Children of the Storm

caught unexpectedly in the eye of a calm. The Lady Jane's not really a bad little cabin cruiser, though. You'll probably like her.”
        He whistled for and located another porter, supervised the loading of Sonya's baggage onto another wheeled cart and then led the way out of the chrome and glass structure into the suddenly oppressive-by comparison-heat of the late afternoon sun.
        The tourists out on the promenade easily outnumbered the locals, dressed in the most awful bermudas and loud shirts, the women in slacks too tight for them, many almost comical in their floppy straw hats and exaggerated sunglasses. But Sonya had had enough of colorful costumes, native accents and mannerisms; now, all that she wanted was to settle down on Distingue as a governess for Mr. and Mrs. Dougherty's two small children, and begin a career that would make use of her education and training.
        The private docks at the bay port of Pointe-a-Pitre were not shabby, by any means, more well-appointed than the public landing decks. They seemed newly built of sea-bleached stone, concrete and tightly-fitted, well-oiled dark wooden planks. The Lady Jane nestled in a berth barely large enough to accommodate her, floated lazily on the swell, beyond a sign that read: PRIVATE. JOSEPH L. DOUGHERTY. LADY JANE. She was perhaps twenty-five feet long, slim and dazzlingly white, trimmed quite subtly in a dark blue and contrasting gold stripe, spotlessly clean and with an air of welcome about her.
        “How lovely!” Sonya said, meaning it.
        “You've been on a boat before?” Bill asked.
        “Never, except for the ship coming down, of course. But that was so terribly huge that I didn't feel as if I was on a boat at all.”
        “I know what you mean.”
        “It was more like a floating town.”
        “You'll know you're on a boat when you're on the Lady Jane!” he said. “The sea bounces her a bit, unless we put her up toward top speed-and then she bounces the sea”
        The porter put the bags on the main deck, near the pilot's cabin, accepted a tip from Peterson, doffed a tiny porter's hat as he smiled, and wheeled away the luggage cart.
        With a gentleness she would not have thought Peterson capable of-since he was such a big man -he took her arm and helped her down the steps and onto the deck. He escorted her on a complete tour of the pilot's cabin, the galley and the two staterooms below deck.
        “It's utterly gorgeous,” Sonya said, enchanted by the sparkling little machine.
        “You'll have plenty of opportunity to go out in her,” Peterson said. “The kids both like to be taken on trips into the smaller islands, the cays and the backwater places. And on your off time, you might want me to take you out as well.”
        “You mean I can use the boat for my own enjoyment,” she asked.
        “Of course! The Doughertys love the beach and shore fishing. But as I said, neither of them is really a sea lover, except at a proper distance. If you don't make use of the Lady Jane, she'll just sit there at the dock, rusting.”
        “I wouldn't let her rust!”
        He laughed. “Spoken like a real sailor.”
        She stood in the pilot's cabin with him while he maneuvered the small craft out of its slot along the wharf, amazed that he did not slam it rudely against the sleek hulls of its neighbor ships and that when he had taken it into the harbor, he was able to guide it around the plentitude of other boats-perhaps a hundred of them-that bobbled on the bright water. He seemed to have been born on a ship, raised with his hands around a wheel and his eyes trained to nautical instruments.
        She asked no questions, and he started no conversations until they were out of the busiest sea lanes and in the open water, the heavy ocean swell rolling rhythmically toward, under and beyond them. “How far to Distingue ?
        “Twenty-five minutes, half an hour,” he said. “It's not actually very far from civilization, but the illusion of isolation is pretty good.” He handled the wheel nonchalantly, setting course by some method which she could not divine.
        “I'm sure the children like living in a place where there's no one to compel them to go to school,” she said, holding fast to a chrome hand railing as the boat slapped through the crests of the foam-tipped waves.
        “They've been pretty rambunctious since the family came down here from New Jersey,”