"Well, it damn well better not look like a shark to the Commissioner of Tourism." He took a deep breath. "Because Carla...?"

"Yes?"

Quietly Mike said, "There was one."

She looked shocked. "Here?"

He nodded. "It left two days ago, heading south toward Spanish Galleon Cay."

Her eyes widened. "How do you know that?"

"We tagged it. It's transmitting its own heartbeat. We followed it for a day."

"I thought they didn't like warm water."

"This one did. You noticed a pink submarine around lately?"

"The Whine Bottle?" She gasped. "No!"

"Well, you've been busy," he said bitterly. "He damn near ate it up."

Her eyes widened. "Was anybody in it?"

"Me, but not for long."

"And you tagged it and shut up?"

"Seventy percent of this island's income comes in the next twenty-four hours." He waved his hand at the carnival stands, the fruit stalls, the vendors. "These people would starve in their shacks. So they chartered us instead."

"You bastards!"

"Look, we knew we could stay on him; he didn't travel fast! Anyway, he's gone. We saved the island, Carla!"

She stared at her glass. "I see why you didn't tell Ellen, Mike...."

"Good."

"But," she said, flaring, getting up, "you sure as hell could have told me!"

"Why?" He jerked his thumb at the figure across the street. "You didn't tell me about yours! You've hardly said a word to me since you married that goddamn thing!"

A whistle shrilled, and the Royal Bahamas Police Force Band, white jackets and pith helmets glaring in the sun, was suddenly marching. In the easy British Army stride, they moved from the Government House down Kingston Street toward the bandstand by the statue.

The drum major raised his staff, with its glittering silver sphere. Ponderously he brought it down, and the band boomed out, "Hail Britannia, Britannia rules the waves..."

Carla, white-faced, glared at Mike, turned on her heel, and ran across the street.

***

The slight, masked Junkanoo dancer and the goombay drummer who always stayed close at his side slipped from the crowds on Kingston Street. The dancer carried a staff with a crepe-paper snake at its end. They moved down an alley of rickety houses, each with its hex sign above the door, leading to Pretty Sally Bay.

The dancer's shuffling, jerky gait changed, and now he moved with a sense of purpose. They paused at a palm tree surrounded with tin cans and rusted gasoline drums. From behind a drum the masked dancer picked up a paper bag.

Ignoring a little black boy squatting in the shade of an abandoned sugar warehouse, they walked to the end of the alley. They moved along a twisted dock, projecting like a beckoning finger over scummy tidal waters.

Below them, swarms of tiny "no-see-'em" gnats circled a wooden fishing boat, half sunken at the dock.

The dancer took from the paper sack a child's beach bucket and a smashed gourd, a silver bell dangling from it.