Long Voyage Back

Part Four LAND

Jeanne had slept while the men anchored Vagabond during the early morning hours, so that when she came up on deck a little after six, she looked out on the boats floating nearby, the quiet, smooth water of the harbor, and the white buildings of the town blossoming up the hillsides in the distance as a child might at her first big city. For more than two weeks she had known only the constant motion of the sea; now Vagabond lay as still as if she were imbedded in concrete. In all that time they had seen no more than four ships, one at a time; now as she slowly swept the horizon with her gaze she could see twenty, thirty… more. For the last two days—since the explosion over San Juan—she had felt continual low-level anxiety; now, surrounded by motionless white hulls, with white houses sleeping in the early dawn light less than a mile away, she felt that anxiety disappear. There was no exhilaration, no joy: simply a sense that here, for the moment at least, was a safe space.

She moved into the wheelhouse and saw Neil stretched out on the cushions asleep, his bearded face and tousled hair showing his exhaustion even as he slept. She wondered if he’d collapsed there, too tired to bother to go aft to his own cabin. He must have fallen asleep after they anchored, only hours earlier.

She slipped quietly down into the galley to prepare herself a cup of tea, then remembered that they had no more tea or coffee. She poured herself a small cup of water. Back in the wheelhouse, sitting opposite the motionless, leaden body of Neil, seeing the slanted rays of the early morning sun sparkling on the golden hairs of his thighs and legs, she felt a wave of longing, tenderness, and pride: they had come through, they had made it. But as she felt love welling up within her she thought too of Frank, and then the beautiful body of Neil, so still in front of her, made her sad.

It was too much for her. They were too much for her. There was no way she could create a world where all of her loved ones could be happy. Although she herself was beginning to feel at home on the water, her children needed the land. But the men, all of them really, seemed unenthusiastic about any of the permanent alternatives that they might find on any of these Caribbean islands. Here they were in Charlotte Amalie in the American Virgin Islands, as far as she could tell as safe and unhostile a place as there was within a thousand miles, and four of the men had spent two hours the previous evening discussing the supplies they would need for another two-week voyage and getting depressed because it seemed hopeless. She had tried to talk about what they could expect from St. Thomas, and though Frank had shown interest, Neil had done no more than give her a book to read.

“What’s that, mommy?” Skip suddenly asked, coming up from his cabin and standing in front of her in his tiny red swimshorts and staring out at the fleet of anchored boats and the distant houses.

“That’s… that’s land, honey,” she answered in a soft voice so as not to disturb Neil. For a week now Skip had been asking “When are we going to get to land, mommy?”

“That’s land?” Skip asked, looking puzzled.

“Yes. That’s the city of Charlotte Amalie on an island called St. Thomas. We may live here for a while.”

“On a boat?”

“No, on land, in a house.”

“Like the one in Washington?”

“No. Smaller. But nice.”

As Skippy pulled himself up onto the cushion beside his mother he was silent, still staring at the distant town.

“They don’t look like real houses,” he said.

“They don’t? Why not, honey?”

After a pause he said, “They just don’t.”

Neil stirred, adjusted a forearm under his head and chin, and then resumed his deadman pose. He had begun to let his beard grow and was in that halfway land of looking scraggly and down-and-out. As she looked at him, affection and desire mingled with her sadness.

“Do they have a McDonald’s?” Skip asked.

“What?”

“Can we go to McDonald’s today?” Skip repeated.

“Oh. No. I’m afraid not. I don’t think they have McDonald’s.”

“What about a Big Whopper?”

“I don’t know, honey. We’ll see.”

Hamburger: it, too, will have disappeared. On the islands there would be no beef or lamb, perhaps a little pork and fowl, but mostly fish. She smiled to herself as she realized that she was imagining herself having to announce to Skip the death of the hamburger. Could he take it at such a young age?

Maybe she should sleep with both of them, she thought. She wanted to sleep with Neil, but could never do so “publicly,” could never slap Frank in the face like that after he had been so fond of her over the last two years. Perhaps she could become a seafaring camp follower, available to whichever officer was officially on watch, the way Katya seemed to have anticipated before they set out.

But she knew she couldn’t, and the tension that existed between Frank and her and Neil was painful. This landfall might represent escape from the waves and starvation and fallout, but there was no escape from themselves.

When a customs launch arrived at eleven, Neil was up, but the other men had to be awakened. Most joined Neil and the others topside, all haggard and grizzled or bearded, even Jim. They looked like the collection of refugees they were. Katya’s hair was tangled; she had lost several pounds from her already slight frame, but still looked healthier than the men. Lisa was a woman now, but because of her frailness she looked more like a child than she had a month earlier.

Although they were nervous about the arrival of the customs launch, they had heard a radio report that the island government had simply ignored the U.S. military. Apparently any attempt to draft the mostly black islanders would have led to an instantaneous revolution. Even as it was, the local government, controlled by blacks but greatly influenced by white interests, was on shaky ground.

The senior customs officer was a nervous, pudgy white man and his two-man crew, black. They searched Vagabond for weapons (all carefully hidden behind a false partition at the back of Jeanne’s berth), asked detailed questions about their previous itinerary—they seemed to want to make certain they had been at sea nine days since the Bahamas—and, without a word of explanation, insisted on taking everyone’s temperature. Just before the customs men left, Neil asked how he and his friends could expect to get food if they had no gold or silver or much else to baiter with.

“Then you fish,” the pudgy officer answered. “New immigrants aren’t eligible for food assistance unless they surrender all their belongings and live in the refugee center out in Capo Gorda.”

After the launch had motored off, their weapons not discovered, they prepared to go ashore. Jim got out the dinghy, and he and Macklin began to inflate it. Jeanne and Katya were talking about the chances of finding a home on St. Thomas when a man and a woman suddenly appeared beside Vagabond in a little eight-foot rowing pram.

“I say, you chaps going ashore?” the man asked. He was a round, red-faced man, his big chest and belly heavily matted with dark hair, although the flesh sagged on him as if he had recently lost weight. Both he and the woman, a bleached blonde, were in their forties and were wearing rather spare black bikini bathing suits.

“We are,” Frank replied. “Why?”

“We own the little blue Wharram catamaran over there,” the Englishman said, pointing. “Always willing to lend a hand to a multi-hull sailor, you know?”

“We appreciate it,” said Frank.

“Philip felt you might need some advice before you go ashore,” the woman said, smiling. “He’s very good at giving advice.”

“We’ve been at sea for more than two weeks,” said Frank, feeling an unexpected pride as he spoke. “I guess we can use some advice about what the land world is like these days.”

“It’s a bloody mess is what it is,” Philip replied, holding on to Vagabond’s combing with one of his big hands. “I know it’s a bit presumptuous of me to come over here like this, but the world’s gotten to be awf’ly Small, and where there’s a chance to find a friend, I like to take it.”

“I see,” said Frank, his mood wavering uncertainly between suspicion and acceptance.

“Fact is,” said the Englishman, “if you’re going ashore for food and petrol and water, there’s a bit you might know first, right?”

“Would you like to come aboard?” Frank finally asked.

“Don’t mind if I do. Take the oars, Sheila.”

The large Englishman and his petite and pretty wife climbed nimbly up onto Vagabond and introductions were made all around: they were Philip and Sheila Wellington of the catamaran Doubloon.

A beer was brought up from Vagabond’s “wine cellar” (the bilge) and passed around to everyone sitting around the wheelhouse and sipped reverentially.

“Bloody marvelous,” said Philip. “Haven’t had a good warm beer in more than two weeks.”

“Supplies are tight here too?” Frank asked.

“Tight?” Philip snorted. “If your whole wealth consists of your bare boat, then your food consists of seaweed, shellfish, rainwater, and fish.” He looked at his wife with a warm smile. “We had no gold or silver, and we pawned Sheila’s jewelry ten days ago to buy sailcloth and a week’s worth of food. And beer doesn’t exist here these days.”

“Can food be bought?”

“Some, I suppose—with gold, silver, diamonds, jewelry,” Philip replied. “And, ah, with pot and pussy. Such are at present the currency of your nation’s former possession.” Frank and Neil looked at him uncertainly. “You’ll have to barter first with the precious metal dealers, then with the individual merchants. Very few shopkeepers will barter themselves, except a few who will deal in cannabis and a lady’s favors.”

“Is there much chance we can stay here, make a home here?” Jeanne asked.

Philip looked at her, grimaced, and looked away.

“Not bloody likely,” he replied. “I’m afraid the world here is becoming a bit of a black-and-white thing, you know? Blacks don’t seem to appreciate the fact that whites are blowing up the whole world and… uh… then the survivors running to the blacks for help.”

“But the Russians started it,” said Tony from the port cockpit.

“Ah, well, I’m not certain too many blacks are sure of that.”

“St. Thomas is all black?” Jeanne asked.

“Pretty much so,” Philip replied. “And most of the refugees are white or now Puerto Rican. The rich whites who live here are holed up in various enclaves—those that haven’t already left, that is.”

“What are your plans?” Neil asked abruptly from his seat in the corner of the wheelhouse.

The big Englishman frowned. “The bloody war’s gotten too close,” he said slowly. “I suppose you know San Juan got hit?… We’ve decided to leave. We want to be part of a convoy.”

“A convoy?” Neil asked.

“Pirates. You can’t go twenty miles in any direction without having them all over you. Bloody trouble is you can’t know who to trust. A friend of mine sailed off with another ship four days ago, and yesterday his ship turned up stripped and foundering while the other ship was reported sailing happily onwards a hundred miles from here. The world’s not a nice place these days.”

“But where are you going?” Neil persisted.

“Thought we might try Australia,” the Englishman replied softly, staring at his hands.

“Australia!” Frank exclaimed.

“My boat’s too small, I know,” said Philip, looking up intently. “But I have a friend who’s got a fine old wooden sloop, fifty-five footer, she is, and—”

“But Australia…” Frank said again. “Jesus. That’s quite a sail.”

“It’s quite a world, Frank.”

“Yes. I guess it is.”

“England doesn’t much exist anymore, you know,” he went on intently. “And since they bombed Puerto Rico and Venezuela, and the whites were massacred on Dominica, no one feels any too bright about this whole area. Everyone who can afford it is getting out. Food was short before on all the islands. Now it’s almost nonexistent here. Things can only get worse, right?”

“Have you stockpiled much food?” Neil asked.

Philip snorted out a half-laugh in reply. “There are two types here: those who’ve got their gold and silver, and those who don’t. The rich are selling it all to fly out of here now. And the rest of us fish.” He laughed, and though his belly shook, his eyes weren’t twinkling.

“What are you people planning to do?” asked Sheila, suddenly.

Frank didn’t answer and a strained silence ensued.

“Survive,” Macklin finally growled.

“Oh, yes, I know…” said Sheila. “But… well…”

“I’m sorry, Frank,” said Philip. “But I suppose I’ve got to ask also whether in this new world you’re rich or poor.”

“We’re poor,” Jeanne said. “We only have a little food left, and none of the mineral wealth that passes for currency. We could never barter for enough food to go to Australia.”

“Bit sticky for us all,” commented Philip.

“I’m glad you’re poor, Jeannie,” Sheila said. “Anyone who has gold on his boat seems to have a lead anchor in his heart. Phil was saying as we rowed over here, ‘Hope to Christ they’re not hoarders.’”

“It’s a paradox, I guess you’d say,” commented Philip. “The way things are, if you had plenty of gold, you’d be the type that doesn’t share, whereas since you, ah, haven’t any gold, we’d be likely to help each other.”

“How do you figure to help us?” Frank asked.

“Well, for one thing, give you advice on what you can and can’t sell. For another, I’ve been here for almost a month, and I know not only St. Thomas but what’s been happening throughout the Antilles. For example, when the war started, a few boats left for some of the islands south of here, but later starvation and revolution and civil war devastated two or three of the islands, and a lot of them came back. And now, after the explosion over San Juan, a lot of ships have put out to sea again.”

“There seem still to be quite a few,” Jeanne said.

Philip looked briefly out at the harbor. “About a third less than on Thursday,” he said. “And half of them are motor yachts. Almost none of them has the fuel to go anywhere, even if they wanted to. Some came in yesterday from Puerto Rico.”

“Is it possible to rent a house?” Jeanne asked.

“I suppose anything is possible if you have the means to pay for it,” Philip replied. “But you won’t be welcome.”

“Can we at least get water free?” Neil asked. “We’ve got less than three gallons left.”

“Water’s rationed. You’ll get some, but not enough for a voyage.”

“Jesus, what’s happened to traditional Caribbean hospitality?” Frank asked, frowning.

“It was obliterated, Frank,” Sheila replied, her face as gloomy as the others’, “the day the white man began bringing disease and death south with him instead of tourist dollars.”

Her husband also frowned. “And of course the other reason is the plague,” he said.

“The what?” Frank exclaimed.

“You’d best watch where you get your water from,” Sheila explained. “There’s some sort of mysterious disease on the islands— not many cases yet and worst on Capo Gorda—that kills about half the people that come down with it.”

“Is that why the customs people took our temperature?” Neil asked.

“Yes,” Philip replied. “It seems the disease is carried by Americans from the mainland, or so they say.” He was frowning and didn’t raise his head to look at the others. There was an awkward silence.

“Rainwater’s safe,” said Sheila.

There was another silence.

“When it rains,” Philip added gloomily.

It only took them a few days on St. Thomas to realize that conditions were appalling. Black antipathy to white strangers was palpable in glances and gestures at every moment. In the month since the war the food shortages had already taken their toll. People looked gaunt, walked slowly, squabbled violently over the tiniest disagreement about food or water. They soon realized that the black men fishing at every bridge and breakwater and along most of the docks were not fishing for leisure, but for survival. The street vendor haggling over the price of two oranges was haggling not because of “cultural tradition” but out of economic desperation. The voluptuous black mother who spent twenty minutes in the store manager’s private office was not cold-hearted or neurotic but only a human being gratefully cashing in her last economic asset. In this world there were no luxuries, only necessities.

Human society on St. Thomas was falling apart. The government was still paying its employees in paper dollars, which were no longer being accepted by the few farmers, fishermen, and merchants who had anything worth selling. Consequently government employees, once the island’s elite, were now working for nothing, whereas most other workers—half the population was unemployed—bargained to be paid in food and water. Pot-smoking and prostitution were now public and open, since there were no facilities to jail offenders in, no food to feed them with, and only unpaid, disgruntled policemen to arrest and guard them. Bicycles and mules were the popular vehicles of the new world. The airport was usually empty of both planes and people, since most private planes had flown south and regular commercial flights to anywhere had ended when the fuel ran out or pirates made off with the planes. The sight of an airplane over St. Thomas two days after Vagabond arrived had sent such a rush of people from town to the airport that when Neil saw it he thought he was witnessing some annual island bike race: over a hundred people pedaling out to the airport as if their lives depended on it.

