A long, finally calming late afternoon and evening: smoked oysters and lumpy pina colada in the cockpit, followed by cold sliced ham and a 1962 Argentine Cabernet Sauvignon that cheered me right up. It was, damn it, Jeannine who had propositioned me. No doubt I ought to have declined, but the woman is 35, not 25 or 15, and I am 69. Not keeping her with me was the “error,” if anything; but I had my needs, too. Away with such caca! Mrs. Golden needed residential psychotherapy, not a cruise on Osborn Jones. Despite the fact that that day was the anniversary of my first seduction by Jeannine’s mother, in the Todds Point cabin in 1932—an anniversary whereof I was exquisitely mindful — I slept dreamlessly and well.

And woke refreshed and rededicated to 13 R! A fine breezy morning — wind still SW 18+—but I was in the mood for a brisk day’s work. Bye-bye, Cacaway! Bye-bye, mild Chester: may you flow as handsome, and less polluted, for generations after me! Given the wind, I was obliged to motor down the first nine miles from Langford Creek, straight into it with the dodger up to break the spray, before I could turn west enough to make sail and shut down the engine. A good fast reach then up out of the Chester’s mouth and around Love Point, the top of Kent Island, and we were in the open, whitecapped, serious Chesapeake. Our destination lay almost in the eye of the freshening wind, but no matter; so many tidewater August days are swelteringly still that it was a pleasure, and cathartic, to reef down, close haul, and bash through it all that bright brisk Thursday—O.J. for the most part steering himself with a little sheet-to-wheel tackle while I took bearings, checked charts, and trimmed sail. A five-mile port tack due west, back toward discomfiting Gibson Island; then a six-mile starboard tack therapeutically south, under the Bay Bridge, past tankers and container ships plowing up to Baltimore; west again then another five miles into the mouth of the Severn, up to the Naval Academy and Annapolis Harbor. The only entries in my log for that day, apart from sailing data, are two questions: If Jane’s Lord Baltimore is André Castine, who is Joe Morgan’s “Monsieur Casteene”? For that matter, who is André Castine?

But I had things to say good-bye to, including (next day) Annapolis itself, where also I needed supplies; so though it was still midafternoon I made but one quick pit stop for ice, water, and fuel and then threaded through the yachts from everywhere, up through the Spa Creek Drawbridge and the creek itself — jammed with condominiums and expensive racing machines, yet invincibly attractive withal — to my destination, near its head. “Hurricane Hole” is a spot both snug and airy, open enough for summer ventilation yet sufficiently sheltered by trees and high banks so that Osborn Jones and his fellow oyster-dredgers were wont to retreat there from Annapolis, in times gone by, to ride out the fall hurricanes. The houses are less crowded that far up, and though one needs a suit for swimming, the moored boats are far enough apart for comfort, the surroundings are still and graceful, and the dome of the old State House rises pleasingly above the farther trees. My notion was to clean the boat inside and out and make final peace with myself concerning Jeannine. I did the first in a leisurely two hours: everything from scrubbing the waterline to sweeping the carpets and airing the bedsheets. The second I found required no further doing. My regret was real and mild; my concern for the woman equally real, but on balance no greater than before she’d come to see me. It could wait. BBQ filet mignon, a cold fruit mold, and a not-bad-at-all Sonoma Pinot Chardonnay.

Next morning, Friday, in hazy sunshine, I tied up at the Annapolis Town Dock and did business: laid in a week’s groceries, restocked the wine locker, found a laundromat, phoned the office. Mack Enterprises, Jimmy confirmed, was preparing for Tomorrow Now by disposing of all old preserved-food inventory to make room for Crabsicles and the rest. No solid word yet on the whereabouts of Harrison’s “remains,” but inasmuch as Jimmy’s own wife worked in the m.e. accounting office, we were in good position to pursue the inquiry. Discreetly. Mrs. Mack was back in town and at work — full speed ahead with Cap’n Chick — after a short Bermuda cruise with her gentleman friend, whose appearance and full correct name no one in the company seemed to know.

