“And put the nightcap on it by kissin’ her,” finished Tyler.
Jude’s face blazed red like a peony.
“If you chaps have had enough, I’m goin’ to clear,” said Jude.
“Right!” said Satan, rising, and she cleared, vanishing with the swiftness of a rabbit up the companionway.
Tyler fetched out a box of cigars. They were Ramon Alones.
“She won’t speak to me now for half a day,” said Tyler. “If you want to guy Jude, tell her she’s a girl. I wouldn’t a told you, only you’re not in our way of life and so can’t make trouble. No one knows. There’s not a man in any of the ports knows: she goes as me brother. But the Thelusson woman spotted her on sight—Come on deck.”
Jude was emptying a bucket of refuse overboard, then she vanished into the galley, and Ratcliffe, well fed, lazy, and smoking his cigar, leaned for a moment over the rail before taking his departure, talking to Tyler.
To starboard lay Palm Island, with the sea quietly creaming on the coral beach and the palms stirring to the morning wind, to port the white Dryad riding to her anchor on the near-shore blue, and beyond the Dryad the violet of the great depths spreading to the far horizon, beyond which lay Andros, and the islands, reefs, and banks from Great Abeco to Rum Cay. Not a sail on all that sea, nor a stain on all that splendor: nothing but the gulls wheeling and crying over the reefs to southward.
But Satan’s mind as he leaned beside Ratcliffe was not engaged by the beauty of the morning or the charm of the view. Satan was a dealer with the sea and the things that came out of the sea or were even to be met with floating on the waves. Ratcliffe was one of these things.
“You’ve never had no call to work?” said Satan tentatively. “You’ve lots of money, I s’pect, and can take things easy.”