Everyone who could afford to leave either had left or was trying to. With the food inadequate on all the islands, the poor, with nothing to lose, were beginning to demand forcefully their share of what little was still left. On their first walk through the streets of Charlotte Amalie Neil, Frank, and Jeanne had seen the broken and unboarded windows of supermarkets and grocery stores, all of which were now empty and deserted. Some downtown blocks had so many looted and abandoned stores it seemed “the revolution” must already have occurred, and yet the local whites they were able to talk to still spoke as if they feared a black uprising and takeover. There were four old tanks parked along the waterfront. Except for the three white enclaves outside of town and the St. Thomas Hilton, Neil didn’t see that there was much left on St. Thomas of value to “take over.”

Settling on St. Thomas began to seem increasingly unlikely. In their first few days Frank was offered two different houses in exchange for Vagabond, but the desperation and hopefulness with which the owners made their offers sobered Frank considerably. He discussed with Neil the possibility of selling Vagabond to raise enough gold to fly most or maybe all of them to Brazil, but the prospect of arriving destitute in Brazil was unpleasant, and, worse, they would have to sell the boat before they could strike a solid bargain with a pilot.

And to complicate their situation still more, the news from the other Caribbean islands and from the rest of the world was dismal. Although the war seemed to be at a standstill, conditions worldwide were still getting worse. No one dared to declare the war was over. No government proudly announced victory or abjectly offered surrender, but reports of recent fighting had ceased—at least among the major powers. Battles for food and skirmishes between refugees and neutral countries trying to keep them out were increasing. U.S. government officials, still speaking from some unidentified underground headquarters, after three weeks of exhorting their fellow citizens to rally to defeat the Soviet Union, now spoke only of the steps that would have to be taken to save the surviving population. Although the government had spoken, there was no evidence that anyone was listening. From what could be gathered from the shortwave radio and an occasional newscast on the local AM station, the country seemed to be divided up into isolated pockets of survivors, each struggling independently to cope with their particular problems. Reports seemed to imply that more than two-thirds of the U.S. population was already dead.

Mass starvation on the mainland of the U.S. had not yet been reported. It was July, and survivors had plenty of natural growing things for nourishment—if they lived in areas uncontaminated by radiation—but throughout much of the rest of the world this was the problem.

Other diseases were now beginning to claim as many victims as radiation sickness and burns. Dysentery, typhoid, and cholera were becoming epidemic throughout those areas of the world where loss of electricity and overcrowding meant reduced and polluted water supplies. Worst of all, the mysterious disease from the western United States was spreading to places untouched by missiles, as it had to the Virgin Islands. Colombia, Venezuela, and four Central American countries had forbidden all immigration from the north, quarantining or exiling anyone caught illegally within their borders. The “flu”virus that had been talked about weeks earlier was now definitely more than a flu, but the etiology of the “plague” remained unknown. All that had been established was that the incubation period was between a week and ten days, that transmission seemed to have to be oral—through ingestion of contaminated food or water, or through mouth contact with someone infected. Flies that had been in contact with the sweat of an infected person could also contaminate food.

The prognosis was known now too. The disease began with stomach cramps, then a fever, then a high fever that might last five or six days, followed by either death or a remission of symptoms. Treatment was to reduce and control the fever—medication, ice packs, fluids, etc. Unfortunately none of them were very successful. Altogether about a quarter of the victims survived with no apparent permanent damage, and another quarter survived but seemed to be debilitated by the disease, lacking in energy and endurance, and about half died.

As a result, international travel and trade had almost stopped. Jeanne and Neil listened to a report that the Venezuelan air force had threatened to shoot down a Boeing 747 that had requested to land in Caracas after an eight-hour flight from Toronto, Canada. When the plane was almost out of fuel and circling outside the city, the air force did shoot it down. No one survived.

For the first time Vagabond’s crew discussed returning to the U.S. mainland, since it appeared that there they could still find enough food and perhaps a more friendly welcome. But Neil argued that radioactive fallout would be increasing for months, if not years, not diminishing. And the problem of avoiding the “plague,” and of avoiding the violence of those who would fear them as carriers was also frightening. Moreover, most of the stored and growing food would already have been confiscated and controlled by previous settlers in each area, and when winter came these sources would be

barely enough for them. Outsiders would not only be feared and kept away because of the “plague” but because of the burden they would place on the already limited carrying capacity of the region. Neil had listened to one shortwave report of a small renegade group of soldiers and a band of survivalists fighting a pitched battle for the food and shelter the survivalists had prepared. The broadcaster didn’t know who had won, but it wasn’t a game that anyone aboard Vagabond had any heart for.

Thus, although their stay in the harbor at Charlotte Amalie permitted them to recover from the weariness of being at sea for almost three weeks, by the end of a week a new kind of weariness was afflicting them: the fatigue of searching endlessly for some end to the threat of starvation, and finding none. Olly, with help usually from Jim, Lisa, and Katya, spent most of every day fishing—sometimes with hook and line, sometimes with a net along the shore—or raking for shellfish. Frank, possessive of Jeanne, took on with her the task of bartering for what little food was available in the city. Over the week they bartered away dozens of “useless trinkets”: watches, shirts, shoes, necklaces, blouses, a transistor radio, the rest of Macklin’s stolen cigarettes, Jim’s remaining small supply of grass. Yet during the week they ate no better than they had at sea and had no more reserve food supply than when they had first dropped anchor. They were running to stand still.

So almost from their first day on the torpid streets of Charlotte Amalie Jeanne felt lost and uneasy. She had arrived wanting to find a home for herself and Neil and the others, for the alternative seemed to be an endless voyage from one hostile place to another. But as she talked to government officials, to shopkeepers, as she pushed her way through the devastated and littered streets or along the waterfront bartering for food, she could feel no connection with anyone, black or white, mostly just a powerful sullen hostility. She felt herself out of synch with the island and its people. By the third day she was just going through the motions. She wanted to leave.

It wasn’t simply that she was white in a world that was mostly black. It was more than color. She sensed that for those who had lived on the islands for a few years anyone who had arrived after the holocaust—black, white, or Puerto Rican—was an outsider, an intruder, even, she realized with a start, a coward. To have fled one’s homeland was to be guilty of selfish betrayal, even if that home had been blown off the earth and the homeland become a vast crematorium. And the anger and contempt with which most of the longtime residents responded to her and the other refugees was undoubtedly intensified by their own fear and their own desire to flee to some ultimately secure haven. A black woman whom she casually tried to befriend in the fish stall turned on her with unexpected hatred: “Go ’way, rich lady,” she said fiercely. “You best fly while you can!” The woman’s rebuke acted to reawaken Jeanne’s own fears, made her begin calculating if she were still “rich” enough to flee.

It hadn’t taken long to learn beyond any doubt the universality of the currency Philip had called “pot and pussy.” Marijuana joints were traded as cigarettes had been during earlier wars. Bags of it were the big bills of island currency. And some women, if they were young and attractive and otherwise destitute, went to buy necessities from certain merchants quite reconciled to paying with their mouths or bodies. One merchant they’d heard about had, because of his own physical limitations, resorted to selling water or fruit or fish to certain women for “IOU’s”—payment to be upon demand of bearer, who would not necessarily be the merchant himself. He, in turn used the sexual IOU’s to buy things he wanted from other merchants.

The second real estate agent Jeanne had called upon, a dignified black man her own age, had offered her a month’s free rent in a cottage he had at his disposal in return for her “friendship.” The suggestion seemed to her not so much insulting as irrelevant, but it contributed to her feelings of uneasiness about St. Thomas.

So too did what was happening to Lisa and Jim. On their second trip ashore the two had discovered in the downtown city park a gathering of teenagers, black and white—the only aspect of local life that seemed comfortably integrated—playing guitars and drums, singing, smoking pot, even laughing, and often gathering around the latest street-corner prophet who was haranguing about doom or salvation or both. Almost every day after they’d worked with Olly, fishing or gathering shellfish, they went ashore and spent some time with their new friends. Katya sometimes went with them.

Lisa, although younger than most of the others, seemed determined to fit in with this society, which disturbed Jeanne mainly because she knew so little about them and had no control over Lisa’s activities on shore. She could feel Lisa pulling away from her. Lisa and Jim would answer her questions about the Park Square people with code word replies: they were “cool, loving people,” they were “nonviolent,” but Jeanne felt only a dull feeling of dread at what seemed an aimless passivity in the face of starvation and disease. Katya didn’t help matters when she said that Jim and Lisa were just trying to hold on to a little more of their normal lives before existence was, once again, solely devoted to day-to-day survival.

And finally the other thing that made her feel out of place in Charlotte Amalie was the absence of Neil. Since he stayed so often on the boat or off on other people’s boats, she had no heart for the land. Neil was a major part of any new home, and if he was rejecting St. Thomas, then she must too.

And so, after six days, she felt that she was back where she had been on day one: on a ship without enough food to leave and without enough food to stay, unable to live with the man she loved because it would destroy the family that was her new world. And her children, whom she had vowed to save, to whom she felt she wanted to dedicate her life, grew steadily thinner, and Lisa, steadily more remote. The climax came one afternoon when Lisa was preparing to go ashore with Jim to visit their Park Square friends.

Jeanne confronted her down in their cabin as Lisa was changing from the wet clothes she’d worn earlier while seining for bait along the shore with Olly, Jim, and Tony.

“Lisa, sweetheart,” Jeanne said to her. “I hardly see you these days. What do you do in the city every day?”

“We don’t do anything, Mother,” Lisa answered, slipping out of her one-piece suit and into panties and shorts. As she did, Jeanne noticed that Lisa seemed to be trying to show that she was unaffected by her own nakedness, not hiding her breasts as she’d done for most of the last two years.

“For seven or eight hours?” Jeanne asked, regretting her accusatory tone.

“There’s not much to do, you know,” Lisa replied, not looking at her mother. “This isn’t exactly Washington.”

“I know, I know,” Jeanne said, trying to get away from the confrontational mood. “What do you talk about?”

“Lots of things,” Lisa answered, pulling a blouse over her head. She no longer wore a bra, partly because the only one she’d brought with her had worn out.

“But what are some of them, sweetheart?” Jeanne persisted. “I’m interested in your life, remember?”

“Oh, Mother,” Lisa said with a sigh. “It’s hard to tell you. About lots of things. The way you adults messed up the world. About how to scrounge for food. About what we want to do with our lives.”

“How do most of your friends manage to get food?” Jeanne asked, handing Lisa the brush she knew she was glancing around for.

“Some of them fish,” Lisa answered, beginning to brush her hair. “Garbage cans outside rich white people’s houses. A few go house to house begging.”

“Your friends beg?” Jeanne asked.

“Certainly, Mother,” Lisa snapped back. “There are no jobs and no food. What do you expect?”

“Don’t their parents manage to provide food?”

“Sometimes,” said Lisa. “But most of us want to be independent of our parents.”

“By begging?”

“It’s better than blowing the world apart.”

“I don’t see how the parents here are responsible for the war,” Jeanne responded, feeling annoyed by Lisa’s self-righteousness.

“Some of them are white, mother,” Lisa said, as if that explained it. “And Robby says all whites started it with their superrationality.”

“Ah,” said Jeanne, knowing she was too annoyed to enter reasonably into an abstract discussion. “I see.”

“That’s why music is so important,” said Lisa.

“Yes…” said Jeanne, standing uncertainly in front of Lisa, who was ready to leave. “Tell me, sweetheart, is Jim your lover now?”

Lisa, who was about to escape, stood still, her eyes on the floor. She turned back to face Jeanne and she slowly raised her eyes. “Yes, Mother,” she answered quietly, without defiance or apology.

Jeanne, who’d been holding her breath, let out a sigh. “I see.”

“You and Neil—” Lisa began.

“It’s all right, honey,” Jeanne said, biting her lip and averting her face to look out the window. “I… Jim… Jim is… a fine man.”

“I love him, Mother,” Lisa said in a low, uncertain voice.

“I know, honey,” Jeanne said and went over and hugged Lisa to her. “I know.” They held each other for a half-minute until Jim’s voice called to Lisa from the dinghy alongside Vagabond.

“But, Lisa,” Jeanne said, releasing her daughter but blocking her path. “I don’t want you abandoning the boat. Stay here. Make love here if you must.”

“It’s not that,” she said, and, inexplicably, she seemed irritable again. “You don’t understand. There’s no life for us on the boat. Nothing but more of the violence that Neil and Frank seem to believe in. Some of the people in Amalie are different, and Jim and I are interested in finding a better world.”

Jeanne felt herself stiffen again at Lisa’s naive oversimplifications. It made her feel both sad and frightened that her daughter seemed to need to escape from the boat and the adults on it. Their world was falling apart. “But, honey—” she began.

“I’m going,” Lisa announced and brushed past Jeanne and left the cabin. Jeanne followed, and as Lisa climbed down into the dinghy, she wanted to call her back or give her a warning of some sort, but she couldn’t articulate her fears even to herself. “Lisa,” she called down to her. “I… I want you to find a better world, but… just be certain it is a better world.”

For a moment Lisa pretended to busy herself with helping Jim fit an oar in the oarlock, but then she looked up at her mother defiantly.

“It can’t be any worse than the one that’s sent us here to starve to death,” she said.

Jeanne, feeling she had nothing better to offer Lisa, could only look down in shocked silence. Jim, smiling up at her awkwardly, shoved off and slowly rowed Lisa away.

For Neil, after a week on St. Thomas, land was again enemy territory. After their first few days anchored in the harbor he let any or all of the others go ashore to try to find food or a house or whatever it was they thought they wanted. He believed that each of them would soon realize the hopelessness of finding a welcome here. Whenever he left Vagabond, he was ill at ease, constantly looking back at the water toward the white, triple-hulled form of his ship, his home. Except when he was with Jeanne—then, together they carried home with them.

The idea of settling on St. Thomas went against his instincts. He worried that Vagabond might be hijacked, worried about the plague, worried about submitting to a governmental authority that was little better than a gang of pirates itself. His reaction to the appalling conditions on St. Thomas was ambivalent. While he sympathized with the native islanders and resented the rich whites flying or sailing off to other havens, he knew full well that he was one of the lucky ones who had the means to get away and knew he’d be happy to do it— indeed, was constantly scheming to be able to do it.

Yet that alternative, all the alternatives, were, as always, heartbreaking. Somehow, some way they had to take on enough food for a voyage even longer than the one they had just completed. Somehow, some way they had to get hold of the weapons to protect themselves against pirates and, eventually, Neil speculated, against foreign navies and air forces. Somehow, some way they had to find a place on the planet where they could feed themselves and be free of the great, leaning, gray weight of the nuclear holocaust. Somehow, some way. It was life.

