Points of Departure by Pat Murphy

exception of Nick, the passengers were scuba-divers, bound for Anthony’s Cay resort on the far side of Roatan,the main island in the group.
    Nick met Morris halfway to the customs building, handed him a magazine, and said only, “Take a look at age fifty.”
    The article was titled “The Physiology and Ecology of a New Species of Flashlight Fish,” by Nicholas C. Rand and Morris Morgan.
    Morris studied the article for a moment, flipping through the pages and ignoring the young boys who swarmed past, carryingsuitcases almost too large for them to handle.
    Morris looked up at Nick and grinned—a flash of white teeth in a thin, tanned face. “Looks good,” he said. His voice was a little hoarser than Nick had remembered.
    “For your first publication, it’s remarkable.” Nick patted Morris’s shoulder awkwardly. Nick looked and acted older than his thirty-five years. At the university, he treated his colleagueswith distant courtesy and had no real friends.
    He was more comfortable with Morris than with anyone else he knew.
    “Come on,” Morris said. “We got to get your gear and go.” He tried to sound matter-of-fact, but he betrayed his excitement by slipping into the dialect of the islands—an archaic English spoken with a strange lilt and governed by rules all its own.
    Nick tipped the youngster who hadhauled his bags to customs and waited behind the crowd of divers. The inspector looked at Nick, stamped his passport, and said, “Go on. Have a good stay.” Customs inspections on the islands tended to be perfunctory. Though the Bay Islands were governed by Honduras, the Islanders tended to follow their own rules. The Bay Islands lay off the coast of Honduras in the area of the Caribbean that hadonce been called the Spanish Main. The population was an odd mix: native Indians, relocated slaves called Caribs, and descendants of the English pirates who had used the islands as home base.
    The airport’s runway stretched along the shore and the narrow, sandy beach formed one of its edges. Morris had beached his skiff at one end of the landing strip.
    “I got a new skiff, a better one,” Morrissaid. “If the currents be with us, we’ll be in East Harbor in two hours, I bet.”
    They loaded Nick’s gear and pushed off. Morris piloted the small boat. He pulled his cap low over his eyes to keep the wind from catching it and leaned a little into the wind.
    Nick noticed Morris’s hand on the tiller; webbing stretched between the fingers. It seemed to Nick that the webbing extended further up eachfinger than it had when Nick had left the islands four months before.
    Dolphins came from nowhere to follow the boat, riding the bow wave and leaping and splashing alongside. Nick sat in the bow and watched Morris. The boy was intent on piloting the skiff. Behind him, dolphins played and the wake traced a white line through the silvery water. The dolphins darted away, back to the open sea, asthe skiff approached East Harbor.
    The town stretched along the shore for about a mile: a collection of brightly painted houses on stilts, a grocery store, a few shops. The house that Nick had rented was on the edge of town.
    Morris docked neatly at the pier near the house, and helped Nick carry his dive bag and luggage to the house.
    “There’s beer in the icebox,” Morris said. “Cold.”
    Nick gottwo beers. He returned to the front porch.
    Morris was sitting on the railing, staring out into the street. Though the sun was down and twilight was fading fast, Morris wore his sunglasses still. Nick sat on the rail beside the teenager. “So what have you been doing since I left?”
    Morris grinned. He took off his sunglasses and tipped back his cap. Nick could see his eyes—wide and dark and filledwith repressed excitement. “I’m going,” Morris said.
    “I’m going to sea.”
    Nick took a long drink from his beer and wiped his mouth. He had known this was coming, known it for a long time.
    “My dad, he came to the harbor; and