Sporting Blood

by

Philip Wylie

I

"Crunch," said the girl.

"Present," the skipper replied, without looking up from his work.

"Hello!"

He took a turn with a wrench. "Hello, Marylin."

There was a brief silence on the Gulf Stream Dock. The sun of early autumn shone fiercely on the city of Miami and its grey-green Bay. Sandals tapped. The Poseidon rocked minutely as the girl came aboard.

"Aren't you glad to see me?"

Crunch grinned in the relative gloom. "All I can see in here is machinery."

Marylin Brush was one of his favorite female fishermen. But you couldn't let Marylin dominate a situation--quite. She had a tendency to try to do so.

"We just got back."

"That's great."

"Aren't you going to leap up and hug me, or anything?"

"You'd have to spend the weekend at a dry cleaner's."

"Oh." She came closer. A blonde who wore her locks in long natural waves. A tall girl, strong looking, dressed in what is called a play suit--a garment separated amidships by a sun-tanned stretch of no garment at all. It would have caused Marylin's grandmother (who had been presented by the American Ambassador to Queen Victoria) to fan the air with her kerchief and fall in a. quick swoon.

Crunch spun the wrench. "How's the family?"

"Wonderful. As usual." She sounded lugubrious.

"Excepting you."

Her voice was startled. "How'd you know that?"

"Elementary, my dear--"

She interrupted. "Crunch! I'm in love! And it's ghastly!"

"What's happened between you and Roge?"

"It isn't Roger."

Crunch put down the wrench. He wiped his hands on some overused waste. He stood-bringing above the deck level a face, shoulders and chest clad in honest perspiration and much black grease. Marylin Brush and Roger Benton had been "one of those things" ever since he'd been the captain of his prep school football team and she'd been a swimming star at Miss Wainwright's Florida Academy for Girls. Brush-Benton.

The nuptial headlines had waited only upon their graduation from the University of Miami. Then their two families would unite as naturally as the confluence of rivers and life among the elite would go on--re-inforced in strength and impressiveness.

"Not Roger?" His eyes--bluer, clearer, for the dark streaks around them--took in the tall girl, from painted toenails to the matching bow on the top of her head. Everybody liked Marylin. He smiled. "Hello, again."

"I guess I hadn't better shake hands, at that. Crunch, you old such-and-such, I'm glad to see you! How's fishing?"

He swung himself on deck. "Good. Who's the unfortunate guy?"

"Everything's wrong with him," she answered dolefully, sitting on one of the daybeds. "For instance. His name's Ramsay. And not only that--but Ramsay Binney. Isn't that silly?"

"Is it?"

"The family thinks so. They keep referring to him as Rusty Penny and Dopey Benny and Rumsey Bunny and names like that--as if they couldn't remember. All my brothers--and Dad and Mother, too."

"What else?"

"His parents were medical missionaries."

"Hardy lot. The best."

"He grew up with them--they tutored him till he was ready to come to America for college."

"Very enterprising."

"I think so," she said, nodding. "But it was on Poaki."

"Poaki?"

"There!" She jumped to her feet, rummaged amongst some charts and spools of line, found a package of cigarettes, put one in Crunch's mouth and one in her own, and lighted both. "You don't know, either. And you're a ship's captain! Nobody--positively nobody--ever recognizes Poaki. That's where Ramsay came from-and it's simply unheard-of!"

"What's Poaki?"

"It's an island in the South Pacific. Copra and pearls and the natives were head-hunters when the Binneys landed there--"

"Had you heard of it before you met--uh--Ramsay?"

She sat again. "No. Not even me. But that's not all. He's a research epidemiologist."

"Certainly your folks can't complain about that. After all--with the Brush Foundation--"

"Can't they! That's where I met him-at our Foundation this summer. We went to Cincinnati to dedicate a new wing--and he made a little speech--and I met him afterward.

1 saw to it that I did. But you should hear my family! He's only interested in tropical epidemics. And they keep telling me if I marry him I'll spend my life in places like--well-

-Poaki. Catching things--eastern sprue and filariasis and so on. It's practically unbearable!"

"The guy in love with you?"

"How do I know?" she asked.

Crunch started to say, "Oh," and changed it to, "I see."

"When they noticed I was getting a crush on Ramsay, they yanked me places. The Adirondacks in July and Maine in August and I didn't catch up with him again till six weeks ago in New York. But he's coming down here soon." She said it with firm satisfaction. "He's going to do some work on Brill's disease. Isn't that marvelous?"

Crunch smoked.

The girl's lovingly shaped mouth became somewhat straight and possibly even hostile. "Don't say you're against me, too! Crunch. I'm going to marry Ramsay--and that's final."

"What about Roge?"

"He'll still have football--and polo, when he graduates." She gave Crunch no opportunity to comment upon games as a solace for her graceful, sun-tanned hand.

"Which brings me to the worst thing of all. You know how athletic my family is."

Who didn't? Crunch thought.

Wherever there were amateur sports, there were Brushes. Wherever the Great Outdoors beckoned, Brushes--father and four sons--cousins and nephews--responded.

When Olympic Games were held--the name of Brush was read off, usually in first place, in this event or that. The Brushes were rich-they had been for generations. And the Brushes were interested in science as well as the subsidy of science. But the Brushes were also interested in every known physical challenge--and they seemed to be born with a uniform aptitude for taking up any gage. High mountains, square with cliffs, had been first scaled by Brushes. Track records had repeatedly collapsed under Brush assault.

College coaches yearned for the matriculation of Brushes. Princeton once had three enrolled at the same time. A great year for sports at Princeton. Two worlds records for deep-sea fishing bore the name of Marylin's father--and of these, one had been established on board the Poseidon.

The picture occupied the skipper's mind for a moment. "Yes," he said. "Your folks are sure athletic."

"Ramsay isn't."

Crunch allowed himself the, "Oh." He pronounced it flatly.

The girl ground out her cigarette. Her eyes flashed greenly--and in this case, the color was a signal of danger. "Is that all that matters in a man? Beef? Brawn? How far he can throw a discus? How high he can toss himself with a pole? How big a mountain goat he can shoot how far away? How hard he can swat a ball with a stick? Is that the only important thing?"

"You're a little bit athletic, yourself. And your family--"

"--eats and sleeps physical culture! So what! Ramsay grew up on a tropical island.

He never saw a game--a sport--till he was eighteen. He doesn't like physical competition.

He's serious minded--and very bright. He has an I.Q.--alone--of a hundred and sixty-seven! He has a B.S., an M.A., a Ph.D., and an M.D.--and some of my brothers had to beat their brains out to get merely a lousy A.B. Ramsay can talk seven languages, including Malay and Chinese, and my family can't even shop in Paris without being gypped. He likes me because he said so and he told me he wished he was good at something so the family would think better of him."

Crunch began to see light. "Is he--healthy? I mean--?"

"Of course he's healthy! He's no weight lifter, like Clayton. No Hercules, like Dodson. No born blacksmith, like Pierce and Davidson. But my brothers make me sick!

They ought to organize a vaudeville act--tearing up telephone books and building human pyramids! Letting elephants walk on their stomachs. . . !"

"When's he coming down?"

"Next week."

"And you want me to make a big game angler out of him?"

The girl stared. "How on earth did you guess that?"

"People think," Crunch answered rather unsympathetically, "that fishing is mostly luck--and that the right skipper can bring the luck. You ought to know better. I might fish this boyfriend of yours all autumn--and he could still wind up a dub. If you're planning to make him a present of a charter--and expecting me to hang him onto something that will go over big with your brothers--"

"Present? Did I say that?" She had blushed a little. "Ramsay's uncle owned railroads. That's why his parents were missionaries and that's why he went into research: conscience toward humanity--paying the debt back to society. I simply persuaded Ramsay that he ought to try fishing because he might like it--and he said he'd look you up. Beyond that--I haven't anything but a little hope. And if you could see the beating I'm taking at home about Ramsay, you'd know I have precious little hope, too! I love him--

and I'm going to make him marry me--but I just wish--wish and wish--that he would do something that made him a little more popular with everybody else I care for in this world!"

Two tears slid down Marylin's cheeks. She wiped at them with the back of her hand and walked to the cockpit. "If you can help me,' all right! If you won't, that's all right! It's my mess." She leaped lightly back onto the dock. Nearby skippers and mates looked at her with appreciation.

The sight of a Brush in tears--even a female Brush--profoundly shocked Crunch.

He started after her, calling, "Marylin! I didn't mean to upset you . . . !"

But she went, without looking back.

Ramsay Binney made a very poor initial impression. Before Crunch knew who he was, he caught Binney stealing, and stealing from a child, at that.

It happened some days later.

The Poseidon had come in from a successful day in the Gulf Stream. Her customers had departed, leaving three sailfish, tagged for the taxidermist, on a fish rack which thus became the cynosure for small boys, mothers, fathers, pretty girls, girls not pretty, less lucky anglers, and others. Des, the mate, had gone to make a phone call.

Crunch was relaxing on the stern of his cruiser in the warm, pre-sunset glow. His eye fell upon a man--a stranger--sitting on one of the dock benches.

The stranger held his head tilted back and sidewise--staring up into the roof which covered a part of the dock. Not staring, Crunch presently decided, but deliberately posing a profile that might have interested a film producer. Hawklike nose, firm chin, full lips, lofty brow, and a tangle of chestnut hair that looked--in the skipper's disdainful opinion--

like the feathers of an enraged partridge. Not far from the stranger were three attractive girls and it was Crunch's opinion that the man had assumed the Byronic attitude for their benefit. The guy was well built--maybe twenty-eight years old--and the women were covertly aware of him. Dopes, Crunch felt.

Now, however, the man moved his head. He searched in the crowd-apparently looking for something or somebody previously observed. He rose and moved toward a boy who was ardently viewing the sailfish. He took some object--surreptitiously--from the boy's back pocket. He hurried along the dock railing, then, to the open locker of the Clara. He glanced about warily and reached into the locker.

By that time, Crunch was on his feet. A pickpocket, evidently. A sneak thief of some sort. But the man went back to the bench--so Crunch waited for developments. In a minute, the gent brought up a slingshot--which was evidently what he had swiped from the boy--and fired at the rafters a metal bolt or nut or screw--which must have been what he took from the Clara's locker. The man was not satisfied by his shot--so he tried again-

-and then again. The third time, something besides ammunition fell to the dock. The man leaped forward and apparently assaulted it. Then, rather to the skipper's amazement, he carefully collected the bolts and nuts, slipped them back into the locker, advanced upon the boy stealthily, and returned the slingshot. The boy gazed unknowing at the fish.

Crunch wondered what had dropped. He hopped ashore and sauntered along the dock. Where the man had rushed was a large, squashed scorpion. Crunch turned. The man was watching him.

"Good hunting," Crunch said.

The man flushed slightly. "I was afraid if I went clear to the dockhouse for a pole-

-it would get away. Scrabbling around up there--it could drop any time on some one, and they sting. I'd noticed that kid had a shooter--"

"They sure do sting. My name's Adams."

"I know," the man said. "I watched you dock. Nice catch. I'm Ramsay Binney."

Crunch concealed a marked surprise. They shook hands. "Come aboard."

Ramsay Binney started aboard, failed to notice the fishbox in the stern, caught his heel, and went into the cockpit like a cavalryman dismounting without command. He sprawled, that is -whacking knees, elbows, forehead and shoulder. Crunch helped Binney to his feet.

"You hurt?"

Certainly he was hurting. And his trousers were torn.

"Hurt? Tut-tut! I hope I haven't damaged the boat."

"The boat? Man--we throw live marlin into this cockpit! You're sure you're all right?"

Ramsey tested himself, smiling embarrassedly. "I'm used to falls. Born clumsy.

Father was clumsy, too, and his father before him. It's hereditary."

"Well--sit." Crunch indicated the fighting chair. Ramsay Binney looked at it for some time, shook his head perplexedly, and sat in it cautiously. Crunch lounged against the fishbox. "Cigarette?"

"Don't smoke, thanks."

Crunch struck a match--and inhaled. He gave Ramsay Binney a chance to start a conversation--which was disregarded; his attention seemed concentrated--rather apprehensively--on the equipment of the Poseidon. Finally the skipper said, "Marylin Brush told us to be on the lookout for you."

"Oh, yes." "Said you might be interested in doing a little fishing."

"H'm'm'm'm."

"She"--Crunch tried another tack--"thinks a lot of you."

The young doctor flushed. Even his ears turned red. But he said nothing.

"Des and I--Des is my mate and he'll be along soon-have done a good deal of fishing with her."

"So she told me."

"And, of course, her father and brothers."

The flush, up until then, had deepened on the face of the doctor. At the word

"brothers," however, it left like a switched-off light. A whiteness replaced it--the whiteness of an indoor man, further paled by emotion.

Crunch felt a reaction that was part sympathy and part amusement. Dr. Binney's stratagem with the swiped slingshot and bolts had changed the skipper's initial feeling of wrath. But the Brush boys were the best. Furthermore, there was no real excuse for a man with Binney's build to be completely a bookworm and student. Crunch didn't insist that all men should be anglers--although it seemed a sensible idea to him; but he did feel that a man in good health should have some facility at some sport or game. That's what muscles were for, in a modern world.

Since Binney said nothing, Crunch went on, deliberately, "The boys have hauled in a lot of big fish, doctor. Their old man has two world's records. One, for mako on medium tackle, made on this spot." He thumped the gunwale.

Ramsay Binney stood up-tripping a little on the footrest. He was exceedingly pale, now. "See here," he said. Crunch waited. Nothing followed. "Yes?"

"See here, captain. Can any thumb-fingered galoot learn fishing?"