He talked with as many sailors as he could, and although many said they wanted to escape, all were as stuck as he. The only difference was that many of them had lost confidence in themselves or in their boats and were waiting, stuck in their own stuckness… .

Philip and Sheila Wellington were exceptions. They were determined to get away, and since their thirty-foot catamaran’s mast was cracked, they were trying to work out a deal with a man named Oscar White who owned an old fifty-five-foot sloop but had little skill or experience at sailing. Philip had become increasingly edgy over the week Neil had known him; he was convinced that St. Thomas was about to explode and that they had to get away.

On their eighth day on St. Thomas, Neil met with Philip again, this time on Oscar’s sloop, Scorpio. The ship was an old racing boat, once queenly, now old and unmaintained, still solid, it seemed to Neil, but much of its gear was in need of repair and all its varnish and brightwork needed attention.

The three sat in the huge, airy open cockpit in front of the beautiful mahogany wheel, which alone was polished and gleaming. Oscar was an intense smallish man in his thirties, with long, wild blond hair, a big handlebar mustache, and narrow blue eyes. A former real estate broker, he had left his job, wife, and family for a fling in the Caribbean on a cheap yacht he’d planned to fix up and sail off into the sunset. The war had interrupted his idyll after less than two months.

His crew consisted of two young men who’d latched onto him in Fort Lauderdale. Gregg and Arnie were both wiry young men, much more laid-back than Oscar, and apparently happy to go along with whatever he decided. They were also friends of Jim, Lisa, and Katya. There were usually two or three young women aboard Scorpio, but none of them showed up for the conference, nor did Gregg and Arnie, content to remain fishing off Scorpio’s stern.

Philip and Oscar sat on one side of the cockpit and Neil on the other, each of them holding a tall glass of water as they once would have held gin and tonics.

“It’s no use, Neil,” Philip said. “There’s no nonviolent way to do it. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

Neil stared gloomily at his glass. Philip was one of the few men he’d met who perceived the situation since the war as he did: a struggle to the finish for individual survival, or rather group survival; Neil was committed not simply to himself but to Jeanne and to all who sailed on Vagabond, and now, although the commitment was unspoken, indeed perhaps unconscious, he was committed to Philip and Sheila too. But much as he liked Philip, he was less enthusiastic about getting involved with Oscar and Scorpio, although if Philip were to become Scorpio’s captain, he would go along.

“So what dishonest ways are there?” Neil replied. “I haven’t seen much on St. Thomas worth stealing.”

“I’ve been thinking about our situation a great deal,” said Philip. “As Samuel Johnson said, ‘The prospect of being hanged wonderfully concentrates the mind.’”

“And?” asked Neil.

“Both of us have two basic requirements: a large supply of food for a long voyage and weapons and ammunition,” said Philip. “Without these two there’s not much hope in setting out.”

“Especially food,” said Oscar. “We’re already starving.”

“Weapons as well,” said Philip, flushing slightly but continuing to address Neil, sitting opposite him. “To get south we’re going to have to run the gauntlet: the twenty or so islands of the Antilles, each of them home base for a pirate ship or two.”

“How do you know that?” Oscar asked.

“I’ve been listening to the shortwave for a month. I’ve seen ships arriving stripped of everything but one sail. I’ve heard Maydays from vessels under attack. I haven’t stayed here because I’m afraid of the sea or of starving. I’m afraid of the land, of the men who come from it.”

“All right,” said Neil, “but where in God’s name can we get weapons? I thought you told me there wasn’t even a black market in them.”

“We get weapons, old boy,” said Philip, brightening as if at last they’d come to what he wanted to talk about, “from the pirates.”

Neil examined Philip’s glowing face. “How?”

“I’ve sniffed out one of the pirate ships,” he answered, becoming serious again. “It’s a forty-two-foot Hatteras docked at Martin’s Marina. Knowing what ships have been hit and when, and where Mollycoddle was at the time, I figured it out. That plus rumors in town and the unexplained wealth of her captain and crew.”

“Mollycoddle?” asked Neil.

“A larky name for a pirate ship, eh? Yet Forester and the others, with no assets other than that ship, never lack for petrol, food, liquor, or barter goods necessary to buy women. They live like kings in a large estate they’ve taken over outside the city. Their sudden prosperity has only come upon them since the war began, since the breakdown of government has made piracy almost a risk-free crime.”

“You plan to get weapons from them?” Oscar broke in.

“Precisely. We’ll hit their ship,” Philip replied.

“Is this Forester, Michael Forester, an Englishman?”

“I believe so.”

“Jesus Christ, count me out. That guy and his gang are killers. I mean they’ve shot people on the streets of Charlotte Amalie, and no one does a thing. Even the blacks are afraid of them.”

“I can understand your concern,” said Philip, flushing, “but when you’ve heard my plan, perhaps you’ll change your mind.”

“You plan to raid their ship?” Oscar persisted.

“Yes.”

“They’ll outgun us three to one,” said Oscar.

“Not when there’s only one or two men aboard.”

“When is that?” asked Neil.

“Every night the ship’s in port,” said Philip, again looking at Neil. “They live on their estate. They always leave a guard on Mollycoddle, often two, I think, but I don’t consider one or two overconfident guards an insurmountable obstacle.”

“Do they have radio contact with the estate?” asked Neil.

“I believe they probably do, yes, in fact,” agreed Philip.

“You think they keep their weapons aboard?”

“Some certainly,” said Philip. “Some on the estate. But the ship will be much easier to hit.”

“Food?”

“I’m sure the Mollycoddle is kept well stocked.”

“You steal the ship’s weapons and food and then what?”

“We sail off into the sunset!” said Philip triumphantly.

Neil frowned, considering all this.

“You’re crazy,” said Oscar. “There’ll be a dozen well armed pirates with a twenty-two-knot Hatteras chasing us to give us a cheery good-bye.”

“We scuttle the Hatteras,” said Philip confidently.

“They have other boats,” suggested Oscar.

“They’re not certain who hit them,” countered Philip.

Oscar shrugged, scowling.

“Let’s hope so,” said Neil.

“Also, we are now two boats, both armed to the teeth, sailing side by side. A rather unappealing target.”

“Not when someone’s mad,” said Oscar.

“True,” said Philip, flushing, “there are risks involved in piracy, my boy.”

Philip was looking at Neil, his face glowing with excitement, while Neil watched the two young crew men aft getting excited as one of them reeled in a fish.

“It’s too dangerous,” said Oscar.

“There are risks involved in piracy,” Philip repeated, looking at Neil, “but not as many as in being the victims of piracy.”

“Screw it,” said Oscar. “Those guys won’t bother me. I haven’t got anything worth taking.”

Grimacing, Philip continued to look at Neil.

“I’m depending on you to iron out the military wrinkles in my little plan,” he said to him. “I can but point the way.”

“Any particular time frame?” Neil asked after a silence.

“Ah, yes, that,” said Philip, suddenly frowning. “I’m afraid we may decide there’s a bit of a rush. Three things. First, I heard a rumor today, just a rumor so far, that quite a few cases of that plague have appeared right here in the city.” Neil stared at him in dismay.

“Not too pretty,” Philip went on. “Secondly, let’s face it, we’re none of us getting any fatter. Our larders are already bare. I believe we should strike as soon as we can.”

Neil nodded. “And the. third thing?” he asked.

“The luxury cruise ship the Norway is scheduled to arrive here later this afternoon.”

“My God,” said Oscar. “How do you know?”

“Fred Turner on the Spright told me an hour ago. The Norway had been hung up in Santo Domingo since the war began, but the U.S. Navy has given her a huge supply of diesel fuel from its depot on Vieques, and the Norway is now carrying about five hundred Navy personnel.”

“What’s it doing here?” Oscar asked.

“Well… that we can only surmise. But clearly it will be taking on passengers. The sight of more rich people sailing off on a lovely white cruise ship is not likely to be greeted with enthusiasm.”

“Maybe we could get aboard?” suggested Oscar.

Neither Neil nor Philip commented on this.

“It would be a lot safer than messing with Michael Forester,” Oscar persisted.

“I wouldn’t count on it,” said Philip.

“Well, all I know is that if it’s a choice of starving or tangling with pirates, I’ll choose starving,” said Oscar, standing up.

“I understand, Oscar,” said Philip. “I respect your decision. But… if things work out, do you still want me to assume command of Scorpio?”

“You get me food and guns, buddy, and you can sail Scorpio for the rest of your life.”

“Good,” said Philip.

Oscar wandered aft to check on the fishing. “Well, Neil?” inquired Philip, leaning forward.

Neil shrugged, then smiled and raised his now empty glass.

“I’d like to see both the Mollycoddle and the estate,” he said. “Is that possible?”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Philip, grinning and standing up quickly with surprising grace for such a bulky man. “Sheila spent the morning reconnoitering the estate, and the Mollycoddle is moored at Martin’s Marina. We’ve borrowed three bikes for the occasion.” Philip was grinning triumphantly.

“Rather sure of yourself, weren’t you?”

“You’re a sailor, Neil. This hunk of filth called St. Thomas could no more hold you down than a cinderblock could hold Vagabond at anchor.”

“You think I’ll drag out to sea, do you?” asked Neil, smiling and standing up.

“Drag, old boy?” said Philip, coming forward to clap Neil on the shoulder. “No, sir. You’ll fly.”

“From the sound of your plan,” he said, “I’d better.”

That night Neil explained to Frank, Jeanne, Tony, and Macklin the plans they were developing for the raid on Mollycoddle. Although Macklin indicated approval, Tony, irritable, found a half-dozen weaknesses in the plans. Frank, looking fatigued, simply didn’t feel that the possible gains justified the risks. After Tony and Macklin had gone down to the main cabin to prepare a small meal for themselves, Neil continued to pressure Frank in the darkened wheelhouse.

“No, Neil,” Frank said, “I just can’t see it. Someone would get killed. Your whole plan scares me.”

“Frank, we’ve got to leave,” Neil insisted. “There’s nothing for us here. St. Thomas is close to exploding. Hundreds of people will leave on the Norway…”

“There’s St. Croix, there’s Puerto Rico…”

“Don’t bullshit yourself!” Neil exploded. “In these islands there’s only chaos, revolution, starvation, madness, and war. That’s all we’ve found, that’s all there is. It’ll only get worse.”

“And you think stealing another man’s ship will improve things!”

“I want all of us to survive. And without food and weapons we won’t make it.”

Frank strode away from Neil and glared out across Vagabond’s foredeck at the few distant lights on the hillsides of Charlotte Amalie.

“I’m not sure I want to be an accessory to piracy,” he said.

“Then you’ll be an accessory to starvation and radiation sickness and death.”

“We’re still alive so far,” he said huskily.

“By outsailing the fucking war! And that’s what we’ve got to do now.”

“And what about Jeannie and the children? They can’t take the ocean. They need a place on land.”

“I know that,” said Neil, shaking his head and grimacing. “I know that, Frank. Believe me, I know that dragging everyone out to sea again isn’t going to bring happiness, but this is probably our best chance. Philip’s going to try to take the Mollycoddle whether we join him or not. Sailing in a convoy with him improves our chances against pirates. It would be nice if we could wait a week or a month, but we can’t.”

“You’re acting too fast, Neil,” Frank said, shaking his head wearily. “Our food supplies are nil, our water low, and you want to solve all our problems, steal a boat from pirates, raid their estate, and put out to sea all in the next couple of days. It’s too much. It’s too sudden. I can’t do it.”

“But you, yourself—”

“No! Leave me alone. I’m done. I’m sick. I’m exhausted. I’m going to my berth and sleep. I’m too tired to argue with you and too tired to agree with your plan. I’m sorry.” And he left Neil to go to his cabin.

Neil stared after him angrily until Frank had slid the hatch closed behind him. Fists clenched, he walked to the opposite cockpit and was surprised to see Jeanne’s hatchway open and Jeanne standing there, looking calmly up at him. Her face showed her fatigue. She was wearing Frank’s bathrobe. The two of them looked at each other expressionlessly.

“So we have to leave again…” Jeanne mused softly.

“Apparently not,” commented Neil, anger still in his voice.

“But you feel we should… steal some food and weapons and sail away.”

“Yes,” Neil answered quietly, realizing that she had listened to the whole loud argument. “I’m sorry. I just don’t see how we could make a home anyplace in the West Indies.”

Jeanne was still staring up at him, absently pulling the lapels of her bathrobe closer to her neck. She glanced across to Frank’s cabin on the other side of the boat.

“Come down to my cabin,” she said, turning and walking down the ladder. Neil swung himself into the opening and went down after her, sliding the hatch shut behind him. She stood facing him halfway down the narrow floor area of her cabin between her berth and Skip and Lisa’s. Skip was presumably asleep in the darkness, Lisa ashore with Jim. Being alone with her sent something warm stirring through him, although the present situation was distinctly nonerotic.

“Frank’s a gentle man,” Jeanne said.

“I know.”

“And Jim’s withdrawal from the boat and his… relationship with Lisa has upset him.”

Neil nodded, wishing he could see her face more clearly.

She hesitated. “And… us… that upsets him,” she went on. “He… he’s in no condition to make such an important decision, especially on such short notice. He’s an awfully good man, but at the moment…”

“Yes?”

“I think you should go ahead with your plan without him,” Jeanne concluded quietly, looking up at Neil. “I’d like to help in any way I can,” she went on. “And I think it’s important that Jim be part of it. And Lisa. And Katya.”

“If they’ll come,” Neil said sullenly.

“They’ll come.”

Neil watched her carefully. She stood there, clearly exhausted, but with the same air of regal authority she always seemed able to maintain.

“It’ll mean a long two-, three-, or even four-week ocean voyage,” he said. “A lot of it like the one we had from the Bahamas, slamming, slamming, slamming. There won’t be any escaping it.”

She looked back at him and smiled. “I’m used to it.” Then she shrugged a tiny shrug, her chin falling down. “But someday…” Tears had formed in her eyes.

Neil held her close and caressed her hair.

“Jeanne…” he said, holding her tightly. “When an animal is being chased, after a while all it wants to do is lie down and let the dogs take it. It wants it all to end.”

At first she held herself stiffly in his embrace and then collapsed against him, her arms returning his hug, her hair pressed against his cheek. Although she made no sound, in her fierce hug he could feel the tiny tremors of her crying.

“…Run…” she said.

“You keep running,” Neil said. “Later, if you make it, you can have the leisure to worry about what kind of a life you want to lead. Right now, for us, the dogs are still at our heels.”

Jeanne nodded, but she looked sad and beaten.

“I love you,” he said softly in her ear.

“Oh, Neil, how I wish we could…”

As she looked up at him Neil bent to kiss her, and as they kissed, lifted her up to put her on her berth.

“No…” she said mechanically.

