NASSAU -- Behind the wire fencing at the detention center here, several Cubans yelled angrily Tuesday morning.

``The murderer is here!'' they shouted. ``There's the murderer!''

The detention center's doors opened and a gray bus of the Bahamian immigration service rolled in. On Monday ``the murderer'' -- as they call the bus -- took 65 Cuban rafters to the airport, for the flight back to Cuba.

Now, many of the 194 Cubans remaining seem resigned to take the same trip on the detested vehicle in the next few days.

Although the Bahamian government has kept the repatriation schedule secret, the Cubans are ready for a flight on Thursday and another during the weekend.

``Only God can save us now,'' said Austonica Hernandez, a cook from Obispos, who has been detained since late April, along with 14 other people in her boat.

That group pulled up to an oil rig in the Atlantic and was taken to the Bahamas the following day by a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter.

The repatriation of 65 -- among them three baseball players and a pitching coach -- came as a surprise, the Cubans said. Shouting to a Herald reporter 10 yards away, they said the center was surrounded on Monday by heavily armed soldiers. Then the guards called the roll and selected those who would be placed on a Cubana de Aviacion aircraft for the trip to Havana.

According to the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina, the 65 Cubans were given quick medical exams in Havana and sent to their homes in the provinces of Villa Clara, Matanzas and Las Tunas.

Secret deal

The large-scale deportation is the result of a secret accord between the Bahamas and Cuba reached two weeks ago during a meeting in Havana, Vernon Burrows, the Bahamas' deputy director of immigration, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

More than 100 other Cubans who have been denied political asylum in the Bahamas for not qualifying for refugee status will be returned to Cuba in the next several weeks, Burrows said. He defended the deportations, saying the cost of housing hundreds of Cuban and Haitian rafters is ``astronomical'' for a small Caribbean island.

Some of the detainees fear the reprisals that may await them. Miguel Laurelio, 19, who identified himself as a Cuban border patrol auxiliary member, said he and several others fled on a border patrol boat. Laurelio arrived at the detention center three days ago after the boat foundered and the occupants were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Some of the detainees are willing to try again, as soon as they land in Cuba.

``I'll just turn right around,'' said Pedro Leon, 28, an actor from Camaguey. ``I've already selected a boat.''

Leon said he paid $7,000 for a wooden craft in which he left with nine other people, including a 2-year-old girl. After the boat ran aground on Lobos Cay, he and the others spent five days ``eating lizards'' until they flagged a merchant ship that notified the U.S. Coast Guard, Leon said.

The repatriations have angered Cuban activists in Miami. Jose Basulto, president of Brothers to the Rescue, canceled a meeting Tuesday with Bahamian officials, originally scheduled to deal with ways to aid the detainees.

``After what has happened, the last thing I feel like doing is talking to these people,'' Basulto said. ``It's a very sad situation.''

Relatives of the detainees are worried about the fate that awaits their loved ones after their return to Cuba. They also worry about the condition of the Cubans who remain in the Bahamas awaiting deportation.

Seeking information

Maria del Carmen Mor's brother, Orlando Dominguez, is one of the detainees. She doesn't know if he was sent back or if he's still in Nassau. The Bahamian authorities have given her no information, she said.

``This is a horrible situation, because after he has been in the Bahamas for five months suffering hardship, hunger and everything . . . for them to deport him to Cuba is sad,'' she said. ``What crime have they committed: To leave Cuba in search of freedom?

``My mother is desperate, back in Cuba. The [repatriated] people from Caibarien have already returned home, but those from Remedios haven't,'' Mor said. ``I don't know a thing.''

Mor said she would like the Cuban community in exile to stage a nationwide sit-down strike or a similar act to protest the treatment the rafters have received in the Bahamas.

``I would like people to become aware of what's happening, somehow or other,'' she said.