Ernest Hemingway

ISLANDS IN THE STREAM
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XVIII

They were lying on the hot deck watching the line of the key. The sun was strong on their backs but the wind cooled them. Their backs were nearly as brown as the sea Indian women they had seen this morning on the outer key. That seemed as long ago as all his life, Thomas Hudson thought. That and the open sea and the long breaking reefs and the dark depthless tropic sea beyond were as far away as all of his life was now. We could have just gone up the open sea with this breeze and made Cayo Francés and Peters would have answered their blinker and we all would have had cold beer tonight. Don’t think about it, boy, he thought. This is what you had to do.

“Henry,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“Splendidly, Tom,” Henry said very softly. “A frag couldn’t blow up from getting too hot in the sun could it?”

“I’ve never seen it. But it can increase their potency.”

“I hope Ara’s got some water,” Henry said.

“Don’t you remember them putting it in?”

“No, Tom. I was looking after my own equipment and I didn’t notice.”

Then against the wind they heard the noise of the outboard on the dinghy. Thomas Hudson turned his head carefully and saw her round the point. The dinghy was riding high and Ara was in the stern. He could see the width of his shoulders and his black head at this distance. Thomas Hudson turned his head again to watch the key and he saw a night heron rise from the trees in the center and fly away. Then he saw two wood ibis rise and wheel and fly off with quick-flapping, then coasting, then quick-flapping wing beats downwind toward the little key.

Henry had watched them, too, and he said, “Willie must be getting pretty well in.”

“Yes,” Thomas Hudson said. “They came off the high ridge in the center of the key.”

“Then nobody else was there.”

“Not if it was Willie who scared them.”

“That’s about where Willie would be by now if he didn’t have too bad going.”

“Keep down low now when Ara comes.”

Ara brought the dinghy along the careened lee of the turtle boat and put the grapnel aboard against the gunwale. He climbed carefully aboard with the ease of a bear. He had a water bottle and a bottle of tea in an old gin bottle each tied to a piece of heavy fishing line that suspended them over his neck. He crawled up to lie beside Thomas Hudson.

“What about some of the damn water?” Henry asked.

Ara laid his stuff down beside Thomas Hudson’s, untied the water bottle from the fish line and crawled carefully along the slanted deck above the two hatches to where Henry was stationed.

“Drink it,” he said. “Don’t try to bathe with it.”

He slapped Henry on the back and crawled back to lie beside Thomas Hudson.

“Tom,” he said, speaking very low. “We saw nothing. I landed Willie on the far side almost directly opposite us and went out to the ship. There I went aboard on the lee side away from the key. I explained everything to Antonio and he understood well. Then I filled the outboard with gas and filled the reserve can and (...)

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