He climbed up beside her on the berth, wishing he could see her face, her eyes. Groping at the head of the bed, he found a flashlight and turned it on, letting its light fall against the far wall. She was staring upward, not looking at him. Her expression was tense, withdrawn.

For a long time, resting on one elbow he stared down at her.

“Hey,” he finally said. “My name is Neil. I’m in bed with you.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, then she closed them and a grin appeared on her face.

“I guessed as much,” she said.

“The least you can do is say hello,” he continued, loving her smile and bending to kiss the tears in the corners of her eyes.

“Go away,” she said, reaching up to put her arms around his neck and hold him close.

“Never,” he replied, coming over on top of her. “Never,” he whispered.

From the moment Jeanne drew Neil down on top of her and opened her mouth to his kiss, their desire, so long restrained, exploded in a series of passionate caresses and couplings that followed one another without words, thought, or conscious intent. The necessity of silence imposed by their unspoken concern for the sleeping Skip and the more distant Frank seemed to add to their sensual intensity. Occasionally they would emerge from their sexual universe to find themselves nose to nose staring at each other as if each had awakened from some unbelievably joyous dream. Their eyes would speak a brief acknowledgment of their jointly created miracle, but their mouths, as if afraid to break the spell, remained wordless. Then they would lose themselves again in fierce intertwining.

“Living God, Jeanne…” Neil finally whispered when exhaustion finally left them sated but still joined, back in a more normal world.

Jeanne, again beneath him, simply smiled up at him.

“Yes…” she said.

Up in the wheelhouse Tony and Macklin sat by themselves in the dim light falling from the kerosene lamp, Macklin smoking, Tony sipping at some rum he’d bartered for earlier. Frank and Olly were below, sleeping. Although Katya had returned, Jim and Lisa were still ashore. Tony and Macklin had seen Neil follow Jeanne down into her cabin, but for the last fifteen minutes they had been talking about Neil’s plans for the raid.

“The trouble is,” Tony complained, “even if we raid the pirates and get some decent food, it just means more endless sailing.” In the month since the war Tony had lost all his fat and was now muscular and slender. His boisterousness had given way to almost constant irritability. He and Katya had quarreled again a few minutes before, and it didn’t help matters that she had compared him unfavorably with Neil. To give Jeanne and Neil privacy, Katya had gone aft to sleep in Neil’s cabin.

“That’s all there is, Tony,” said Macklin quietly. “We’ll never be safe until we’re in the Southern Hemisphere. Vagabond’s the only way for outcasts like you and me to get there.”

“Maybe,” said Tony, “but I’m not sure I want to spend the rest of my life as a cabin boy.”

“Oh, yeah, that,” said Macklin, grinning. “That we can probably change.”

“I’m getting a little tired of waiting,” said Tony, starting to pace back and forth.

“As long as Neil and Frank are together you and I will be cabin boys,” Macklin went on. “Let’s face it, right now no one needs us. They have Neil. He’s hardass enough to get them to save themselves. Without him they’d flounder.”

“Without him they’d need me… us,” said Tony.

“Yes, without him.”

Tony stopped in front of Macklin, who was sitting with his accustomed heavy composure.

“I don’t notice us doing much about it,” Tony said.

“They’ll do it for us,” Macklin replied quietly, “if we give them enough time.”

“Do what?”

“Split the boat apart. Send Neil packing. You don’t think Frank is going to let Neil stay on board once he finds out he’s balling Jeanne, do you?”

Tony looked uncertain.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Frank likes Neil, and if Jeanne went with him…” He paused. “He’d sure enough be pissed though.”

“Unfortunately,” said Macklin, “Frank seems determined not to see what’s going on.”

“Why don’t we tell him?” asked Tony.

Macklin sat very still. Then he took out a cigarette, lit it, and took a long toke.

“Beats me,” he replied.

Frank, bone-weary, nevertheless staggered out of his berth when Tony told him there was some trouble between Neil and “a woman.” Confused, half-asleep, he had felt an instant flash of anger, convinced that Neil was hitting on Jeanne, but before he could ask for further clarification, Tony had disappeared.

Slipping on a pair of shorts and taking a flashlight, he stumbled up out of his cabin and went aft to Neil’s cabin. He knocked on the hatch, then slid it open. Flashing his light down the ladder, he was startled to see Katya’s bare legs and then her questioning face. She pulled a cover over the rest of her body.

Frank’s first take was relief: so Neil was balling Katya, he thought. He was glad. But when he saw that the man in the berth was Olly, snoring peacefully, Frank blinked uncertainly.

“I’m… ah… looking for Neil,” he said.

Katya blinked up at him. “He… went topside to check on… the anchor,” she replied.

“Oh.”

Frank closed the hatch and walked into the wheelhouse.

“Have you seen Neil?” he asked Macklin, who was sitting against the mizzenmast with his feet stretched out on the settee. “Tony said something about some… problem.”

“He’s in bed,” said Macklin.

“No, I just checked there,” Frank said.

“In bed with Jeanne,” said Macklin indifferently.

Frank stayed where he was, turning the light off to leave himself in relative darkness. He felt fear. Unexpected and powerful fear. He walked reluctantly to the port cabin, hesitated, and then banged his fist down three times on the sliding hatch, like a judge gaveling for order. There was no response from inside. In a small burst of breeze Vagabond swung slowly off to port in the darkness, swinging on her anchor. Frank hammered three more times on the hatch.

“What is it?” he heard Jeanne finally say.

“I’m looking for Neil,” Frank said harshly, even as he entertained a strong momentary hope that Macklin was wrong. Then he heard the sound of someone landing with a thump on the cabin floor.

He waited.

In another few seconds the hatch slid forward and away from him, a figure came quickly up the ladder and stopped on the top step, three feet away. It was Neil. After a pause he came out into the cockpit and confronted Frank. In the wheelhouse behind them Macklin was turning up the kerosene lantern, and its dim glow fell across Neil’s bare chest. He was wearing only his swim trunks. Frank stared at him, Neil returning his gaze steadily. Then Frank saw on his shoulder a long black strand of Jeanne’s hair.

“You goddamn son-of-a-bitch,” he said automatically.

“No, Frank,” said Neil. “I’m… sorry…”

Frank swung his fist with the same instinctive rage that had brought out the curse. The blow struck Neil solidly in the side of the head, sending him reeling to his. right and tumbling into the cockpit seat. There he sat for a moment, stunned, his body turned sideways to Frank, touching the left side of his face.

“You heartless, selfish son-of-a-bitch,” Frank said, his fists clenched at his side. Neil looked up at him, anger in his eyes too.

“Selfish, Frank, not heartless,” he said.

“How dare you take advantage of that woman when she… she…” Frank wanted to say “she’s mine,” but the words stuck in his throat and he felt an urge to cry.

“I’m sorry,” Neil said. “But sometimes something becomes more important than loyalty to a friend.”

“A goddamn fuck!?” he shouted at Neil.

Neil looked up at him sadly. “Yes,” he answered quietly.

Frank lunged at Neil to grab him by the throat, but this time Neil fell to one side to avoid the charge and grabbed Frank’s left arm to pull him over and send him crashing into the back of the cockpit seat. Frank turned and reached for Neil again, but he pulled himself away. Blindly Frank got up to come at him a third time.

“Look, Frank, this is ridic—”

As Frank swung at him Neil ducked under the blow and slammed into Frank’s chest, sending them back against the cockpit seat, Frank crushed hard against it by Neil’s weight. The wind was knocked out of him, leaving him momentarily dazed. He felt Neil push himself to his feet and step back again, into the middle of the cockpit. Both men were gasping for air.

Frank looked up at him, feeling both a hatred that seemed to be unwinding out of control and a sad-little-boy impulse to cry, as if Neil were the neighborhood bully picking on him.

“Look, I know—” Neil began.

“You ever go down in her cabin again and I’ll kill you!”

Neil stood uncertainly a few feet away, his fists clenching and unclenching at his side, sweat matting the hairs on his chest.

“Don’t say that, Frank,” Neil said softly. “You don’t—”

“I said it! I mean it!” he shouted back. “Stop betraying me!”

Neil flinched at these words. Jeanne appeared behind him in her cabin entranceway, looking at Frank with a pained, frightened expression. Frank’s heart ached for her: how he wanted to protect her, care for her.

“It’s not Neil you should be angry with,” he heard her say to him.

“Damn it, Jeanne, how could you!?” he asked huskily. Again he wanted to cry.

“Get below, Jeanne,” Neil said, pushing her back with his left arm. Frank saw now that Katya, wearing Neil’s robe, was standing in the wheelhouse beside Macklin and Tony, watching. And Jim and Lisa had returned, too, and were also staring at him. He felt beaten. Slowly he brought himself to a standing position.

“Have…” he began, but had to clear his throat. “Have I made myself clear?” he said to Neil with as much coldness as he could command, the sounds coming out huskily, like the words of a dying man.

“Yes,” said Neil.

“Good.”

The images of the others were blurred, barely distinguishable— later he realized that he must already have been crying—as he moved past Neil, shoved himself between Katya and Tony, and returned to his cabin. He had lost everything.

Guiltily, unhappily, Jim and Lisa escaped Vagabond with Katya, in theory to barter for some additional food out at a commune at Salt Point, but in reality to get away from conflicts they couldn’t handle. They sailed with Oscar, Gregg, and Arnie and two young women from Scorpio. One was Oscar’s girl friend, Janice, a plumpish woman of thirty with short curly brown hair. The other was a slender, nervous young girl named Mirabai who was vaguely connected with Arnie. Both women—and the men, too, he realized—struck Jim as frighteningly passive and apathetic. None of them seemed to have any ideas about how they might survive what was happening. They were vaguely hopeful that the commune might feed and take care of them, and only Oscar seemed interested in joining Vagabond and sailing farther south. Gregg and Arnie, often stoned on grass, seemed indifferent even to the prospects of the commune.

The old racing ship moved sluggishly, and Jim noticed how tentatively Oscar and his crew handled her. He was worried by the small anchor they threw overboard, especially when they paid out so little scope that a fresh breeze might well blow them out to sea. Oscar explained that their big anchor had been stolen. When Jim suggested that it might be advisable to put out another hundred feet of anchor line, they thought it was a swell idea.

By the time the three from Vagabond rowed ashore at Salt Point with Oscar and Janice, it was after four in the afternoon. Then, as they were pulling the dinghy up onto the beach, Gregg’s shouts from Scorpio indicated that, even with the additional scope, Scorpio’s anchor was dragging with the rising wind. Oscar and Jim left the three girls and began rowing full speed back to the sloop. The three women were left to investigate on their own.

Salt Point was a barren peninsula stretching out from one of the three white enclaves that still survived on St. Thomas. It had become the unofficial home of a small group of homeless young whites and blacks.

As Lisa followed Janice and Katya into the low shrubs on their way across the peninsula toward the cove where Janice said the barter boat was reported to come, she moved reluctantly, unhappy at being separated from Jim. On the other hand she needed to be away from the tensions of Vagabond and looked forward to checking out the commune. Big Robby, the leader, preached that the end of the world was upon them—just three more weeks or something like that—and that all should take joy in the last days.

When they were halfway across the peninsula, they saw in the distance three or four rather dilapidated one-story wooden structures and some people. As they came nearer Lisa saw that two of the women in one group were bare-breasted and a man leaning back against the wall of one of the shacks was completely naked. Several people were smoking, and when they arrived at the clearing, she could smell the sweet odor of pot. A man with a bushy blond beard and long hair tied in a bun behind his head emerged from a shack near them. He was wearing cutoff jeans.

“Hey, welcome, good sisters,” he said. “I’m Thunder. Don’t think I’ve seen you around here before.” He grinned at Katya.

“We’re just visiting,” she said.

“We heard good things about you,” Janice added. “Thought we’d check it out.”

“That’s great, man, great,” Thunder said, smiling and looking from one to another and then back at Katya. “We’re getting dozens of new people every day. The last days are here and I guess everyone’s finally learning to groove.”

No one responded immediately to this, and in the pause Lisa introduced everyone to Thunder. A naked white man and a black girl walked by holding hands, the girl’s long hair falling down her back. Lisa noticed how skinny they both were and that the girl’s bony bottom was covered with a light coating of sand.

“We’re not much on clothes here,” Thunder went on, smiling. “Everyone’s free to do what they want. Bare-assed or tuxedo, it’s all cool here.”

“But bare-assed is cooler,” Katya commented, and Thunder laughed and reached out a bony hand to pat her on the shoulder.

“You’re right there,” he said. “Especially in this heat.”

“Is there someplace to get something to eat and drink?” Lisa asked.

Thunder’s face clouded. “There’s a cistern about two hundred yards past that last house. Just follow the path. But it’s getting low, so we have to ration. Our next meal’s about dusk—only an hour—but I doubt the girls are back from buying the fruit and fish.”

“We’ll survive,” said Lisa, tossing her dark hair away from her face.

“Yes…” said Thunder, looking at the three of them with a frown. “Hey, you know, I don’t want to preach, but you cats ought to loosen up a bit, enjoy yourselves. This is the peninsula of love, man, and Robby’s message is that we should joy in these last days. You folks appear a little down. Loosen up, man. Do what you will, but joy!”

They stared at him.

“We’re a little done in by our sail,” said Janice.

“Sure, man, I dig that. But you got to know that within a month the whole earth will be destroyed,” Thunder elaborated, his bearded face strangely expressionless as he spoke.

“Things don’t look too good,” Lisa agreed tentatively.

“You got to joy, man. These are the last days. Let go!” He smiled at them and gave Janice an awkward hug. “If you want to get stoned the communal pot supply is in this first shack here. I’m afraid it’s rationed too.”

“No thanks,” said Lisa.

“Joy, brothers and sisters,” Thunder pronounced, opening his arms in a belated welcome. “Joy in all you do. The last days are here.”

“Joy to you too,” said Lisa shyly in a soft voice as Thunder strode away after two women who were following a path off to the left.

“May the last days find you soon,” said Katya, so low that only Lisa could hear.

“Hey, Oscar asked me to get some pot,” said Janice. “You go on ahead. I’ll join you later.”

Lisa and Katya walked on. When they emerged several minutes later from the shrub oak onto the beach they found themselves surrounded by six or seven other young women and girls and one man, all but two of them black, all watching a long powerful motor yacht slowly approaching a large mooring about forty feet from shore. The black women were wearing blouses and shorts, both so frayed in some cases they were almost in rags. The hot wind was blowing offshore at this point, and the water, despite the strength of the breeze, was calm.

“Excuse me,” said Katya to the lone white girl, who was wearing only a bikini bottom, her small naked breasts a light stripe in her brown torso. “Where can we get something to eat?”

The girl frowned. “The boat,” she said, pointing. “They bring it on the boat.”

Lisa could see that two men had successfully tied their yacht to a mooring about fifty feet out.

