Dem Bones, Dem Sly Bones

It comes up out of the coral forest like a log and vaults half a dozen times while the drag squalls and Larry curses, furiously trying to turn the dory back toward the fish and run with it while the line peels off the spool and the sea catches the dory and rolls her insanely, and I figure we have lost it all. But finally those two thumbs pay off and Larry gets the boat sorted out. When the fish comes to the boat, it proves to be a barracuda the length of my leg. Larry chooses not to try his knockout punch. Instead he gaffs the cuda and bludgeons it to death with a handy wrench.

"Oh, my," he says, all gaps and grin, "dat make a mighty fine suppah. Maybe two!"

Tonight, after dinner, we learn about the Spanish sweat. Retiring to the sitting room of the main building, as is Kepler's wont, we sip our coffee and brandies as Captain Bill discusses the Honduran political climate. Twilight has already thickened into Prussian blue, and candlelight gutters against the spines of many books; the coffee table is an old hatch cover, highly varnished but scarred beneath the gloss.

"That's the good thing about this place," Kepler says. "It's a tough government that will back you up if you've got the money, a government along the lines of a Spanish military dictatorship. There's no horsing around with the law here. Anybody who gets out of line—pow! Things aren't likely to go the way of Cuba or the Bahamas or the Virgins. They have a device called the Spanish sweat that they use on recalcitrant political or social villains. It's a steel band that fits around the forehead and the temples. Loosely at first. They ask a question and if they don't get the right answer, they tighten the thumbscrews. And so forth...."

That night Kepler and I go nightclubbing. You do it by boat on Roat�n. We bounce through the dark and a spatter of rain to the Happy Landings Bar, about a mile down-key. There is country music on the jukebox, and the girls, despite their craggy, 17th century English pirate features, are friendly and graceful on the dance floor. The men look like anyone you might meet in a roadhouse outside Valdosta , Ga. After a few beers we leave.

"Good thing Larry isn't here," says Kepler, standing spraddle-legged at the tiller. "He'd keep you out drinking all night. He loves his beer, old Larry does. There's lots of wrecks on a Saturday night, when the drunks go roaring home in their dories. Lose more people a year that way than to sharks or the weather—haw, haw!"

How right he was. Last Sept. 18, when Hurricane Fifi came bellowing up the channel between the Bay Islands and the mainland with winds of 120 to 140 mph, the Roat�nians simply rode out the storm as their ancestors have been doing since the days of Morgan. "I haven't heard of a soul being killed," Kepler advised us when communications to the island were reestablished. "The only bodies discovered were three that washed over from the north coast—probably from La Ceiba. These people are good sailors. I know of only one boat that came up on the reef, and that was one from the neighboring island of Guanaja. Sailors understand these things."

Structures fared a bit worse than sailors, though. "We lost a couple of roofs, a straw cabana and our seawall," Kepler added. There was little damage even to boats, though Fifi, in her fury, blew an outhouse into the bay and carried it full tilt into six moored dories, smashing them to flinders. None, however, was Kepler's boat. Total cost to repair the storm damage came to a scanty $4,000 for Reef House, and the resort is once again in full function. But how about the bone-fish? Any damages there?

"The bonefishing and everything else will be back in two months," said Kepler's neighbor and fishing friend, Earl Cooper , a laconic Ohioan who retired to Roat�n a few years ago. "The fish are smart. When hurricanes come, they head out to deep water."

Yes, indeed, in the fine old pirate tradition.