“Got it again?” asked the captain laughing. “Well, I don’t blame you. They’re curious islands—”
“Where’s Timbado Key?” interrupted Andy.
“Timbado? Oh, I see! Old Ba has loosened up. That’s Ba’s notion of a good place to keep away from.”
“Why?” asked the boy quickly. “He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Nor me,” answered the captain, freshly charging his pipe. “I’ve heard it’s a place colored men never go back to a second time and that white men never go to even once.”
Andy dropped the map, and Captain Anderson walked over and picked it up. He pointed to a nameless speck on the southern edge of the Bahama Banks.
“It’s about here,” he indicated. “They told me over on Andros Island, when I put in there two years ago, that if you want to see real African savagery, you don’t need to cross the ocean—just go to Timbado.”
Andy’s eyes dilated.
“At other places there are white men, Englishmen and Americans, growin’ fruit and spongin’ and fishin’, but on Timbado, there’s nothin’ doin’.”