“I say, are you girls coming or not?” one of the men yelled from the bow of the yacht.

“Bring us the little boat, mon!” one of the black women shouted back.

“Oh, no,” the man shouted back, grinning. “You can swim out today. The exercise will be good for you.”

“Put the boarding ladder down!” shouted a pudgy black girl, slipping off her brightly colored but tattered blouse, and putting it down neatly next to another woman’s basket. The woman then ran four or five strides into the water, made a clumsy dive, and began swimming out to the yacht.

“Ah, shit, I can’t swim,” one of the other black girls said as two more prepared to swim out.

“Hey!” shouted the white girl to the man standing on the bow watching the swimmers. “I can’t swim! How about a lift?”

“Later, sweetheart,” the man replied. “We’ll let these ladies row in with what they buy.”

“Oh, shit,” said the white girl to herself. “By the time we get there they’ll be tough to bargain with.”

“Who cares?” said a black girl. “We’ll eat anyway.”

“Shit, rotten mangoes and fish.”

“It food, I eat it.”

Lisa and Katya stood just behind these two, watching the three women who had swum out to the yacht. One by one they climbed up the boarding ladder on the starboard side and stepped down into the huge cockpit. The yacht’s bow was pointed directly at them, so Lisa couldn’t tell what was happening on board. The man who’d been on the bow went aft when the women began climbing aboard.

Three of the women still on shore now moved off along the beach and seemed to have lost interest in the yacht, leaving only Lisa, Katya, and the black girl who was desperate for any kind of food. When Lisa looked out again, she saw two of the men peering over the top of the high windshield and examining her and Katya through binoculars.

In another few minutes a dinghy appeared from astern, and a black woman climbed down into it and paddled toward shore. The girl in front of Lisa and Katya walked down to the water’s edge to meet her.

“Fucking white pigs!” the returning woman said, throwing the oar up the beach. She retrieved a small cardboard carton half-filled with mangled fish from the bottom of the dinghy and came toward them.

“You want food,” she said to Katya as she approached, “go get it. They tol’ me to tell you they feeling generous. They like white girls.”

Lisa began to walk down the beach to the dinghy. As she did she noticed the men had tied a line on the dinghy’s stern, which was attached at the other end to their yacht. Katya had been slow in following, but now she stood beside the dinghy just as the last black girl had sullenly climbed aboard.

“Coming?” she asked Katya gloomily.

Lisa looked at Katya.

“Who are these men?” Katya asked slowly as if calculating.

“They bring food and stuff every few days,” said the black girl.

“Is there ever any rough stuff?” Katya asked.

“Why they use rough stuff?”

“Do they have guns?”

“I never seen none. You, June?”

“Oh, they got guns,” said the women who had been on board. “They pirates, mon.”

“Pirates?” Lisa echoed.

“My God, that’s the Mollycoddle,’” Katya exclaimed suddenly, remembering Neil’s presentation the night before.

“Sure. They famous,’” said the black woman.

“You stay here,” said Katya to Lisa. “I’m going out to take a look.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Jim?” Lisa asked.

“I’ll be all right,” said Katya. “The only thing I’ve got they might want to take can’t be permanently removed.” She laughed nervously and then walked down the beach and after a long hesitation dove into the water.

As Lisa watched Katya’s slow progress the last black girl was having trouble pulling the dinghy into the water; Lisa helped her and, when the boat was afloat, impulsively jumped in beside her.

Katya had swum past the boarding ladder to examine the yacht’s transom—to verify that this was indeed Mollycoddle—so that Lisa and the black girl arrived before her. When they boarded, they were greeted by two white men, dressed neatly in blue Bermuda shorts and clean white sport shirts, and immediately offered a lit joint. The older of the two, a pale white man in his late thirties with sideburns and a baseball cap, paid special attention to Lisa. One of the two black girls still aboard was lounging topless on a cushioned chair in the huge open area aft, smoking woozily. She seemed disoriented when the joint was passed to her. When Katya pulled herself up the ladder, her wet T-shirt clinging to her breasts, the other man looked at her with frank interest.

“I say, you look better clothed than most women do naked,” he said to her. “I’m Michael.”

Katya shook her curly blond hair and with both hands squeezed the water out of most of its length.

“Hello,” she said coolly, looking carefully around the boat. “We’d like some food.”

“Why certainly, darling. What would you like?”

Katya accepted the proffered joint as Lisa had done and took a distracted puff. “What have you got?” she asked.

“Over here,” said Michael.

“How old are you?” the man with the baseball cap asked Lisa. He was short and thickset, with powerful forearms, and though Michael seemed to have an English accent, this man was American.

“Fifteen,” said Lisa, feeling self-conscious under his frank appraisal of her figure.

“That’s nice,” the man said. “You been in the commune long?”

“No, I’m just visiting.”

“You’ll love it,” he said, grinning. “Everybody loves it.”

With Katya and the black girl looking into some cans and boxes on the other side of the deck, Lisa became aware of a loud male grunting coming from the main cabin forward. A woman’s suppressed little half-screams occasionally accompanied the grunting.

“Sounds like Robert must be selling the whole stock,” Lisa’s admirer in the cap joked to her.

“I’d like as much of the fruit as you can spare,” said Katya. “You can keep the fish.”

“Why certainly, darling,” Michael said. He was tall, slender, and clean-shaven, with hard blue eyes that glittered happily. “How much fruit would you say we can spare, mate?” he asked his shorter friend.

“Quite a bit,” said the other.

“I think we might be able to part with all the rest, don’t you think?” said Michael, not actually paying much attention to the older man.

“Certainly.”

“Thank you,” said Katya. “May I take the basket too?”

“I think that might be arranged,” said Michael.

“Fine,” said Katya, abruptly lifting the straw basket of fruit and striding back toward the boarding ladder. “Let’s go, Lisa.”

Michael grabbed her arm in mid-stride, and as Katya spun sideways, a few oranges spilled forward onto the cockpit floor. Katya remained in a half-crouch, holding the basket clutched to her chest and staring at the fallen oranges, Michael still holding her arm.

“Payment, darling,” Michael said quietly. “The matter of payment, don’t you know?”

Katya slowly lowered the basket to the floor and then straightened up. She looked slowly over at Lisa. Now the sounds of the woman’s gasping screams, whether of pain or pleasure—Lisa, frightened, couldn’t tell—came sharply from the forward cabin. In the silence of the confrontation between Katya and Michael the screams seemed horrendously loud and obscene.

“You got to pay them,” the sullen black girl said.

“It’s only fair,” said the other black girl drowsily.

“Besides, darling,” the man named Michael said, seeming to ease his grip on Katya slightly. “These are the last days, remember? Nothing matters. Take joy in all you do.”

“That’s right,” said the sullen black girl gloomily.

“Of course,” said Katya, shaking her head as if clearing it. “I’m new here and just didn’t know.” She smiled at the man, whose big hand still held her arm. And then she added in a voice so soft and husky and sexy it startled and frightened Lisa, “How do you like it, Michael? You name it, I’m good at it.”

Lisa thought that even Michael looked surprised at the sudden sexual power Katya seemed to be turning on him.

“Don’t forget me,” the older man said nervously.

Katya turned to the other man. “I’ll take care of you too,” she said huskily.

The noises from the cabin had ceased.

“But what about these other girls?” she added, still in her new husky voice. “Don’t they get some food too?”

“Certainly,” said Michael. “Help yourselves, girls. Take the dinghy ashore with your food. It’s been lovely seeing you again.”

“Oh, no,” said the man in the baseball cap. “I’ve got a little girl here who wants to pay too, right, honey?”

“Go, Lisa,” said Katya sharply.

The older man grabbed Lisa firmly by the arm.

“And miss the fun?” he said, smiling.

With a swiftness that caught everyone by surprise, Katya pulled a short mahogany boathook from its staple near the control panel shelf and whacked the older man a vicious blow on the side of his head, forcing him to release Lisa and stagger away.

“Swim!” shouted Katya, turning to swing at Michael who was approaching her in a crouch.

Lisa took two steps toward the yacht’s combing and glanced back to see Michael duck under the boathook, tackle Katya, and send her sprawling while the third man was coming at her with a pistol. Then Lisa hopped over the combing and into the water. As she surfaced and began swimming for shore she heard a man shout, then Katya scream.

Lisa slipped once as she staggered out of the water and, seeing two men getting into the dinghy to pursue her, broke into a run toward the shrubs. Even as she darted down the trail across the peninsula she wondered if she should turn back to try to help Katya. It was getting dark, and she decided to get off the main trail and find a place to hide. She tripped once and fell, immediately springing up to run forward. Seeing a small fire and a shack ahead of her, she ran for help.

When she appeared in the firelight, an old black man who had been sitting beside the fire leapt up.

“Git away!” he shouted. “Go!”

Lisa stood frozen, trembling, almost unable to speak. “I… I need help,” she finally blurted. “Some men—”

“Go ’way!” the old man shouted, then turned to look at the shack ten feet away.

A young white man and woman were crawling out of the entrance, their eyes red and watery.

“Water,” the man called feebly. “Please help us. Water…”

“Get back in there!” the old black man shouted and brandished a heavy stick at the two feeble specters. “Back! Back!”

Lisa gasped as she suddenly realized that the two were sick, feverish. Glancing back in terror for a sight of her pursuers, she ran on. She hadn’t gone more than forty feet when she came upon the burnt-out remains of another shack, the white bones of three skeletons gleaming in the dim light of dusk.

Whimpering, she ran on, no longer aware of exactly what she was fleeing, only needing to run, to escape the horrors that seemed to explode into her life in an unending series.

At dawn the next morning Jim reported to Neil that Katya and Lisa were missing. Earlier, after he and Oscar had finished reanchoring Scorpio, they had begun looking for the three women, but found only Janice. They traced Katya and Lisa to the beach where the barter boat had been moored and then… nothing. A black girl on the beach told Jim that the men on Mollycoddle had motored off with “de sexy white girl” but that she thought the younger white girl must have escaped. Although Janice and Oscar had abandoned the search when it got dark and returned to Scorpio, Jim had kept looking another four hours, finally stealing a bicycle to ride the ten miles back to Charlotte Amalie, and then had swum out to Vagabond.

For Neil and Frank and Jeanne it was clear that now they had to raid Mollycoddle and probably the estate too. Katya—if she were still alive—was probably either on the boat or out at the pirates’ estate. Lisa had either shared Katya’s fate or had escaped and was already back on Scorpio or making her way to Vagabond. Neil suspected that Lisa would have tried to find Jim if anything untoward had happened, and thus would have tried to make her way back to Scorpio. Through binoculars they soon determined that Mollycoddle was moored at her berth at the docks, but that Scorpio hadn’t returned yet. They guessed that Oscar was too timid and inexperienced a sailor to try to sail the ten miles back to Charlotte Amalie harbor in the dark.

Neil ordered Jim and Tony to go back to Salt Point and contact Scorpio, hopefully to find Lisa there. In any case they were to help sail Scorpio back to join Vagabond in Charlotte Amalie. After Katya and Lisa were both safe—God willing—and additional food and weapons had been garnered from the raid, the two boats would set sail together for southern waters.

Jeanne’s concern over the disappearance of Lisa was mostly assuaged by Jim and Tony’s departure to search for her, and Neil next signaled the Wellingtons with the air horn to begin final plans for trying to save Katya and Lisa and, once again, themselves.

Eight hours later Jeanne walked slowly along the dock, holding a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head with one hand to prevent its being blown off by the wind. Ahead of her and to the left was Mollycoddle, tossing in the rough seas that were rolled in by the storm, its stern facing her, the wind blowing it a few feet off the dock, its mooring lines taut. She was wearing a black bikini top and a blue denim skirt, the skirt necessary to hide the small automatic strapped to the inside of her right thigh: the brief bikini top was to guarantee a friendly reception by Mollycoddle’s guardians. Neil’s last stern-faced words to her after he’d helped her strap the gun to her thigh were, “Don’t let anyone feel you up.”

At this moment he was, Jeanne hoped, in Vagabond’s dinghy, hidden six boats back. Philip was casually fishing from the dock a dozen yards behind her. Olly and Conrad Macklin, with binoculars, were seated in the park area “admiring the boats.” Neil had asked Frank to remain on board Vagabond, telling him that if Neil himself were killed, Frank had to be safe to take over leadership. He was to join them only after they’d succeeded.

As she neared the stern of the pirate yacht she saw no sign of life. Neil said they were certain there was at least one man aboard and Philip thought there were two, but whoever was aboard was below. Perhaps the hot wind from the distant hurricane had discouraged them. Or worse, perhaps Katya was there with them, and Lisa…

Timing things carefully, she waited until she was exactly opposite the open cockpit of Mollycoddle and then released her hold on her hat. It went flying off toward the yacht, Jeanne uttering a little scream. The hat sailed into the cockpit as planned, but then bounced on a seat cushion and flew out the other side, no, hit a metal strut and dropped back into the cockpit. She stared at it wide-eyed. In theory a guard was supposed to come out, rescue the hat, engage her in conversation, and ask her aboard. Nothing happened.

Glancing up and down the dock and trying to look upset and pathetic, Jeanne walked over to the edge of the dock and contemplated either hailing Mollycoddle or going aboard after her hat.

“Ahoy in there!” she said in as helplessly feminine a voice as she could muster, the rushing of the wind in the rigging of nearby sailboats effectively drowning her voice. No one responded. There was four feet of open water between the dock and the combing of Mollycoddle, an easy jump for Jeanne, if only the gun didn’t work loose. Steadying herself on the dock, gauging the distance carefully, she leapt into the yacht’s cockpit, letting herself fall forward with a crash onto her left side, screaming a good loud scream and lying there contorted and moaning.

In a few seconds the cabin door opened and a large, bare-chested man holding a pistol appeared, staring at her fiercely, then looking up along the dock.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked with a distinctly American accent.

“My hat,” said Jeanne, grimacing in pretended pain and pulling down her skirt and adjusting her legs so that her armament wouldn’t show. Then, sitting up, she gestured at the straw hat lying on the other side of the cockpit.

“And you jumped after it, huh?” the big man said, now grinning, his handlebar mustache flicking up at the ends.

Jeanne nodded, rubbing her left ankle, which she decided she had twisted. But not badly. She didn’t want to be carried.

“Need some help?” he asked, stuffing his pistol in between his belly and his shorts.

“No, no, I’m fine,” she said, holding up a hand to restrain him. “I’m just a little bit in shock, I guess.” She looked up at him and smiled wanly. He stared at her breasts.

“You want a drink or something?” he asked.

“Oh, no, I don’t want to bother you,” Jeanne said, standing awkwardly. “Although come to think of it, a drink would be nice.”

“Hey, Mike, can the lady have a drink?” the big man asked, and Jeanne saw a tall, slender man wearing a neat beige sport shirt and shorts standing in the cabin door. He was eyeing her coldly. She smiled at him. He smiled back.

