The Reef

isn’t a boat been made I can’t board.”
    “Goddamn it, you’re going to capsize us. Buck, you idiot.” As the dinghy pitched dangerously, Matthew shoved Buck down. Water sloshed in, soaking both of them.
    “I’ll bail her out, Matthew.” With a good-natured chuckle, Buck began to scoop water out of the bottom with his hands.
    “Just sit still.” Matthew took the oars out of the locks, glanced up to see the Beaumonts grinning over the side. “I should have made him swim for it.”
    “ ’Night, Ray.” Buck waved cheerfully as Matthew rowed. “There’ll be gold doubloons tomorrow. Gold and silver and bright, shiny jewels. A new wreck, Matthew,” he mumbled as his chin dropped to his chest. “Always knew we’d find it. Was the Beaumonts brought us the luck.”
    “Yeah.” After securing the oars and the line, Matthew eyed his uncle dubiously. “Can you make the ladder, Buck?”
    “Sure, I can make the ladder. Got the sea legs I was born with, don’t I?” Those legs wobbled, as did the small raft as he weaved toward the side of the Sea Devil.
    Through more luck than design, he gripped a rung and hauled himself up before he could turn the inflatable over. Soaked to the knees, Matthew joined him on deck. Buck was weaving and waving enthusiastically to the Beaumonts.
    “Ahoy the Adventure. All’s well.”
    “Let’s see if you say that in the morning,” Matthew muttered and half carried Buck to the closet-sized wheelhouse.
    “Those are good people, Matthew. First I was thinking we’d just use their equipment, string them along, then take us the lion’s share. Be easy for you and me to go down at night, lay off some of the best salvage. Don’t think they’d know the difference.”
    “Probably not,” Matthew agreed, as he stripped the wet pants off his uncle. “I gave it some thought myself. Amateurs usually deserve to be fleeced.”
    “And we’ve fleeced a few,” Buck said merrily. “Just can’t do it to old Ray, though. Got a friend there. Haven’t had a friend like that since your dad died. There’s his pretty wife, pretty daughter. Nope.” He shook his head with some regret. “Can’t pirate from people you like.”
    Matthew acknowledged this with a grunt and eyed the hammock strung between the cabin’s forward and aft walls. He hoped to God he wouldn’t have to heft Buck into it. “You’ve got to get into your bunk.”
    “Yep. Going to play straight with Ray.” Like a bear climbing into his cave, Buck heaved himself up. The hammock swayed dangerously before he settled. “Should tell them about Angelique’s Curse. Thinking about it, but never told nobody but you.”
    “Don’t worry about it.”
    “Maybe if I don’t tell them, they won’t be jinxed by it. Don’t want to see anything happen to them.”
    “They’ll be fine.” Matthew unzipped his jeans, peeled them off.
    “Remember that picture I showed you? All that gold, the rubies, the diamonds. Doesn’t seem like something so beautiful could be evil.”
    “Because it can’t.” Matthew stripped off his shirt, tossed it after his jeans. He slipped Buck’s glasses off his nose, set them aside. “Get some sleep, Buck.”
    “More than two hundred years since they burned that witch and people still die. Like James.”
    Matthew’s jaw set, and his eyes went cold. “It wasn’t a necklace that killed my father. It was a man. It was Silas VanDyke.”
    “VanDyke.” Buck repeated the name in a voice slurred with sleep. “Never prove it.”
    “It’s enough to know it.”
    “It’s the curse. The witch’s curse. But we’ll beat her, Matthew. You and me’ll beat her.” Buck began to snore.
    Curse be damned, Matthew thought. He’d find the amulet all right. He’d follow in his father’s footsteps until he had it. And when he did, he’d take his revenge on the bastard who had murdered James Lassiter.
    In his underwear, he stepped out of the cabin into the balmy, star-splattered night. The moon hung, a silver coin struck in half. He settled under it in his own hammock, far enough away that his uncle’s habitual snoring was only a low hum.
    There was a necklace, a chain of heavy gold links and a pendant etched with names of doomed lovers and studded with rubies and diamonds. He’d seen the pictures, read the sketchy documentation his father had unearthed.
    He knew the legend as well as a man might know fairy tales recited to him as a child at bedtime. A woman burned at the stake, condemned for