204 ALBACORA 



A vise squeezed my forehead a few hours later when 

 the sounds of daytime awakened me. Lou was gone 

 and the blinds in the room had been drawn tightly, but 

 noise broke where no light fell. I twisted on the cot. 

 Each sound was a solo instrument trying to have its 

 way. There was the raucous neigh and hiccoughing 

 of burros, mixed with the broken songs of jungle birds ; 

 the yaps of dogs, demanding attention, played off 

 against the screaming proclamation of roosters. Hu- 

 man voices, the resolute beatings of hammers and the 

 strident echoings of laughter added to the din. 



I got up and pushed open the door. Sunlight, glancing 

 off the sea and a clean strip of sand, blinded me for 

 an instant. Then I saw that I had opened a door that 

 faced a little balcony overlooking the sea, now cobalt 

 and clear and stretching toward the sky. Breakers 

 pounded the sand, and just beyond the surf, the Explorer 

 lay restlessly at anchor, straining her moorings with 

 each swell and ebb. The sea was so vast that the Explorer 

 looked small and inadequate, but still she was a com- 

 forting sight in so alien a land. 



The smell of fresh coffee rose from below, where 

 the beans had been spread to dry in the sun. Mixed with 

 coffee was the familiar scent of iodine and the smell 

 of tar from boat bottoms and fish nets. Surrounding the 

 hacienda stood a high green fence which served as a 

 perch for all the neighboring vultures. Dozens of the 

 dour birds crouched on its posts and railings. Within an 

 enclosure burros and ducks and pigs and turkeys and 



