Читать книгу The Silent Reefs - Dorothy Cottrell - Страница 4

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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."