The Cay (12 page)

I
T WAS ABOUT NOON
when I heard the bell.

It sounded like bells I’d heard in St. Anna Bay and in the Schottegat. Small boats and tugs use them to tell the engineer to go slow or fast or put the engines in reverse.

For a moment, I thought I was dreaming.

Then I heard the bell again. And with it, the slow chugging of an engine. And voices! They were coming from east beach.

I ran down there. Yes, a small boat had come into the Devil’s Mouth and was approaching our cay.

I yelled, “I’m here! I’m here!”

There was a shout from across the water. A man’s voice. “We see you!”

I stood there on east beach, Stew Cat by my feet, looking in the direction of the sounds. I heard the bell again; then the engine went into reverse, the propeller thrashing. Someone yelled, “Jump, Scotty, the water’s shallow.”

The voice was American, I was certain.

The engine was now idling, and someone was coming toward me. I could hear him padding across the sand. I said, “Hello.”

There was no answer from the man. I suppose he was just staring at me.

Then he yelled to someone on the boat, “My Lord, it’s a naked boy. And a cat!”

The person on the boat yelled, “Anyone else?”

I called out, “No, just us.”

I began to move toward the man on the beach.

He gasped. “Are you blind?”

I said, “Yes, sir.”

In a funny voice, he asked, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine now. You’re here,” I said.

He said, “Here, boy, I’ll help you.”

I said, “If you’ll carry Stew Cat, you can just lead me to the boat.”

After I had climbed aboard, I remembered Timothy’s knife stuck in the palm tree. It was the only
thing I wanted off the cay. The sailor who had carried Stew Cat went up the hill to get it while the other sailor asked me questions. When the first sailor came back from the hill, he said, “You wouldn’t believe what’s up there.” I guess he was talking about our hut and the rain catchment. He should have seen the ones Timothy built.

I don’t remember everything that happened in the next few hours but very soon I was helped up the gangway of a destroyer. On deck I was asked so many questions all at once that one man barked, “Stop badgering him. Give him food, medical care, and get him into a bunk.”

A voice answered meekly, “Yes, sir, Cap’n.”

Down in sick bay, the captain asked, “What’s your name, son?”

“Phillip Enright. My father lives in Willemstad. He works for Royal Dutch Shell,” I answered.

The captain told someone to get a priority radio message off to the naval commander at Willemstad and then asked, “How did you get on that little island?”

“Timothy and I drifted on to it after the
Hato
was sunk.”

“Where’s Timothy?” he asked.

I told the captain about Timothy and what had happened to us. I’m not sure the captain believed any of it, because he said quietly, “Son, get some sleep. The
Hato
was sunk way back in April.”

I said, “Yes, sir, that’s right,” and then a doctor came in to check me over.

That night, after the ship had been in communication with Willemstad, the captain visited me again to tell me that his destroyer had been hunting a German submarine when the plane had spotted my black smoke and radioed back to the ship.

There was still disbelief in his voice when he said he’d checked all the charts and publications on the bridge; our cay was so small that the charts wouldn’t even dignify it with a name. But Timothy had been right. It was tucked back up in the Devil’s Mouth.

The next morning, we docked at the naval base in Cristóbal, Panama, and I was rushed to a hospital, although I really didn’t think it was necessary. I was strong and healthy, the doctor on the destroyer had said.

My mother and father flew over from Willemstad in a special plane. It was minutes before they could say anything. They just held me, and I knew my mother was crying. She kept saying, “Phillip, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

The Navy had notified them that I was blind, so that it would not be a shock. And I knew I looked different. They’d brought a barber in to cut my hair, which had grown quite long.

We talked for a long time, Stew Cat on my bed, and I tried to tell them all about Timothy and the cay. But it was very difficult. They listened, of
course, but I had the feeling that neither of them really understood what had happened on our cay.

Four months later, in a hospital in New York, after many X rays and tests, I had the first of three operations. The piece of timber that had hit me the night the
Hato
went down had damaged some nerves. But after the third operation, when the bandages came off, I could see again. I would always have to wear glasses, but I could see. That was the important thing.

In early April, I returned to Willemstad with my mother, and we took up life where it had been left off the previous April. After I’d been officially reported lost at sea, she’d gone back to Curaçao to be with my father. She had changed in many ways. She had no thoughts of leaving the islands now.

I saw Henrik van Boven occasionally, but it wasn’t the same as when we’d played the Dutch or the British. He seemed very young. So I spent a lot of time along St. Anna Bay, and at the Ruyterkade market talking to the black people. I liked the sound of their voices. Some of them had known old Timothy from Charlotte Amalie. I felt close to them.

At war’s end, we moved away from Scharloo and Curaçao. My father’s work was finished.

Since then, I’ve spent many hours looking at charts of the Caribbean. I’ve found Roncador, Rosalind, Quito Sueño, and Serranilla Banks; I’ve found Beacon Cay and North Cay, and the islands of
Providencia and San Andrés. I’ve also found the Devil’s Mouth.

Someday, I’ll charter a schooner out of Panama and explore the Devil’s Mouth. I hope to find the lonely little island where Timothy is buried.

Maybe I won’t know it by sight, but when I go ashore and close my eyes, I’ll know this was our own cay. I’ll walk along east beach and out to the reef. I’ll go up the hill to the row of palm trees and stand by his grave.

I’ll say, “Dis b’dat outrageous cay, eh, Timothy?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

T
HEODORE
T
AYLOR
was born in North Carolina and began writing at the age of thirteen as a cub reporter for the Portsmouth, Virginia,
Evening Star
. He left home at seventeen to join the Washington
Daily News
as a copy boy, worked his way toward New York City, and became an NBC sportswriter at the age of nineteen. Since then he has been a manager of prizefighters, a merchant seaman, a naval officer, a magazine writer, a movie publicist and production assistant, and a documentary filmmaker. He has written many books for adults and children, including
The Cay
, which won many literary awards, including the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and was made into a movie. Mr. Taylor lives in Laguna Beach, California.