As they returned to their conversation I ordered a strawberry Margarita from the colorful menu. I regretted my choice when the barmaid dumped in red juice from a pitcher that insects ran out from under. The Hammerheads gathered outside on the water’s edge, drinking the six-packs they brought.

Next to the girls was a table by the window. Mustering the necessary courage I interrupted their discussion again. “Do you mind if I sit here?”

“Knock yourself out,” answered the blond.

They both had fit bodies and tans, both wore large diamond rings and were about my age, late 20’s I guessed. The Asian brunette wore a sparkling scarab coiled around her arm, ornate toe rings and gold wrist and ankle bracelets. The blond wore almost no adornments.

Soon, their men showed up, looking in their forties and fifties with hulking tanned bodies and bellies bulging. The blond hugged none other than “Captain Briefly” who was around six-foot six, with a big hook nose. He wore only small dungaree shorts below his hairless chest and was bald but for a rim of grayish-blond hair flowing back in the fan’s breeze. I recognized him from the night before, Seaweed Joe, the one steering The Rapture when she scraped the dock pilings. Nothing special to look at but he had his arms all around her. Not being a believer in marriage contracts I wondered how long she’d collect baubles from this jerk before taking as much as she could in a divorce.

The thin athletic man that had the tiff with other girl on the stern of The Rapture was also there. The first noticeable thing about him was his flat stomach, unusual for that crowd. He had a fit but not overdeveloped body, neat black hair, goatee, and studious black eyes that scanned the room. He dashed my image of the lazy fat-cat yachtsman. Then he stopped next to the two beauties at the table and glanced at me as if dismissing my presence beside them. His t-shirt had a ship’s helm logo with large print around it that read, The Rapture, Luxury Dive Charter, Hollywood, Florida. Inside the helm logo was a picture of a man and woman holding hands while diving down.

A brazen roach scampered up the side of my drink glass, but slipped on the condensation before reaching the salted rim. Everywhere insects seemed to play hide and seek. I was never returning to The End of the World and thought about Ally back at the boat. I could have stayed aboard to see what developed with her.

Then there was a great commotion, “Rah-Rahs!” and the womens’ loud laughter. To my amazement, the brunette lifted her butt off the chair and slipped down the elastic of her panties an inch, snapping it there. More raucous cheering of “Samara! Samara!” followed. That exotic curvy woman demonstrated a few small jiggles of her fluid body. The tall captain sidled up to her as applause from the others rose.

“Panties, panties! C’mon! Samara’s panties!” they called.

Both women had scant underwear visible under their gauze-thin dresses. The tall, bald captain played with and tugged the panty elastic under the woman’s yellow taffeta dress. Then he slipped it down her hips while she moved slow and sensual against him. Finally, she relaxed her inner thighs and the strip of black thong dropped to her knees, with more hoots and hollering.

Her bangles and necklaces tinkled. The intriguing Far East looks, the jeweled scarab, toe rings and fine sandals with panties down around her braceleted ankles all began to have a definite effect on my sex, nearly causing me to faint. I was so beside myself with craving that could not be released. I was certain that people could see my hard-on. Averting my eyes, I took a long deep breath upward and stared at the ceiling fans, then at the thatched roof with the many white cable ties and bamboo scissor-braces supporting the big hut. My mind seemed to swirl in a rhythm with the fan blades, which seemed suspended in their hypnotic whirling motion like my sexual desire.

She kicked her leg up, and whipped the thong panty in the air to be caught, then, she dangled and brushed it over the shining pate of lumbering Captain Seaweed. He went wild on the panties with his eyes closed, chewing, sniffing and savoring, and she wrapped his head and face inside them, and stuffed his mouth full with them to the loud cheers and applause erupting from everyone, everyone except Killis and me and the guy with the goatee. But, we were smiling. Tourists videotaped the ritual while the rough-faced Bahamians escalated the festivities with rowdiness. One of the Bahamian men with wild reddish hair poking out of his black leather cap greeted Killis like they knew each other. They walked out of the hut separately but at around the same time. I thought that was interesting.

Always prepared for a bawdy ceremony, the hefty barmaid came from behind the log bar with a staple-gun and handed a Sharpie pen to the sexy dancing Samara.

“Special pens—look, they have it all at the ready here!” exclaimed the Captain.

The Asian beauty signed her moistened panties over to the ugly Captain, who kissed them one last time and reached high up to staple them to the middle of the hut’s main beam, stretching it across several other womens’ panties and brassieres.

Killis and the Bahamian with reddish hair returned through different entrances. Most of my attention was on the glow-glitter writing across the crotch of her black panties, “I bestow upon thee, my Royal Order of the Panty...” And the rest I didn’t read because old Jim tapped me on the back.

“We gotta leave. Killis says weather problems.”

Three of the happy Bahamian men at the long table, including the one with reddish hair sticking from his cap, smiled at us as we departed.

***