Chubby waited at the hole in the hull while I went in. What remained of the galley was filled with swirling excited shoals of fish. They were in a feeding frenzy and I choked and gagged into the mouthpiece of my scuba when I saw what they were feeding upon.
The only way I knew it was Judith was the tatters of green cloth clinging to the fragments of flesh. We got her out in three main pieces, and placed her in the canvas bag that Fred Coker provided.
I dived again immediately, and worked my way through the shattered hull to the compartment below the galley where the two long iron gas cylinders were still bolted to their beds. Both taps were wide open, and somebody had disconnected the hoses to allow the gas to escape freely.
I have never experienced anger so intense as I felt then. It was that strong for it fed upon my loss. Dancer was gone - and Dancer had been half my life. I closed the taps and reconnected the gas hose. It was a private thing - I would deal with it personally.
When I walked back along the wharf to the pick-up, all that gave me comfort was the knowledge that Dancer had been insured. There would be another boat - not as beautiful or as well beloved as Dancer - but a boat nevertheless.
In the crowd I noticed the shiny black face of Harnbone Williams - the harbour ferryman. For forty years he had plied his old dinghy back and forth at threepence a hire.
“Hambone,” I called him over. “Did you take anybody out to Dancer last night?”
“No, sit, Mister Harry.”
“Nobody at all?”
“Only your party. She left her watch in the cabin. I took her out to fetch it.”
“The lady?”
“Yes, the lady with the yellow hair.”
“What time, Hambone?”
“About nine o’clock - did I do wrong, Mister Harry?”
“No, it’s all right. just forget it.”
We buried Judith next day before noon. I managed to get the plot beside her mother and father for her. Angelo liked that. He said he did not want her to be lonely up there on the hill. Angelo was still half doped, and he was quiet and dreamy eyed at the graveside.
The next morning the three of us began salvage work on Dancer. We worked hard for ten days and we stripped her completely of anything that had a possible value - from the big-game fishing reels and the FN carbine to the twin bronze propellers. The hull and superstructure were so badly broken up as to be of no value.
At the end of that time Wave Dancer had become a memory only. I have had many women, and now they are just a pleasant thought when I hear a certain song or smell a particular perfume. Like them, already Dancer was beginning to recede into the past.
the tenth day I went up to see Fred Coker - and the moment I entered his office I knew there was something very wrong. He was shiny with nervous sweat, his eyes moved shiftily behind the glittering spectacles and his hands scampered about like frightened mice - running over his blotter or leaping up to adjust the knot of his necktie or smooth down the thin strands of hair on his polished cranium. He knew I’d come to talk insurance.
“Now don’t get excited please, Mister Harry,” he advised me.
Whenever people tell me that, I become very excited indeed.
“What is it, Coker? Come on! Come on!” I slammed one fist on the desk top, and he leapt in his chair so the goldrimmed spectacles slid down his nose.
“Mister Harry, please-“
“Come on! You miserable little grave worm—2 “Mister Harry - it’s about the premiums on Dancer.” I stared at him.
“You see - you have never made a claim before - it seemed such a waste to-” I found words. “You pocketed the premiums,” I whispered, my voice failing me suddenly. “You didn’t pay them over to the company.”
“You understand,” Fred Coker nodded. “I knew you’d understand.”
I tried to go over the desk to save time, but I tripped and fell-Fred Coker leapt from his chair, slipping through my outstretched groping fingers. He ran through the back door, slamming it behind him.
I ran straight through the door, tearing off the lock, and leaving it hanging on broken hinges.
Fred Coker ran-as though all the dark angels pursued him, which would have been better for him. I caught him at the big doors into the alley and lifted him by the throat, holding him with one hand, pressing his back against a pile of cheap pine coffins.
He had lost his spectacles, and he was weeping with fright, big slow tears welling out of the helpless shorts sighted eyes.
“You know I’m going to kill you I whispered, and he moaned, his feet dancing six inches above the floor.
I Pulled back my right fist and braced myself solidly on the balls of my feet. It would have taken his head off. I couldn’t do it - but I had to hit something. I drove my fist into the coffin beside his right ear. The panelling shattered, stove in along its full length. Fred Coker shrieked like an hysterical girl at a POP festival, and I let him drop. His legs could not hold him and he sank to the concrete floor.
I left him lying there moaning and blubbering with terror and I walked out into the street as near to bankrupt as I’d been in the last ten years.
Mister Harry transformed in a single stroke into Fletcher, wharf rat and land-bound bum. It was a classic case of reversion to type - before I reached the Lord Nelson I was thinking the same way I had ten years before. Already I was calculating the percentages, seeking the main chance once more.
Chubby and Angelo were the only customers in the public bar so early in the afternoon. I told them, and they were quiet. There wasn’t anything to say.
We drank the first one in silence, then I asked Chubby, “What will you do now?“and he shrugged “I’ve still got the old whaleboat– It was a twenty-footer, admiralty design, open-decked, but sea-kindly. “I’ll go for stump again, I reckon.” Stump were the big reef crayfish. There was good money in the frozen tails.
it was how Chubby had earned his bread before Dancer and I came to St. Mary’s.
“You’ll need new engines, those old Sea Gulls of yours are shot.”
We drank another pint, while I worked out my finances - what the hell, a couple of thousand dollars was not going to make much difference to me. “I’ll buy two new twenty horse Evinnides for the boat, Chubby,” I volunteered.
“Won’t let you do it, Harry.” He frowned indignantly, and shook his head. “I got enough saved up working for you,” and he was adamant.
“What about you, Angelo?” I asked.
“Guess I’ll go sell my soul on a Rawano contract.”
“No,” Chubby scowled at the thought. “I’ll need crew for the stump-boat.”
They were all settled then. I was relieved, for I felt responsible for them both. I was particularly glad that Chubby would be there to care for Angelo. The boy had taken Judith’s death very badly. He was quiet and withdrawn, no longer the flashing Romeo. I had kept him working hard on the salvage of Dancer, that alone seemed to have given him the time he needed to recover from the wound.
Nevertheless he began drinking hard now, chasing tots of cheap brandy with pints of bitter. This is the most destroying way to take in alcohol, short of drinking meths, that I know of.
Chubby and I took it nice and slow, lingering over our tankards, yet under our jocularity was a knowledge that we had reached a crossroads and from tomorrow we would no longer be travelling together. It gave the evening the fine poignancy of impending loss.
There was a South African trawler in harbour that night that had come in for bunkers and repairs. When at last Angelo passed out cold, Chubby and I began our singing. Six of the trawler’s beefy crew members voiced their disapproval in the most slanderous terms. chubby and I could not allow insults of that nature to pass unchallenged. We all went out to discuss it in the backyard.
It was a glorious discussion, and when Wally Andrews arrived with the riot squad he arrested all of us, even those who had fallen in the fray.
“My own flesh and blood, Chubby kept repeating as he and I staggered arm and arm into the cells. “He turned on me. My own sister’s son.” Wally was human enough to send one of his constables down to the Lord Nelson for Something to make our durance less vile. Chubby and I became very friendly with the trawlermen in the next cell,
