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whatever work needed to be done. But the Lazlos and the Burguises had read the Coast Guard precautions, and they refused.
    The wind had been blowing from the east at a steady ten knots all day, and there was no reason to believe—from the radio or the sky or the breeze itself—that it was about to change. So the skippers of Penzance and Pinafore cruised slowly southeast along the western shore of a low island, searching for a leeward anchorage.
    The island was not on the Defense Mapping Agency Hydrographic Center charts, but such omissions had long since ceased to concern them. Everything about this part of the world was badly charted: Shoals appeared where none were marked; deep-water channels separated islands, that were, supposedly, one; lighthouses listed on the charts were heaps of rabble; “submerged reefs” turned out to be whole islands; and named islands were often nothing more than lines of breaking surf. Navigation was based on the principle of “What you see is what you get.” Consequently, the Lazlos and the Burguises never sailed at night.
    A hundred yards ahead of Pinafore, Lazlo sat at the helm of Penzance and scanned the craggy shoreline. The island was about half a mile long, ten-foot-high cliffs topped with a tangle of scrub and thornbushes and sisal trees. Lazlo noted idly that the sisal trees had been stripped and were regrowing. Once, the sisal must have been harvested, its fibers used to make rope. But, though Lazlo couldn’t see into the interior (if there was one), it was obvious that no one bothered with the island now. Nothing lived there. Nothing could live there, except birds. And bugs.
    “You’d best get the 6-12, dear,” Lazlo said. “I’m afraid tonight will be buggy.”
    “You’re not going ashore,” said Bella, pointing to the desolate island. “Not on that.’’
    “No, but the water’s too deep to anchor out. We’ll have to be within fifty yards of shore. And you know what kind of radar those devils have.”
    Lazlo saw a break in the cliff line ahead. He took a microphone from the bulkhead. “Walter, there’s an inlet up there. I’m going to head for it.”
    “All right,” Burguis’ voice came back. “I certainly can’t drop a hook here. I’d never get it back.”
    As he drew nearer, Lazlo saw that the inlet was a small harbor, perhaps a hundred yards wide and two hundred deep. At the far end, rusty iron tracks led up the beach into the scrub.
    “To haul the carts of sisal, I suspect,” he said before Bella could ask. “They probably loaded it aboard ship in here.”
    Lazlo anchored Penzance, while Burguis hung outside the harbor. Lazlo used his engine to maneuver his boat as close to dead-center as he could: At the moment, the tide was running into the harbor; the boat would lay at anchor with its stern toward the shore. But, in a few hours, the tide would slacken and turn, heading out. The boats would need plenty of room to swing with the tide. By morning, their sterns would be pointing out to sea.
    As soon as the boat turned away from the wind, the bugs struck, kamikaze mosquitoes and tiny black gnats known as “no-see-ums” that transmitted no itch or sting when they bit but whose toxin later raised painful welts. Lazlo removed his sunglasses and wrist watch (a substance in the bug spray corroded plastic lenses, first making them opaque and then, weeks later, dissolving them until they cracked and fell apart) and let his wife spray him with 6-12 from the part in his hair to the soles of his feet.
    Pinafore anchored aft of Penzance. The Lazlos hauled in the rubber Zodiac tethered to their stern, climbed aboard, and let themselves drift back until they could board Pinafore. While Walter Burguis mixed martinis, Ellen and Bella started a charcoal fire in a hibachi that fit in slots on Pinafore’ s stern.
    As they ate club steaks and canned petits pois and watched the sun set, the water behind the boat came alive with rolling, jumping, feeding