“Certainly, Bart,” he said. “We wouldn’t want her to leave in pain. She might sue us.”

Jeanne laughed prettily.

“Come in, darling.”

“Said the spider to the fly,” said Jeanne as she limped past Bart and Michael and into the luxurious main saloon of the Hatteras. There was no one else there.

“Wow, this is something,” Jeanne said as she paused in the middle of the plush carpet and looked around, still half-hoping, half-fearing to discover signs of Lisa’s presence.

“What would you like to drink?” asked Michael. “Please sit down.”

“Thank you,” said Jeanne, sitting down in a leather chair and quickly crossing her legs. “Gin and tonic?”

He laughed. “How about some rum?” he asked.

“That’s fine too.”

“Bart?”

“Sure, Mike,” said Bart and went forward into the far part of the galley.

“I’m Michael Forester,” said Michael.

“I’m Jeannie Wilkins,” she said after an awkward hesitation.

“And what brings you tumbling into the Mollycoddle?”

“Stupidity, I guess. My hat blew onto your boat.”

“A likely story,” said Michael. “Are you sure it wasn’t because you noticed my handsome face in the street and followed me here out of uncontrollable lust?”

Jeanne smiled, again awkwardly. “If I’d seen you before, I might have!” she managed, smiling more broadly.

“Are you often overcome with uncontrollable lust?”

Jeanne felt a bit overwhelmed. At the rate this conversation was going, Michael would have her in the sack before Neil had paddled halfway here.

“Only on hot, stifling days when there’s no wind,” she answered.

“Ahh,” said Michael. “What disappointing weather then, no?”

Bart entered with the drinks, handed them around, and kept a bottle of beer for himself. He sat down on a second easy chair in the saloon.

“Cheers,” said Michael.

“Anyone aboard?” a loud voice came from the dock outside.

“See who it is, Bart” said Michael, frowning.

Jeanne tensed. This was the proverbial it. She uncrossed her legs and straightened in her chair. She wished she’d practiced drawing the gun. Bart arose, put his beer down, adjusted the gun in his belt, walked up the two steps, into the cockpit, and looked to his left.

“What is it?” she heard him say to Philip.

“Have you a gaff I can borrow?”

“You seem nervous, Jeannie,” she heard Michael say and saw him staring at her with a suspicious frown. “What’s the matter?”

“That man’s voice…” she said uncertainly.

“Yes? What about it?”

The yacht lurched as if a sudden new weight had been added. Michael and Jeanne both saw Bart standing in the center of the cockpit but facing away from the door now with his arms raised.

“Don’t shoot, buddy,” Bart said loudly.

Michael leapt up, rushed past Jeanne, and opened a drawer from which he drew a pistol. He then crouched behind her chair, facing the cabin entrance. Jeanne was stunned by such a piece of bad luck: Michael had chosen the one place where he would inevitably see her if she tried to draw her gun.

Neil and Philip appeared in the cockpit, Neil nudging Bart, who, with arms raised and empty-handed, was coming down into the cabin.

“He’s got a gun on me, Mike,” Bart said when he saw Michael’s pistol trained on them.

“All right, lady,” said Neil. “Get into the galley with your hands behind your head.”

“You move, lady,” hissed Michael, “and I’ll kill you.”

“Go ahead and kill her,” Neil said evenly. “She’s none of our business. Move, lady!”

Slowly Jeanne stood up and, appalled, terrified, walked slowly toward the galley area.

“What do you want?” Michael asked tensely.

“All we want—” began Neil.

“Don’t turn around,” interrupted a voice from behind Neil and Philip. “Throw your guns on the rug.”

Someone Jeanne couldn’t see had come into the cockpit behind Philip and Neil and had a gun on them. Neil, after a brief hesitation, threw his gun onto the rug between Bart and Michael. Philip threw Bart’s gun and his automatic after it and Jeanne reached down, lifted her skirt and, her hand trembling, pulled out the loaded .38 automatic. She remembered to press the safety as Neil had instructed her to and held the weapon in front of her, hidden by the counter that separated the main part of the galley from the saloon.

Bart picked up their guns and Michael stood up behind the leather chair. A third man, black, pistol in hand, appeared in the cabin entrance behind Philip and Neil.

“Who in bloody hell are you two?” Michael hissed angrily. He thrust his pistol violently into his belt and crossed to the couch to retrieve his barely touched glass of rum. He glared at Jeanne, not really seeing her. Neil didn’t reply.

The black man behind Neil and Jim spoke: “Okay, mon, you get over against that wall there. Bart, you search them.”

Neil and Philip walked slowly over to the wall on the other side of the main saloon. Bart dropped Philip’s gun onto the couch behind Michael and ambled over to Neil and Philip. Michael and the black man both took their eyes off Jeanne to watch what was about to happen.

She froze. As soon as she spoke and showed her gun they’d turn and shoot her. Three to one. And then Neil and Philip. She was unable to raise her gun.

“They’re clean,” Bart announced after his search.

Michael turned to Jeanne. “Perhaps you had better check the lady too,” he said.

Jeanne stared at him, wide-eyed with fear. As Bart came toward her she reacted instinctively: she crouched and raised her gun to her eye level, aiming it directly at the black man whose pistol was still pointed at Neil.

“Drop it!” she snapped, so sharply it astonished her. Her eyes were wide, hysterical, only her head and the gun barrel were visible above the galley shelf. Bart stopped and all of them watched her, motionless and uncertain.

Then the black man swung his pistol at her and fired, and Jeanne pulled the trigger, the gun jumping in her hand, two shots following one after another in less than half a second. Neil leapt on the man who had shot at her, ripping the gun from his hand, and Jeanne shifted her aim to Michael, who was standing only eight feet away, his hand frozen on the butt of the gun in his belt.

“Don’t shoot!” he screamed.

Neil took Bart’s weapon and stood behind him with two guns, one in each hand. The man who had shot at her had been hit and was sitting on the floor, clutching his shoulder and looking at Jeanne with both surprise and pain, as if she had committed a social faux pas by shooting him. Philip began retrieving the weapons on the couch and the rug.

Michael slowly turned to look at the wounded black man, now slumped back against a chair, at the bewildered look on Bart’s face, at Philip now complacently pointing a .45 straight back at him, and finally at Neil, who was smiling at him tensely.

Finally, slowly, Michael looked back at Jeanne. He stared at her with frank hatred.

“You bloody bitch,” he said quietly. “Are the boobs fake too?”

“I’m afraid that information is classified,” Neil answered, coming up behind Michael to remove the gun from his belt.

“You’d better pray I never get a chance to find out for myself,” Michael said.

Jeanne, feeling safe at last, lowered her gun onto the counter top and leaned against the counter. The big war might be over, but the small wars seemed to be getting worse.

In planning their raids on Mollycoddle and the pirate’s estate Neil and Philip had felt that the storm passing south of them could work to their advantage. Normally the easterly trade winds made it difficult to sail east from the Virgin Islands, but the counterclockwise rotation of the storm system would give them a southerly wind as it moved westward. What they had failed to consider was the unexpected size of the storm and the leisurely pace with which it moved to the west: the waves it was sending northward were huge, much larger than they had anticipated, as was the wind: thirty knots and gusting to forty-five.

Standing with Philip on the dock beside the captured Hatteras, which Olly, Macklin, and Jeanne were busy ransacking for everything of value, Neil could feel doubt and fear blowing through him with the hot wind. Events were moving too fast, involving too many people, too many variables, too many unknowns, to permit him to deal with all that had to be done. The wind and seas were rocking the boats at the dock, and Neil watched the swells rolling into the supposedly protected harbor with increasing anxiety. The noise of halyards and lines beating against masts, the wind whining in the rigging, and the waves slamming against docks and boat hulls were unnerving. As they tried to discuss their plans Philip had almost to shout to make himself heard.

“I don’t like this blow,” he shouted. “I’m not sure we have the time to raid the estate before dark.”

For Neil the initial purpose of the raid—food and weapons—was no longer worth the risk. But there was the question of Katya and Lisa. Neither had been aboard Mollycoddle, and Michael and the others wouldn’t tell them who was at the estate.

“We need food,” Neil replied loudly to Philip. “There’s too damn little on Mollycoddle.” He was watching the waves rolling in at them; at times froth blew off the tops in a horizontal saltwater rain. The Hatteras had already produced two automatic rifles, a small shotgun, four automatics, at least two pounds of marijuana, four bottles of rum, but only a small cache of food. Either Michael and his men bartered for food on a daily basis or their food supply was at the estate.

“I know,” said Philip, “but this wind… I don’t know. Is it worth it? There’s the girl, of course.”

“The girl’s worth it, Phil,” Neil answered grimly, feeling a disturbing lethargy and dread, as if nothing were worth the effort, and as if any enterprise they set off on now were doomed from the outset. “And Lisa might be there too. I know we’re going to have a hell of a time getting out to sea in this, but… I have to go out there. If you want to—”

“No, no. If that’s the case, let’s get on with it.”

So they went ahead. Bart and the wounded black man were tied up in the forepeak of the Hatteras while Michael was to accompany the raiders to the estate. The plan was to use Mollycoddle right up to the last minute to tow Vagabond up over her anchors and get her out of the harbor against the strong winds. Scorpio too would need a tow if she returned; she was already overdue. Neil only hoped that Vagabond didn’t drag anchor before they got back out to her. It was already past four thirty: only two and a half more hours of daylight.

They divided into three groups. Frank and Olly were to barter some of Mollycoddle’s marijuana and surplus weapons and other “useless” valuables for food while Neil’s raiding party went up to the estate. Sheila and Conrad Macklin would remain to guard Mollycoddle and continue to try to make radio contact with Scorpio while waiting for her return. The “raiding party” consisted of just Neil, Philip, and Jeanne with their hostage, Michael. They rode bicycles.

Neil felt frail and vulnerable on a bicycle, and the gusty wind increased his feeling that events were moving too quickly, decisions being made too hastily. He wondered how many officers had led their troops into battle on a bicycle. Although the three others had ten-speed bikes, Neil rode a cumbersome old one-speed and had to labor to keep up with his prisoner. Both of them were periodically blown several feet to one side by a gust of wind.

The estate was a large rambling summer house overlooking the water. It had a swimming pool on one side and a set of swings and a slide on the other. Its only landscaping was a few low shrubs and flower beds. The grass was dry and brown from lack of water. In the driveway was an old Ford station wagon with its hood up.

Michael was ordered to hold his empty pistol and pretend that he and Neil, who was armed with a loaded automatic rifle, were guarding Philip and Jeanne, who preceded them up the gravel walk to the front door with their hands clasped behind their heads.

A little man with glasses opened the door, gun in hand, to Michael’s knock and hail. “What’s all this?”

“Some new booty,” Michael answered sullenly.

Philip and Jeanne pushed their way in past the little man. Michael, with a tense glare back at Neil, followed them.

“I say, who are you?” the little man asked Neil.

“Michael’s cousin,” Neil answered, smiling and holding the automatic rifle casually pointed at the little man’s stomach. The living room had two couches, some handsome carved wooden chairs, and a piano.

“Oh, really? Where’d you come from?”

No one else appeared to be in the room. Neil saw Philip lower his hands, remove the revolver he had wrapped up and tucked in as part of his belly, and move toward a doorway at the far end of the room. When the bewildered little man turned to watch, Neil hit him in the neck with a karate chop and dropped him to the floor.

Neil crouched back against the closed front door watching Philip approach the doorway at the far end of the room. Jeanne came up to him.

“My gun,” she said softly to Neil, and he remembered and pulled the automatic out of his belt and handed it to her. At the far end of the room Philip disappeared through the doorway, and there was a bang that made Neil swivel his gun to the right: the wind had blown a shutter loose and it had banged alongside a window there. As he watched, still tense and trying not to tremble, it banged again. Philip came back from the far room.

“Kitchen,” he said. “I’d say it’s quite well stocked.”

“Call your friends,” Neil said to Michael. “Ask them to come down here.”

Michael glared at him without replying. Neil swung his rifle toward his stomach.

“Jeanne,” he said. “Go into the kitchen and start getting the food into boxes and bags. Michael, I’m waiting. Call your friends.”

Michael turned and walked slowly over to a second doorway off the main room. As Neil followed he saw that it led off into a hallway with a closed door and a stairway to the second floor. Michael stopped near the stairway and called:

“I say! Larry! Rick! Tolly!” he shouted. “Come down and have a chat! It’s me, Mike.”

A door opened upstairs.

“Welcome home, old buddy,” an American voice said. “What brings you back so soon?”

“I brought you a lady, Rick. Tall, dark, long hair. I know how fond you are of long hair.”

“Be right down.”

“Ask who’s around,” Neil whispered to Michael, the muzzle of his rifle digging into his back.

“I say, Rick, who’s here today?” Michael yelled up the stairs. “Is Tolly around?” A silence followed, then Rick’s voice puzzled: “What d’ya mean, ‘Is Tolly around?’ You know that Tolly…” The voice stopped and left only an ominous silence.

Neil raised the butt of the rifle and slammed it into the back of Michael’s head; he crumpled in a heap on the floor. Neil ran up the stairs two at a time and burst into the room the voice seemed to have come from. A skinny young man, apparently Rick, was standing at a bureau, groping in the top drawer.

“No! Don’t!” Rick yelled and dropped the gun back into the drawer. Neil flattened himself against the wall inside the door.

“Who else is in the house?” he asked. Rick looked around nervously, first at Neil, then at the door.

“There’s Arthur, I think, and Larry and the Pussycat—”

“Arthur’s a little man?” Neil asked.

“Yes?”

“Where’s Lar—”

Two shots rang out from downstairs. Neil ran to the door, then turned back on Rick, who still stood frozen but now with both arms stretched toward the ceiling.

“Don’t shoot!” he said again.

Enraged by the delay, Neil walked over to where Rick was standing and drove his fist into his face, sending him crashing back against the bureau and to the floor. He grabbed the pistol from the drawer and, carrying the automatic rifle in one hand like a handgun, rushed back to the head of the stairs.

“Phil!” he shouted down.

There was no answer. Michael’s legs were still visible at the foot of the stairs. The silence brought forth from Neil a low moan of anguish. Two shots and silence: Philip must have been hit by some newcomer. He edged over to the railing at the top of the stairs and peered down. Still no sound.

“You down there,” Neil shouted. “I… I… I know you got Phil, so I want to surrender. I never wanted to be part of this…” Neil wanted to get the man—Larry was it?—to talk, to focus his attention on Neil. Perhaps he didn’t know Jeanne was in the kitchen. Oh, dear Lord, please don’t let him have shot Jeanne.

“Throw your gun down the stairs!” a deep male voice commanded from the living room.

