"Leave it alone!" Chiun snapped. "Get out! Go on!"
"Chill, Chiun." Remo left, but not before adding, "Why in the hell do you need eight trunkfuls of stuff?"
By sundown they were ready to depart. Remo could probably have stalled until after the next morning's breakfast of rice, but he saw no point. If they were going, they had best be on their way. He could see his way around Charleston harbor just about as well at night as he could during the day, so it was no more of a challenge in the semidarkness, even for a navigator of his minimal accomplishments. Chiun was standing several feet away on the aft end of the craft, but Remo still heard the old Korean rolling his eyes in disdain.
When they were on the open water and the sun was gone, Chiun turned away from the black water. "I am amazed at your seamanship," he said simply.
Remo didn't reply. For a long time Chiun stood there.
Finally Remo sighed. "Okay, why are you amazed at my seamanship?"
"There are two large rocks in Charleston harbor. It took skillful sailing to bang us against both of them," Chiun explained.
"Stuff it, Little Father."
When they were well at sea, Remo picked out a southward course and kept the lighted coastline on his right, referring to the compass mounted on his console when he felt the need. The cockpit was above decks, situated on the cabin roof beneath an open canopy. Chiun was in the cabin, testing the reception on the Melody's twelve-inch RCA television.
From the sound of his muttering, it was none too promising. Remo would have thought he'd be able to find some sort of programming to suit his tastes, which of late had run to Spanish-language soap operas.
It was four hundred miles from Charleston to Miami, as the seagull flew. Remo topped off the fuel tanks at Easy Eddie's, on Miami Beach. Two hundred more to Nassau, and they put in for the night, Remo intent on following his orders to present a fair facsimile of wealthy tourists on vacation. Shiftless travelers wouldn't be rushing on from one point to the next without a fair amount of shopping, lazing in the sun and soaking up the "local color."
That was pushing it with Chiun along. The Reigning Master Emeritus of Sinanju bore no more resemblance to an average upscale tourist than he did to Li'l Abner, and his patience for such joys as sightseeing or window-shopping was minute. Chiun could draw almost as much attention simply by walking through a basic gift shop as he would by demolishing the place by hand. On the other hand, if he wanted to, he could walk unnoticed into the office of Nassau's prime minister.
Chiun's unique appearance might, in fact, serve their cause. Remo wanted to look helpless without putting on a Rob Me sign, and traveling with Chiun could be the next-best thing. A city boy alone, unarmed, was no real threat to anyone, but team him with an elderly Korean in expensive silk garb, who appeared to have one bony foot across the threshold of Death's door, and the potential odds for easy pickings blasted through the roof.
These so-called pirates didn't operate from Nassau, but they might have spotters in the city, and Remo used the time to role-play as long as his patience allowed. He managed to pack a lot of ugly-American-type behavior into that twenty-minute stint. He bought and wore a loud shirt over his white T-shirt and made a point of spending too much cash on a few trinkets when he could have talked the vendors down to half the asking price. He bought a bottle of Corona and wobbled around with it for a while, pretending to chug some occasionally. He got noticed by the regular street trash, but as far as he could tell nobody showed special interest, and he made his trip back to the Melody without so much as a mugging.
"Like the shirt?" he asked Chiun, who regarded him suspiciously from the deck.
"It is better than the undergarment that is your typical attire," the old Korean said. "If you must wear something brightly colored, why not wear a proper kimono instead of that garish thing? And why do you smell like a brewery?"
"Relax," Remo said. "I haven't gone on a bender or anything. I just carried around a bottle for a while. I didn't even spill any on my hands."
"You still reek of it," Chiun pronounced, adding extra wrinkles to his nose to demonstrate how disagreeable the odor was.
THE RUN TO CAICOS TOOK another day, twelve hours on the water, putting them in port by dusk. Along the way, Remo had kept a lookout for suspicious boats on the horizon, while Chiun remained below, inviting painful and humiliating death to visit all of those involved in manufacturing the yacht's televisions and satellite receiver that vexed him endlessly. They weren't attacked by pirates.
On Caicos, Remo slipped into his tourist role again and played it to the hilt. He hoped. They would be closer to the pirates now, if there were any pirates to be found, and he hoped they had scouts in port looking for easy marks for future looting. If they had him marked, however, the sea raiders gave no sign.
In the morning Remo dawdled on departure, wasting time to make it seem as if he had a hangover. Chiun came on deck briefly, eyeing his performance like an off-off-Broadway director.
"Why have you not been attacked by the pirates yet?" Chiun demanded.
"Hey, I'm trying," Remo protested. "What do you want me to do? Rent a megaphone and start yelling for them to come and get me?"