"Anyone can try. Des and I are good coaches. Whether he learns or not is in the lap of himself--and Providence."

"If just once--just one time--in anything--I could--!" He had spoken under great stress. He broke off.

"Could what?"

"Clayton! Dodson! Pierce! Davidson!" He said the four names fiercely. "Egad!"

His large eyes were a studious brown, but they flashed now. "I'd trade anything but my medical education to beat anyone of the Brush boys at anything! Anything, captain. Even table tennis. Yes. Even croquet! They knocked me off the lawn so many times I tore my pants"--he glanced down--"worse than this, going back and forth through the rosebushes!"

"Marylin said--" Crunch began peaceably, but he was interrupted by pure indignation.

"What in Sam Hill has this to do with Marylin? It's far past that! I suppose I did fall in love with Marylin. It does happen, evidently. She wanted me to 'take up'

something--for her family's sake. I tried golf. Egad! Sickened me! Grown man--chasing a pill. Dodson's a champ--the idiot! I cracked my ankle with a seven iron. Fishing, she said.

Anybody can do it. Women under a hundred pounds catch monstrous tunas, she said.

Deuce take what she said! I don't even know how I feel about her, any more. Spoiled.

She'd have to be handled firmly, in any case. It's those four boys--!" He strangled.

Crunch thought, for a moment, that Binney was going to burst into tears. Rage was shaking him. He smote the arm of the fighting chair such a blow that Crunch had to tighten it, later.

"Inferiority complex," Dr. Binney went on. "Everything in the United States gives me an inferiority complex! Never saw an automobile till I arrived here at eighteen. Don't drive. Don't skate. Don't dance. Don't bowl. Can't play bridge. Never on a baseball team--

or track, football, hockey. I've got the biggest inferiority complex on the eastern seaboard! Never would have known it, if I hadn't met that girl. Had it covered over with books. Buried myself in studies. Then--I encountered her--and these four Olympian brothers! I wonder how they'd stand up on Poaki? I'd like to get them--and their dratted games--on a head-hunt!"

"Huh?" Crunch said. "Head-hunt?"

Dr. Ramsay Binney's burst came to an end. He blushed again. "Forget I ever mentioned it. Dad never knew. It was outlawed--long ago. The natives took me along on one-that's all."

"What happened?"

He sat back in the fighting chair. "Nothing. For a minute, we threw spears at each other-then everybody ran-and I cut my foot."

Crunch was disappointed. "Oh."

The doctor nodded. "Island life's not very exciting. Nothing glamorous. I've told Marylin that--over and over." He sighed. "I'll mosey along, now, I guess."

"What about the fishing?" He rubbed his face with his hands. "Futile, don't you think?"

"Never find out on shore."

"I've got about three weeks before Dr. Jarvis arrives to start work here. Still . . ."

"Why not try it--tomorrow? Just the day?"

Ramsay pondered. "Why not?" He sounded listless. He rose listlessly. "Crack of dawn?"

"Any time you like. Seven? Eight?"

"Seven's fine. I'll be here." He went--without falling.

Des arrived.

"Who was that bird? The one just stepped ashore?"

"Marylin's boyfriend."

Des thought that over. "Looked upset."

"Yeah. Funny guy. Last word in research. But about a generation behind in the language. When he's excited, he says 'egad'--and means it. He also says 'galoot' and

'mosey along' and 'dratted.'"

"No kidding!"

"Guess that's what missionaries say when they're riled clear through. Nine years of college and medical school haven't changed him any."

"Marylin will, though--in a lot less time."

"I'm not so sure she will."

"Meaning what?" Des asked. "Search me. He's a new type on our logbook."

"Stand by for our passenger," Crunch said in a low tone, "and get ready not to laugh."

Des peered and murmured, "Wahooo!"

Dr. Binney was striding down the dock. As he passed each of the moored charterboats, silence fell--an awed, incredulous Silence.

It was a hot morning, but it was not a hot morning on a remote, Pacific island which had felt the influence of Spain, Holland, England and France. It was a hot morning in the American city of Miami, Florida.

The Poseidon's customer carried, on one arm, a huge wicker hamper. This, presumably, was lunch: Marylin had undoubtedly explained that the customer brings lunch for all. In his right hand, the doctor carried a large, red silk parasol, open, and casting upon his person a pale, crimson light. About his loins, he wore knee-covering, British shorts. Above these was a shirt of native design and material which looked, one of the captains later said, as if it had been made from old battle flags. The belt supporting the shorts was of reptile skin and, hitched to it, on the left hip, was a large Boy Scout knife in a leather sheath. The man's legs were bare. He wore native sandals, woven of straw. His head covering, however, was the most conspicuous item in his costume--a sola topee, freshly clayed to whiteness, fixed by a strap that crossed the upper lip and stuffed with small green leaves which, as the doctor walked, kept falling on his shoulders in a verdant shower.

"No lei," Des croaked and dived down the ladder to hide his mirth from the doctor.

Crunch went gravely to the stern.

"Top of the morning to you!" Binney cried.

"Wonderful day," Crunch replied without showing any other sentiment than amiability. "Come aboard." He braced himself for any emergency. Binney leaped, tottered, and made it.

"This is about what we wear," he said, as if he realized his haberdashery might need clarification, "on Poaki."

"Looks comfortable."

There was some sort of sound below. "My mate," Crunch went on imperturbably.

"Sneezing. Hay fever. This is--allergy of some sort. Oh, Des! We're all set. Come and meet Dr. Binney."

The Poseidon fled the dock. She churned through the Government Cut and past the buoys. Des lowered the outriggers while Crunch began to explain the rudiments of big game fishing. There was a mild easterly breeze and, in consequence, a slight chop.

Binney listened to the lecture and experimented with rod-tip, reel brake, and gimbal. He quickly understood the workings of the outriggers--intellectually, at least. And Crunch noticed, as the Poseidon took the motion of the waves, that his passenger showed none of the misgivings which indicate easy liability to seasickness. He kept his balance readily, unconsciously. It was evident that he had been on the water before.

The baits went out. A big mullet on the starboard outrigger, a whole balao on the port--and a strip bait on the center line. Twenty-four-thread line on both sides-nine-thread in the middle.

"All you do," Crunch said, "is keep your eyes on the baits. If you feel a fish--hit it.

If you see one following-with a fin up or a bill out-it looks like a stick-holler for one of us and we'll coach you. Just watch the baits."

Dr. Binney watched the baits. Crunch had never seen anybody watch baits as Binny did. He sat in one position--moving gently with the boat. His eyes were glued to the sea. He did not wiggle, twist, ask a question, say a word, or move an unnecessary muscle. His parasol had been folded and discarded but he still wore knife and helmet.

After an hour, Crunch asked him if he'd like some beer or water.

"Neither, thanks, old boy. Fun, isn't it?"

He sounded, Crunch decided, as if he meant it. Not a thing had happened. Not a rise, a swirl or a strike--not a fin sighted or even a turtle seen. But the doctor was--for some reason--getting a kick out of it.

So another hour passed.

Crunch hated to mar a proper attitude, but he began to feel that his advice was being taken a little too earnestly. "Look," he said. "When I told you to watch the baits, I didn't mean you had to concentrate like a man--" Crunch was going to say, "watching the clock on his execution day." But he broke off, instead, "After all, Des, up on the canopy, is helping you look. And I am--most of the time."

Binney seemed disappointed, almost hurt. "But I enjoy it! Used to spear crabs when I was a boy. Sharpen a stick--raise it--and wait for hours for one of the nippers to get in range."

"Well--if it doesn't tire you . . ."

They had lunch. Other boats were flying sailfish flags. Crunch saw the Clara take a big dolphin and he saw Jake Westover, on the Tulu, miss gaffing a big 'cuda. But the Poseidon was finding nothing whatever. Dr. Binney, eating sandwiches, drinking a Coke, consuming four bananas, did not budge from the chair or bend his eyes from the baits. It was inhuman. And the lack of fish was abnormal. And yet--it happened.

Every day, with some exceptions, at least one boat came in skunked. And occasionally-although less often than in the case of most--the Poseidon was the unlucky vessel. This was such a day.

Des yielded the controls to his skipper. Crunch tried trolling past likely weed

"edges." He tried the inshore water. He took a long cruise into the deep indigo of the Gulf Stream. He. even circled around the Pirate Hussy when she hung three sailfish at the same time, hoping to hit a school. No luck. He trolled slowly--and he trolled fast. When the sun slanted low, he gave up. Des reeled in the lines and Dr. Binney at last rose and stretched himself.

Crunch was crestfallen when they reached the dock. "No explanation--no alibi,"

he said. "I suppose you won't be interested in giving us another chance. But--"

The doctor was beaming. "Why--it was magnificent! Haven't had so much fun for years! Enjoyed every second--and I'll be at the dock at eight tomorrow--if you're free."

When he had gone, Des said, "Whaddaya think of that?"

Crunch didn't know quite what he thought. "Seems patient." "

Patient! One of his ancestors must have been a statue!"

"Good sailor."

"I kind of think he's been at sea before. We'll ask him, to-morrow."

When they asked him, he laughed a little and shrugged. "Well--never in a ship of this sort. Outrigger canoes in Poaki is all. With the natives. You can imagine how it is out there. What they did, I did."

He had left the red parasol at his hotel on the second day--but he still wore the helmet. The second day, moreover, was different from the first. In fact, the Poseidon had hardly rounded the turning buoy at the edge of deep water, where ocean-going vessels sail, when Des yelled from the canopy, "There's about a nine-foot hammerhead off to starboard. Shall we try for it?"

The doctor spun around. His eyes glittered. "Egad," he said. "Shark."

A hammerhead shark, Crunch thought, would be ideal. A strong and lunging beast which, however, lacks great speed and does not jump. Perfect for the novice. He waved his mate to advance upon the shark. He took down one outrigger line and wound it in. He advised the doctor to reel in the strip bait. He handed to the doctor the rod which carried the whole mullet and seated the butt in the gimbal. "If he rises, we'll see him. If he takes the bait, the line will fall from the outrigger. When it comes tight, hit him."

Presently, behind the mullet, which danced whitely in the azure sea, a yellowish-brown shape showed vaguely.

"He's coming," Crunch said. "He smells it!"

Dr. Binney braced himself quiveringly. There was a large splash in the vicinity of the mullet and it vanished. The line sifted down from the outrigger, lay on the sparkling chop, and slowly straightened out. "Now," Crunch said quietly.

Binney struck. He struck hard enough, Des later said, to set a hook in concrete.

And he kept on striking.

Crunch thought the rod would snap--or the line would break. Neither disaster occurred. The shark began to run, hard and steadily. The reel buzzed. Binney was in a nervous transport.

"He's getting away from me, captain!"

"Sit tight. When the run stops, you can get him back."

The run finally did stop, and the skipper showed his passenger how to heave back slowly and reel quickly thereafter, as he lowered the rod. This procedure, known as

"horsing," is standard. Binney worked the shark to within thirty yards of the boat. Then it went away again--at a tangent. He fumbled anxiously with the star-drag--turning it the wrong way. The shark, thus relieved of tension, ran much faster.

"Something's gone wrong!" Binney shouted.

Crunch explained. The angler flushed, and tightened the drag. Again, he stopped his quarry and heaved him back toward the boat. The struggle continued in this fashion for some half hour, at the end of which Binney brought his fish so close that they had a good look at it-snaggle of teeth, gruesome eyes on the ends of long stalks, floundering tail. This spectacle so stimulated Binney that, before Crunch could take measures, he stood up, carried the rod to the stern, threw it on deck, seized the line in one hand, whipped his knife out, put it in his teeth, and began pulling on the line. "Egad!" he bellowed through knife and clenched teeth.

The hammerhead had by no means abandoned the battle. Perhaps the sight of Binney had upon the shark as electrical an effect as it had on the fisherman. At any rate, the shark lunged around and away, splashing mightily. Line sizzled hotly through Binney's hands. He hung on--while Crunch grabbed the rod and tried to make him take it.

"Never used anything but handline in Poaki!" Binney yelled. He took a turn of line around his arm. Inevitably, it snapped. "Never had on anything that big, either,"

Binney said quietly, as he sat down. "Sorry, skipper. Boner--wasn't it?"

"Well," Crunch said slowly, "it was only a shark. And your first fish. What the heck!"

Up on the canopy, Des was staring straight ahead, battling with an unborn chortle.

"Egad!" he murmured to himself--and suddenly bent double. Crunch caught sight of him even as he began attaching a new leader to the broken line. "Allergy's bothering my mate again, poor chap."

Dr. Binney presently hung a big bonita on the center line. Big--as bonitas go, Crunch thought. It bored straight down at a tremendous rate, directly astern of the boat.

Des speeded up to give the doctor an angle on his fish. But Binney, who had already mentioned his lack of co-ordination, now exhibited that lack. As the fish sounded, his rod-tip fell lower and lower. He responded to a series of jerks with a further lowering of the rod. Crunch warned him--but he mistook the advice not to drop his rod as a command to do so. When the tip, as a result, lay across the gunwale, it broke, and so did the line.

"Huh!" said the doctor. "Live and learn, eh? Put the rod on my bill, skipper, and the next time, I'll hold it high."

Another man might have been enraged at his bad luck or--if he had character--at his own stupidity. Binney took this last as a matter of course. "Never was good at such things," he smiled. And he began to whistle a hymn.

It was the sailfish which authenticated Binney as the problem angler of all time. If they had not seen the performance, Crunch and Des would have believed an account of it from very few persons. Sailfish were hitting well in spite of the previous day's ill fortune.

This one was a small specimen--a thirty-pounder, perhaps. As far as it was concerned, it did nothing unusual or unconventional.

