collected his commission in advance and nobody had put his head in a noose, nor had they almost wrecked his boat. We were now discussing the subject of whether or not our business arrangement should continue.
“They also say, Mr. Coker, that a man with his buttocks hanging out of the holes in his trousers should not be too fussy,” I said, and Coker’s spectacles glittered with satisfaction. He nodded his head.
“And that, Mister Harry, is probably the wiser of the two sayings,” he agreed.
“I’ll take anything, Mr. Coker. Body, box or sticks. just one thing, the cost of dying has gone up to ten thousand dollars a run - all in advance.”
“Even at that price, we’ll find work for you,” he promised, and I realized I had been working cheaply before.
“Soon,” I insisted.
“Very soon,” he agreed. “You are fortunate. I do not think that Inspector Daly will be returning to St. Mary’s now. You will save the commission usually payable there.”
“He owes me that at least,” I agreed.
I made three night runs in the next six weeks. Two body carries, and a box job - all below the river into Portuguese waters. The bodies were both singles, silent black men dressed in jungle fatigues, and I took them far south, deep penetrations. They waded ashore on remote beaches and I wondered briefly upon what unholy missions they travelled - how much pain and death would arise from those secret landings.
The box job involved eighteen long wooden crates with Chinese markings. We picked up from a submarine out in the channel, and dropped off in a rivermouth, unloading into pairs of dugout canoes lashed together for stability. We spoke to no one and nobody challenged us.
They were milk runs and I cleared eighteen thousand dollars - enough to carry me and my crew through the offseason in the style to which we were accustomed. More important, the intervals of quiet and rest were sufficient to heal my wounds and give me back my strength. At first I lay for hours in the hammock under the palms, reading or sleeping. Then as it came back to me, I swam and fished and sun-baked, went for oysters and crayfish - until I was hard and lean and sunbrowned again.
The wound healed into a thickened and irregular cicatrice, tribute to Macnab’s surgical skills, it curled around my chest and on to my back like an angry purple dragon. In one thing he had been correct, the massive damage to my upper left arm left it stiff and weakened. I could not lift my elbow above shoulder-level, and I lost my title in Indian wrestling to Chubby in the bar of the Lord Nelson. However, I hoped that swimming and regular exercise would strengthen it.
As my strength returned so did my curiosity and sense of adventure. I began dreaming about the canvas- wrapped package off Big Gull Island. In one dream I swam down and opened the package - it contained a tiny feminine figure, the size of a Dresden doll, a golden mermaid with Sister May’s lovely face and a truly startling bosom, the tail was the graceful sickle shape of a marlin’s. The little mermaid smiled shyly and held out her hand to me. On her palm lay a shiny silver shilling.
“Sex, money and billfish—2 I thought when I woke, “-good old uncomplicated Harry, real Freud food.” I knew then that pretty soon I would be going for Big Gull Island.
It was very late in the season before I could prevail on Fred Coker to arrange a straight fishing charter for me, and it turned sour as cheap wine. The party consisted of two overweight, flabby German industrialists with fat bejewelled wives. I worked hard for them, and put both men into fish.
The first was a good black marlin, but the party screwed down on his stardrag, freezing the reel while the fish was still green and crazy to run. It lifted the German’s huge backside out of the seat, and before I could release the stardrag for him, it had my three hundred dollar rod down on the gunwale. The fibreglass rod snapped like a matchstick.
The other member of the party, after losing two decent fish, panted and sweated three hours over a baby blue marlin. When he finally brought it to the gaff, I could hardly bring myself to put the steel in, and I was too ashamed to hang it on Admiralty. We took the photographs on board Dancer and I smuggled it ashore wrapped in a tarpaulin. Like Fred Coker I also have a reputation to preserve. The German industrialist, however, was so delighted by his prowess that he slipped an extra five hundred dollars into my avaricious little paw. I told him it was a truly magnificent fish which was a thousand-dollar lie. I always give good value. Then the wind backed into the south , the temperature of the water in the channel dropped four degrees and the fish were gone. For ten days -we hunted far north but it was over, another season was past.
we stripped and cleaned all the billfish equipment and laid it away in thick yellow grease. I pulled Dancer up on to the slip at the fuelling basin and we went, over her hull, cleaning it down, re-working the temporary patches I had put on the injuries she had received at Gunfire Reef.
Then we painted her until she glistened, sleek and lovely, before we refloated her and took her out to moorings. There we worked lackadaisically on her upper works, stripping varnish, sandpapering, re-varnishing, checking out the electrical system, re-soldering a connection here, replacing wiring there.
I was in no hurry. It would be three weeks before my next charter arrived - an expedition of marine biologists from a Canadian university.
In the meantime the days were cooler, and I was feeling the old glow of good health and bodily wellbeing again. I dined at Government House, sometimes as often as once a week, and each time I had to tell the full story of the shoots out with Guthrie and Materson. President Biddle knew the story by heart and corrected me if I omitted a single detail. It always ended with the President crying excitedly, “Show them your scar, Mister Harry,” and I had to open the starched front of my dress shirt at the dinner table.
They were good lazy days. The island life drifted placidly by.
Peter Daly never returned to St. Mary’s - and at the end of six weeks, Wally Arorews was promoted to acting Inspector and commanding officer of the police force. One of his first acts was to return to me my FN carbine.
This quiet time was spiced by the secret tingle of anticipation which I felt. I knew that one day soon I was going back to Big Gull Island and the piece of unfinished business that lay there in the shallow limpid waters - and I teased myself with the knowledge.
Then one Friday evening I was rounding out the week with my crew in the bar of the Lord Nelson. Judith was with us, having replaced the flock that had previously gathered around Angelo on Friday nights. She was good for him, he no longer drunk to the morbid stage.
Chubby and I had just begun the first duet of the evening and were keeping within a few beats of each other when Marion slipped into the seat beside-me.
I put one arm around her shoulders and held my tankard to her lips while she drank thirstily, but the distraction caused me to forge even further ahead of Chubby in the song.
Marion worked on the switchboard at the Hilton Hotel. She was a pretty little dan with a sexy pugface and long straight black hair. It was she whom Mike Guthrie had used for a punch-bag so long ago.
When Chubby and I straggled to the end of the chorus, Marion told me, “There is a lady asking for you, Mister Harry.”
“What lady?”
“At the hotel, one of the guests, she came in on this morning’s plane. She knew your name and everything. She wants to see you. I told her I would see you tonight and give you the message.”
“What is she like?” I asked Marion with interest. “She’s beautiful, Mister Harry. Such a lady too.”
“Sounds like my type,” I agreed], and ordered a pint for Marion.
“Aren’t you going to see her now? ” With you beside me, Marion, all the beautiful ladies of the world can wait until tomorrow.”
“Oh, Mister Harry, you are a real devil man,” she giggled, and snuggled a little closer.
“Harry,” said Chubby on my other side, “I’m going to tell you now what I never told you before.” He took a long swallow from his tankard, then went on with sentimental tears swimming in his eyes. “Harry, I love you, man. I love you better than my own brother.”
I went up to the Hilton a few minutes before midday. Marion came through from her cubicle behind the reception desk. She still had her earphones around her neck.
“She’s waiting for you on the terrace.” She pointed across the vast reception area with its emaz Hawaiian decor. “The blonde lady in the yellow bikini.”
She was reading a magazine, lying on her belly on one of the reclining sun couches, and she had her back to me so my first impression was of masses of blonde hair, thick and shiny, teased up like the mane of a lion, then