"This voyage is tiring."
"Huh. Tiring," Remo said. "Seems to me that I'm the one doing all the work."
"I mean it is monotonous," Chiun clarified condescendingly.
"Yeah. I bet." Remo didn't buy that, either. In fact, he had a sneaking suspicion that Chiun was enjoying this little trip. He was a little too enthusiastic about the Melody. He hoped the little Korean didn't get any ideas about moving out of their Connecticut duplex. He didn't want to live on something that floated.
Late morning found them heading south-southeast, for Puerta Plata. They were getting closer to their target zone. The pirate's nest. Remo hoped the pirates came and got them quick before Chiun started thinking about yachting catalogs.
"YOU LIKE 'EM, EH?" Billy Teach asked.
"I would have liked them better if I'd had first pick," said Thomas Kidd, making no effort to disguise the irritation in his tone.
"Um, well, that is..."
Kidd pinned his first lieutenant with a glare that had been known to make men soil themselves. It wasn't that he snarled or threatened; rather, Kidd had learned through years of practice to project pure venom through his eyes, the grim set of his mouth, so that the object of his anger knew exactly what the stone-faced buccaneer was thinking. You could see death in those slate-gray eyes, and it wasn't a quick death, never clean.
When he had made his point, Kidd turned to face the three young wenches once again. His cold expression altered slightly, not quite softening. It was a matter of degree, and those unused to dealing with him may have missed the change entirely. That was quite all right with Kidd, since he wasn't concerned about the nature of his first impression on three female hostages.
The wenches had been naked when Teach brought them from the Ravager to Kidd's land quarters-corrugated metal and a sheet of rotting plywood for the walls, a thatched roof overhead and dirt beneath his feet. Kidd had immediately ordered clothing for the three, and one of Teach's raiding party had gone off to fetch the mismatched remnants they were wearing now: two pairs of cutoff jeans, one pair of gaudy boxer shorts, a paisley halter top and two men's shirts. None of the garments fit, and none of them was clean, but dressing had allowed the three young prisoners to face him squarely, rather than with downcast eyes.
There would be time enough to strip them once again, pass them around, when they had learned the rules. Kidd was a firm believer in the notion that you followed certain steps to see a job done properly the first time, deviating only at your peril.
He wasn't afraid of the three wenches. That would have been ridiculous. What troubled Thomas Kidd was that his second in command had not been able to restrain his crew from having at them on the journey back to Ile de Mort. That lack of discipline was dangerous to all concerned. Suppose they had been short of lookouts on the trip back, for example, and patrol boats took them by surprise while three or four of them were busy with the women down below? More to the point, suppose the notion got around that Kidd's strict orders could be flaunted with impunity? What then?
Still looking at the women, Kidd addressed himself to Billy Teach. "Who gave the order for the sharing out?" he asked.
Teach swallowed the obstruction that had suddenly appeared in his throat, half-choking him. "Th-there was no order, Captain," he replied.
"I see." Worse yet. Teach had allowed his crew to run amok, when there was sailing and potential fighting to be done. "In that case, who was first to touch the wenches, in defiance of my rule?"
A sidelong glance at Billy Teach showed Kidd that his lieutenant had begun to sweat. It was uncomfortably warm inside Kidd's hut, but Teach had long since grown accustomed to the temperature on Ile de Mort. This sweat sprang from his nerves, the knowledge that his captain was preparing an example, Billy praying to forgotten gods that he would not be chosen as a lesson to the brotherhood.
"Answer!" Kidd snapped, and Billy jumped as if someone had poked a hot dirk in his arse.
"It's hard to say, Captain." The words came out as if Teach had to squeeze them from between clenched teeth. Both hands were fisted at his sides, not reaching for the pistol in his belt. If it came down to that, Teach knew he wasn't fast enough to win the draw.
"In other words," Kidd said, "you weren't paying attention to your crew."
"It isn't that," Teach said defensively. "We had a second vessel to be manned, and we were heading back."
"Which means you needed every man jack of your company at work or watching out for trouble, yes?" the captain said.
"Aye, sir." Reluctantly, but there was no escaping it. Kidd saw his first lieutenant's shoulders sag, the grim weight of responsibility descending on him. It would take only a little extra pressure to crush him flat.
"There's an example to be made," Kidd said.
"Aye, sir." From the expression on his face, his tone of voice, Teach had almost resigned himself to death.
"I want the first man who made sport with one of these," Kidd said. "If it's a tie, pick one at random. I don't care how he's selected. You've got fifteen minutes to produce a man for punishment, or you stand in his place."