Clutching her shivering children to her side in the bottom of a smuggler's pounding speed boat, Bernadette Laurent heard the anguished cry of a fellow refugee screaming, "My baby is dead, my baby is dead!"
Then came the screams as the woman and baby vanished into the night sea, the latest victims of the Haitian people's desperation to escape their stricken island nation.Laurent, 30, was luckier than most. She finally waded ashore holding her year-old son, Jason, and daughter Manoushka, 5. They found themselves near Fort Lauderdale, where police turned her over to immigration officials.
Many more Haitian immigrants are bound for Florida from their homeland or from their legal limbo in the Bahamas. The voyage for some will be deadly. The smugglers' tiny speed boats on their nighttime runs from the Bahamas to Florida are often no match for the rough winter seas.
Laurent's experience "was a perfect example," said Michael Sheehy, the Border Patrol's assistant chief in Miami. "She said only the two Bahamians on board had life jackets. They ensured their own safety at the expense of everybody else."
Laurent is one of the 25,000 to 50,000 illegal Haitian immigrants who have washed up intentionally or otherwise in the Bahamian islands.
Tolerance for the aliens has evaporated in the Bahamas. Both Laurent's children were born in Nassau - but under Bahamian law, neither she nor they are legal residents.
In a spring crackdown, the Bahamian government began rounding up the unwelcome visitors, imprisoning them until they could come up with money to pay their way back home. Laurent, her children and Jason's father were caught in March and shipped back to Haiti.
Their reception was hostile from the military that overthrew elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
"The soldiers threatened us," she said. "They yelled, `You're the ones trying to bring back Aristide.' "
She immediately made plans to escape again to the Bahamas. Or Florida. Or anywhere.
Their chance came this month. A smuggler in Haiti agreed to take her to the Bahamas for $500. The eight-day voyage ended in Freeport, where a woman met their boat with an even more attractive offer - a quick trip to Florida.
Laurent was introduced to two men she called "the captains." One was a black Bahamian; the other a white man who spoke English. They charged her $700 for the 70-mile trip.
Three days later, on Sunday night, she was awakened and told to get ready.
Laurent and her children joined the captains and four other refugees - two young Haitian men and a mother and baby. She knew the mother only as Marie.
They shoved off in the small motor boat from a private dock in Freeport.
Marie's 3-month-old son seemed ill to begin with - coughing, a runny nose. Things got worse when they hit the open sea.
"It was cold, and the waves were very high," Laurent said. "The children were scared. They were trembling. I held them close to me. I was hiding my face in my hands."
Marie held her child tightly as well, Laurent said. Then the woman cried out.
"I just touched my child. He's not there. He's dead," Marie cried.
Then Marie began screaming over and over, "My baby is dead!"
The despairing mother "was crying and crying," Laurent said.
Then the crying stopped. Marie and her child were gone.
"I didn't see what happened. The captain said the woman just fell in the sea," Laurent said.
The passengers begged him to search. They circled for about 10 minutes in the night but found nothing. They continued to Florida. The Border Patrol said it didn't have enough information to search for the bodies or the boat.
Laurent, weighed down with the children, waded to shore in water up to her thighs.
She's free on an immigration parole and staying with a cousin under the sponsorship of Church World Services.
With all she endured, however, she refuses to tell her countrymen to stay home. It's easy to tell others to stay home when you already have your freedom, Laurent said.
"I won't do that," she said.