and smiling welcome.
My last charter had begun; I had one week to work, then it would be back to Masquerade, and then to the long winds of the southern ocean that led to the uttermost ends of the earth, and thus to happiness.
W avebreaker , despite her ethereal beauty, was not the most practical boat with which to cruise the Bahamas. She drew too much water, and the Bahamas, for the most part, are a shallow bank dotted with ripsaw coral heads and treacherous shoals where flat-bottomed boats might glide in comparative safety, but where a deep-keeled schooner was forced to creep with painful care. Whenever we reached coral or shoal waters Thessy was forced to spend hours perched at the foremast’s lower spreaders to watch the water’s colour. Deep safe water was a dark royal blue, while over a coral reef the sea shaded to green or, when perilously shallow, to brown, and Thessy, peering ahead, would shout at me to go to port or starboard, or even to go backwards as fast as the motors would catch hold. We tried to avoid such adventures by sticking to the deeper channels and harbours, but some guests demanded we anchor in the shallower lagoons where the rays glided above the bright sand and the grey snappers schooled and the barracudas patrolled. One way to discourage such demands was secretly to salt a shallow anchorage with a bag of rotted chicken heads which would quickly draw a sinuous and evil-looking pack of otherwise harmless sand sharks that would twist menacingly under our keel and persuade the paying customers to seek the deeper darker waters offshore.
Guests who still wanted to explore the lagoons and sea-flats could use Wavebreaker’s skiff. Our Georgia guests used the small flat-bottomed craft to go bonefishing one afternoon, and Thessy, well trained by his father, led them unerringly to a sea-flat by a mangrove swamp where, in just a few heart-racing moments, they landed four of the gleaming and elusive fish. None weighed more than three pounds, but the sheer savage strength of the mirror-plated fish astonished our guests. “Hey, beautiful!” the proctologist, back aboard Wavebreaker at sunset, called down the companionway steps to where Ellen was tearing apart a lettuce for the evening meal. “Can you cook me a bonefish?”
“I can cook it, doctor, but you won’t want to eat it.” Ellen gave him her sweetest smile, the one calculated to provoke cardiac arrest in a sworn celibate. “Eating bonefish is just like sucking fish-juice off a mouthful of tin-tacks.”
“So what are you doing for my supper, darling?”
“French fries and New York strip steak.”
“Who strips? You or the beef?” The proctologist whooped with laughter and punched my arm. “Get it, Nick? Who strips? You or the beef? Shee-it, I kill myself sometimes. Was she really a college professor?”
“So she tells me.”
“They didn’t look like that when I was at college. I tell you, Nick, the old bags who lectured us were all spayed before they were allowed near the students.” He chuckled, then held his glass out for a refill of vodka and orange juice. Once the glass was full he held it up to the lantern that hung from the awning’s strut and toasted whichever patient had paid for that afternoon’s bonefishing. All week our doctor and two lawyers had thus credited their clients for their various pleasures. The proctologist drank the toast, then raised his glass once more, this time in tribute to Thessy’s prowess as a bonefish guide. “Is the kid’s name really Thessalonians?”
“It truly is,” I confirmed.
“Weirdest goddamn name I ever did hear.” The proctologist shook his head then turned to look at our private scrap of paradise. The evening was dropping like velvet and the lagoon was fading to a deep dusky richness in which the curving palms were reflected as cleanly as though the water were a dark-silvered looking-glass. We had moored off a deserted cay rimmed with a beach of clear sand above which
My last charter had begun; I had one week to work, then it would be back to Masquerade, and then to the long winds of the southern ocean that led to the uttermost ends of the earth, and thus to happiness.
W avebreaker , despite her ethereal beauty, was not the most practical boat with which to cruise the Bahamas. She drew too much water, and the Bahamas, for the most part, are a shallow bank dotted with ripsaw coral heads and treacherous shoals where flat-bottomed boats might glide in comparative safety, but where a deep-keeled schooner was forced to creep with painful care. Whenever we reached coral or shoal waters Thessy was forced to spend hours perched at the foremast’s lower spreaders to watch the water’s colour. Deep safe water was a dark royal blue, while over a coral reef the sea shaded to green or, when perilously shallow, to brown, and Thessy, peering ahead, would shout at me to go to port or starboard, or even to go backwards as fast as the motors would catch hold. We tried to avoid such adventures by sticking to the deeper channels and harbours, but some guests demanded we anchor in the shallower lagoons where the rays glided above the bright sand and the grey snappers schooled and the barracudas patrolled. One way to discourage such demands was secretly to salt a shallow anchorage with a bag of rotted chicken heads which would quickly draw a sinuous and evil-looking pack of otherwise harmless sand sharks that would twist menacingly under our keel and persuade the paying customers to seek the deeper darker waters offshore.
Guests who still wanted to explore the lagoons and sea-flats could use Wavebreaker’s skiff. Our Georgia guests used the small flat-bottomed craft to go bonefishing one afternoon, and Thessy, well trained by his father, led them unerringly to a sea-flat by a mangrove swamp where, in just a few heart-racing moments, they landed four of the gleaming and elusive fish. None weighed more than three pounds, but the sheer savage strength of the mirror-plated fish astonished our guests. “Hey, beautiful!” the proctologist, back aboard Wavebreaker at sunset, called down the companionway steps to where Ellen was tearing apart a lettuce for the evening meal. “Can you cook me a bonefish?”
“I can cook it, doctor, but you won’t want to eat it.” Ellen gave him her sweetest smile, the one calculated to provoke cardiac arrest in a sworn celibate. “Eating bonefish is just like sucking fish-juice off a mouthful of tin-tacks.”
“So what are you doing for my supper, darling?”
“French fries and New York strip steak.”
“Who strips? You or the beef?” The proctologist whooped with laughter and punched my arm. “Get it, Nick? Who strips? You or the beef? Shee-it, I kill myself sometimes. Was she really a college professor?”
“So she tells me.”
“They didn’t look like that when I was at college. I tell you, Nick, the old bags who lectured us were all spayed before they were allowed near the students.” He chuckled, then held his glass out for a refill of vodka and orange juice. Once the glass was full he held it up to the lantern that hung from the awning’s strut and toasted whichever patient had paid for that afternoon’s bonefishing. All week our doctor and two lawyers had thus credited their clients for their various pleasures. The proctologist drank the toast, then raised his glass once more, this time in tribute to Thessy’s prowess as a bonefish guide. “Is the kid’s name really Thessalonians?”
“It truly is,” I confirmed.
“Weirdest goddamn name I ever did hear.” The proctologist shook his head then turned to look at our private scrap of paradise. The evening was dropping like velvet and the lagoon was fading to a deep dusky richness in which the curving palms were reflected as cleanly as though the water were a dark-silvered looking-glass. We had moored off a deserted cay rimmed with a beach of clear sand above which
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