The Saint on the Spanish Main (2 page)

“I’ve just this minute decided,”
he said. “I’m going to
Bimini too.”

“Then I’ll most likely run into ye over
there. It’s been nice meetin’ ye, sorr, even though somebody should o’
warned ye about the company
ye’re keepin’.”

He shook hands again, winked amiably at Don,
and was swept aside by an eddy of thirsty newcomers.

“No kidding,” Don told the Saint,
“Patsy’s one of the
best fishing captains around here.”

“And you knew very well he was booked
before you
introduced
me.”

“I did not. Any more than I knew you
were going to Bimini. What on earth made you suddenly decide that?”

“It was the first island I’d heard
mentioned since I got
here,” said the Saint cheerfully.
“So I let that be an
omen. I had to pick one of ‘em eventually,
anyway. A
dear old aunt of mine ruined a lot of bookies picking
racehorses
by a similar system.”

“Well, Patsy isn’t the only good
skipper. Let’s see
who else is here tonight.”

They met several dozens of other men, in an
accelerat
ing kaleidoscope whose successive patterns soon
overtaxed
even Simon Templar’s remarkable memory,
in the goodhumored
turmoil of a typical stag party. But at the end of the meeting, after the
dinner and the pres
entation of badges and the lecture and the artistic per
formance
of the girl called Lorelei (who, I regret to in
form those readers
who were only staying with us for
that bit, has nothing further to do
with this story), the
face which had impressed itself on him most
sharply per
haps only because it was the first introduction of the
evening
sorted itself out of the dispersing crowd and ap
proached him again.

“I’ve been thinkin’, Mr. Templar,”
Patsy O’Kevin
said. “So long as ye’re headed for Bimini anyhow,
an’ if it isn’t too soon for ye, maybe ye’d like to be goin’ over
with me
tomorrow? It won’t cost ye nothin’, an’ we
could do a bit o’
fishin’ on the way, an’ if we’re lucky
we’ll catch one
that’ll make this loud-mouth Mucklow
wish he’d used that sardine o’ his for
live bait.”

“Take him up on it, Simon,” Don
said. “You might
even catch one of those pink sea-serpents he
sees after a
week on rum and coconut water.”

“That’s too nice an offer to pass up,
Patsy,” said the Saint straightly. “Thank you. I’d love it. What time
do
we sail?”

So if it hadn’t happened like that he would
never have
met Mr. Clinton Uckrose. Or (to supply a new focus of
sex interest) Gloria
…

2

Mr. Uckrose, Simon learned on the way over,
was an
American, rich and retired, living in Europe. He had been in the
jewelry manufacturing business in New York, but had sold out to his partner,
and had become
a legal resident of the principality of Monaco, by which
device he escaped paying any income tax on his invested
capital,
since the profits from the Monte Carlo Casino
absolve the happy
inhabitants of Monaco from any such
depressing obligation. He was so
morbidly apprehensive
about jeopardizing the delicate but
agreeable situation
that nothing would induce him to set foot in the United
States again, for fear that by touching American soil he might provide the
Internal Revenue Department with grounds for some claim against him. Although
he had become a regular winter visitor in Nassau, and liked to
get in
some big-game fishing during his stay, he flew
directly to the
Bahamas via London and Bermuda, and
refused to take the short
fifty-minute additional flight to
Miami for his sport: instead, he took
a Bahamian Air
ways plane to Bimini, most westerly of the islands and
only some
fifty miles off the Florida coast, and sent for
a charter boat to come
over and join him there. A
former business connection of Uckrose’s had
recom
mended Patsy O’Kevin the first time, and this would
make the
third consecutive year that the stocky
Irishman had been booked for the same
assignment.

This had not made O’Kevin any more
enthusiastic
about it.

” ‘Tis not that he’s stingy, Simon,
which I’ll be so
bowld as to call ye. An’ wid the competition these days,
a captain should give thanks for ivry charter he gets. But
there’s
not a drap o’ real fisherman’s blood in him.”
O’Kevin watched
approvingly as the Saint used a sharp
ened brass tube to core the spine out
of a ballyhoo, the
slender little bait fish that looks so aptly like a
miniature
of some of the big billed fishes it is used to lure.
“Niver
would Mr. Uckrose soil his hands by puttin’ thim closer
to a fish
than the other end av a rod.”

Simon slid the ballyhoo on a hook and bound
it with
a few deft twists of leader wire. Now when it went in the
water it
would troll with its limp tail fluttering exactly as
if it were swimming
alive.

“I’m just a free-loader,” he said lightly. “If I
were paying for this, I might expect service too.”

“Niver would Mr. Uckrose use that rod
an’ six-thread
line,” O’Kevin persisted. “All he’ll use is the
heaviest tackle I’ve got, so that whiniver he hooks anything, so
long as
the hook holds, he can just harse it in. If I had
a derrick an’ a
power winch, he’d be usin’ that. An’ any
toime there’s a
little braize blowin’, we’ll stay right at the
dock. Mr. Uckrose is afraid he’ll be
seasick.”

“That isn’t his fault, Patsy.”

“Thin he shouldn’t be tryin’ to pretend
he’s a fish
erman,” said O’Kevin arbitrarily. “For it
seems all he
cares about is to come in wid some fish, he doesn’t care
what kind
it is or how it was caught, just so he can be
havin’ his picture
taken with it, an’ send it to his friends if it’s eatable or have it stuffed if
it isn’t, so they’ll think what a great spartsman he is, when there’s no spart
to it.
An’ that’s
the kind o’ client I’d like to be rich enough to
turn down.” The captain spat forcefully to lee. “Now
get that bait in the water, Simon, before I start
thinkin’
ye’re a man after Uckrose’s
heart rather than me own!”

