“Once colored gemstones take over the market, the diamond craze will disappear overnight.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“What do you intend to do when you leave here?”
“Alert the board of directors of what you have up your sleeve so they can plan an immediate course of action to knock the wind out of your scheme before it can be realized. It’s not too late to stop you.”
Dorsett remained sitting and looked up at Strouser. “I don’t think so.”
Strouser missed his meaning and turned to leave. “Since you won’t listen to reason, I have nothing more to say. Good day to you, Arthur.”
“Before you leave, Gabe, I have a present for you.”
“I want nothing from you!” Strouser snapped angrily.
“This, you will appreciate.” Dorsett laughed uncharitably. “On second thought, perhaps you won’t.” He motioned with one hand. “Now, Boudicca, now.”
In one swift motion, the big woman suddenly appeared behind Strouser and pinned his arms to his sides. The diamond merchant instinctively struggled for a minute, then relaxed, staring dazedly at Dorsett.
“What is the meaning of this? I demand that you unhand me.”
Dorsett looked at Strouser and spread his hands disarmingly. “You neglected to eat your lunch, Gabe. I can’t allow you to leave hungry. You might get the idea that I’m inhospitable.”
“You’re crazy if you think you can intimidate me.”
“I’m not going to intimidate you,” Dorsett said with sadistic amusement. “I’m going to feed you.”
Strouser looked lost. He shook his head in disgust and began an unequal struggle to break free of Boudicca’s embrace.
At a nod of Dorsett’s head, Boudicca manhandled Strouser back to the table, grasped him under the chin with one hand and bent his head backward, face up. Then Dorsett produced a large plastic funnel and stuffed the lower end between Strouser’s lips and teeth. The expression in the diamond merchant’s eyes transformed from rage to shock to bulging terror. His muffled cries were ignored as Boudicca tightened her hold around him.
“Ready, Daddy,” she said, leering in cruel anticipation.
“Since you live and breathe diamonds, my old friend, you can eat them too,” said Dorsett as he lifted a small canister shaped like a teapot that had been sitting on the table and began pouring a stream of flawless D-grade, one-carat diamonds down Strouser’s throat while using one hand to pinch the nostrils of his victim shut. Strouser thrashed wildly, his legs kicking in the air, but his arms were locked as tightly as if he were trapped by a python.
Out of sheer terror, Strouser tried desperately to swallow the stones, but there were too many. Soon his throat could hold no more and his body’s convulsions became less frantic as he choked for air and quickly suffocated.
The glaze of death froze his open eyes into an unseeing stare as the glittering stones slowly spilled from the corners of his mouth, rattled across the table and fell to the floor.
Two days off the sea and everyone felt as if raised from the dead. York’s campsite was tidied up and every article and object inventoried. Maeve refused to go in the hut even after they buried Rodney York in a small ravine that was partially filled with sand. A tentlike shelter was built from the old Dacron sails found inside the hut, and they settled down to the day-to-day routine of existence.
To Giordino, the greatest prize was a toolbox. He immediately went to work on the radio and the generator but finally gave up in frustration after nearly six hours of futile labor.
“Too many parts broken or too badly corroded to repair. After sitting all these years, the batteries are deader than fossilized dinosaur dung. And without a generator to charge them, the radio-telephone, direction-finding set and wireless receiver are useless.”
“Can replacements be fabricated with what we’ve got lying about?” asked Pitt.
Giordino shook his head. “General Electric’s chief engineer couldn’t fix that generator, and even if he could, the engine to turn it over is completely shot. There’s a crack in the crankcase. York must not have seen it and run the engine after the oil leaked out, burning the bearings and freezing the pistons. It would take an automotive machine shop to put it back in running order.”
Pin’s first project as resident handyman was to find three small blocks of wood that were straight grained. These he split from a sideboard on the berth that had served as Rodney York’s final resting place. Next, he made a template of everyone’s forehead just above the eyebrows from the stiff paper jackets of novels he found on York’s bookshelf. He marked the template lines on the edge of the wood blocks and trimmed accordingly, cutting out an arched slot for the nose. Holding the blocks tightly between his knees he gouged and smoothed hollows on the inner curl of the wood. Then he removed the excess outer wood and cut two horizontal slits in the hollowed walls. With oil from a can sitting beside the outboard engine, he stained the thinly curled finished product before cutting two holes in the ends and attaching nylon cord.
“There you are, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, passing them out. “Colonel Thadeus Pitt’s spectacular sun goggles, from a secret design revealed on the lips of a dying Eskimo just before he rode off across the Arctic Ocean on the back of a polar bear.”
Maeve adjusted hers over her eyes and tied the cord behind her head. “How clever, they really shut out sun.”
“Damned clever, those Inuits,” said Giordino peering through the eye slits. “Can you make the slits a tad wider? I feel like I’m staring through a crack under a door.”
Pitt smiled and handed Giordino his Swiss army knife. “You, may customize your goggles to your personal taste.”
“Speaking of taste,” Maeve announced beside a small fire she had started with matches from Pitt’s survival kit. “Come and get it. Tonight’s menu is grilled mackerel with cockles I found buried in sand pockets below the tide line.”
“Just when my stomach got used to eating fish raw,” joked Giordino.
Maeve dished the steaming fish and cockles onto York’s old plates. “Tomorrow night’s fare, if there is a marksman in our little group, will be something on the wing.”
“You want us to shoot defenseless little birds?” asked Giordino in mock horror.
“I counted at least twenty frigate birds, sitting on the rocks,” she said, pointing to the north shore. “If you build a blind, they’ll walk by close enough for you to hit them with your little popgun.”
“Roasted bird sounds good to my shrinking stomach, I’ll bring back tomorrow night’s supper or you can hang me by the thumbs,” Pitt promised.
“Can you pull any other tricks out of your hat besides the goggles?” asked Maeve whimsically.
Pitt lay back on the sand with his hands behind his head. “I’m glad you brought that up. After a strenuous afternoon of intense thought, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that we should move on to a more receptive climate.”
Maeve gave him a look of utter skepticism. “Move on?” She glanced at Giordino for moral support, but he gave her a you-never-learn look and continued nibbling on his mackerel. “We have two badly damaged boats that can’t sail across a swimming pool. Just what do you suggest we use for our all-expenses-paid cruise to nowhere?”
“Elementary, my dear Fletcher,” he said expansively. “We build a third boat.”
“Build a boat,” she said, her voice on the edged laughter.
Conversely, Giordino’s expression was intense and serious. “You think there’s a Chinaman’s chance of repairing York’s sailboat?”
“No. The hull is damaged beyond any possibility of repairing with our limited resources. York was an experienced sailor, and he obviously didn’t see any way it could be refloated. But we can, however, utilize the upper deck.”
“Why not make the best of it right here?” Maeve argued. “We’re more resourceful than poor Rodney. Our survival skills are far greater than his. We can catch enough fish and fowl to keep us going until a ship comes by.”
“That’s the problem,” said Pitt. “We can’t survive on what we can catch alone. If Rodney’s missing teeth are any indication, he died from scurvy. A dietary lack of vitamin C and a dozen other nutrients I can think of weakened