Around four in the afternoon it swam up behind the starboard bait, followed a while, and hit. Binney saw it first--he was fishing, still, with endless concentration--and called out. Des was at the topside controls. Crunch had gone below to obtain cokes. There was a breeze blowing. The outrigger line dropped and the breeze wafted its lazy slack toward the cockpit. Des bellowed, "Don't get tangled in that line!" Crunch heard, and dropped the bottle opener to rush on deck. He was too late.

The line had fallen across the doctor's sola topee. In trying to brush it away, he had managed to wrap it around the hat. It came tight. The leather strap caught on it. The hat was jerked ferociously from the doctor's head and hurtled overboard, casting its contents of small, green leaves on the deck, the gunwale, and the sea--into which it vanished, drawn by the rushing fish. The entrance of the hat into the sea added pressure on the fish, for the topee was firmly entangled in the line. It became a sort of sea anchor.

The fish leaped. It leaped several times.

Staring with excitement and awe, murmuring, "Golly! My lord!" Binney thoughtlessly eased his rod-butt up out of its gimbal. The sailfish now ran--and the rod turned round in his hands. This circumstance drew Binney's attention and he struggled gamely. He seemed to need three hands to get the rod--now under great strain--turned around again. He tried to make up the deficit by contorting himself oddly in the fighting chair and using his foot to help support the rod. Meanwhile, the sailfish raged around toward the port side of the boat. This brought the rod-already upside down-around sidewise. Binney's toe slid between the line and the rod. His sandal was whisked away.

The racing line burned against his foot. He stood up and pulled on the rod. It came up along his leg and he lifted until, in a split second, he had the thing above his knee. His khaki shorts now protected him from further line-burn. The line raced along one side of his leg and the rod bent upon the other and he scrabbled about, trying to reach behind himself to get hold of the reel handle.

Crunch grabbed him at approximately that point, sat him down, and removed the busy rod from his abraded limb. He reset the rod in its socket and bade Binney to continue fishing.

That should have been all there was to it. The sailfish was obviously firmly hooked. The sola topee had acted as a drag when Binney's gyrations had prevented him from applying suitable tension. The sail jumped a few more times, fought stubbornly for some twenty-five minutes, and Crunch boated it. He socked it on the head, disengaged the hook, and stretched it on the stern for Binney to admire. Binney spread its huge, polka-dotted dorsal and tested its rough bill. In so doing, he knocked it overboard. It eddied bluely in the foaming wake--and sank.

Crunch looked up wildly. No Des was in sight. For a terrible instant, Crunch thought his mate had fallen overboard in some paroxysm. He jumped up on the gunwale.

Des was lying flat on the canopy. His abdomen heaved. Tears ran down his cheeks. No sound came from him.

Crunch went back to the side of his passenger. "Well--" he said, "we darned near got one, anyhow. Technically, we did."

Binney seemed slightly stunned. He rubbed the various chafings on his leg. "I'm sorry."

"Forget it, doc. We'll try to find another."

The doctor seemed to meditate. Presently he chuckled. "That was about the most ludicrous thing I've ever done yet."

"You're unfamiliar with the gear, after all. . . ."

"Hopping around," Binney amused, "with my leg trapped between rod and line--

fumbling for the reel. . . ."

He began to laugh. At first, he just laughed a little. Then more. Soon, his mirth--

hearty and unrestrained--sounded across the Gulf Stream. And Crunch laughed, also.

When he saw that his customer didn't mind, he gave full expression to feelings he had contained all day long. Des, getting up on his knees, was astonished to observe the two men rocking with laughter and slapping each other on the back. Des joined them. He felt that, for years to come, in any truly somber hour, he would be able to relieve his depression by recalling the spectacle of the dancing Binney. Egg Jones's Golden Loon passed near-by--her lines trailing in the sea. All hands turned to watch the Poseidon and listen to the hilarious din which rose from her canopy and cockpit.

"Any guy," Crunch said to Des that evening, "who can laugh so hard at himself is okay."

"Don't start me in again. My sides hurt."

"I'm serious. He may be eccentric. The fact that he looks like a movie actor is odd.

But I like him."

"How you going to teach him to fish?"

Crunch snorted--and checked himself. "We started him in too big a league.

Tomorrow, we'll take him out bottom-fishing. He says he's done some handline fishing in outrigger canoes. He'll be okay at that. We'll work up gradually--from handline to rod and reel on grunts. Then groupers. Then amberjack. Then we'll risk sailfishing again."

Des said soberly, "I'd just as soon sailfish with him, any day. Maybe he can dream up another."

They were laughing again when a female voice said, "Hey!"

"Marylin," Crunch called through the warm gloom. "Come aboard. We've been getting set for tomorrow again."

She came aboard. She was wearing something that hissed like silk--something dark and simple and expensive--along with a perfume that was charged with a mixture of heartache and what's good for it. Her arms gleamed and her gold hair glittered like Christmas tinsel in a half-dark room. "I'm looking for Ramsay. Thought he might be down here. He didn't come over this evening."

"We sent him home in good condition--more or less."

"Meaning what?" she asked quickly. "How did he do today? Is he going to turn into an angler?"

"It's a little early to tell--" Des ventured.

"--but," Crunch added, "he is certainly trying."

She sat down. They gave her a cigarette. "He would be. He's stubborn as a mule.

He won't marry me."

"No?" Crunch said that.

"Not--yet." She sounded as if it were merely a matter of time.

"How do you know?"

"Because I asked him last night--point blank. We were in the garden--the little formal one--necking--"

"Ye gods!" Des exclaimed. "Does he neck?"

Perhaps her lips were smiling. They couldn't see in the murky cockpit. At any rate, her voice was light. "Neck? Oh, yes. Ramsay necks. Maybe he learned at Harvard. I sort of think though--from the way he does it--that it's one of those things he picked up from the natives." She seemed to nod. "No Harvard man I ever knew. . . ." Her tone changed. "However. He said he absolutely wouldn't marry me at this point. He said I wasn't docile." She sounded annoyed. "Is that what a man wants in a woman? Docility?"

"Maybe," Des suggested vaguely, "that's a native idea, too."

She thought it over. "Phooie! Look. Has he caught anything?"

"In a sense," Crunch said.

"What do you mean--in a sense?"

They explained--in some detail.

Marylin listened grimly. She was not amused even by the episode of the entangled sailfish and the sea-going sola topee.

"Why I have to be so crazy about a stumblebum . . . !" She shrugged it off. "What charters have you two got in the next ten days?"

"September," Des said, "things are slack. People don't plan to fish. Afraid of hurricanes. Usually--the weather stays swell and the wind fails to blow."

"Meaning none?"

"Meaning," Des replied, "that your Ramsay was a godsend. The night he showed up, I was phoning a guy I know who runs a brick yard to see if I could get a temporary job there. Lot of construction going on--"

"Dad has got one of those merciless ideas of his."

"What?" Crunch asked.

"To charter two boats and take Dodson and Pierce and Mother and a girl they know and Ramsay and me, of course--and make a trip down to Key West. Fishing."

"Our Ramsay," Des said firmly, "isn't ready for it."

"That's just the point. They think if I'm cooped up with him--where the boys will shine and he won't--I'll get over it."

"Did it ever occur to you that you might?" Crunch asked.

"No!" She said it sharply.

"Tell Ramsay not to go."

"He'd go," the girl answered. "That's the hell of it. He's getting to loathe my family. But he'd go just because he won't give up on anything--ever."

"Yeah." Crunch smoked. "Your Ramsay, Marylin, in his very peculiar way, is a whole lot of fellow."

To Crunch's surprise, he found himself kissed. "That," she said, "is the only nice word I've heard about him in months!" She sat down again. "You boys really like him, don't you?"

Des said, "Yeah. We like him. We like him enough to hate to see him take a beating. No kidding, Marylin. That guy ought to stay in his laboratory-or wherever he works. On a boat--he's--"

"Out of this world." She nodded and her hair twinkled. "Poor lamb. The whole idea of the trip makes me sick. I can just see Ramsay falling overboard and Dodson or Pierce diving in and saving him. Or Dodson catching a marlin--and Ramsay incessantly missing even snappers."

"We might put a few--difficulties--in the way of your brothers," Des suggested.

"No, sir!" She said that with firmness. "My brothers are all right. I love my brothers. It's just--how to get them to see that Ramsay's all right, too. They're every bit as serious minded as Ramsay. Dad's trained them all to run the business and to run the Foundation. So they're going to have to work hard all their lives, too. It's just that Ramsay never had their opportunities--and he has no aptitude, the way they do. . . ."

"Very little," Des agreed.

"Go on," she said, "be funny."

Crunch snapped a cigarette, watched it ride its red trajectory to the water, heard it hiss, and heard, after that, the swirl of a fish that was sure to find paper and tobacco a great disappointment. "Listen, Marylin," he said. "Get up the trip. Ask your guy. We'll do something to help him out, if we have to train a sailfish to jump aboard."

"Maybe," Des suggested, "he could learn to catch flying fish in that hat."

Marylin spoke hotly. "Try isolating viruses, someday, Des. That, Ramsay can do--

extremely well."

He answered contritely, "I'm sorry. But--no kidding--even though I admire him, I can't help remembering. I never saw anybody get his foot caught in his tackle before."

After a while, she rose and bade them good night. She sounded uncertain and unhappy. "It'll be an ordeal--from start to finish," she said. "But please--please help me!

Us."

"We'll do what we can," Crunch assured her, assisting her ashore. "But don't expect miracles," Des called.

Skipper and mate sat a while in silence. "Think he's stuck on her?" the latter asked eventually.

"Yeah. Plenty. The way he flushed. Little things he said."

"I do, too."

"Poor galoot," Crunch murmured. "I'd hate to be in his shoes."

"Sandals," Des reminded his captain.

II

Marylin had said the fishing trip to Key West would be an ordeal. It was the business of Crunch and Des to see that, come high wind, high water and hades itself, no fishing trip was an ordeal for anybody. Sometimes they failed. But, as a rule, they brought back to the dock contented customers and when they said the time-honored,

"Hurry back," the Poseidon's guests usually did return, if not this year, then next. The reputation of fishing guides depends upon the matter of "hurrying back." It is not an easy business--and far more men, good men, have lost out in it than have ever, like Crunch and Des, made a sound living at it.

Crunch had a delicate cargo and a tough assignment. He thought over the situation as he stood in the morning sun and steered south from the jetties off Miami--south and a little east till he reached the Gulf Stream. Then west a bit. On board the Poseidon, besides himself and Des, were Marylin, Ramsay Binney, Marylin's brother Dodson, and a friend of his--one Olivia Brarely, an Atlanta girl.

Des put out baits. The two couples drew matches and took places accordingly-Dodson on the center rod, Marylin port, and Olivia starboard. Ramsay Binney sat on the fishbox astern and talked, not to Marylin, but to Olivia. She seemed interested. A girl with long, black hair, flame-blue eyes, red cheeks and Dixie in her voice--a petite young woman, very well shaped and very much aware of that. Marylin affected to be just slightly amused that Ramsay was talking to Olivia--and it took only a fraction of Crunch's discernment to measure the falsity of that pose. Crunch, himself, was slightly surprised by Ramsay's attention to the southern girl, which had begun with their meeting and ripened, in half an hour to the present stage--the stage of anecdotes about life at Harvard, snatches of which Crunch could hear above the engine pulse.

Dodson, who had invited the girl, did not care much about the monologue, either.

That was to be expected, however. As far as Dodson was concerned, Ramsay Binney had two strikes on him and a glass bat.

Things, for the first half hour of a doubtful trip, were not shaping up well, Crunch thought.

Astern, and out to sea aways, was the Sea Pike--with Ronney Boles at the controls, Skid Wilkins as mate, and Mr. and Mrs. Brush together with Pierce, another son, as passengers. Presently the Sea Pike found something. Crunch saw her lose weigh, and turn a little; he made out a bent rod in the capable hands of Mrs. Brush. He shut down lightly on the gas levers and put the Poseidon in a very wide turn. When it was completed, he saw Skid lean over the Sea Pike's side and gaff a nice dolphin. Both boats started down the Keys again in their original, relative positions.

"Come over and sit by me a while, Ramsay," Marylin said.

She said it pretty sharply, Crunch thought. She was tired of the monologue to Olivia.

"I'm okay right here." Ramsay said it pleasantly, and returned to a story he was telling about ritual dances on Poaki.

Marylin didn't push the invitation. She slid lower in her chair, however, and sat very still. Dodson stared at Ramsay icily. And only Crunch saw that, a moment later, Ramsay almost did rise to go to Marylin's side. He glanced at her--glanced again--and his jaw hardened. He sat back on the stern and started another island yarn for Miss Brarely's benefit.

Crunch wished something would break this up. He began to have visions of some first magnitude sulking--or even of scenes--on board his usually happy ship. His wish was answered. There was a change in the shimmer of the wake where Dodson's bait bobbed and surged in the bubbles. Crunch opened his mouth to call. But Dodson was just as quick. He looked--looked again--and shifted his right hand to his reel.

A fin came out--then a bill. The bill lunged foreward. Dodson slipped off the drag and let the line drop back. When the sailfish picked up the bait and ran with it, Dodson felt the slight acceleration and knew it was time to hit. He snapped on the drag, stood and struck. He then took a folded handkerchief from his pocket and put it between the rod butt and his abdomen, for padding. He struck again. The sailfish now hove itself into the air and every one saw it. Dodson waited until the fish reached the top of its leap--then he whipped back his rod slightly and spilled it on the sea-surface with a calculated and dazing smack. The sail jumped five or six times in succession--and Dodson threw it off balance every time. Then, when the fish ran wildly, he held his rod in one hand, propped against himself, and stuck the other in his pocket--insolently.