Simon laughed, and put the bait over the side.

O’Kevin’s mate eased off the throttles as
the
Colleen
knifed her trim forty-foot hull out of the green coastal
water into the deep blue of the Gulf Stream, a boundary
almost as
sharply marked as the division between a river
and its bank. He was
a thin dark intense-looking young
man who never opened his mouth unless
he was directly
spoken to, and not always then. “We call him
Des,” O’Kevin said, “after the chap in those Philip Wylie
stories,”
His air of nervous compression suggested the
mute strain of a
hunting dog on a leash.

When the Saint threw the brake on his reel,
O’Kevin
reached for the line, nipped it in a clothespin, and
hauled it
out to the end of one of the outriggers that had
already been lowered
to stand out from the boat’s side
like a long sensitive antenna. With
the outrigger holding it clear of the
Colleen’s
wake, the ballyhoo
wiggled and skipped enticingly through the tops of the waves far be
hind
them. The Saint settled the butt of the rod securely
in the socket
between his thighs, leaned comfortably
back in the fishing chair, and watched the
trail of the
bait lazily with his blue eyes
narrowed against the glare. Patsy opened a cold can of beer and put it into his
hand.
This was the life, Simon
thought, feeling the sun warm
his
bare back and letting his weight balance harmo
niously with the gentle surge and roll of the boat, and he
didn’t give a damn about Mr. Uckrose or any of his
shortcomings.

“Now, Mrs. Uckrose is different
altogether,” Patsy
said presently, as if some obscure need for
this
amplification had been worrying him. “Gloria’s her
name, an’
glorious she is to look at, though I’m thinkin’
she needs a stronger
hand on the tiller than Uckrose is
man enough to be givin’ her. If I were
as young as
yerself—”

“Sail!”
shouted Des, in a sudden hysterical bark.

Simon had already seen it himself, the long
dorsal fin
that lanced the water behind and to one side of the diving
and flirting ballyhoo. It disappeared; then showed
again briefly on the other
side of the bait, still following
it.

Suddenly the line broke out of the light grip
of the
clothespin
that held it at the end of the outrigger, and
the
slack of it drifted astern from the Saint’s rod tip.

It must perhaps be explained to those who
have not
yet been initiated into this form of angling that a mem
ber of the
swordfish family does not attack a lure like a bass hitting a plug or a trout
rising to a fly. It first strikes
its intended victim with its bill, to
kill or stun it: this is
the blow that jerks the line from the
outrigger, and with the line released the bait is for a few seconds no longer
towed by the boat and drops back with convincing lifelessness, while the fish
that struck it circles into position to take a comfortable gulp at the
prospective snack. The
precise timing of this wait is a matter of
fine judgment
curbing the excitement of a suspense that makes seconds
seem to stretch out into
minutes.

“Now!”
howled O’Kevin; and
even as he said it the
Saint had flipped the drag on his reel, and
was lifting his
rod tip up and back. “And again!” yelled the
captain,
dancing a
little jig; but already the Saint was rearing
back
again, so that the slender rod tip bowed in a sharp curve, tightening the line
strongly yet with a controlled
smoothness
that would not snap it. “Again! That’s
right! That should’ve hooked
the spalpeen—”

A hundred and fifty yards astern the fish
shot up out
of the water, shaking its head furiously, the whole mag
nificent
streamlined length of it seeming to walk upright
on its thrashing
tail. The sunlight flashed on its silver
belly, shone on the
sleek midnight blue of its back, sten
ciled the outline of the enormous
spread sail of dorsal
fin from which the fish took its name. Then
after what
seemed like an incredible period of levitation it fell
back
into the sea with a mighty splash. The reel under
Simon’s hand whined in protest
as the line tore off it.

“Holy Mother of God,” said O’Kevin reverently.
“That’s the biggest grandfather av a
sailfish these owld
eyes iver hope to be gladdened be the sight av. If
it
weighs one pound it’ll weigh a hundred
an’ twenty. No,
it’s bigger’n that.
It’s twenty pounds bigger. It’s a
world’s
record! … Des! Is it dreamin’ ye are?” As if
waking out of a trance himself, he scrambled back
to the
wheel, pushed his mate aside,
hauled back on the
clutches and
gunned the engines, his gnarled hands mov
ing with the lightning accuracy of a concert pianist’s.
“Howld on, Simon me boy,” he breathed.
“Play him as gently as if ye had him tied to a cobweb, an’ me an’ the
Colleen
will do the rest!”

If this story were about nothing but fishing, the
chronicler could happily devote several pages to
a blow-
by-blow account of the Saint’s
tussle with that specimen
of
Istiophorus
americanus;
but they would be of interest
mainly to fishermen. Those who have had a taste of
light-tackle fishing for big-game fish know that
when
you have more than a hundred
pounds of finny
dynamite on the end
of a line which is only guaranteed
to
support eighteen pounds of dead weight, you do not
just crank the reel until you wind up your catch
alongside the boat. All you can do is to apply
firm and
delicate pressure, keeping
the line tight enough so that
he
cannot throw off the hook, yet not so taut that it
would snap at a sudden movement. If he decides to
take
off for other latitudes, you
cannot stop him, you can
only keep
this limited strain on him and wait for him to
tire. But you also have only a limited length of line on
your reel for him to run with, and if he takes all
of it you have lost him; so the boat must follow him quickly on
every run so that he never gets too far away. In
this
maneuvering the boat captain’s
skill is almost as vital as
the
fisherman’s.