Mm hm. Though there was no particular reason for doing so, I decided that A. B. & A. should invest in an investigator — that same apparently reliable fellow in Buffalo who had drawn a blank, but competently, in the matter of Jane’s blackmailing — to look into the coincidence of the names Casteene and Castine: the one (I explained) borne by a former patient at the Remobilization Farm, the other supplied me by a present patient there, Mrs. Mack’s daughter. Whose condition was also to be reported, in my name, to Mrs. Mack. Discreetly. I was mighty anxious; didn’t know exactly what I was searching for; trusted my hunch that the search was worth considerable expense; but was beginning to begrudge these impingements on 13 R. I would not call again, I decided and declared, for a week. ’Bye.

That week I’ll sail through swiftly, though sailing through it slowly was the heart of my enterprise. From Annapolis I reached seven miles up the high-banked Severn to Round Bay, thence into Little Round Bay, past St. Helena Island (where lay a fine new motor yacht whose name—Baratarian—reminded me of Jane’s crank cousin A. B. Cook and of the film from which Jeannine had been dropped. Nota bene, Dad), to my Favorite Anchorage on that splendid, busy river: Hopkins Creek, snug, private, still unspoiled. No swimsuit needed; few nettles that far upriver; mild phosphorescence when I swam that night. Incest be damned, I wished Jeannine were there again! Next day out through the Sunday mob — wall-to-wall sails in Whitehall Bay! Adieu, Annapolis! — and down to the next river, the South, itself less imposing than the Severn but with finer creeks and coves. Rode out a thundersquall in perfect peace, all alone in a certain nameless, turtled cove off Church Creek: chicken breast with wild rice, a light cucumber-and-onion salad, and a bargain Lalande-de-Pomerol, steady as the eponymous church while the crashing storm merely cooled the cabin. Good-bye Church and Harness creeks, twin beauties! Down to Rhode River’s single spot worth a farewell visit: the anchorage behind Big Island (Sunset like a Baroque Ascension. Fluted jazz on the FM. Shrimp w. cashews & Beaujolais — no ice to spare for chilling white wine), airy but secure, where handsome Herefords graze down to the waterline. Straight across then to Eastern Bay and my Eastern Shore to say goodbye to its sweetest pair of rivers, the Miles and its sister the Wye: five full days required of sun and rain, wind and calm, to touch only my favorite places therealong! Tilghman, Dividing, Granary, Skipton, Pickering, Lloyd, Leeds, Hunting! Sweet bights and creeks and coves, deer and ducks and herons, gulls and cormorants and ospreys, blue crabs and bluefish and rockfish and oysters and maninose — good-bye!

Now it is Friday again, Day 14, August 22. From Hunting Creek I reach down the Miles (up on the chart) to St. Michaels for provisions, laundry, lunch ashore, good-bye to that dear town and harbor, and a 10 A.M. phone call to the office. Which I log, ponder, and relog thus: 1330: HM’s shit nowhere to be found. Could Jane be staging a diversion? Pursue, discreetly. Her fiancé: one Baron André Castine of Castines Hundred, Ontario, 1/2-brother (so Buffalo reports) of A. B. Cook VI! May be involved in C.I.A. or counter-C.I.A. activity! Foreign? Domestic? Interagency? Buffalo doesn’t know: was “seriously warned off by C.I.A./F.B.I. types.” Reports Castine “somewhere in west N.Y.” since Bermuda cruise. Cook himself at home at Barataria Lodge, B’wth I. Hunch: check out that Bray fellow in Lily Dale, N.Y. “Casteene” of Ft. Erie may be unrelated to Jane’s friend: name not uncommon in Quebec, though usually w. the “Baron’s” spelling. Too much coincidence: inquire further. Jeannine has left Ft. Erie; whereabouts uncertain; no one seems to care. Inquire, inquire! Buffalo suspects “drug tie-in”: C.I.A. people moving dope under pretext of monitoring V.N. war resisters, instead of vice versa. A very big fish, which he hopes he has not hooked and refuses to reel in, even discreetly.