Rio looked at him with hatred.
“Meanin’, my fine lad, I ain’t part of you? Well, maybe I ain’t.” He brought one fist down on the rail, then pointed at the water. “Christ, you’re wrong about it all, though. You ain’t no sailor—but you are the ‘part of.’ I’m the foreigner. My father buccaneered from the pulpit. A hard-shell, hell-fire Baptist, he cheapened a pirate’s trade with pennies out of a palm leaf.... I remember him well; a dirty man from the west, with green eyes and a thin beard. He showed me your English and your habits and shouted his bad theology. And all the time, my native mother, with the sound of the beach for religion, stared at him——” He turned clumsily, more like an anthropoid than a man. “I don’t get myself, Martin. Maybe I’m starved. It’s been a long time. I’ve lived in a monastery since a brown girl——”
“I hear every word,” said Martin. “I hear ‘monastery,’ ‘brown girl,’ ‘pirate’—but I can’t put them together. I can’t think logically. They’re disconnected pictures.”
“Keep your pictures.” Rio moved closer. “I said I’m crazy to-night.”
Now Martin could see an intentional grace, eager and sharp.
“Hold your Baptist’s head then, Rio. That’s not for us.” Martin’s waist was slim in the moonlight. He knew the night was wrong—something to fight or there would be a mistake. He turned away. “It’s nearly eight bells, Rio, and the squarehead relieves me too fast.”
Rio held his fist against the moon. His face seemed breaking.
“You ain’t right, Martin, but you make me think you are.”
He climbed down the ladder, walked across the foredeck and aft to his bunk. He took his bath in a bucket, put on clean skivies, turned in and tried to sleep.