It was perfect fishing, Crunch thought. In something less than twenty seconds, Dodson Brush had felt the tap, dropped back, hooked his fish, jarred it on every jump, and set himself for the ensuing run. The skipper looked at Ramsay Binney and found that the young doctor was watching--not the fish--but the angler. Watching with almost desperate concentration. And now, as Dodson began to reel smoothly and rapidly, Ramsay, unnoticed by anyone but Crunch, imitated over and over the movements he had seen Dodson make.

Marylin was standing. "It's big, Dod," she said excitedly. "See how fast you can bring it in." She looked at her watch. "Nine-eighteen."

Olivia said, "Yeaaaah, boy!" loudly. Then she added, "Kill it, Dod!"

Dodson didn't "kill it"--but he made short work of it, especially for light tackle.

When the fish ran, he tightened the drag to the last possible ounce of tension. Any more would have snapped the line. When the fish came toward the boat, he gathered line with amazing speed. When it sounded he stepped close to the stern and put on pressure again--

turning it back up toward the surface in two or three minutes. When it "tail-walked" he spilled it once more. In ten or twelve minutes, it was making mere half-jumps that did not clear the water, and Dodson was getting it nearer to the boat with each one.

Not long after that, Des reached for the leader. "Want it?"

Dodson smiled and shook his head. "Put him back to grow bigger."

Des nodded, leaned, grabbed the bill in a gloved hand, wiped his eyes clear of spray from the threshing tail, backed the hook out of the gristle in the jaw, and let go. The sailfish lay still for a second, receded astern, shook itself, and swam lazily away.

"Eighteen minutes and ten seconds," Marylin said. "Pretty good."

Dodson grinned and motioned Ramsay to his chair. "You're up, pal." He reached for the monkey rail and swung himself lithely up on the canopy. Olivia watched him go up and blew him a kiss.

"Fun," Dodson said to Crunch.

"Very neat fishing," Crunch answered. "Never saw better." He noted that Dodson was not panting and there was no sign of perspiration on his face. A large, frank face with copper freckles set beneath reddish blond hair and above a pair of shoulders that might have belonged--and did belong--to a fullback.

The two boats trolled uneventfully for a while.

Crunch felt better. The taking of the sail had relieved a bad mood. Marylin began singing "Nature Boy"--and Olivia harmonized. She was good at it.

"How do you like the professor?" Dodson quietly asked Crunch.

Crunch turned from the long vista of horizon and low keys to the cockpit. He stiffened. "Hey, doc," he called.

Ramsey wheeled and gazed up enquiringly.

Crunch gestured with his fingers and shook his head.

Ramsay regarded his own fingers, then, and realized he had wound his line around them several times. A strike would have broken the line and probably cut his fingers. He flushed and extricated his hand.

"Nervous guy," Dodson said to Crunch. "Isn't he?"

"I like him." The skipper eyed his passenger directly and candidly. "A lot, Dod."

"The clown prince of twerps."

"Use some imagination, Dod. Suppose you'd had his background?"

Dod was bitter about it. "All right. Suppose I'd had. So what? I'd have learned something on that damned island! After all--it was surrounded by water. You should see the oaf in a swimming pool! We had him in ours--and he uses some kind of native breast stroke that looks like a bowlegged platypus swimming in maple syrup."

"I never saw him swim, I admit."

"You may. He's the type that falls off boats. If I'd been raised on his' island, Crunch, I'd have learned to climb trees. But he's high-shy. Or shoot. Or throw rocks. Or use a bow and arrow. Or weave sisal. Or some damned thing. So far as I can find out--he just studied at home and taught the natives hymns. And then what? He's been in America nine years. Nine years, Crunch! But he still talks like something out of the nineteen-tens--

at least when he's upset. And he hasn't even learned to drive a car!"

"He's worked hard."

"To be a brain--he's worked hard. To be a person--he hasn't lifted a finger. Take a gander at the hair-comb on him! Looks like what you shake out of a vacuum cleaner."

Crunch chuckled. He couldn't help it.

Dodson shook his head sadly. "Marylin--that moron! We've only got one sister--

Clay and Pierce and Dave and I--and we swore we'd make sure she married something A-number-one. This isn't it. One part intellectual giant, one part matinee idol, and one part jellyfish. It won't do, Crunch. What'll be left for her when the honeymoon ends? How will she explain it, all the rest of her life? Ye Gods! Look at what's coming up!"

Crunch had been facing the bow, steering his course, during the homily. With a feeling of apprehension, he turned again. There was a sailfish behind Ramsay's bait-and Ramsay had seen it. But Ramsay, having fiddled nervously with his line and having been warned against that, had transferred his fiddling to the ring that held his reel in its seat.

The sailfish struck. Ramsay snapped off the drag. His reel slewed back and forth a few times and fell to the deck. With agonized eyes, Ramsay glanced up at Crunch, but Crunch had no solution for that one. It was up to Des--and luck. Unfortunately, Des was cutting a bait.

Ramsay knew there had to be tension on the line to set the hook. So he grabbed the reelless rod and the line in both hands and struck. The line sizzled--but he hung on.

And now the reel began to leap about the deck. Des made a pass at it and it bounced ten feet from his hand. Marylin nearly caught it as it hopped up and hit her chair. It ricocheted from the gunwale and struck Olivia, who cried, "Ouch!" Then the line on the reel backlashed, stopping the crazy revolutions of the spindle. The hooked sailfish, however, was still going away at something like thirty miles an hour. So the reel lifted itself from the deck, flung like a bullet at the rod, smacked Ramsay's hands, and thus broke the line. Having done that, the reel dropped to the deck again.

"Very pretty," Dodson murmured to Crunch. "Ve-ry pretty!"

Marylin began to giggle.

Olivia wailed, "Darn it, I'm going to have a black and blue spot!"

Des picked up the reel and studied it. "Humh," he said.

Ramsay Binney looked shamefacedly from Marylin to Olivia to Des and then up, to Dodson and to Crunch.

"If anybody has any suggestions to make," he said, grinning, "I don't want to know what they are. Olivia, let me see your injury. I'm a doctor, you know." And then, after a glance at the trifling bruise on the girl's shin, he sat down quietly in his chair. "Bait her up again, Des," he requested. "Hope we have plenty of tackle aboard."

For one moment, Crunch noticed a flicker of admiration in Dodson's eyes. But it died. "That chump," he muttered. "That nit-wit !"

Key West is one of the most glamorous towns in America. But many people have gone there, looked, listened, and left with the impression that they have taken unnecessary lengths to visit a village of no great interest. Those are people without imagination, without sense, without the spirit of adventure--people to whom travel means invidious comparisons and nothing else.

Key West is on an island, which, in itself, is romantic. The island is set in a spot where the Gulf of Mexico meets the Caribbean and both these meet the, Atlantic. The Gulf Stream runs around it like a purple sickle. Many of the town's clapboard houses are made of solid mahogany--the original, Keys mahogany. It is maritime. Once the center of the sponge fisheries--Key West is still the chief port for green turtles and the steaks and the soup that are made from them. It has a beach and a ruined fort; coral grows under the sea in a gigantic garden all around Key West. At night, the United States Navy promenades its streets and drinks beer in its murky bistros. Spanish is spoken on its thoroughfares--black, Cuban hair gleams in its neon lights and black eyes flash in the glitter of its traffic.

It looks like Salem, Massachusetts, or any other eighteenth century town with a sea-going tradition. Something like Salem. But the shade trees are different--cork oaks and sapodillas, mono strous, corrugated ficuses, gumbo limbos, palms, palmettos, mangoes spreading like maples, and great, mysterious branching mammoths that were brought by sailors from Madagascar and Ceylon and Java and the natives have forgotten the names of. Frangipanis bloom in Key West, cereus and jasmine by night, and orchids in people's backyards--the kind that florists breed and the kind that spring up on stumps in the Everglades to the north. Here is to be found the southernmost house in the United States; and ninety miles away lies the tropical isle of Cuba.

There is no frost.

They sell electric refrigerators in Key West, automobiles, chewing gum, mixing machines-and the drugstore is any American drugstore, except that it is air conditioned--

even in winter. The visitor can dine on a "turtleburger" as easily as on hamburger--or on Cuban bread and black bean soup, arroz can pollo, local limes and bananas, conch salad, Morro crabs; he can have local tortoise shell carved according to his fancy or buy a sponge, direct, from the man who harvested it. He can buy a seashell collection, too--or pick up his own, on the beaches.

At night, the moon rises in one ocean and sets in another. Spicy pine from the upper keys burns on cooking fires and the aroma, mingled with the exotic honeys of the myriad flowers, floats through the streets and the treetops, pervades the old, gabled houses attached to the ground by steel hawser against the day of a blow, and drifts in high, hotel corridors. This scent-sweet, pungent and sea tinged-is the island's spirit, its ester, and the sensitive visitor acknowledges it subtly. He--or she--is still in North America, still in the United States, to be sure; but the mood here is different from the rest of the land--more impassioned and yet languid, more primitive, and yet savored with old, unfamiliar cultures of hot countries.

The Brushes, their guest Olivia, and Dr. Binney, had taken rooms in the Hotel Tropic of Cancer. Crunch and Des slept on board the Poseidon as did Ronney Boles and Skid Wilkins on the Sea Pike. By day, they fished on the reef and in the Stream. In the evenings, they dined together at the picturesque eating places of Cayo Huesco--which is what the Cubans called the town. Friends usually joined them--friends from the mahogany houses and friends from other fishing boats and houseboats, who had ignored the hurricane season. For the Brushes--mére, pére, fille and fils--were the sort of people who had friends everywhere on the earth, in every walk of life. Let an airplane containing a Brush be forced to land in Timbuktu or Patagonia and soon that Brush would be lunching with an acquaintance he or she had made years before in Alaska, or Tibet, or London.

On the fifth night of the expedition, the Brush party was dining at a large table in the Pearl of the Caribbees Restaurant. At the head of the table sat Jerome, the senior Brush, a tall and powerful man--grey haired, grey moustached, and grey eyed, with a deep voice given to laughter. His attention wandered now and then, in spite of himself, to his daughter and thence to Ramsay Binney. Each time, he frowned all but invisibly. Mrs.

Brush--handsome, ungreyed, poised perfectly--concealed her own inner anxiety. She affected to be pleased with Dr. Binney and took almost as much interest as Olivia in all that he said. Crunch and Des, of those at dinner who did not belong to the family, were aware of constant tension. And Binney himself, of course, was keenly conscious of it. But Mr. and Mrs. Weber and their two pretty daughters, from the yacht Beryl, had no idea they were present at anything but a delightful, informal dinner party.

The room contained several dozen tables, a long bar, a dance floor and a band stand. Its walls were covered with trellises and upon these grew paper vines bearing implausible red flowers. Behind this mural bower, rosy lights glowed. There were many other diners-and waiters who spoke better Spanish than English.

With the conch chowder, Pierce Brush rose and raised his wine glass. Pierce was the dark brother--the tallest and also the thinnest--the one who held the pole-vaulting records, the hurdler, the brother who was interested in the technical work at the Brush Foundation more than the executive opportunities it offered.

"A toast," he said, "to Ramsay."

"A toast!" one of the Weber girls cried, and lifted her glass.

Others followed suit.

Pierce looked into the wine thoughtfully. The table quieted. "To Dr. Ramsay Binney who, after misadventures and vicissitudes too numerous for mention, has, in the past few days, actually succeeded, alone and unaided, and virtually without incident, in bringing to boat several members of the genus Lutianus, locally known as snappers, as well as various mackerels and small members of the bass family-to wit, groupers. I suggest we rise in appreciation of this virtuosity, this intrepidity, this formidable exhibition of strength, skill and endurance, and confer--"

"Cut it out," Marylin said sharply.

"--confer upon the eminent-to-be scientist the honorary degree--"

"Stop it," the girl said.

"--of Master of Meager Fishes, Honoris Causa. Dr. Binney. Well done!" Ramsay had accepted the start of this ribbing with his usual, rather meek grin. Marylin's interference made him blush. Crunch, watching him with the others, thought that--for an instant--he was angry. There are limits beyond which no human patience will bear up.

However, after the toast was drunk, Ramsay stood up, smiling again, and said, "I wish to thank one and all, and Pierce in particular, for this undeserved recognition. His prowess in the piscatorial field, along with his prodigious feats in other fields of sport, make this honor unique for me. I only wish there were fields in which Pierce and I might compete on more even terms. Unfortunately, my forte lies in the realm of intelligence."

It was a biting riposte and everybody laughed--excepting Pierce who was, probably, the most intellectual of the Brush brothers. His knuckles went white around his glass and he glared at the doctor.

Olivia said quickly, "Why doesn't somebody toast me? caught a sailfish, after all."

Mrs. Brush took that up.

Dodson framed the toast for Olivia.

But as the meal continued, even the Webers realized that there were strained relations amongst their hosts. Crunch signaled approval to Binney when he got the chance: the doctor could dish it out, when he felt like it, as well as he could take it. But he appeared to be discomfited by his speech. He ate uneasily.

All that could be expected to follow the rather insulting toast and its still more insulting rejoinder was a heightening of antagonisms. Pierce was now personally peeved at Binney. Marylin was sore at Pierce. Mr. Brush senior was annoyed. His wife became unnaturally gay and chatty. Dr. Binney held his embarrassed flush. Dodson attacked a turtle steak with violence. The waiters poured more wine.

"I wish I had never let Ramsay go on this trip," Marylin whispered to Crunch. "I wish I'd never urged him to try to learn to fish."

