Green Waller reported that Henry Short had left the Bend the day before bound for Key West in the Gladiator with a mixed cargo of six hogs, a milk cow, two hundred gallons of cane syrup, coconuts, eggs, guavas, and papayas. That storm had built all day after the schooner left, and when it broke, Short was caught somewhere southwest of Cape Sable, managing that sailing boat alone in ugly weather. Even a small schooner needed more sea experience than Henry had for an eighty-mile voyage over the shallow banks west of the Keys in time of storm. Hearing my angry shouting and the news that Short was missing, Jane Straughter wept as if it were my fault that her lost love was all alone out there-as if this danger had be-fallen him because I had driven him away from her out of my jealousy. Two days later, Henry turned up at the Bend. The Gladiator had sunk on the outer banks of Florida Bay and he had been picked right off the masts by my friend Gene Roberts, bound from Key West for Chokoloskee. “Way them spars are stickin up, you can spot her two miles away,” Gene said. “Hull’s probably all right but you best get there quick before some Key West pirate comes across her.”
The squall had come up fast out of the south, Henry related when I questioned him. Rather than fight it, he tried to run before the wind, but by the time he came about, the schooner, responding sluggishly with her heavy cargo, remained broadside too long and took a sea over her star-board beam. “I lacked sea knowledge, Mist’ Watson,” Henry whispered. “I sure am sorry.” The only thing Henry had saved was his old rifle.
Kate took my arm to keep me calm but the fury was already abating. Short deserved credit for coming back at all, because ever since that Tucker business, this nigra had been deathly frightened of E. J. Watson. Even so, he made no excuses but took full responsibility, holding his straw hat to his chest, toeing the ground. I saw Jane watching from the doorway, frightened for him, too.
With Lucius and Henry, I went south to Wood Key to pick up Owen and Webster Harden and their guns. At Lost Man’s Beach we left the Warrior in the cove at the north end and took Erskine Thompson’s little eight-ton schooner for our salvage expedition-never asked permission, we just took her. As we hauled anchor, Thompson came out-he was probably hanging back, knowing I was angry because he had entrusted my ship to someone else without permission. If my ship’s captain wanted to stay home from now on, I yelled across the water, that was fine by me.
We kept on going that late afternoon, down toward Cape Sable. Lay to that night on the open Gulf off Sandy Key in a silver calm under the stars. At first light next morning we located her masts, and sure enough, a blue ketch was tied up to her that I recognized as the old Cleveland, Captain Walter Smith.
Her crew was still asleep below. We reckoned Smith had sent back to Key West to get help with the salvage. We stood off a little ways, eased down the hook. In a while, a man came up on deck to piss. Seeing our boat, he made a move toward the hatch to wake the others, but Owen Harden waved him back at rifle point.
A decade ago, when I first went to Key West, there were three hundred boats unloading sponges at the foot of Elizabeth Street but now the sponges were fished out in local waters, and now there was new competition from the Greeks at Tarpon Springs-unfair competition, Key Westers decided, because those damned immigrants were cheating, using diving helmets. Smith and others got the homegrown spongers fired up, and they went up the coast and slashed some air hoses, burned a few boats.
That was Walt Smith’s reputation, quick to bite when anything got in his way. Come to a fight, I was happy it was Smiths, first because Walt Smith deserved to be shot and second because the Harden boys were the right men for the job: the Hardens had made good friends with Guy Bradley when they lived at Flamingo for a year at the turn of the century, and they wouldn’t need much provocation to straighten out Guy’s killer once and for all.
Henry Short had his old Winchester along, and Henry shot even better than the Hardens-better’n any man along the coast, I’d heard, excepting me. All the same, I ordered him not to show his weapon if it came to any showdown with Key Westers. “Next time those conchs caught you alone,” I said, “they’d lynch you on general principles.” Henry nodded, knowing what I meant by general principles.
Pretty soon there were three spongers up on deck: Cap’n Walt, small, mean, and quick, and his offspring Tom and that scraggy feller the Hardens called Coot Ethridge who had been belowdecks on this boat when Guy was murdered. And I said, “You know who I am. Cast off your lines.”
Smith crossed over to the rail and took a leak in our direction to relieve his feelings. In that silver early-morning calm, in that dead silence, in that red sun rising from the fiery shimmer of the banks off to the east, that tinkle of his worn-out bladder would have woke a crocodile a half mile off. While he pissed at us, his glasses glinted and his brain buzzed as he figured out what he was going to do next. Finished, he shook the last acid drops in our direction, hawked, spat, and farted. If he could have mustered up a shit, he might have done that, too. Taking his time, he straightened up and stuffed his mean old prick back in his pants, all the while squinting toward the southward, as if confident that help would show up any second on that horizon.
Seeing him being so obnoxious, his crew got nervous, and Coot’s voice broke as he called over, “Mr. Watson, we ain’t lookin for no trouble so there ain’t no call to go pointin them guns.” Hearing that, Smith whipped around so quick that he damn near tore off his own pecker. “This vessel was abandoned and we found her first. We are aboard of her right now. That’s the law of salvage. Law’s the law.”
My temper came up quick as his. “How about Bradley? How about all the lies you told to put the blame on Watson? Law was the law, you sonofabitch, you would have hung!” When I raised my shotgun, his crew dove for cover. “Anyway, you’re not aboard my schooner and you’re not going aboard her, either, cause she’s on the bottom. So you cast off real quick, the way I told you, cause I don’t aim to explain it all again.”
The Hardens had raised their rifles, too, and the oldest, Webster, interrupted Walt Smith’s thoughts before he could speak again. “You’re thinkin its your word against our’n, now ain’t that right? Only thing is, your word ain’t worth a shit no more on this whole coast nor your ass neither if you don’t get movin.”
Smith did not like hearing such hard words, never mind looking down so many gun barrels, but he reckoned this was not the time to say so. He gave Webster a wink to let him know that accounts would be settled later. “We got witnesses,” he snarled, as the Smith boy and Coot had jumped to clear their lines, “and they will be showin up here any time now.”
In the still air, Smith’s ketch moved hardly at all on the weak current. They had drifted clear but were still in gun range. Finally Smith called across the water, “You’ll need hands to raise her, Watson, let alone careen her. We can split the salvage.” I called back, “The damned cargo is spoiled. The ship is mine. No salvage. One day’s wage.”
That’s how we settled it. Rigged a block and tackle amidships and more lines fore and aft, raised her inch by inch between the boats like a drowned whale. Took till noon before her gunwales surfaced, that’s how slow and hard that winching was. Then all hands bailed till her deck came up out of the water, and she wallowed.
A ship rose on the horizon after midday, drew near in early afternoon. I sat back in the stern where I could cover all three boats with my gun sticking up where all could see it. I was well known at Key West. There wasn’t one man on that other boat who wanted trouble.
By now a little breeze was picking up. At high tide, we towed the Gladiator eastward, ran her aground on a bar. We careened her six hours later when the tide was down, long about midnight. The hull came out undamaged but her cargo was a total loss, a mess of busted eggs and slimy vegetables, waterlogged chickens, a drowned milk cow, swollen hogs.
The Smith crew refused to help us clean her out. “Where’s our money?” Walt Smith said. The sea salt crusted on his glasses made this old wharf rat look more vicious than before. I said he’d have to wait till the next time we sold a cargo in Key West. He cursed vilely. “Don’t go drinkin it all up before we get what’s owed us,” Walt Smith said.
Six hours after that, the tide floated her again. She was riding as high as a white gull next morning when the sun came up like a fireball over the Keys.