Always Kill a Stranger

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The sea, which had been so deceptively peaceful and calm when the freighter Santa Eugenia had discharged a portion of its cargo in Salvador de Bahia and headed south along the Brazilian coast, was now beginning to perceptibly roughen. Whitecaps flecked the growing waves beneath a dismal morning sky rapidly filling with threatening black clouds; a sudden chill touched the rising wind. The increased movement brought protesting creaks from the rusty plates of the ship, which nosed deeper into the murky green depths, as if searching for the cause of this abrupt unfriendliness. In the small galley below, dishes slid haphazardly and pots clattered; dim bulbs in the forecastle angled perilously on their twisted flex, swaying erratically, throwing monstrously distorted shadows across the stacked bunks.

On the small open bridge that jutted from the wheelhouse, Captain Enrique Juvenal, master of the Santa Eugenia, studied the latest radio reports of the storm into which the ship was heading, and shook his head. Captain Juvenal was worried. A cautious man by nature, he knew his beloved Santa Eugenia was neither the newest nor the sturdiest of freighters, and he also knew his cargo was in severe imbalance as a result of their off-loading in Salvador de Bahia. And even more he knew that the sudden tropical storms that could sweep this area, while rare, were certainly no less treacherous for that.

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