"Too late." Crunch glanced at the doctor. "He's determined to learn, now--and when he gets determined--well. . . ."

"I know," she said. "Stubborn people are wonderful when they're helping you out.

When they're not. . . !"

These were expectable circumstances. But, wherever Ramsay Binney went, something unexpected was likely to happen.

The band filed in as the dinner guests were served coconut ice cream. It was a rumba band and a good one. As it began to play, a blissful expression came over Dodson's freckled face. He looked at Olivia and inclined his head. She nodded. They danced. Crunch asked Marylin to dance. Mr. and Mrs. Brush danced. Pierce took one of the Weber girls, and Des the other. Patrons--among them some Cubans who were expert-

-filled the floor.

Ramsay watched them, for some time. His eyes were interested and yet, Crunch thought, after a glance or two, a little sad. Here was another Brush accomplishment that left him out.

Crunch liked to rumba. He and his wife, Sari, had won several amateur contests in that dance and Marylin was a skillful partner. Lot of professional lessons, Crunch thought. He went into a fast spot turn, reversed it, walked his girl around, and closed again. The tempo changed. The music stopped, presently, and they switched partners.

Crunch was dancing with one of the Miss Webers--and not in a place where he could see the band--when the music itself became somewhat different. It was the bongos, Crunch thought--the small, double drums. Somebody else was playing them and the whole band was following. Whoever it was had terrific rhythm and a beat Crunch had never heard, in spite of his familiarity with the rumba bands of Miami. The new player made the drums roar with hands that flew like sticks on a snare drum. He made a loud, sharp, exclamation for the long beat. He played briefly in that cadence and shifted to contra-tempo--roaring all four beats, rattling them, hesitating minutely before the last-and drumming them squarely and lightly when the song grew softer. Then he changed to a kind of syncopation-loud and soft and loud--that sounded less like the civilized and sophisticated rumba music of modern bands and far more like the African bush music from which rumba, like jazz, has been derived.

Crunch knew, then. He danced around the side of the floor and up to the band.

Already, some of the Cuban couples had stopped dancing to admire. Ramsay had taken off his coat. He had tucked in his necktie. He held the two little drums between his knees, like a professional. But he played them like a native--a native of faraway Poaki, who had recognized the kinship of Afro-Cuban rhythm with his own, elemental drumming.

Ramsay had learned something on Poaki, after all; he had learned to drum barehanded so well that the present band leader conducted with enchantment and every man in the orchestra played with a kind of reverence.

Dodson danced up with his mother--and stopped. He looked. "Ye gods!" he said.

"El professor!"

Crunch saw Marylin--standing with Ronney. She was smiling a little, not surprised, her eyes slightly shut, looking as if she had always known, always understood Ramsay to be capable of such bizarre virtuosity. His hair flew. His eyes closed. He seemed not to realize anybody was watching. The walls quivered. The building throbbed.

The night and the very ground seemed to beat. And that, Marylin obviously felt, was all right in the man she was crazy about. It was, too, Crunch thought.

The piece came to a sudden, crashing climax. People yelled and whistled. The orchestra leader asked Ramsay, in Spanish, if he would like to suggest something.

Ramsay was still only vaguely conscious of his audience in spite of the noise it had made.

He nodded and shut his eyes again.

The leader let Ramsay drum alone for a moment. Then he brought in maraccas, a violin, and a big drum. The pianist and trumpeters stayed out of it. Nobody knew what Ramsay was playing. It began slowly. It accelerated. It created feelings--dim, primordial sensations of fear and loneliness and rising excitement--which civilized people brush out of their minds in childhood. The beat was, still, the same as the rumba beat. It could have been danced. Crunch--and perhaps others--could imagine that it undoubtedly was danced-

-by men wearing feathers, clay daubed, barefooted--and women with grass skirts. It reached a speed and violence almost beyond tolerability--and then, swiftly, whispered to silence.

Again there were cheers. From the night outside, people began sifting into the Pearl of the Caribbees to listen--many of them dark-visaged Cubans. The music continued.

Marylin moved through the standing listeners. "Isn't he wonderful?"

Crunch said, "Yeah," and meant it. He thought that--on familiar grounds--Ramsay had ample co-ordination.

But Pierce heard her and said, "Damned cannibal jam session! I want to dance."

"It's interestin'," Olivia agreed, and she looked at Dodson. "But I much prefer to dance, myself."

That was enough for Pierce. He walked up to Ramsay and waited for him to finish his next tour de force. "Look, pal. The ladies would like to dance--and your concerto has stopped the fun."

Ramsay shook himself slightly. He saw the room again, and Pierce. His rapt expression faded away and his amiable smile took its place. "Why--sure," he said. "I didn't mean to hold up the show. I just saw those drums--and they're like the kind we had in--"

"Poaki. I know."

Ramsay stepped down.

There was immediate, bilingual protest. Pierce had not calculated the effect of the drumming on its Key West audience and, particularly, on the Cuban faction of that audience. A thin, excited gentleman with dark sideburns took Pierce by the arm and turned him a little. His Spanish was incomprehensible in detail but easily enough understood in purport: he was furious at the interruption. Pierce yanked away from the man--who seized him again. Two more came to his verbal aid. People were yelling,

"More!" and "Encore!" and "Bravo!"

Mr. Brush senior sought out the proprietor and told him that the floor should be cleared, the regular music should be played, and he and his guests should be permitted to take their coffee--and to dance without further hubbub. The proprietor, who had himself been enchanted by the bongos, somewhat loftily suggested that if Mr. Brush wished this to be done, Mr. Brush should undertake it himself.

Whereupon Mr. Brush, who had once enjoyed exactly such problems, turned to the clamorous dance floor, narrowed his eyes, and said, "The way I feel this evening, I have half a mind to."

"Half a mind to what?" Dodson asked, who had seen his father in altercation and pushed up to his side.

"Throw these monkeys out and finish dinner decently."

Dodson studied the scene. "Not a bad idea."

People were trying to push Ramsay back to the bandstand. He was now visibly horrified by the pandemonium he had so innocently caused. He kept shaking his head and refusing to play any more. When the shouting and the pressure reached a level that, for him, was intolerable, he pulled himself free of the press of people, jumped awkwardly behind a pillar in the Pearl of the Caribbees, and stepped quickly through a side door. He felt that his playing had been another faux pas--another foolish spectacle--and, as a man will under such circumstance, he stepped rather savagely into the deep, pungent night, and stayed there.

Meanwhile a burly citizen of Key West--not Cuban, but an enthusiast of the rumba-had overheard Dodson's statement that throwing a few people out of the restaurant would not be a bad idea. He was a little drunk and he presented himself. "My name," he said, "is Coxley. Will Coxley. I never saw you around Key West before. It's our town, though, and we like good musicians down here. We don't like strangers threatening to throw us out of our own eating joints. If you insist on trying-suppose you begin with me."

This startled the usually good-natured Dodson. "Oh--hell," he said. "I'm sorry."

Mr. Coxley poked Dodson with a thick forefinger. "You should be sorry. Good and sorry. You might get hurt, otherwise."

This caused Dodson to slant his head. "Really?"

Mr. Brush senior said, "Come away, son. This is absurd."

Mr. Coxley now turned to the father. "Stay out of it, you hippopotamus."

People were gathering, now, around this new nucleus of trouble. Dodson eyed Coxley and tried to walk through the crowd. "Throw him out," somebody said.

And somebody tried.

"Throw out the whole bunch!" another voice shouted, as the scuffling began.

Crunch, from old experience in such situations, knew that there were enough people who were drunk enough, and enough Cubans who were sufficiently excitable, to make a very quick shambles of the Pearl of the Caribbees. Fists were already smacking and shouts were rising in the knot of men around Dodson. Mr. Brush, senior, was taking off his coat, calmly--and Pierce was already hammering his way in toward his brother.

Crunch took charge, then, of the Weber ladies, of Mrs. Brush, of Marylin and Olivia.

Aided by Des, he conducted them rapidly to, and through, the side door. Other ladies were leaving, frenziedly, by the same route. Some were screaming for the police ana some were just screaming. The ladies from the Poseidon and the Sea Pike, however, retired in an orderly, if indignant, manner.

Crunch and Des, joined then by Ronney and Skid, moved thereafter toward the fray. "Don't hit anybody if you can help it," Crunch ordered. "Just haul them off."

It was strenuous. Crunch began peeling away the outer rim around Pierce, Dodson and their father. One of the vine-covered bowers was smashed and fell upon the combatants. A guitar was raised and shattered on Pierce-without effect. Somebody com-menced throwing electric light bulbs--which burst loudly and accomplished nothing. Des saw a man take a knife surreptitiously from beneath his trouser leg and look at it. He took the knife away from the man and, on second thought, knocked the man beyond any further contemplation along such lines.

The four charter boatmen reached the center of the mill at about the same time.

"Come on--Dod--Pierce!" Crunch yelled.

They began struggling and fighting their way toward the door. Mr. Weber, on the outside of the crowd, opened the door. And so, presently, they were ejected into the street-partly by design and partly with the violent co-operation of various customers of the Pearl of the Caribbees.

They stood there, panting, under a wan electric light. "Anybody hurt?" Mr. Brush asked calmly.

Nobody was hurt--beyond bruises, a few small cuts, and large damage to habiliments.

"When things calm down," Mr. Brush went on, "I'll come back and pay up. Too bad to ruin a nice dinner party. On the other hand--I rather enjoyed it. That lug who called me a hippopotamus will hold his tongue another time, I believe."

"I wonder what happened to Binney?" Pierce asked, between breaths.

A voice came from the gloom near-by. "I'm right here. I was watching through the window."

"Watching!" Pierce sounded aghast. "And you didn't come?"

"Why should I? I can't box. I'd probably have been a liability."

"Have you ever thought of trying to box and wrestle--when your own gang was in trouble?" Pierce's voice was bitter.

"No. I was brought up to believe that sort of thing shameful." Ramsay felt that the statement satisfied nobody, including himself. "I would have gone for the police, but you all seemed to be protecting yourselves well enough."

"What a pal!"

"You mean," Dodson asked incredulously, "you won't get in a fight, even when you're responsible for it?"

His father stopped that. "Be fair, son. He didn't start it. You did. If you and Pierce had let him go on playing, we'd have been life buddies of every rumba fiend in the joint."

He started walking toward the hotel.

The others followed.

"My folks," Ramsay tried to explain, "were peaceable. Part of their creed. And I, personally, detest to hurt people. If I'd known my playing would make so much trouble, I'd never have dreamed of starting it."

In the bright, air-conditioned lobby of the Hotel Tropic of Cancer the ladies waited nervously. When, one by one, the men filed through the revolving door, each woman made her own census, and reacted with her own brand of relief. Each, save Marylin. She was the first to notice that Ramsay Binney, though missing his jacket, was untouched--while all the others bore the bruises and scratches, the incipient black eyes, the torn pockets and rent shirts which are the stigmata of minor brawling.

"What didn't happen to you?" she asked, ignoring the interest of forward-pressing strangers.

"He stayed outside," Pierce answered, "and watched through the window."

Marylin didn't say a thing. A strange expression came on her face. It wasn't contempt or anger, Crunch decided. It was a kind of humiliation, coupled with a faraway look that went beyond Ramsay into distant time. Crunch realized that she was thinking--

not that he was a coward, which her family had obviously concluded, but that she was going to have to suffer a good deal with Ramsay Binney as a husband. And something about Marylin's sudden set of her jaw, her indignant glance at her family, gave Crunch a deep feeling of sympathy for the girl. Sympathy--and understanding of just how much she liked the doctor. It came, perhaps, from the fact that Crunch's own wife, in marrying him, had taken a man for whom her background hadn't exactly suited her.

And it had worked out mighty well, Crunch thought. He winked encouragingly at Marylin--and at Binney--when he got the chance.

The Poseidon was softly creaking her hawsers as Ramsay came aboard. It was pretty dark, but Crunch could see, in the feeble rays of a lamp on a near-by street, that the doctor's cheeks glittered. He'd been crying. At least, he'd shed tears. Walking around town, probably.

"Hate to disturb you fellows," he said in a low tone. "But I left a suitcase on board. . . ."

Crunch got up. Des followed. They came out into the cockpit, in pajamas.

"Suitcase?" Crunch repeated.

"Yeah." Ramsay sat down. "I thought I'd take the night bus back to Miami. Slip out. They'll have a better time without me."

"Marylin won't," Crunch said.

"I talked with her earlier. Mind if I sit down?' I'm kind of--I guess, exhausted."

Crunch sat and so did Ramsay. Des lighted a cigarette and leaned against the cabin.

"Marylin," Ramsay went on, after a while, "did her best to persuade me to stick it out. She has an all-time high crush on me. And, being sort of spoiled, she won't give it up. 'She's right and the world is wrong.' That sort of viewpoint. But the truth is--I'm an ass."

There was silence. Lapping water broke it--and stilled itself. "How do you feel about her?" Crunch finally asked.

Ramsay started as if greatly surprised. "I'm here. I've done the things she told me-

-or tried to. Doesn't that explain how I feel?"

"Not necessarily."

"I will love that girl," he said stiffly, almost primly, "till my dying day. And if it were a question of just the two of us--I could manage. I may seem unsophisticated to people like you. But I know something about women. She has the makings of one of the best. But it isn't a question of just two of us. It's a question of a big family--those bright, athletic brothers--big houses in a half dozen places--a hundred times as much money as I have--and more. It's a question of being the hereditary donors and managers of a great Foundation. Of taking it for granted that they are dedicated--and their wealth is--to human service. And then, on top of that, of becoming spectacular sportsmen just for fun.

