I've been on vacation at my usual hangout, Little Harbour in the Abacos, Bahamas.

Pete's Pub is a beachfront thatched hut, decorated with flotsam and jetsam, old fishing lures, items salvaged from wrecks, and bent bronze propellers. I can assure you he spent nothing on all this atmosphere, it just washed up on the beach in the forty years he's lived there. While sipping my Goombay Smash, I surveyed the relics. New this year was a rusted VW emblem from the front of a splittie, nailed to a support post made from a casuarina tree.

I asked Pete about the provinance. "It came from Junior Roberts' old bus, the one he used as a taxi. After Junior died, Kenniston bought it as a storage shed, parked it near his house in the scrub, and gave me the emblem. A little different, but it fits right in, don't you think?"

My thoughts shifted. A stripped splittie, abandoned after years of abuse in the tropics, sitting a hundred feet downwind from the Atlantic. No doubt a salty, rusty mess. I salivated at the prospects of a major coup: a significant contribution to the Hall of Shame.

Kenniston was off the island, and I did not realize how involved the search would be. The next morning I walked down to his place, a stone and driftwood cottage built with a lot of imagination, little money, and breathtaking views of the ocean breaking over the Boilers, a huge coral reef.

The splittie was not obvious. I marched through the palmetto and poisonwood scrub, systematically looking for the hulk. There were orchids, bromeliads, and hermit crabs. But no bus.

About then Ken walked by. I asked if he had seen the splittie. "Yeah, it was right by the path. Such an eyesore! We shamed him into hauling it off; try talking to Bobby."

More detective work, and I had my suspicions. Bobby had the only boat in the harbor big enough to carry a car, the Michael John. "Yup, we took it into the Bight. Its in about twelve feet of water, just west of Goolie Cay."

Now, Goolie Cay is really just a rock, I thought, and the bus should be easy to find. But underwater photography was not a possiblity; there would be no entrada to the Hall of Shame. Still, I felt committed to continue.

In the next morning's calm, I took my dinghy back into the Bight of Old Robinson, a large, shallow bay surrounded with mangrove and bonefish flats. Even before I got to the rock, I saw a pale rectangular shape below. I anchored, put on mask and flippers, and dove.

It was the splittie, and I remembered seeing it at the airport many years ago. A late hardtop deluxe, painted a vaquely fleshy pink, Junior's tropical inclination. Now it was lying on its side, and on the front door I could still read "Taxi 18". It was sad. Like its old owner, this bus had passed on.

I swam over to look at the undercarriage, wondering if Kenniston had bothered to remove the engine. It was still there. Then some movement caught my eye. In the dark of wheelwells, against the sand, I saw antennae. Longusta, spiny lobster, in the Bahamas we call them crayfish, and they were everywhere. I went back up to the dinghy, and got my gloves and diving bag. I took the six biggest.

It was March 31, the last day of the lobster season.

Tom F. 90 Syncro Westie