Mammy was sitting up, wiping beads of sweat
from her face. "Woman!" Tobias said. "Oh, woman, you have tricked me
and robbed me of my vengeance!"

"I couldn't know this would happen. I was merely giving him time to be
gone to save you from the 'lectric chair, colored man. But it is right
way to have it happen. Mister Thomas Webber is most surely improved the
only way he could be improved--by being dead. No one going to punish
a poor foolish girl he treated like dirt under his feet an' tried to
'bandon--an' you can go on being a nice, big, angry colored man. Now
you come with me proper to comfort poor girl and tell police he was
mistreating her!"

"I will come. But then woman, may I never see your face again!" Tobias
said.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meeting Henri Christophe outside the courthouse in Tampa two weeks
later, Mammy looked cheerfully and straight into his dark eyes. "How do
matters go with your lost ship, young foreign man? And did you learn
why the men that was like the pirate pictures in the school books came
to see the late Mister Thomas Webber?"

"The insurance upon our ship has been paid. For what befell between
the Hereras and Thomas Webber, we may not know. But I think they said
to him, 'We are many and you are one. Pay us not what was arranged but
all or we swear you disabled your ship so she drove upon the Reefs. And
that you--and not we--killed to preserve the fraud!' And Thomas Webber
was a man who read a book that is called _The Prince_ and thought very
big things. But he was a great coward and I think he paid them. Perhaps
they merely told him they would very surely kill him if he did not pay.
His fear that it be known they came would be lest men guess he had
paid--and question why. For the rest, they who took the lives of our
brother and Tobias' son and other good men await hanging in the West
Indies. Only Thomas Webber cannot be punished."

"He were punished, for he was sore afraid," she said calmly. "Looking
in your eyes, I wonders if you too wasn't like big colored man and
saved? And that was the Lord's hand!" She studied him with gentle
majesty. "Miss Rue is going with you to the island?"

"She has promised me that one day she will go. She is making me wait
while she goes first to school with the good sisters at the convent to
learn all things that Daphne, a lady of our house, knows," he said with
something of astonishment. "In a year I am to come to ask her hand in
the presence of the reverend mother as Daphne's hand was once asked.
Meantime she has also found employment in the shop from which a kind
salesgirl helped my brother Joseph obtain a handkerchief for Daphne."

She smiled. "She a fine girl with sense, Miss Rue. Young men, they
the nicest creatures 'cept even the nicest of them apt to feel they
conferring favors by letting a woman love them. Now men not so young,
they the nicest creatures 'cept they apt to disbelieve a woman can love
them at all." Mammy looked cheerfully and straight at Henri. "How would
one get to that island where that nice big fool colored man lives at?
And has he cottage and yard?"

He noted as Tobias had done that there was an amazing amount of her but
that it was all comfortable and kind. He told her of the island and
of Tobias' shack, far out in the Great Sound. She nodded comfortably.
"Could be all to the good." Her great, golden smile broke. "If a woman
was to arrive to see a man uninvited, it's one thing to push her
through the door, but it's another to throw her in the sea!"

       *       *       *       *       *

On Home Island the evening air was thick with color as if with dust
in which the dragonflies were burnished golden sparks, then rubies
catching the last of sunset as the brothers Christophe straightened
from laying the last flagstone in the path for Aunt Caroline's
wheeled-chair from Domremy to the packed coral road that led on to the
little chapel in West Town. Regarding them, the old lady said, "So
there is safety for Domremy and there will be a new ship and M'sieur
Latour will be paid and a small loan to help him as well, which is as
it should be--but what of something else?"

"Dear, we wanted to paint it!" Henri said, glancing at the great house.
"We have known how you wanted it painted as it was in the great days.
We have not known how to tell you that still money would not reach, do
what we would. But the mail contracts and cargoes of the new ship will
assuredly carry the monthly bills and there is very much evidence of
old ships upon the reefs and it was our thought to set our schedule
so that we might continue to search and should we make even a small
find . . ."

"Never mind!" the old lady said. "I have but waited for three
generations to see the house pink for the roses and white for the
jasmines. Nor am I unreasonable. What a woman most loves in a man is
that he be a truly good man and have the touch of dreams. Having that,
she must know that she is likely to wait for the galleons!" She smiled.
"Thank you for my path. Nor is the matter of paint quite hopeless. In
the letter which you brought me from your love, Henri, she informs me
that each week she is buying house paint from her salary so that when
she comes, she will bring a dowry. What three generations of men have
failed to do, a girl-child may accomplish." She put her little claws
upon the hand-rails of the chair and turned it toward the sweet and
unsuspecting sound of distant female voices singing while her face
twisted in an expression of the most horrible malignancy that Henry
and Joseph had ever seen. "Now, Ladies' Gatherings in His Name, here I
come!"


Transcriber's Notes:
page 5 take told of the mahogany casket ==> take hold of the mahogany casket


[The end of _The Silent Reefs_ by Dorothy Cottrell]