Just because they're nice people and full of beans. It's a question of a way of life perhaps different from what mine can ever be--an attitude--society--people--a million things. I could marry her--sure I could. Tonight--and in the face of her family. We all know that.

But--no matter what I did in my work--even if I ever do something valuable--I'll always be the freaky brother-in-law--the dope--the dithering one who gets helpless when things are exciting. I'll always trump Marylin's ace, as they say."

It was Des who spoke, then--in a kindly voice. "You're doing better every day, Ram. No fooling."

"Ram." The doctor savored that. He laughed a little. "Maybe so, Des. But I'm so jittery, the way things are, that I haven't any confidence about anything I do. And that's not all. I'm proud of my folks. Medical missionaries--in a hell-hole. It was tough--the first dozen years--mighty tough for them. They stuck. They're old-fashioned--and they made me that way--but I'm proud of them and proud of Poaki. It's quite a place. The Brushes will never understand that."

Silence again. The somber silence of assent-or something near it.

"So I'm leaving."

Then Crunch said, "You love the girl, don't you?"

"Of course."

"Stick around, then."

His head shook.

"Ram. You don't quit easy, do you?"

"I think not."

"Well don't, now. I pretty nearly gave up my gal--several times. We've been married a lot of years, now. Got a boy--a real one. And a gal-brand new. Nice house. A piece of a fishing camp in the Keys. This boat and a good business in her. Came from not quitting. "

"I'll just make some new flub, if I stay. . . ."

"So what?"

Ramsay thought for a long time. Finally he seemed to smile. "As you say--so what. Thanks fellows. I'll leave the suitcase on board."

They went back to their bunks. As they started toward sleep Crunch said, "Des--

watch him like a hawk tomorrow, will you? Somehow, we've got to keep him out of trouble."

It was a bright day, the next one. Bright, hot and calm--with a steamy haze in the distances over the sea. A white sun. The Poseidon went out across the reefs and her passengers--Marylin and Ramsay, Dodson and Olivia--leaned over the gunwales and looked down through the crystal fathoms at the coral formations, the big fish, the flashing schools of small fish, the weird gardens. Even when Des put out baits--where the water was sixty or seventy feet deep--every detail of the bottom could be seen under the hull of the Poseidon. On the sandy stretches, sharks lay motionless. Rays flattened themselves out--diamonds with tails. Amberjacks turned in the clear water, swimming up and then down over roller-coaster currents.

"I'd rather watch, almost, than fish," Olivia said.

And Ramsay, at her side, agreed heartily.

Crunch understood that relationship, now. Ramsay was too nervous to talk naturally with Marylin in the presence of her brother. So he had chattered nervously with Olivia through the days. It was not even an unsubtle effort to create jealousy in Marylin; just a defense. Olivia was friendly and talkative. She made it easy for him.

Poor devil, Crunch thought.

And not long after that--not long after the bottom faded out of view--becoming indistinct at a hundred feet, a blur of light and dark after that, and invisible where the Gulf Stream rolled--Dodson hung the mako shark.

It was the biggest mako Crunch had ever seen. And Dodson hooked it on twenty-four-thread rig.

An epic battle began.

III

The mako made a pass at the bait on Ramsay's side. Its dorsal was like a scythe.

Its tail broke water. Its round, black, bulging eyes seemed to glare at the Poseidon and at the people on board. Crunch thought it was between eighteen and twenty feet long.

Marylin gulped, "Look, everybody!"

The pale belly of the terrible shark turned up as it veered away, apparently in reaction to the sight of the boat.

Crunch, on the canopy, found himself grateful that it hadn't taken the bait. Not Ramsay's bait, anyway.

It was gone from view.

"What on earth was that?" Olivia shouted.

"It was the grandfather of the makos," Crunch answered.

Then he saw it again--deep--a torpedo, a small submarine--shimmering darkly behind Dodson's outrigger line. "Dod! You better be set! He's looking you over!"

"Looking over twenty-four-thread? I'm laughing."

"In a minute--you may not be!"

The blue blur rose, defined itself, thrust a sharp nose--a prow--above the slick sea, then opened its cavern of teeth--teeth as big as axheads. It engulfed the bait.

The line slanted down--slowly at first--and then stretched tight in the air so that it hit the surface with a small, running slap.

Dodson stood and struck. His reel went crazy. Olivia leaped from the center fighting chair. Dodson shot into it and slammed his rod-butt home in the gimbal. His rod took a heavy bend and the reel continued to scream like something broken loose in fast machinery.

Crunch, thin lipped, shoved both throttles to their extremes. The Poseidon's motors tried to drown out the reel. Everybody was staggered by the forward thrust. The boat went around, skidding a little, and set out in pursuit of the mako. But even full speed did not seem to diminish the rate at which line melted from the reel spool.

"How many yards?" Dodson yelled.

"Nine hundred," Crunch yelled back.

"He's got six or seven--already!"

"We're doing our best! Hang on!"

"Till it breaks," Dodson answered grimly.

They leaned forward--not closely enough to interfere with Dod, but enough to watch that melting of line. Soon, the remaining quantity was but an inch in diameter.

Desperately, Dodson tightened the drag. It accomplished nothing. The inch shrank, shrank--and then there glinted under the last few turns of line the brass axis of the reel. It was all over. Marylin swore to herself. Dodson glanced down and shook his head.

But it wasn't all over.

The great shark made a mistake. Having felt the hook--having bulleted through the sea for half a mile--and having accomplished nothing by that measure-it leaped.

Crunch had been praying for that.

It leaped--high-huge--cobalt blue--and so far away that it seemed to Ramsay and Olivia, who had never seen a fish take so much line--that it could not possibly still be attached to the Poseidon.

But Dodson knew. He whispered, "Oh, boy!" and leaned on the rod.

The mako turned in the air and splashed back, headed toward the boat. It swam as it landed--and now the rush of the Poseidon at the rushing fish put slack in the line which Dodson recovered at his best speed. The mako jumped again. Dodson kept winding.

"Roll it, Dod!" Marylin chanted. "Wind it in, baby! If you boat that fish you'll hang up a record nobody'll touch for a century!"

He got in a hundred yards--two--three--four. Then the mako changed direction and the chase was on again. But, this time, the shark swam no faster than the top speed of the Poseidon and the angler neither lost nor gained much line, while they covered--in a huge arc--a good two miles of open sea.

A mako is a mackerel shark and unlike the other sharks. The mako's tail is built like the mackerel's and it swims with the speed of a marlin and the energy of a tuna. It leaps--and other sharks sometimes leap when hooked, but none so high, so violently, or so often. It is not grey, or greenish, or yellow-brown. It is blue. It has round and bulging eyes. It does not have rows of slicing teeth, like many sharks, but a mouthful of immense, sharp, hard teeth meant to grasp and rend. It is a game fish and some who have caught makos regard it as the toughest of them all, tougher than broad-bill, than blue marlin, or the black demons of the Pacific, or the white, or the tuna, or the majestic broadbill. As a rule, a big mako will play havoc with the heaviest tackle--tackle more than twice as strong as that used by Dodson.

But with skill, Crunch kept thinking-with such an angler--with plenty of time--and with luck, especially--it could be. . . .

He did not dare bring that thought to a conclusion.

Dodson hung the mako at ten-fifteen. At noon, they were many miles above Key West, out in the Stream a mile or more, and the fish was running just as hard as ever--a few hundred yards at a clip. It had quit leaping, for the time being.

Shortly before one o'clock, the mako sounded. It started from a point about two hundred yards astern of the Poseidon and went down in swift lunges, twenty or more yards at a time. The reel wheezed and was still, wheezed and was still. The rod-tip bowed down and down. At five hundred yards, the shark stopped. The line now descended tautly and almost vertically over the stern. And the mako, somewhere in the darkness of the abyss, moved along--surging this way and that.

When, exerting himself strongly but cautiously, Dodson tried to heave the fish up-

--even a few inches--the mako responded by sullenly shaking its head and yanking a few more feet of line from the reel.

"Let him stay there," Dodson finally said. "The pressure won't do him much good.

And I can't budge him with this gear. Couldn't--with a winch--I bet. What do you say we eat?"

They hadn't talked much. They had just watched--breathless-concentrated--

clenching things when the mako leaped or raced--bending a fraction of an inch in sympathy with Dodson's even, heavy labor. Crunch had cut down the motors to match the dogged speed of the fish. They moved along slowly and calmly, like a ferryboat.

Des said, "I think I'll stay behind the chair here--in case we have to make any quick maneuvers. Marylin, you set up the bridge table."

"I'll help," Ramsay offered.

They opened out the legs of the bridge table between the day beds. They brought, from the galley, potato salad and hard-boiled eggs, cold cuts, open cans of ice cold fruit, and iced coffee. They handed a plate and a glass up to Crunch. They served Des--who ate standing. Marylin, Olivia and Ramsay ate at the table, hardly looking at the food but watching Dodson instead. Afterward, Marylin fed her brother.

"How's it going?"

He grinned. "Dandy."

"Tired?"

"Hell, no." He laughed. "Neither is the mako."

She filled a pail with water, dipped a sponge, and wiped the perspiration from his face and chest. He had long since taken off his shirt.

The mako sulked until half past two. Then, suddenly, Dodson felt the pressure stop. "Broke off," he called.

"Broke off hell!" Crunch yelled back. "He's coming up!" He threw forward the throttles to get the Poseidon clear of the spot where the fish might emerge and to give the angler a chance to wind slack without fouling the propellors.

At the peak of his upward swim, not far from the boat, the mako burst into the air-

-once--twice--and again. They could clearly see the now-twisted leader and see that it entered the mouth of the giant fish. Hooked deep. Crunch wondered if the teeth would ultimately cut through the stainless steel wire leader. Another risk.

Little waves spread from where the three jumps had been made and lapped the Poseidon. The rod bent and straightened and bent again as the shark tore away a few feet under the surface, zigzagging, circling on itself, circling the boat. For an hour, this furious race continued and then, after a long, straight run, the shark began to bulldog against the fisherman--keeping his distance--yanking out a foot or two of line--yielding it--yanking again.

It was after four o'clock.

Ramsay found himself near Marylin. "What a tremendous fight!" he said in a low, admiring voice.

Her eyes answered. She squeezed his arm.

"What stamina!"

"Dod's good."

"Very good."

"He's gaining now, do you notice?"

Inches--feet--inches again--Dod began heaving the great shark toward the boat. Its forked tail broke water. Its dorsal showed. It turned away, sculled, struggled, and was turned back.

But Dodson was tired, too. He showed it in pallor--in excessive sweating, and in the nervous way he occasionally let go his rod with one hand and tried to wipe the pouring perspiration from his eyes. He had been on the fish for six hours by that time.

The boat was some twenty miles from the point where they had hooked the mako. In the whole time and distance Dodson had not relented once, for a moment. It was not surprising that even he was wearying. However, he had his fish coming toward him, and that fact gave him new strength. His hands whitened. The rod creaked. His great back muscles showed like ropes.

And Ramsay, to help out, took a large, clean handkerchief from his pocket. He folded it catercorner, twisted the two ends, and went up to Dodson.

"If you like, Dod, I'll tie this around your forehead. Keep the sweat out of your eyes."

"Sure, pal. Good idea. Wish I'd had it right along."

It was, probably, the word "pal" that threw Ramsay off. His hands began to perspire. They made the first knot clumsily. Dodson had to move his head to give a heave on his incoming fish. He brought his rod up again and held still. But now, with a heavy flurry, the mako turned about and lunged away once more. At the same moment, from sheer exaggerated effort, Ramsay lost his hold on the handkerchief. Dodson's head swept it forward and it fell onto the racing line. The line whipped it into the first guide, where it jammed. Dodson made a frantic grab at the handkerchief, but it was too late. With the line held fast, the lunging mako broke it instantly--and was gone.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

Then Dodson put on an exhibition of the sportsmanship for which he was justly famous. He grinned at Ramsay. "Wasn't your fault, old man. The big ones usually get away. We'd have lost him--nine chances out of ten--when we tried to get a flying gaff in him. Ask Crunch."

But Ramsay knew that Crunch had been hoping. So had everybody. All day. And-

-which was more--he knew that only a fumbling idiot would have lost his hold of both ends of a mere handkerchief.

Olivia burst into tears.

Marylin went below.

Dodson stretched his mighty frame and looked up at the expressionless skipper.

"Hell of a fine fight, anyhow."

Crunch said, "Yeah, Dod. Yeah."

Des leaned over the gunwale as if the sea was something, he had never seen before--something he wanted to inspect closely, for a long while.

The Poseidon came around and started the long trek back to Key West. They were going to be late getting in.

The next evening, the Webers gave a dinner for the Brush party--not at the Pearl of the Caribbees, but in the large dining room of the Hotel Tropic of Cancer. Morale among the Brushes and their guests was not high. Only Marylin and Ramsay had fished that day--with indifferent success, owing partly to the fact that they had gone out late, come in early, and taken only a desultory interest in trolling. The Webers were, of course, ignorant of the loss of the mako. All four of them, led by Mr. Weber-who was rotund, bald and full of energy--were eagerly entertaining their guests when Ramsay arrived--

late.

He walked through the dining room and up to the big, busy table, looking even more uncomfortable than was his want. His very appearance stopped conversation; it trailed away--died to nothing. Ramsay smiled with an effort and opened his mouth to apologize for being tardy.

Pierce Brush said loudly, "Hi, there, Drop-the-Handkerchief!"

The Webers looked at Pierce, wondering what he meant.

