early sun broke through the mists of the eastern sky, lending glitter to the calm waters of the Mediterranean. The skipper of the small fishing boat, his eyes bloodshot, his hands marked with rope burns, sat on the stern gunnel smoking a Gauloise, grateful for the sight of the smooth sea. He glanced over at the open wheelhouse; his younger brother was easing the throttle forward to make better time, the single other crewman checking a net several feet away. They were laughing at something and that was good; there had been nothing to laugh about last night. Where had the storm come from? The weather reports from Marseilles had indicated nothing; if they had he would have stayed in the shelter of the coastline. He wanted to reach the fishing grounds eighty kilometers south of La Seyne-sur-Mer by daybreak, but not at the expense of costly repairs, and what repairs were not costly these days?
Or at the expense of his life, and there were moments last night when that was a distinct consideration.
“Tu es fatigué, hein, mon frère?” his brother shouted, grinning at him. “Va te coucher maintenant. Laisse-moi faire.”
“D’accord,” the brother answered, throwing his cigarette over the side and sliding down to the deck on top of a net “A little sleep won’t hurt.”
It was good to have a brother at the wheel. A member of the family should always be the pilot on a family boat; the eyes were sharper. Even a brother who spoke with the smooth tongue of a literate man as opposed to his own coarse words. Crazy! One year at the university and his brother wished to start a compagnie. With a single boat that had seen better days many years ago. Crazy. What good did his books do last night? When his compagnie was about to capsize.
He closed his eyes, letting his hands soak in the rolling water on the deck. The salt of the sea would be good for the rope burns. Burns received while lashing equipment that did not care to stay put in the storm.
“Look! Over there!”
It was his brother; apparently sleep was to be denied by sharp family eyes.
“What is it?” he yelled.
“Port bow! There’s a man in the water! He’s holding on to something! A piece of debris, a plank of some sort.”
The skipper took the wheel, angling the boat to the right of the figure in the water, cutting the engines to reduce the wake. The man looked as though the slightest motion would send him sliding off the fragment of wood he clung to; his hands were white, gripped around the edge like claws, but the rest of his body was limp—as limp as a man fully drowned, passed from this world.
“Loop the ropes!” yelled the skipper to his brother and the crewman. “Submerge them around his legs. Easy now! Move them up to his waist. Pull gently.”
“His hands won’t let go of the plank!”
“Reach down! Pry them up! It may be the death lock.”
“No. He’s alive ... but barely, I think. His lips move, but there’s no sound. His eyes also, though I doubt he sees us.”
“The hands are free!”
“Lift him up. Grab his shoulders and pull him over. Easy, now!”
“Mother of God, look at his head!” yelled the crewman. “It’s split open.”
“He must have crashed it against the plank in the storm,” said the brother.
“No,” disagreed the skipper, staring at the wound. “It’s a clean slice, razorlike. Caused by a bullet; he was shot.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“In more than one place,” added the skipper, his eyes roving over the body. “We’ll head for Ile de Port Noir; it’s the nearest island. There’s a doctor on the waterfront.”
“The Englishman?”
“He practices.”
“When he can,” said the skipper’s brother. “When the wine lets him. He has more success with his patients’ animals than with his patients.”
“It won’t matter. This will be a corpse by the time we get there. If by chance he lives, I’ll bill him for the extra petrol and whatever catch we miss. Get the kit; we’ll bind his head for all the good it will do.”
“Look!” cried the crewman. “Look at his eyes.”
“What about them?” asked the brother.
“A moment ago they were gray—as gray as steel cables. Now they’re blue!”
“The sun’s brighter,” said the skipper, shrugging. “Or it’s playing tricks with your own eyes. No matter, there’s no color in the grave.”
Intermittent whistles of fishing boats clashed with the incessant screeching of the gulls; together they formed the universal sounds of