Neil took out Rick’s gun and tossed it down the stairs. It bounced twice and came to rest near Michael’s feet. Neil noticed that the door to the other downstairs room was now open. Come on, Jeanne, he’s talking to me. Shoot the bastard.

“Now come down with your hands up over your head,” Larry commanded next.

Exactly when will he be able to see me? Neil wondered. He took a step down the stairs. Then another. Where are you, Jeanne? he wondered, prayed. A third step. Two more and my legs will be in sight. He won’t shoot until he can hit my belly. A fourth step. No more. Something, pray it’s not death, must be stopping Jeanne from shooting from the kitchen. He had to get Larry to move. He took a fifth step down, then took the last seven steps in two long strides and lunged through the farther door in the corridor, rolling away from the doorway. Two shots whizzed past him, pounding into the wall by the stairway.

Neil got to his knees, glanced quickly around the room, and stopped, stunned. Katya was sitting on the bed only six feet away, naked. She looked at him with as much surprise as he guessed he must be looking at her.

“Can you see anyone?” Neil whispered. She responded with a barely perceptible nod. “Is Lisa here?” he asked next.

Katya shook her head and whispered, “They never got her.”

Remembering the layout of the living room, Neil added, “Is he behind the couch near the front door?” Again Katya gave a barely perceptible nod.

Positioning himself by the doorway, he steadied the rifle with both hands, then reached around the corner and sprayed off a three-second blast toward the spot where he remembered the couch to be. He heard a muffled scream, then the sound of movement.

“He went toward the kitchen,” Katya whispered.

Neil stood up, took two quick strides across the hallway to the living room, and hesitated. As he started to peer into the room the bam-bam-bam of three quick shots blasted out from the kitchen area. He ran into the living room, rifle at the ready, and crouched behind one of the ornate wooden chairs. He saw two bodies on the far side of the room near the kitchen, one partially hidden behind the end of the second couch, only its bare legs visible. The first, he realized sickeningly, was Philip, and for a horrifying moment the bare legs of the second looked female. A movement at the kitchen door caught his eye, and Jeanne stood there, her automatic at waist level, her eyes on the man she had apparently shot, blood spreading in a wide red splotch on the shoulder of her white cotton blouse.

From the minute he and Olly began trying to barter for food, Frank sensed that something was wrong. As they made their way up from the docks the streets seemed strangely empty. The few people in the doorways of houses or bars or on street corners all seemed to be standing for the sole purpose of staring at Frank and Olly as if they were enemy agents. Black food vendors with whom they’d bartered a half-dozen times were now either gone or refused even to talk to them. They went into a bar to find out what was happening.

Even at five in the afternoon Bosso’s was packed. People were standing two and three deep at the long bar along one wall, and the dozen small tables across the room were all filled. Almost everyone was drinking water or a special postwar punch spiked with rum. Imported alcohol had disappeared. Frank and Olly stood awkwardly in the crowded space between the bar and the tables. Everyone in the bar was white except for three black men at the far end surrounded by a halo of conspicuous space. Many of the patrons kept glancing nervously at the entrance as if expecting an important but formidable visitor.

Most of them talked in low voices or whispers, as if they were in church. There was no boisterousness or joy. The one loud drunk who made an effort at jollity seemed to be deranged and soon lapsed into gloomy mumbling. Captain Olly wedged himself between two customers to press against the bar.

“Say, fella,” he asked the nearest bartender, “who died?”

The bartender, a big man with thick glasses and a cowboy hat, came toward Olly with a frown. The other patrons grew even quieter at Olly’s loud outburst.

“What d’ya mean, ‘Who died?’” the bartender sullenly asked Olly.

“The way I figure it,” Captain Olly replied, “everyone’s mother just got run over by a steamroller. Never been in such a dreary place. You got a law against talking in a normal voice?”

“You a stranger here?” the bartender asked belligerently. The two other bartenders, although still mixing drinks, were half-turned, listening.

“Hell, I’ve lived here for days,” Olly said. “You fellas acting as if you’d just learned that your blind date was a Russian missile.”

“You want a drink?” the bartender asked.

“The price of drinks these days being what it is, I think I’ll make water last into my next incarnation.”

The bartender shrugged his big shoulders and moved away to another customer. Olly turned to the tall, slender man on his left.

“What’s bothering everybody, fella, huh?” he asked. The man turned and looked coldly down at him. He shrugged. “The blacks may be going to riot,” he said.

“I see. What’s their gripe?”

“I wouldn’t know,” the tall man said, looking away and lifting his almost empty glass to his lips.

“You don’t seem much bothered,” said Olly.

“I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” the man said neutrally.

“Well, ain’t that nice!” said Olly. “Where you headed?”

The man placed a silver dollar on the bar and then brushed past Olly and left. Olly returned to Frank.

“You give it a try, Frank,” he said. “I guess I ain’t got the personality I once did.”

A big black man with glittering white eyes and a sweat-covered face abruptly stood in front of them. He was dressed in a neat brown suit, totally inappropriate in the sweltering heat.

“You want to know why it’s so gloomy in Bosso’s today?” he asked, smiling, his gleaming eyes either stoned or mad.

“Yeah,” Frank said, “we’d appreciate it,” and, glancing at Olly, followed the man over to the empty space that surrounded his friends. The other two men were dressed in the casual and unpretentious style more usual among Virgin Islanders, white or black.

“These people want to know what’s going on,” the first man said, grinning absurdly at his two friends. “I’ve promised to tell them.”

The other two blacks, subdued and sullen compared to the man who introduced himself as Mr. Sutter, looked at him and then turned back to the bar and their glasses of water.

“Everyone’s a little touchy these days,” Mr. Sutter said.

“Why?” Frank asked.

“Well, you see,” said Mr. Sutter, turning his glittering eyes on Frank, “the obliteration of San Juan has had a certain depressing effect on everyone. We all thought we were safe here and then, boom, we find we’re not. Five days ago the cruise ship St. Augustine, loaded with almost a thousand passengers, most of them white, sailed away from the white enclave at Caneel Bay on St. Johns. Tomorrow the Norway does the same.”

“Where are they going?” Frank asked.

“The St. Augustine is going to Rio de Janeiro, and the Norway, ah, the beautiful Norway, is sailing to, ah, yes, South Africa.”

“Jesus,” said Frank.

“This mass exodus of whites to South Africa is having a certain alienating effect upon some of the blacks,” Mr. Sutter went on, grinning as if he were telling a dirty story. “Certain resentments seem to have arisen. A feeling, as you mainlanders would put it, of being screwed.”

“Are most of the people in here planning to sail tomorrow on the Norway?” Frank asked.

“All but my two taciturn friends here,” Mr. Sutter replied, gesturing at the two blacks next to them at the bar. “They are deficient in gold and in the belief that South Africa is nigger heaven.”

“You’re going?” asked Frank.

“You’re goddamn right. If I’m to choose between my identity as a live rich man or of a dead black man, I’ve no trouble in opting for the Norway and Capetown. The South Africans may not like the color of my skin, but they’ve always liked the color of gold.”

A commotion at the entrance of the bar distracted Frank: the people nearest the door began to talk loudly and, as if a plug had been pulled at the door, everyone in the room began to be sucked toward the entrance.

“They’re coming!” someone shouted, and several men produced guns. A man now stood aiming a .38 at the three blacks at the bar. Mr. Sutter, sweating, grinned grotesquely.

“I assure you,” he said to the thickset white man with the gun, “I am not part of the revolution.” The other two blacks were looking balefully at the man with the gun but appeared to be unperturbed.

“I want you three to turn around,” the white man said, “and lean against the bar with your arms outstretched. I’m going to check you for weapons.”

Captain Olly had left for the entrance, where the sound of gunshots could be heard, but Frank stood watching the confrontation.

“I’m sailing on the Norway, ” Mr. Sutter insisted, trying to establish his connection with the “good guys.” “And although it makes me gag, I must confess that essentially I’m on your side.” None of the three blacks had moved.

“I said turn around,” repeated the white man, looking nervous. “And lean forward, with your hands flat on the bar. NOW!” He poked his gun in Sutter’s ribs and gave him a shove.

“My dear man,” Mr. Sutter began, but even as he spoke, one of the other blacks had sprung forward, grabbed the man’s gun arm, and began wrestling with him. The other came to his aid while Frank stood tensely in surprise and indecision. Within three or four seconds the white man staggered back against Frank, and one of the blacks was crouched down, leveling the gun at them and backing toward the rear entrance of the bar. An explosive roar from the bar sent the man staggering backward, his shirt shredded. The other black fled. Frank turned to see one of the bartenders standing behind the bar with a smoking shotgun. A distant explosion was heard from outside.

“Frank! Let’s go!” Olly shouted from the front entrance.

“Get out of here, Sutter,” the bartender ordered.

“Yes,” said Mr. Sutter, and, tight-lipped and terrified, he darted out the back.

When Frank left the bar with Olly, the bright afternoon sunlight blinded him and he could only see a few figures moving rapidly from left to right, toward the docks. The gunfire was coming from off to the left and from behind the buildings across the street. There was another loud explosion and the ground trembled under their feet. Then he could see smoke rising above the boutique across the street. As he and Olly turned right to make for the docks Frank saw an ancient brown tank rumbling down the street toward them, a handful of soldiers running at a crouch alongside and behind it.

He and Olly scurried along the sidewalk, watching the tank and the half-dozen soldiers—mostly black, Frank noted with surprise— head past them in the direction of what Frank assumed were the black rioters. A small Datsun heading toward the docks with a cracked windshield careered up onto the curb nearby to avoid the soldiers and tank; the white driver, bleeding from a head wound, looked terror-stricken.

At the corner of the first street, still a block from the docks and the marina where Mollycoddle was tied, a cluster of white civilians were crouched behind two overturned vegetable carts, looking up the street where the tank had stopped and where the shots were coming from. Most of the men had either a rifle or handgun.

Another explosion rocked the pavement, and Frank turned to see that the tank had turned around and its smoking cannon was now aimed down the street at them. Half the soldiers had disappeared, but the others were crouched down behind parked cars; two were firing at the whites.

“The bastards are firing at us!” someone shouted.

“Let’s go!” another yelled, and two of them began running toward the docks, soon followed by the other four.

A piece of sidewalk popped up in front of Frank as he and Olly followed. It took him two strides to realize that it was a bullet.

They were all running now and within a minute’s time had arrived at the dock area, where cars were being overturned as barricades while a few soldiers—here mostly white and looking bewildered—made halfhearted efforts to direct the flow of people. Along the three blocks of waterfront Frank could see only a single additional tank; it sat with its cannon aimed incongruously and ominously out to sea.

At the marina where Mollycoddle was moored were dozens of men, women, and children and mounds of luggage. Most were gathered near the small boat dock, trying to get out to the Norway, which was still at anchor a half-mile out in the harbor. There was no crowd around Mollycoddle, and as he approached Frank saw why: Macklin and Sheila were standing on the foredeck, each with an automatic rifle held at the hip and aimed at the dock. Although Sheila looked like she could probably handle her gun, Macklin looked like he wanted to use his, and his grim face alone would discourage most people.

The ground in the marina parking lot abruptly exploded less than fifty yards away, sending people running in all directions and leaving four or five men sprawled on the ground. When Frank turned back, he saw that rafted seaward to Mollycoddle was Scorpio, so low in the water compared to the Hatteras that he hadn’t seen her at first. With a surge of joy he saw Jim and Lisa coming out of the main cabin with empty boxes for transferring Mollycoddle’s food to Scorpio. Jim waved and shouted, “We found her on Scorpio!”

“For Christ’s sake don’t stand there!” Macklin shouted. “Get aboard! We’ve got to get away!”

“Where’s Jeanne and Neil?” Frank asked as he and Olly boarded Mollycoddle.

“They’re not back!” Macklin shouted. “They’ll never get back through this. Get us out of here.”

Frank looked at Sheila, who looked back at him questioningly. Her face was pale. Glancing at his watch, Frank realized that Neil and Philip were already a half-hour overdue.

Oscar ran across from Scorpio.

“Pull us out of here,” he said, his small eyes wider. “They’ll sink us!”

“Tony!” Macklin shouted.

Ten feet away Mollycoddle’s main windshield shattered as three neat holes appeared in the glass; Macklin crouched down and Oscar threw himself to the deck. Frank, standing numbly, now realized there was gunfire all around them.

Tony sprang from Scorpio and in a crouching run joined Macklin and huddled behind Mollycoddle’s combing.

“Get us out of here!” Macklin shouted at him.

Tony crawled over to the controls and, glancing fearfully around him, finally stood up and turned on the engine.

“Get the dock lines!” Macklin shouted at Frank and Oscar.

Another explosion boomed behind them, and Frank turned to see the dock one berth away burst into fragments and a body go flying off into the water. Sheila clutched his arm.

“We can still wait,” she said. “We can’t desert them.”

“Get the goddamn dock lines!” Macklin shrieked at Frank and Oscar.

Jim appeared beside Frank, slightly hunched over.

“We’re not leaving yet, are we?” he asked. The smoke from the recent explosions, although it was blowing away from them, prevented them from seeing much of what was happening in the streets. Along the docks people were running, crouching, stampeding onto boats to get out to the Norway, occasionally shooting, seemingly at random, back into the smoke.

“No… no, we’re not,” Frank said in a low voice.

Macklin, wild-eyed, suddenly leapt up, knife in hand, ran forward along Mollycoddle’s side, and slashed the forward dock line. With the wind blowing the yacht against the dock, Mollycoddle remained where she was, but when the two aft lines were cut, Tony would be able to motor off. As Frank, Sheila, and Jim watched, Macklin ran aft and cut the two other dock lines.

“Go Tony!” he shouted.

But Frank and Jim both came alive at once and ran to the helm.

“Not yet,” said Frank.

Tony stared back at him, his usually placid face filled with fear, then looked to Macklin for support.

“Get out of the way, Frank,” Macklin said loudly but with his accustomed icy calm. “I’m saving our lives. Get us out of here, Tony.” Macklin’s automatic rifle was aimed directly at Frank and Jim. “If you’re so hot to be with Neil and Jeanne and Philip, get off the boat. You too, Sheila.”

Sheila, still holding her automatic rifle—aimed vaguely shoreward—looked at Frank, then at Macklin, and finally back at the scene on shore.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

When Frank let his eyes follow hers, he saw Neil and Katya coming through the smoke in the parking lot, one pulling a garden cart, the other, a wheelbarrow.

Escaping from the estate had been a nightmare. Philip had been shot twice; one bullet had passed relatively harmlessly through the fleshy part of his side, but the second had buried itself in his back, just to the right of the fifth vertebra.