But Crunch watched Ramsay because Ramsay had stopped cold. His color, such as it had been, drained to whiteness. His hands clenched. For a moment, Crunch had an impression--weird and spine tingling--that Pierce was in tremendous danger. Crunch slid his legs under his chair to stop something sinister. It wasn't necessary.

Ramsay's lips began to move. He was counting, Crunch realized. Then he understood: Ramsay was counting ten. His color came back a little. The expression in his eyes--the tautness of his lips--disappeared. He smiled his humble smile.

"'Evening, everybody." He said it rather proudly--for some reason. "Sorry to be late. I got reading. . . ."

Conversation was resumed. Mrs. Brush found an opportunity to lean forward and whisper to Mr. Weber, "We're a little strained tonight. Some carelessness on the part of Dr. Binney caused Dod to lose a record mako the other day--just when he had it beaten."

Mr. Weber passed this item to his daughters. Cocktails were served. The meal proceeded with reasonable decorum.

It was toward the end of it that Mr. Weber made his suggestion.

"All you Brushes, I understand, are a little tired of fishing. I've got a proposal that might interest you. The boys, anyhow."

"What is it?" Dodson asked.

"Any of you ever dive--in a helmet?" B

oth Brush boys-and their father-said, "Sure," at the same time.

"I've got a special rig--built according to my ideas--takes you down darn near seventy feet--if you want to go. Comfortable. Just a helmet that straps on--but covers only your head and shoulders. Fixed for escape from the straps--so there's no worry in it.

Hand-operated compressor."

"I've always wanted to try it," Marylin said.

Mrs. Weber interrupted. "Dad is crazy about fooling around under water on the reefs."

"He was," said one of the Weber girls.

Mr. Weber laughed. "My physician in New York said I was over-age for diving.

My wife and daughters agree. So it's unanimous--with me abstaining from the voting. But I've got the rig--the weather's flat--and I'd be delighted to lend it to you."

Pierce and Dod said, "Swell!" and, "Elegant," respectively.

"Furthermore, I've got a diving site for you."

"I don't think you ought--" Mrs. Weber began.

Her husband smiled at her. "Mother--I'm talking to a lot of husky men. Maybe it was too much for me." He turned to Crunch. "Know where Scuddy Cay is, Captain Adams?"

"Sure. About fifteen miles west--and a little north--from here."

"Check. Well--about a mile due west, in the Gulf, near a marvelous stretch of grouper reef, is a wreck."

"Of what?" Dodson asked.

Mr. Weber's eyes twinkled. "That's the question. It's a very old wreck. Last year--

diving myself--I got two cannon off her. British-made, in 1750. I also got the remains of a Bible--French--published about 1725. But the wreck itself is so much caved in and so grown over with coral that I didn't have a chance to work out what sort of vessel she was.

A Spaniard, I suspect."

"How'd you find her?" Des asked.

"Looking for new and better grouper holes in the Beryl. If you want some fun, though, you can go down to that wreck with crowbars and poke around. Might find something--might not."

Pierce said, "Great!"

"It would give me the pure willies even to watch," Olivia said.

"What about it, skipper?" Dod asked.

Crunch nodded. "We've run off diving parties before. It's simple. Rig the pump in the cockpit. I've got a ladder that fits the side. . . ."

"Then it's set. Dad?"

Jerome Brush nodded. "Count me in."

"Me, too," Ramsay said.

They looked at him surprisedly--as if they'd forgotten his presence.

"If nobody minds," he said hastily.

Nobody spoke for a moment.

Then Jerome Brush said, "Sure, doctor. I take it you've used a diving helmet?"

Ramsay shook his head. "Never even saw one--except in movies."

Pierce groaned.

"The thing is," Dodson said diplomatically, "we'd worry about you, doctor."

Ramsay sighed softly. "I'll be content to be a spectator."

That relieved the Brushes. Jerome said, "Be a big party, Crunch."

"We'll manage."

The morning was hazy, flat calm, brilliant--like all the recent days. Hurricane weather with no hurricanes in view. Crunch had pointed out repeatedly to prospective customers that September was a good month for fishing--that the hurricanes came only at intervals of years--and that the weather, barring a blow, was usually perfect--especially for poor sailors. Muggy and glassy. He'd sold few September trips by that little lecture, however.

The Poseidon had loaded the diving gear from the Beryl early. The four Brushes and Ramsay came aboard. Olivia had decided to stay on shore with Mrs. Brush. Crunch cast off and Des headed for Scuddy Cay, a small, swampy--looking island almost out of sight of all other land.

They took careful bearings from the marks Mr. Weber had made on the ship's chart, but, even so, it was almost an hour after their arrival in the proper area before Marylin yelled from the harpoon pulpit, "Hey, Des--what's that yonder?"

It was a dark spot. It became a ship-shaped shadow as the Poseidon drew near.

Des cut the motors.

They coasted, marring the immaculate surface. All hands peered over the side.

Slowly, they came to the spot. Fifty feet down, in water as clear as any spring, they made out every detail of the wreck. She lay on sand. Probably she had been buried in sand for a century or two and laid bare again by the currents only recently--as time went. Even so, she was well shaken down and flattened out in most places and she supported a thick encrustation of corals, sea mats, fans, millepores and other marine growths. Long weeds trailed up from her, bending in the current. A sand shark lay along side of her and, behind the shark, was the big diamond of a dug-in sting ray. Filtering through the staghorn corals, the sea pens and fans, were thousands of fishes of every color. They could make out where some ribs ran and they could see that the forward timbers were still upright. It was as if the Poseidon floated on air-as if they were in a balloon, close to such a landscape as imaginative painters invent to represent the flora and fauna of another planet.

"Golly!"

Des said that. And when Des said "golly" in such a tone, there was reason for wonderment.

"It's beautiful," Marylin murmured. "But I'm not sure I'd have the nerve to go down there, after all."

"Sting rays?" Dodson chuckled. "They scram when they see you. And that little shark wouldn't hurt a baby."

"It looks octopusy," she said.

"They never get big around here."

"Morays, then?"

Dodson laughed. "The thing in the case of morays is to leave them alone. You stick your hand in their hole, and those big eels can really bite. I ought to know. I got bitten twice diving off Turtle Rocks, in Bimini."

Pierce said sarcastically, "What's your opinion of it, doctor?"

Ramsay raised his face. "It's like heaven." That was all he said.

Crunch had been watching the motion of the deep seaweeds and also the slow drift of the Poseidon. "I think," he said, "if we take her north and a shade west and get the anchors holding good, we can drop her straight back, stay right here, and set you down beside her."

Des nodded.

Half an hour later, Dodson, who had matched with his father and brother and won, was in the helmet. Des helped him down the ladder to the water. Pierce began pumping.

Ramsay came up. "At least--I could do that?"

Pierce scowled. "Look, doc. I hate to be mean. But this is just what you can't do.

Sure as hell--you'd bollix the thing up and old Dod would have to shake off his helmet and swim out of it. It's deep down there and he'd hurt his ears and bleed his nose and we'd lose the gear and it would be your fault."

Ramsay said nothing.

Crunch thought that it was bad tempered. He also understood Pierce's feeling about the importance of proper air operation. After all, there were plenty of men on board--reliable men--to keep the pump-handle stroking evenly.

Marylin picked up a four-foot, narrow, boxlike gadget, which had handles and a glass bottom, and put it over the side. The bubbles rising from Dodson's helmet were riming the surface and making it hard to see. Through this device, however, as through a glass-bottomed bucket, she had a perfect view. She watched Dodson go down and down and down through the gin-limpid sea. It was a long trip.

But at last the rope which Crunch and Des were paying out went slack.

"That wreck stands a lot taller than it seems from here," she reported. "Dod looks like a pigmy." She handed the instrument to her father.

He peered into it. "Well--Dodson's walking up to the side. He's giving it a poke with the crowbar. He's knocked off a lot of coral and junk and stirred up some marl. Now he's coming out of that. Yoiks! Look at that old stingaree take off for other parts!"

Crunch took a turn. "He's apparently going all the way around. Yep. Des--hike up the lines a little. That's good. Hold it--or you'll lift him. Right! Now he's climbing aboard.

It's quite a high climb. Now he's snooping along it. All I can see is the bubbles and his red trunks. He's in the clear, now. Walking up on what was the cabin or the poop or the forecastle, or something. Now--climbing down the side. Going up to the bows--if they are the bows. Hacking away. I guess he's trying to bat the coral off in the spot where he thinks her name might be."

"Didn't they have the names on the stern in those days?" Marylin asked.

"Search me. Guess they did. Anyhow--he's working on those forward timbers."

After a considerable period, Dodson signaled that he would like to be brought up.

He climbed the ladder slowly after he emerged and took off the gear--with help. His face was enthusiastic. "We ought to be able to find out a lot about her--if the light and the weather stay like this. She's been messed up and spilled around by the currents. They come in, down there, and give you a shove every now and then. I knocked a lot of guck off her forward part--and found this between two timbers."

He held out something flat and metallic. He picked up a bait knife and scratched it. It glittered.

"What is it?" Marylin asked.

Dodson shrugged. "I wouldn't swear--but doesn't that look like gold? And hasn't it got a bird shape--sort of? I think I've seen some Inca or Mayan gold ornaments like that at the American Museum."

"For heaven's sake!" Jerome Brush said then. "It does! Of course--"

Dodson nodded. "Could be merely a keepsake of one of the crew--or somebody--

that got lodged there. But we ought to look. Your dive, Dad."

They watched Mr. Brush descend. He shooed away two large barracudas which slid in from nowhere and took a considerable interest--either in him, or his bubble stream.

Then he attacked the timbers Dodson had worked on--breaking and prizing away the coral--peering at it as it fell, turning it on the sand with his shoe, and squinting through the cumbersome helmet at the revealed timbers. He worked a long while and came up with the report that he had found nothing--no more Aztec gold, or whatever it was, and not even the beginning of a name on the timbers.

"We have time," Crunch said, "for another dive. Then maybe we should knock off for lunch. After all--this weather will probably hold and we've got the afternoon. We can also come back tomorrow if we want."

Ramsay had gone up forward and was peering into the water from the harpoon pulpit when Pierce descended. Direct visibility there was not much blurred by the breaking bubbles. He watched Pierce--feeling as helpless and, in a sense, as alone as he had ever felt in his life. They would not even let him man the pump. They had no confidence in him in any way. They detested him. And they were--excepting for the cracks Pierce made--being decent even about that. He was too wretched to stay near them, too burdened with self-reproach and feelings of inferiority to take a turn at what Marylin called the looking glass.

She was using it, now--reporting what she saw.

He could see it, too. Pierce went down and down as Crunch and Des payed out rope. He touched the sand, picked up the crowbar his father had left stuck in it, and advanced upon the coral-covered prow. This he assailed with tremendous energy. Soon, the muck he stirred up obscured him from view.

Ramsay rolled over on his back and let the sun burn down on his face. He was tan, now-as tan as any Brush. Any sporting, athletic, enormously energetic young Brush.

He was in as good shape. He should and could have enjoyed the trip--if only it weren't taken as a game with tricky rules, and played every inch of the way competitively. Such competitiveness, he thought sadly, was for kids--or for men in a war--but not for the pleasure of grown people.

It was then that Marylin screamed.

He sat up instantly and leaned in order to see around the cabin. She still held the glass-bottomed box.

"Ohhhh!" she screamed. "The whole forward end fell over on him!"

Ramsay rolled and looked down. There was a vast cloud of murk. The current was clearing it except at one edge, where a struggle was going on.

He looked astern again. Des pulled on the lifeline--gingerly and then hard. It was dead--caught.

Jerome Brush had grabbed the box. His voice was awful. "I can begin to see, now! Pierce is there--lying there--flat! Pinned by timbers I think! My God--the helmet's slipped off him--or he's gotten himself free of it! Pull!" An instant later he yelled, "Stop pulling! You're hauling him farther under! The line goes from him--beneath the beams--

then up. He's trying to get his legs out!"

Des, paper pale, looked to Crunch for direction. Crunch seized the box and stared.

"What do you make of it?" the father asked imploringly.

Crunch was as white as Des. "Give a heave on the air line, Des. The helmet's pinned, too--and we gotta get it up because somebody's gotta go down there and dig him out. He'll never last long enough--"

Mr. Brush snatched the box away and stared. "Drowning!" he shouted. "Drowning before my eyes!"

"Shut up!" Crunch ordered. That stopped that. Des was trying. Ramsay and Dodson were at his side. Crunch came in. All four hove on the air line. It broke.

Crunch said hoarsely, "Get out the dinghy anchor, Des. We'll make a grapple. He might still be able to hang on--if we can get it straight to him . . ."

"You'll never pull him from under those timbers!" the father said hoarsely. "And he'll be unconscious in a few more seconds. . . ."

Dodson leaped on the gunwale to dive.

Crunch grabbed him. "Don't waste your strength." He pulled Dodson back. "It's sixty feet."

Des came with the anchor.

Ramsay took it and went over the side with a jump and a splash.

Nobody moved.

Nobody had noticed that he had been stripping off clothes and breathing and gulping air.

There were no bubbles, now.

They could see.

See everything. See Pierce digging crazily, in the sand beneath his pinned legs.

See the line that went from his waist under the beams. See the helmet, smashed and held by timber and broken coral. The clearing of the remnants of forward structure had undermined them or weakened them and an eddy of current had done the rest.

Ramsay went down--slowly, it seemed, clinging to the anchor. He landed about fifteen feet from the doomed man. He walked forward, slowly, it still seemed, carrying the anchor. He apparently patted Pierce on the back. Pierce clawed at him and then layover on his side. Ramsay took a stance and tried the beams. They moved a little--

stirred up muck--but not enough. He picked up the anchor again and looked about. He saw the crowbar and recovered it after a struggle. He walked back, carrying the bar now, and set it under the beams. He bent his back and the beams moved farther. He hunted again, found a chunk of coral, and shoved it in with his knee as he levered the beams.

