Children of the Storm

bright teeth, his voice syrupy and yet a musical delight that she thought she would never tire of no matter how long her job kept her in these climes. When she tipped him, he said, “De lady be outrageous kind,” half-bowed and walked away.
        The lounge was busy-though most of the hustling and bustling was done by the tourists, chiefly Americans who appeared unable to adjust to the lazy ambience of this new land. The dark-skinned workers all seemed loose-jointed and half-dreaming, their pace adjusted to what the tropics required of a man if he were to live his allotted span and remain healthy.
        “Miss Carter?” Someone said from behind her.
        Startled, she turned, her heart thumping, and looked into the eyes of an extremely handsome man perhaps four years her senior.
        He said, “My name's Bill Peterson. I'm the Dougherty's chauffeur, messenger and boat captain all rolled into one.” He was tanned so deeply that he could have passed for a native at a quick glance, teeth white against his brown skin, only his blue eyes stood out startlingly from his dusky countenance. He made Sonya feel out of place, a foreigner with her pale skin and bright yellow hair. At least, they had the blue eyes in common.
        “I'm glad to meet you,” she said. “Can I call you Bill?”
        He smiled. He had a very winning smile, almost boyish. He said, “You'd better.”
        “Sonya, then, for me.” She had to look up in order to speak to him, for he towered over her five-feet, four-inches.
        “Good!” he said, clearly pleased with her. “I can see that you're going to get along well with everyone. I was afraid you might be hard to get to know, a snob or a complainer-or something worse. On an island as small as Mr. Dougherty's Distingue, it would be intolerable to have a staff member who was anything less than fully amicable.”
        “How small an island is it?” she asked.
        She was remembering Lynda Spaulding's warnings about high water and hurricanes.
        “One and a half miles long, slightly less than three-quarters of a mile wide.”
        “That doesn't sound so tiny,” she said.
        “In a vast ocean, it is infinitesimal.”
        “I suppose.”
        He seemed to sense the source of her uneasiness, for he said, “I wouldn't worry about it sinking out of sight. Its been there for thousands of years and looks to last even longer.”
        She let the musical name roll around on her tongue for the thousandth time since she had first heard the word a month ago, found it as pleasant as she always had before. “ Distingue,” she said dreamily. “It almost sounds like paradise.”
        “The name is French,” Bill Peterson said. “It means 'elegant of appearance', and the island is just what the name implies-palms, orchids, bougainvillea and white-white sand.”
        She smiled at him, at his obvious enthusiasm for the island. He was a big man, a couple of inches past six feet, slim and well-muscled. He was wearing white jeans and a maroon, short-sleeved, knitted shirt; his arms were brown as nuts and knotted with muscle, his hands broad and strong. Yet, talking about the island, he sounded like a child, a little boy who was breathlessly anxious for her to share his enthusiasm, his sense of wonder.
        “I can't wait to see it,” she said.
        “Well,” he said, looking at her luggage, “we'd best get your things along to the private docks where I have the Lady Jane tied up.”
        “That's Mr. Dougherty's boat?” Sonya asked.
        She could still not get accustomed to the idea that she was working for a bona fide millionaire, someone who could own an island and the boat to get to and from it. It was all like a scene from some fairy tale, a dream from which she would wake sooner or later-or, if her old college roomie were to be believed, it was not a dream but a nightmare. In any case, it did not seem real.
        “Yes,” Bill Peterson said, “but it's not the most interesting of boats. I'm an experienced trimaran captain, and I always prefer sailing to the use of engines. For one thing, its ecologically more sound a method. But more important than that, sails give a man a sense of accomplishment, a real communion with the sea that the use of engines inhibits. But Mr. Dougherty is not really much of a sea lover. He believes that gasoline is far more reliable than the wind-though I've seen more small boats with engine trouble than those