Jeanne had taken a bullet through her shoulder but, amazingly, after they had staunched the flow of blood, she could still use her other arm to help Katya (now fully dressed in shorts and T-shirt) transport food. When the car wouldn’t start, Neil found in the garage a wheelbarrow and a large garden cart. He carried Philip outside and placed him in the two-wheeled cart. Jeanne and Katya brought out boxes, cartons, and plastic bags of food and packed them gently around the wounded Philip. They put the heavier foodstuffs into the wheelbarrow. With Neil towing the garden cart like a dray horse and Katya pushing the wheelbarrow, they fled. Jeanne, insisting that she was still strong enough, bicycled one-handed on ahead of them.

On the deserted road into town, an old black couple they passed looked enviously at the food and seemed to conclude that Philip was a rich man being pulled by a servant.

As they entered the outskirts of the city they began to hear gunfire, but the streets were still mostly empty; they saw only an occasional bicycle or motorcycle racing away from the violence. When they came to within a few hundred yards of the docks, the smoke from the explosions both masked and impeded their progress. Jeanne’s wound finally had brought her near to collapse, and Neil carried her on his back the last hundred feet.

When he arrived coughing, sweat-soaked, exhausted, but unhurt by shell or shrapnel, he was disoriented, unaware of the conflict aboard Mollycoddle. Frank and Jim took Jeanne as she slid semiconscious from Neil’s back, assuring her that Lisa had been found safe on Scorpio. Sheila and Tony carried Philip aboard; the others brought the food. Five minutes later they motored Mollycoddle away from the docks with Scorpio rafted to her side, then took her in tow with Olly, Jim, and Lisa aboard her to help Oscar.

Events were now out of control. Mollycoddle plunged and plowed against the wind and waves, which careered toward them as if pushed by white demons. Spray exploded aft against the windows, cutting off visibility. Philip and Jeanne were placed on the long settee in back of Mollycoddle’s lower steering controls and Macklin was trying to examine their wounds. Fifty yards away water burst high in the air, making Neil fear that waves were smashing against some wreck or uncharted rock—until he realized it was an explosion. A quarter-mile off to port the gigantic white Norway lay placidly at anchor, surrounded by a dozen small boats all scrambling to come alongside and unload passengers. The Norway’s wide boarding ladder was packed with people shoving their way upward. Waterspouts burst in the sea around her. When Neil looked back across a hundred yards of water to the dock, he saw an explosion rock the boat that had been moored behind them, sending its mast toppling over into the sea.

They motored out against the swells to the mouth of the harbor and there cut Scorpio loose to sail off to Anguilla, where they hoped to rendezvous the next day. Tony warned Neil that Mollycoddle’s fuel gauge registered empty, but this seemed trivial. As they continued on back to pick up Vagabond, the Norway gave four blasts of its horn and began hauling anchor. A fire was burning on the afterdeck, smoke streaming out horizontally shoreward on the fierce wind.

Vagabond, lying to two anchors veed out at about sixty degrees from her bow, tore and plunged like a maddened horse at her tether. When Mollycoddle came alongside Katya and Tony put fenders in place and got the mooring lines tight. Everyone began unloading the new food and transferring the wounded to Vagabond, and Neil had to force himself to consider the next steps. He felt weary, worried about Jeanne’s wound, and burdened with the same nagging sense of foreboding that had been with him since the capture of the Mollycoddle. The seas were building too high; the civil war was too unpredictable. The sun would be gone in half an hour. Four more blasts from the Norway’s horn sent a chill through him.

“We can’t get either of the anchors up,” Frank reported to Neil between gasps.

“Cut one,” said Neil. “Cut it now, and let’s not waste time. If Tony can’t pull the other out, cut it too if you have to.”

Ten minutes later Mollycoddle, with Vagabond in tow, plunged toward the mouth of the harbor. Macklin had finished cleaning Jeanne’s and Philip’s bullet wounds. He couldn’t tell how seriously Philip had been torn up inside, but with Vagabond bucking and rolling as she was, they agreed it was useless to poke around to see. Neil realized for the first time that leaving land might mean sentencing Philip to death, yet neither Philip nor Sheila had suggested they stay to look for a doctor. And now they were committed to the sea: ashore Michael and his men would be waiting for them.

When he stood up and peered forward into the wind and spray, Neil felt frightened again. At any moment a towline might snap, an anchor drag, an engine fail, someone might fall overboard. As Mollycoddle crashed forward he watched the Norway moving seaward off their port beam; she was still hauling anchor, and smoke was still billowing out astern. Her decks were packed. When Macklin finished checking Jeanne, Neil carried her down to her cabin and lifted her up onto her berth. As he was tying Jeanne and Skip into the berth so they couldn’t roll out, he felt a strange new motion and a new sound that at first he couldn’t place. As he hurried back up on deck he suddenly knew: The engine had stopped. Mollycoddle had run out of fuel.

“Get aboard!” Neil shouted to Tony as Mollycoddle drifted rapidly back toward Vagabond. “Frank, get ready to cut the towline!”

He himself ran toward the mainmast, stumbling when Mollycoddle crashed into them, then getting up again to loose the halyard and begin hauling up the already triple-reefed mainsail. He was dimly concerned that no one had been assigned to Vagabond’s helm, but someone… The triple-reefed main, flogging loudly, went up, and he winched it up tight, tied it down, and began raising the storm jib. With a loud twang the towline flew past his leg, and Vagabond lurched away from Mollycoddle, which was drifting more slowly now. Neil quickly tied down the jib halyard and raced aft.

Sheila was at the helm, but as he approached she let go of the wheel to help Katya sheet in the storm jib, which was loose and flogging. They were drifting off on a starboard tack, and it seemed they were being pushed almost sideways downwind. The dagger board was up.

“Dagger board!” he shouted forward to Frank, pointing.

Frank nodded and staggered to the place just aft of the mast to begin forcing down the twelve-foot-long central dagger board, five feet of which should have been under the boat cutting down leeway. In the two minutes it took to get it down—Macklin had gone forward to lend his strength—Vagabond had plowed and plunged forward, sliding sideways, too, toward Smith Point on the left side of the harbor. Land was less than a quarter mile away. The docks behind them were about three-quarters of a mile off. With the dagger board finally down, the ship gained speed and began to point better up into the wind.

“Will she come about in this?” Sheila asked him.

“She’d better,” Neil said, knowing their lives depended on it. “We’ll make it.” “Prepare to come about!” he added. Frank was already at the port jib sheet, Katya and Tony ready to release the jib in the opposite cockpit.

“Don’t release the jib till I yell!” Neil shouted.

“You’re backwinding the jib?” Sheila asked.

“Coming about!” he shouted and swung the wheel full to starboard. Vagabond labored slowly up into the wind, the five-foot seas smashing into her three hulls with loud cracks, spray flying aft.

Squinting forward through the holed and streaming Plexiglas windows of the wheelhouse, Neil could barely see the jib in the gathering dusk. Vagabond plunged, rocked, and shuddered dead into the wind, both sails snapping as they luffed. The jib, still held close-hauled for the starboard tack, was now beginning to be backwinded, pushing the bow further around onto the desired new tack. Vagabond swung around to starboard with increasing momentum; Katya released the jib the instant Neil gave the command, and Frank winched it in on the other side.

With two more tacks they were out of the harbor and heading east a half-mile from the south coast of St. Thomas.

The waves outside the harbor were immense; huge, gray, ugly, spume-covered swells barreling in at their starboard side, sending them sliding down into the trough, only to be hit broadside by the next crest with a sickening crash. Philip lay moaning now on the deck of the wheelhouse, where he had rolled off when the first angry swell had smacked them into a forty-five degree tilt. Frank had vomited onto the control panel shelf; Macklin had staggered below, useless with nausea. With Sheila tending to her husband, only Neil, Frank, Tony, and Katya remained in the central cockpit.

It was dark. During their last tack night had fallen with the swiftness of the tropics, and Neil had only his compass to steer by. The sky was totally overcast. There were no navigational aids along the south coast, only rocks. A breaking wave rolled into Vagabond with a shattering crash, which sounded as if a hand grenade had exploded against her right side.

“She can’t take this,” Frank said to Neil from beside him. Neil stared back at him uncomprehendingly.

“Vagabond can’t take this beating!” Frank shouted.

Maybe she couldn’t, but what the hell choice did they have? Neil thought. To run before the seas meant running onto the rocks of St. Thomas. Then he thought of the dagger board.

“Bring the dagger board halfway up!” Neil shouted to Tony. “We’ll let her slide some,” he explained to Frank, who nodded. Tony snapped on a safety harness and left to crawl forward. Even in the darkness Neil could get some sense of each wave as it approached, and he watched carefully as Tony snapped his safety line to a shroud and began crawling on his hands and knees across the main cabin roof to get to the dagger board. Once there, he began trying to winch the board up, but he needed someone to tail the line.

“Give him a hand!” Neil shouted instinctively, and Katya left to crawl up across the foredeck toward Tony. Even as she did Neil caught sight of an unusually large wave bearing down on them, breaking on top.

“Hold on!” he yelled and tried to turn Vagabond away to take the shock further aft, but it was too late. The wave struck Vagabond broadside with an explosive crack. A river of water two feet deep swirled across the main cabin top, burying Tony and Katya; water crashed into the starboard cockpit, and someone screamed. Vagabond was jolted to port by the blow, left wallowing, then sailed on.

Neil could feel water swirling around his feet, felt Frank’s arms around him, saw Tony, saved by his safety line, clutching a shroud on the port side, then beginning to crawl back toward the dagger board, like some persistent insect momentarily pushed away by an intruding finger. Sheila came up beside him, she too clutching at him for balance.

“Where’s Katya?” she shouted.

Neil searched the port side, hoping to see her clinging to a shroud, but she was gone. The next wave was big, but Vagabond appeared to slide away, letting it roll under her, and the wave only gave her a playful slap. As the trimaran surged forward Neil brought Vagabond up into the wind to stop her, but she turned sluggishly, unresponsive to the helm.

“No, Neil!” Frank shouted. “It’s no use!”

Even as Neil had swung the wheel around his mind told him there was nothing he could do. It was dark, Katya did not have light, nor was Vagabond equipped with a marker buoy with a light or a transmitter—there was no point in trying to find her. Even if she could keep swimming until daylight, there was still no chance they could beat their way back and locate her with the wind and seas still running like this. He mechanically turned Vagabond back on course.

Tony had staggered back to him at the helm.

“Katya went over!” he shouted. “She’s back there!” he added, pointing.

Shaken, Neil looked at him, nodded, and kept the helm steady.

“We can’t help her,” Frank said hoarsely from beside him.

“Aren’t you coming about?” Tony asked them, still gasping for breath. “She’s a good swimmer. We’ve got a searchlight.”

“We can’t do it, Tony,” Neil said, staring ahead of him, aware now of the ache in his throat.

“We’d probably kill everyone if we stopped now,” Frank added. “We’ve got to get past the point.”

“But we’ve got to try!” Tony said fiercely.

“She’s lost,” Frank said, putting one of his huge, bony hands on Tony’s shoulder. “Katya’s gone, and there isn’t a chance in a trillion we could find her. We’ve got to sail on.”

Tony had finally realized how close he himself had come to being lost as well; he looked briefly at the huge seas rolling at them and then back astern, toward where Katya had disappeared, and emitted a low, harsh groan. He turned back and lowered his head.

“It was my fault,” Neil said, shaking his head. “I should have gone forward myself. I should never have sent anyone without a safety harness.”

“A stanchion broke off,” Frank said, as if in defense of Neil.

“The sea will always break a stanchion if you give it a chance,” Neil replied. “Never, never, never let her go…” he muttered.

For another minute they all stood in the darkness, staring forward.

“She’s gone,” Tony said softly, flatly.

“I’m sorry, Tony,” said Neil, tears finally appearing on his cheeks. And then his grief was checked by sudden fear: Vagabond’s easier motion meant… that cracking noise when the wave hit…

“The dagger board’s gone,” Neil said harshly. Tony then informed them that he hadn’t made any progress when the wave hit—the twelve-foot dagger board must have broken off flush with the bottom of the boat.

“The ocean’s way of correcting a captain’s error,” Neil added bitterly.

“Will we still clear the tip of the island?” Sheila asked.

A minor, casual, life-or-death question. And if we cleared St. Thomas, there was still St. John and Flanagan Island to clear.

“I doubt it,” said Neil.

“Which anchor did you save?” Neil asked Frank.

“The CQR,” Frank answered.

It would never hold. It didn’t matter. Three anchors wouldn’t hold in this. And he couldn’t even see the coast of the islands he was trying to avoid, wouldn’t see it even at the moment Vagabond first began smashing herself to pieces.

“We may not clear the tip of the island,” he said, talking as much to himself as to the others, trying to clear his own mind. It was a no-win situation. If you tried sailing closer into the wind you’d lose speed and make three times as much leeway. If you continued on this reach, your course was so close to the tip of the island that the waves would still put you up on the rocks. And though they might clear the rest of St. Thomas, Dog Rocks stuck out even farther south. Dog Rocks: what a place to die.

“I’ll shift the battery over so we can use the depthmeter,” Frank said gently to Neil and went below.

“Can you reef the mizzen?” Sheila asked.

“Yes. Why?” asked Neil

“If we have to… to try to tack offshore, the mizzen could help us come about.”

Come about? In this? With no dagger board! Neil felt like crying.

“I don’t think I could even get Vagabond in irons, much less bring her about,” he said quietly.

“Then it’s in the hands of the gods,” said Sheila softly.

“One of them’s sure as hell got to be a better sailor than I am,” Neil commented bitterly, thinking again of Katya.

And so they sailed on. Using the depthmeter and a local chart that Sheila had brought over to Vagabond with the gear from Doubloon, Neil guessed what the time was when they cleared the tip of St. Thomas and what their course should be to clear Dog Rocks! He sent Tony forward to listen for the surf breaking ahead. Frank brought up the boat’s twelve-volt spotlight to search ahead occasionally too. Neil turned the helm over to Sheila so that he could concentrate all his meager resources on determining Vagabond’s probable speed, leeway, and direction, plotting her progress on Sheila’s chart, and ordering the minor course changes that might let them get a little bit farther over to windward.

And in the blackness of that night the sounds of waves crashing against rocks or reef less than a hundred yards away no less than three times terrified them into preparing for disaster, yet they somehow sailed through. At one point, when Sheila was wielding the spotlight, they saw surf shattering itself against a reef less than forty feet off to port. At another point Vagabond struck something—probably, since their depthmeter was registering eight feet of water, a little shaft of coral—but she sailed on.

By midnight the storm winds, as Philip and Neil had expected so long ago in their initial planning session, moved around to the southwest and the seas and wind began to fall. Free now of the last of the little cays and reefs, they were able to sail easily due east. It was just possible, thought Neil, as he came back up on deck after checking on Philip and Jeanne, that they might survive this night after all. They would live to suffer another day.