Then he looked for more coral of the right size.

Pierce had stopped moving--after one small, last series of threshings and twistings.

"He's dead," the father groaned.

Crunch, lined with the rest along the rail, said, "He's got ten minutes sure--twenty, maybe--and possibly even more--if Ram can get him!"

Two of those minutes passed. No one at the rail moved.

Then Dodson stood. "I've got to try for it. Got to." He dove.

He swam down and down and down and then, when still far short, he turned and swam up. Des grabbed him at the ladder.

"No use," Dodson whispered. "No use at all. I can't make it." He shuddered.

Crunch hardly paid him heed. He saw, now, that Ramsay was looking up. Three minutes. Ramsay kicked off.

Crunch left the gunwale. He got out another crowbar and went below. He came back with a shovel--kept in a locker to dig the Poseidon off mudbanks, when and if necessary.

Ramsay broke water. He swam--with his strange stroke-to the ladder. He was breathing hard. "Shovel."

"Right here," Crunch said.

"'Nother anchor."

"Bar do?"

Ramsay nodded.

He came out, chest high, on the ladder. He belched and began to draw immense, whistling breaths. He showed signs of strain, but not of undue strain. In fact Crunch thought that, before he let go again, he half-grinned at Marylin.

He went down with the shovel in one hand and the heavy, second crowbar in the other. Down and down in the clear, bluish water. He landed a little nearer to the inert, pinioned body of Pierce Brush. He went back to work in the same, methodical-looking way. Actually, it was the weight of water that slowed his movements. They lined the gunwale again, watching. Marylin whimpered softly--and did not know it. Mr. Brush prayed gently, continuously. Crunch held his own breath as long as he could--and did not know it--and did not notice when he let it out.

"It's inhuman," Dodson finally whispered.

Crunch said, "No."

They looked.

Ramsay prized on the beams and shoved in his coral wedges--looked--repeated--

looked--and levered again. Sand and marl swirled around him and around the unconscious, drowning man.

Now Ramsay took the shovel and began to dig. Two minutes. He kept digging.

Two minutes and a half. He tried Pierce's shoulders and dug again. Then he set his hands under Pierce's armpits, leaned with the running current, and pulled, furrowing sand with his heels. The inert form slid forward, Ramsay took another hold. The figure moved again.

Three minutes.

He looked up but he tried one more time.

Pierce came free.

Ramsay started up with him.

Crunch nudged Dodson. "You can dive down and help now," he said. "That was a pretty long time."

Dodson dove--and helped Ramsay the last twenty feet.

Water poured from Pierce's stomach and lungs. Ramsay advised on how to get it out most efficiently. Mattresses were laid on deck. Pierce was stretched on them. Ramsay began artificial respiration. He already had his wind back. ". . . and I know how," he said.

"I've done this often."

He worked. "Get blankets--make coffee--head for Key West--and have somebody ready to spell me."

Crunch pulled anchor and tore for Key West.

Des took the second turn at artificial respiration.

Crunch looked searchingly, tensely, at the swift effort in the cockpit. He saw that the father was close, again, to cracking. He called, "Take the wheel here, will you, Mr.

Brush? Keep this course! You'll see the town in a few minutes. I'll call on the ship-to-shore and have a pull motor and an ambulance at the closest dock."

The engines roared.

The Poseidon shot across the slick sea.

And, suddenly, there came an enormous yell from Dodson. "He coughed! And he's breathing!"

Des worked on.

Dodson sat on the fishbox and his eyes filled with tears. "Tough old monkey! The tough old monkey!" Then, suddenly, he looked for Ramsay--and found him kneeling at Pierce's side. He was, after all, a doctor of medicine. He was something else, Dodson realized.

"How come?" he said, pushing past Marylin.

Ramsay looked up. "How come what?"

"That. Saving his life. Diving that deep-with nothing. Staying under water like a fish. How come?"

Ramsay felt the pulse fluttering in the wrist he held. He looked at the deck, obscurely. "It wasn't--anything."

"How come?" Dodson was still too frantic to show much self-control.

Ramsay said quietly, "Well--it wasn't anything, really. You see--at Poaki--the natives were pearl divers. And I dived with them--from the time I was a little kid. I've been down deeper. And maybe even stayed under longer-when I was in practice."

Dodson stared wildly. "Why didn't you tell us you were a pearl diver?"

"I never thought of it," Ramsay said. He turned. "You can let up, Des, for a moment, and see how he breathes. His pulse is coming back."

Late that evening, Marylin and Ramsay started through the lobby of the hotel, for a walk. He was limping from cuts sustained when he had used his knees to push lumps of coral under the timbers. But they would have strolled, in any case, only to the nearest park bench or secluded nook.

A voice in the lobby reached them. Dodson's voice--on long distance. He had left open the phone booth door and he was shouting loudly enough to hold the attention of the whole room. Marylin checked Ramsay.

"Listen! Dod's talking to Dave and Clay, in Miami Beach."

Ramsay tried to escape. He did not want to eavesdrop on an inter-fraternal conversation. She held him.

"Sure, Pierce is all right," Dodson was saying. "I just left the hospital and I'll tell you how all right he is. He asked me if I could get the nurse changed to a blonde. His voice is a bit squeaky--but as impertinent as ever. He told the head nurse he wanted beefsteak, not custard. Called the custard, 'these filthy curds.'"

Dodson laughed. There was a pause. Then he said, "How did you hear about that?

Pierce wrote, eh? So okay! So okay! Our Binney isn't a fighter. He didn't help out in that restaurant brawl. We can skip it, however. He has other virtues. . . . Yeah. . . . Yeah. . . . I know I'm the best swimmer--and I was twenty feet short. . . . Yep. . . . Sixty feet down. . .

. I said at least three minutes, and Crunch agrees . . . The guy is half fish. . . . That's right, pearl diving. . . . Ye gods, I never thought to ask him if he got any pearls! He got Pierce--

isn't that enough?"

Marylin led Ramsay toward the door. "Did you?"

"Did I what?" The door turned and the aromatic dark enveloped them.

"Ever get any pearls?"

"A few," Ramsay smiled. "Quite a few, in fact. You'll see, if you ever happen to marry me."

The formal announcement of their engagement was made by the Brushes at a lawn party, on a Junelike December afternoon. Green acres, ornamented here with topiary art, there with a blue swimming pool, and yonder with a maze and a tennis court, stretched from the large house to the azure bay. They were now populated with hundreds of persons. Among these were Crunch and Des, dressed for the occasion, beaming, greeting many an old friend and customer.

Crunch walked to a long table and took a cup of punch. He handed a second to Des. They made each other a small, nearly invisible toast.

"Marylin looks terrific," Des said.

"Nice gal. I think Ram can handle her, too."

"Easy!" Des said. "She'll graduate this year, though. And he'll probably take her to some faraway spot. I'll miss 'em. Had fun watching the guy finally learn to fish."

Crunch shook his head. "Ram told me yesterday he had a lot of work to do here on Brill's disease-and several other things have turned up. I'll bet they stick around for a while. Miami could use a good research epidemiologist." He stared across the wide lawn at Dr. Binney.

Ramsay was bathed in a sensation of bliss so deep and extensive that he almost knew--but not quite--it could not endure. He, too, was sipping punch--and talking to a favorite Brush aunt--Aunt Augusta--who had flown down from Seattle. A large woman, characteristically, with a high pile of white hair, a foghorn voice, and a gentle heart. She eyed Ramsay thoughtfully. "You're a strange choice for my niece, young man. But I think. . . ."

Ramsay's attention wandered. There was an unobtrusive commotion amongst the guests. Pierce stepped up hurriedly to Crunch and Des. They set down their glasses--

unfinished--and followed Pierce through a tall hedge.

Clayton--the weight-lifting brother--and Davidson--the boxer--soon went through the same hedge, quickly.

Ramsay said, "Excuse me," to Aunt Augusta. He departed.

Beyond the hedge was the maze and beyond the maze he heard voices. Voices raised in anger. He knew the maze--Marylin had taught it to him under romantic conditions-and when he came out on the other side he found the four Brush boys, Crunch and Des, and a tall, very husky stranger who was talking loudly.

"I say I'm going in--and I say you can't stop me."

Dodson saw the doctor. "Stay out of this one, will you, Ramsay?"

The young stranger thereupon broke past Dodson and Clayton and rushed up to Ramsay. "You're the person I wanted to see. Hello, wise guy!"

"Who are you?" Ramsay asked.

The man said nothing. He was somewhat taller than Ramsay and a good deal heavier. He came closer, glaring. Pierce spoke flatly. "This is a bird named Roger.

Marylin used to go around with him."

"For a lot of years," Roger said hotly.

"She told him about you, Ramsay," Pierce continued, "and broke it off, long since.

This cluck is somewhat drunk--"

Roger took it up on his own. "--and so I came over here, Dr. Ramsay Binney--to bust you wide open!"

"You did?" Ramsay seemed to doubt it.

"Just one smack," Roger continued. "That's all. You took my girl, but I don't give up easy. I'm going to fix it so you'll spend your honeymoon picking teeth out of your throat."

The Brushes--as well as Crunch and Des--moved in slowly.

Ramsay glanced at them and shook his head.

Roger stepped nearer still. His hands closed.

Davidson spoke. "You better step back, Ramsay. The guy's a fighter. A dirty one, too--I've boxed with him. One poke--and you'll be in rotten shape for a party. Just back away-and we'll close in-toss the monkey out of the grounds. . . ."

Ramsay did not back away. He eyed Roger and murmured, "I wouldn't want to hurt him."

Roger said, "Whaaaat?"

Ramsay said. "Marylin's mine--and that's that. It's tough, but it happens. I'm sorry.

I'd--I'd like to be your friend."

"What you are going to be, is my meat."

"I said--" Ramsay's voice dropped--"I don't want to hurt you. And I might. So don't swing, I warn you."

Roger swung.

The muscles of six extraordinarily powerful men tensed. From where they stood, they couldn't spare Ramsay the first haymaker. But they could stop a second blow.

The first haymaker, however, went wide. Ramsay had moved--with incredible swiftness. "I tell you, Roger," he repeated, almost mournfully, "quit that! I'm not sure but I might seriously injure you."

Roger's eyes were blindly enraged. He gathered himself and rushed in. The six men now waited: maybe the doctor wasn't bluffing.

What followed was in no sense boxing. It was not wrestling, as wrestling is known. It was not jui-jitsu. Ramsay was everywhere. His hands, legs, arms, elbows, shoulders--flew like shadows. He was on his knees for an instant. For another, he seemed to sail in the air.

Roger was bent to one side, then the other, turned around, struck in fifty places; his punches went wide, weakened, ceased. Quite suddenly he shot into the air and fell with a heavy thud. Ramsay was on him again, but this time not attacking. While Crunch and the four brothers stared--breathing hard, a little shocked--Ramsay tested Roger's neck and then his shoulders.

"Nothing broken," he said with immense relief. "Egad! I was scared I'd really hurt him!" He felt the pulse in Roger's neck. "He'll come to--in about five minutes."

Silence. Finally Pierce said, in a meek tone, "Ram, I thought you didn't fight?"

"I don't. This isn't fighting--as a sport."

"Just what do you call it? That oaf should have mangled you."

Ramsay frowned. He was not panting or perspiring--but he was looking rather unhappily at two small grass stains on his trouser knees. "Have to change, I guess. Maybe one of you 'will lend me something?" He bethought himself of the question. "What do I call it? Oeenee-mao-paakii. That would translate, approximately, as 'the way of the serpent.' It's also called, 'the ninety deaths.'"

"Poaki?" Dod asked, humbly.

Ramsay nodded. "I didn't really put the pressure on, you know. Took it very easy.

Yeah. The head-hunters taught me. For a head-hunt, on our island, if you waste your spear, and have to come to grips, it's always your head or the other man's. Our tribe--

before Mother and Father stopped them-had 'the way of the serpent'-and they hardly ever lost a head."

"I can imagine not," Dod said.

Clayton snorted.

"I'll get you some trousers," Pierce offered. "Come on, Ram. That guy'll be hard for you to meet again--ever."

The doctor looked at Roger once more. "He'll be stiff and pretty lame for a week or two, poor chap!" He shook his head sympathetically.

Crunch and Des walked back--skirting the maze judiciously. They were seized upon by Aunt Augusta. "Aren't you two the celebrated fishermen? I'm so glad to meet you! I'm Aunt Augusta Towers-née Brush! What are you both grinning about? Canary-swallowing of some sort!"

Des looked the aunt over placidly and decided he liked her. "We've been watching Ramsay."

"Where is Ramsay? He left me--quite rudely, I thought--"

"He had a little business to tend to," Crunch replied. "Urgent. But trifling--for Ramsay--it turned out. He'll be back in a few minutes."

Augusta nodded. "I was just saying to him that I thought he was a rather--well--

curious choice, for Marylin."

"He'll do," Crunch murmured.

"Oh, I'm sure. But--really--he's no athlete, like the others--"

"No," said Des. "No athlete."

"Wretched at games, I hear."

"He's learning. In time--with confidence--"

"Not," said Augusta, "an outdoor type, at all."

Crunch raised an eyebrow. "Wellll--in the usual sense possibly not."

"What I mean is," Augusta continued, "that you'd expect Marylin to pick for a husband somebody who was a sportsman."

Crunch and Des looked at each other and then at Augusta.

Crunch said, "As to that--I think you can call Ram a sportsman, Aunt Augusta. I really do."

THE END