Mike watched Hoagie sip his gin and tonic on the veranda. Carla was searching for scrap metal from a wreck at the southern end of the island, on Bowsprit Point. Ellen was showering the smell of gasoline away. Thea, who seemed to care more about her sand castle than her narrow escape, was bent over a coloring book at the other end of the porch.

"What do you mean, you hit a bird?" demanded Mike.

"A tern," said Hoagie tersely. "Saw it just before it hit."

"Can a bird put a hole in your wing tank?"

"At eighty knots, Mike, yes." Hoagie nodded at the plane on the beach. "She's not a Harrier fighter, you know, just a beat-up old Cessna with tissue-paper wings." He sipped his drink. "I wonder that it didn't take that aileron off too."

"How bad is it?" Mike asked. The plane seemed to be Calypso's only one, and Hoagie's only livelihood. Or was it, after all?

"She'll be all right. I've called in a Nassau mechanic. I'll have her off your beach tomorrow, if I can clear that hill."

"Just one bird?" asked Mike. "My mother says she heard more than one thing hit the wing."

"A flock of birds," said Hoagie.

"Sure," said Mike sardonically, "one good tern deserves another." He stood up and walked to the railing. "Mind if I take a look?"

Hoagie stiffened. "What are you getting at?"

Mike swung back. "Look," he said, flaring. "I heard gunfire from the deck of the Folly, halfway across Masthead Sound. What were these 'birds' armed with? Twenty-millimeter cannon in their wings?"

"You heard backfires," Hoagie said calmly. "A rebuilt Continental engine, don't you see?" He lit a cigarette. "It resents it when I make it work too hard."

"That's bullshit!" Mike slammed down his glass. "Somebody almost killed my mother, and I'm calling the police!"

"Now that I wish you wouldn't do."

"Why not?"

Hoagie shrugged. "We all have our reasons for disliking prying eyes." He blew a cloud of smoke into the morning air and watched it drift away. "I don't imagine you heard anything else in the middle of the Sound?"

"What do you mean?" Mike asked cautiously.

"Well, flying in this morning, I saw your boat. You were moving quite a bit. Powering about, using up fuel, quite like proper yachtsmen, you and Jake."

"Yes?" Mike said softly. "So what?"

"I presume the conch are migrating? And you follow them from the surface? By sound? Like a destroyer tracking subs?"

Mike swallowed. "That's our job."

"Interesting," Hoagie mused. "One sees a lot from the air, you know, if one spent a war doing antisub patrols off the jolly old Falkland Islands. Especially in clear waters like these. I could have sworn, this morning, coming in... I could have sworn that you were following a most impressive shark! Looked almost like a great white from the air."

Mike's heart sank. He said nothing.