I was fishing for tarpon, lolling back in the stern of my small boat. The outboard motor, running at trolling speed, was a puttering purr in the drowsing watery silence. It was sunset of a summer evening of 1948. The Gulf of Mexico, out beyond the mouth of the little Florida bayou inlet across which I was heading, was a glassy expanse, blood-red in the light of the huge setting sun. To the south lightning was playing along the orange sky. I recall that a vague uneasiness was upon me. Because a s