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THEY DID NOT LIKE the foreigner If he had approached any of theames, or taken a shot of ruht have been different But he had locked hi to anyone, even paying extra to have a steward bring his meals to him The black, hard-eyed seamen didn&039;t like that; he would only be on board for a three-day trip, but they didn&039;t trust whites anyway, and this foreigner was very strange

The man seemed to dislike the sun; his flesh was a pasty white, his hair dull, tinged with yellow and coht back in an old style He had never co the day, but there were stories circulating that he&039;d been seen walking the forward deck in the dead of night, standing at the bow as if trying to sight soalley steward in a strange accent: not British or Ahter tied up at the colad to be rid of him The captain had told the first h the ston with theed through a hatchway onto the deck; he squinted, though the sun was diray sky, and walked past the plank would be lowered He carried a battered brown suitcase and wore a suit, once-white, that had yelloith age The men moved out of his way so he could pass He walked slowly, stepping over lines and cables, and he winced occasionally because today his leg was bothering hiht itOne could often judge the weather froplank was secured and squinted again, the light almost painful to him When he crossed over onto the wharf, one of the seaood riddance"

The htly, then stopped to gaze across the village ahead A s, and the man asked him, "Please Is there a hotel here?"

The boy looked up at the stranger, turned, and pointed at the blue house on the hill "Indigo Inn," he said, then quickly ripped his suitcase and began to walk toward the street beyond

The jukebox began to throb in the Landfall Tavern as coins tinkled down through e had deteriorated, so all that cauitar and the low thud-thudding of drums The bartender, annoyed because he&039;d expected this to be an easy day, drew roup of seahter to quench their thirsts

At a back table, sitting alone, the foreigner sipped frolad because he was not eager to have the men notice him there Before him on the table was a tattered piece of the Daily Gleaner dated four days earlier, which he had bought in Jae he&039;d had to sit down in his rooain very carefully Then again He&039;d made a telephone call to the paper and was referred to an officer at the police station by the name of Cyril McKay "Yes," the officer had told hiation now, yes, a small island called Coquina to the southwest of Jamaica Do you have any particular interest?"

"No," he&039;d said "Only curiosity I was a naval man, you see"

And now he&039;d reached the island He&039;d wanted to get out of the sun before starting that long walk up the hill He looked down again at the two-paragraph itee, so strange, he mused, how one&039;s past never really releases its hold; it always reht, sound, or s the freighters cast off their lines and head for the open sea He felt sed up by those tords Wreckage Discovered After all those years? Thirty-five, thirty-six? He had just turned sixty More like forty years Enough tirayer, for the ht to turn to flab, for his long-unused sea instincts to becoh he was barely sixty he looked older That was because of his tis froh his fists, then had calmly sat down outside his cell to discuss the hopelessness of the Nazi cause The man kne to beat his prisoners where the bruises didn&039;t show, and they were told that if they cried out they ht be smothered in their sleep Thedied of heart attacks

He had never said a word When they took him to the black room and opened up a hole in the roof for the hot tropical sun to burn down on hirim line Who was your commander? the one who spoke Gerer man, had watched You&039;re the only one who survived; there&039;s no use in being loyal to them anymore They&039;re dead, food for the fishes They wouldn&039;t have been so cruel to you! There are women and children back in the Fatherland ant to knohat&039;s beco to have chiseled on the gravestones? Your boat destroyed the Hawklin, isn&039;t that right? And then it got into Castries harbor and torpedoed a freighter ht?

Sweat had strea his flesh through that ceiling hole, but he had not spoken because he was still one of the as he lived

"Refill?" someone asked

He looked up; the bartender stood over him "Excuse me?"

"Another beer?"

"No" The bartender nodded, hter&039;s crew They hadn&039;t liked him, he knew; they had scorned him, as if his pale flesh carried a disease they were afraid of catching But the freighter was the quickest way to get here and though the cabin he&039;d shared with a dozen cockroaches had been cramped he hadn&039;t paid very ht he could hear the racket of the huge diesels coood sound, a sound that reood hly on the shoulder and he turned his head Who was it, grinning froe as toel, with his bushy red beard thatAnd beside hi Kreps Everyone at their cluster of tables was drinking, laughing and shouting; the sounds ca drunkenly, others singing a bawdyabout the ladies left behind

"Hear, hear!" shouted Bruno, the big-shouldered diesel hter, plates clattering, chairs scraping the floor The waiter placed a pink mound of pork on a bed of potatoes and sauerkraut before hirily, for tos, lukewares that would rapidly collect fungus from the dank air

"and so as I to think?" Hanlin, the senior radioel "There was the petty officer - you re in the whorehouse balcony holding his prick out and parading so the good people of Berlin could see! My God! Well, anyway, the patrol wasn&039;t long in coon with his dick still hanging out of his pants! And to think we all thought of him as a saint! St Stindler we called hi could we have been?"

"And what happened to hiet his piece or not?"

"Who knows about that? I only know he&039;s not signed on the new boat"

Farther down the table, Lujax, the E- quietly, absorbed in their conversation "dangerous waters," Lujax was saying "Atlantic boiling"