I held him quiet just a second, and then I laid him down across the stern. He lay there, face up, quiet, in his good clothes, with his feet in the cockpit; and I left him.
I picked up the money off the cockpit floor and took it up and put on the binnacle light and counted it. Then I took the wheel and told Eddy to look under the stern for some pieces of iron that I used for anchoring whenever we fished bottom-fishing on patches or rocky bottom where you wouldn’t want to risk an anchor.
“I can’t find anything,” he said. He was scared being down there by Mr. Sing.
“Take the wheel,” I said. “Keep her out.”
There was a certain amount of moving around going on below but I wasn’t spooked about them.
I found a couple of pieces of what I wanted, iron from the old coaling dock at Tortugas, and I took some snapper line and made a couple of good big pieces fast to Mr. Sing’s ankles. Then when we were about two miles offshore I slid him over. He slid over smooth off the roller. I never even looked in his pockets. I didn’t feel like fooling with him.
He’d bled a little on the stern from his nose and his mouth, and I dipped a bucket of water that nearly pulled me overboard the way we were going, and cleaned her off good with a scrub brush from under the stern.
“Slow her down,” I said to Eddy.
“What if he floats up?” Eddy said.
“I dropped him in about seven hundred fathoms,” I said. “He’s going down all that way. That’s a long way, brother. He won’t float till the gas brings him up and all the time he’s going with the current and baiting up fish. Hell,” I said, “you don’t have to worry about Mr. Sing.”
“What did you have against him?” Eddy asked me.
“Nothing,” I said. “He was the easiest man to do business with I ever met. I thought there must be something wrong all the time.”
“What did you kill him for?”
“To keep from killing twelve other chinks,” I told him.
“Harry,” he said, “you’ve got to give me one because I can feel them coming on. It made me sick to see his head all loose like that.”
So I gave him one.
“What about the Chinks?” Eddy said.
“I want to get them out as quick as I can,” I told him. “Before they smell up the cabin.”
“Where are you going to put them?”
“We’ll run them right in to the long beach,” I told him.
“Take her in now?”
“Sure,” I said. “Take her in slow.”
We came in slow over the reef and to where I could see the beach shine. There is plenty of water over the reef and inside it’s all sandy bottom and slopes right into shore.
“Get up forward and give me the depth.”
He kept sounding with a grains pole, motioning me on with the pole. He came back and motioned me to stop. I came astern on her.
“You’re got about five feet.”
“We’ve got to anchor,” I said. “If anything happens so we haven’t time to get her up, we can cut loose or break her off.”
Eddy paid out rope and when finally she didn’t drag he made her fast. She swung stern in.
“It’s sandy bottom, you know,” he said.
“How much water have we got at the stern?”
“Not over five feet.”
“You take the rifle,” I said. “And be careful.”
“Let me have one,” he said. He was plenty nervous.
I gave him one and took down the pump-gun. I unlocked the cabin door, opened it, and said: “Come on out.”
Nothing happened.
Then one Chink put his head out and saw Eddy standing there with a rifle and ducked back.
“Come on out. Nobody’s going to hurt you,” I said.
Nothing doing. Only lots of talk in Chink.
“Come on out, you!” Eddy said. My God, I knew he’d had the bottle.
“Put that bottle away,” I said to him, “or I’ll blow you out of the boat.”
“Come on out,” I said to them, “or I’ll shoot in at you.”
I saw one of them looking at the corner of the door and he saw the beach evidently because he begins to chatter.
“Come on,” I said, “or I’ll shoot.”
Out they came.
Now I tell you it would take a hell of a mean man to butcher a bunch of Chinks like that and I’ll bet there would be plenty of trouble, too, let alone mess.
They came out and they were scared and they didn’t have any guns but there were twelve of them. I walked backwards down to the stern holding the pump-gun. “Get overboard,” I said. “It’s not over your heads.”
Nobody moved.
“Over you go.”
Nobody moved.
“You yellow rat-eating aliens,” Eddy said, “get overboard.”
“Shut your drunken mouth,” I told him.
“No swim,” one Chink said.
“No need swim,” I said. “No deep.”
“Come on, get overboard,” Eddy said.
“Come astern here,” I said. “Take your gun in one hand and your grain pole in the other and show them how deep it is.”
He showed them, holding up the wet pole.
“No need swim?” the one asked me.
“No.”
“True?”
“Yes.”
“Where we?”
“Cuba.”
“You damn crook,” he said and went over the side, hanging on and then letting go. His head went under but he came up and his chin was out of water. “Damn crook,” he said. “God damn crook.”
He was mad and plenty brave. He said something in Chink and the others started going into the water off the stern.
“All right,” I said to Eddy. “Get the anchor up.”
As we headed her out, the moon started to come up, and you could see the Chinks with just their heads out of water, walking ashore, and the shine of the beach and the brush behind.
We got out past the reef and I looked back once and saw the beach and the mountains starting to show up; then I put her on her course for Key West.
“Now you can take a sleep,” I said to Eddy. “No, wait, go below and open all the ports to get the stink out and bring me the iodine.”
“What’s the matter?” he said when he brought it.
“I cut my finger.”
“Do you want me to steer?”
“Get a sleep,” I said. “I’ll wake you up.”
He lay down on the built-in bunk in the cockpit, over the gas tank, and in a little while he was asleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
I held the wheel with my knee and opened up my shirt and saw where Mr. Sing bit me. It was quite a bite and I put iodine on it, and then I sat there steering and wondering whether a bite from a Chinaman was poisonous, and listened to her running nice and smooth and the water washing along her and I figured, Hell, no, that bite wasn’t poisonous. A man like that Mr. Sing probably scrubbed his teeth two or three times a day. Some Mr. Sing. He certainly wasn’t much of a business man. Maybe he was. Maybe he just trusted me. I tell you I couldn’t figure him.
Well, now it was all simple except for Eddy. Because he’s a rummy he’ll talk when he gets hot. I sat there steering and I looked at him and I thought, hell, he’s as well off dead as the way he is, and then I’m all clear. When I found he was on board I decided I’d have to do away with him but then when everything had come out so nice I didn’t have the heart.
But looking at him lying there it certainly was a temptation. But then I thought there’s no sense spoiling it by doing something you’d be sorry for afterwards. Then I started to think he wasn’t even on the crew list and I’d have to pay a fine for bringing him in and I didn’t know how to consider him.
Well, I had plenty of time to think about it and I held her on her course and every once in a while I’d take a drink out of the bottle he’d brought on board. There wasn’t much in it, and when I’d finished it, I opened up the only one I had left, and I tell you I felt pretty good steering, and it was a pretty night to cross. It had turned out a good trip all right, finally, even though it had looked plenty bad plenty of times.
When it got daylight Eddy woke up. He said he felt terrible.
“Take the wheel a minute,” I told him. “I want to look around.”
I went back to the stern and threw a little water on her. But she was perfectly clean. I scrubbed the brush over the side. I unloaded the guns and stowed them below. But I still kept the gun on my belt. It was fresh and nice as you want it below, no smell at all. A little water had come in through the starboard port onto one of the bunks was all; so I shut the ports. There wasn’t a customhouse officer in the world could smell Chink in her now.
I saw the clearance papers in the net bag hanging up under her framed license where I’d shoved them when I came on board and I took them out to look them over. Then I went up to the cockpit.
“Listen,” I said. “How did you
