"Hester won't let me starve, sir."

"Nor Olga. Now beat it." Jake eyed his sails, decided he could point a touch higher, reached out with his right hand to the running rigging controls, kept tapping a switch to shorten his main sheet, his eye on her mainsail, while he handled the wheel by touch till he had her settled down on a lighter tack. Then he adjusted his jibe and relaxed.

"Good morning, Captain."

"Tom, save that for witnesses. It's all very well for Mrs. Salomon to want me dubbed with an honorary title but we all know who's the sailing master by our ship's papers. You're skipper and have the responsibility; I'm just the owner and unlicensed first mate. Eunice ought not to do it—but we have to cater to the little darlings. Speaking of little darlings, how are your two this fine morning? Didn't see Eve at breakfast."

"She ate before you got up, sir. Seen her and told her she's goin' to have to wear pants from now on, except in the pool or near it."

"Don't see why she should, the other gals don't unless it happens to suit them. I just don't want her swarming into my lap, naked as an eel and twice as lively. Gives me delusions of youth."

"I'll clamp down on her, sir."

"Tom, I don't want the child ‘clamped down on.' I want everybody to enjoy this cruise—one big happy family. Ask Hester to tell her quietly that old Uncle Jake loves her but doesn't like to be pawed. A lie, that last, but an official lie. Speaking of the pool, how's the filter?"

"Filter's okay, was just a clog in makeup feed line. Kelp. No huhu."

"Has the surgeon tested the water?"

"Safe."

"That's good. Tom, when I was a kid, striking for quartermaster third, we used to swim off the boat booms and thought nothing of it. But today even the Pacific Ocean can't soak up all the crud they dump into it. You can put swimming call on the bull horn and take the Skull-and-Crossbones sign off the pool."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Half a second while I make eight bells." Jake reached out with his left hand, picked the last touchplate of a row of eight; the quadruple double Bong! marking the beginning of the forenoon watch rang through the vessel. He then picked still another touchplate and sounded swimming call himself. "Tom, if a man didn't have to eat or sleep, he could sail this wagon around the world by himself. Three men could do it easily. Even two."

"Maybe."

"You sound doubtful, Tom."

"Even one man could, sir—if nothin' never went wrong. Something always does."

"I stand corrected. And with two pregnant women aboard—three if you don't keep a close eye on Eve—"

"Oh, Dr. Garcia got her on the junior pill. I don't take no chances, sir."

"So? Tom, my respect for you—high—has just increased. She's safe from her Uncle Jacob... but I make no promises about any other male in this bucket. There is something in salt air that hikes up the metabolism. And there is much truth in the old saw about ‘when they're big enough, they're old enough and nothing can be done about it.' Better to roll with the punch."

"She is and she has and we did—I had this here talk with the Doc. Hester and me don't expect no more from Eve different than we did ourselves. Anybody knows when a broad starts getting broad she's goin' to land on her back."

"Yes, everybody knows it—yet most parents don't believe it when it comes to their own kids. I know, I had a family law practice for years. Tom, you're such an all-around sensible man I'm surprised that you ever got in trouble."

His sailing master shrugged. "Comes o' believing what I was told, sir. ‘M chief officer of this rust bucket and Captain says keep my lip tight and see nothin' and we make ten times as much on one voyage. All fixed. Only he got smart and hung onto the bribe money hisself. Thought he could run it in the dark. You'da thought he'd never heard of radar. Wham. Coast Guard." Finchley shrugged again. "No complaints, sir, I was a fool. But two years and four months and I get this much better job driving for Mr. Smith-as-was. Smellin' like a rose. Not so trusting now, is all. Don't trust too much, you don't get your ass burned."

"Yet you don't seem cynical. Tom, I think the major problem in growing up is to become sophisticated without becoming cynical."

"That's over my head, Counselor. I just think people are okay, mostly—even that silly skipper—if you don't strain ‘em more than they're built for. Like that piece of standing rigging there. Rated three tons. Pro'ly take five and no trouble. Don't put six tons on it."

"We've said the same thing, I think, but your illustration is vivid. Beat it, Tom. If there's no work to be done, grab sack time. Or pool time."

"Yes, sir. I want to inspect the starboard hull; it's making extra water. Pump can handle it but I want to know why." He touched his cap and swung down off the platform.

Jake cocked his own cap against the sun, relaxed and started to sing:

"‘A sailor's wife a sailor's star shall be!

"‘Yo ho, we go, across the sea!

"‘A sailor's wife a sailor's star shall be,

"‘A sailor's wife his star... shall be!"

His wife climbed up behind him and kissed the back of his neck. "Is that for me, dear? Or for ‘Nancy Lee'?"

"Always for you, my darling. Besides, I can't remember the part with ‘Nancy Lee' in it."

"I wonder if you ever remember a girl's name. You call all of us ‘darling.'

"Merely because it's true. But you are the only one I call ‘my darling.' And I do remember your name—it's ‘Salomon.'"

"Jacob, you must have been a prime menace when you were a bluejacket. With that Hebrew blarney you could talk your way into anything. Then out of it, with no trouble."

"No, Ma'am, I was a sweet, innocent lad. I simply followed the ancient code of the sea: ‘When the hook's up, all bills are paid.'

"Leaving little Jewish bastards behind in every port...and thereby improving the breed. How about Gigi? Going to improve the breed there?" She dug her thumb into a spot over his hip where his slight pot bulged out from sitting. "Some dish, eh, keed?"

"Madam," he said haughtily, "I do not know what you are talking about."

"‘Tell that to the Marines, the old sailors won't believe you.' Jacob my love, I feel certain that you know the second Mrs. Branca almost as well as you knew the first. But I have no wish to prove it; I simply offer my congratulations. Gigi is a darling, I love her to pieces. I was not throwing asparagas." (Tell him she squeals, twin.) (I will not!)

"Woman, you get your exercise jumping at conclusions."

(Then tell him it happened where Troy Avenue crosses Gay Street, near the Square—a neighborhood you know well, twin.) (Eunice, I want Jacob to feel easy about such things—I am not trying to harpoon him.) (You aren't equipped to, Joan; Jake is the original Captain Ahab.) (Eunice, you have a dirty mind.) (Whose mind? I don't have one. Don't need one.)

Mrs. Salomon dropped the subject, opened her sextant case, took it out.

"Will you give me a time tick, darling?"

"Are you going to shoot the defenseless Sun?"

"I'm going to do better than a Sun sight, dearest. The Sun, the upper limb of the Moon, and—if I'm lucky and can spot it again—Venus, for a three-star fix. Want to bet on how small a triangle I get?"

"Even money on fifty miles for the short side."

"Beast. Brute. Cad. And me an expectant mother. I was more than ten times that close yesterday evening; I'm getting the hang of it. I could cheat—I could get a point fix by querying Point Loma, then fudge it on the chart."

"Eunice, why this passion to emulate Bowditch? One would think that radio and satellites and the like had never been invented."

"It's fun, darling. I'm going to hit that nay exam for a flat four-oh and get my limited license. After I've unloaded this pup in the hopper and we no longer have to stick to coastal water, I'm going to do a ‘Day's Work' every day all the way to Hawaii. Betcha I make landfall at Hilo under three miles. Oh, it's not necessary, dear—but what if it turned out to be? Suppose war broke out and everything went silent? Might help to have a celestial navigator aboard. Tom admits that he's hardly taken a sight since he got his mate's ticket."