Dead Calm by Charles Williams 1963(2)

3
The sun was hotter now. He turned, searching the horizon for
any darkening of the surface of the sea that would indicate the
beginnings of a breeze. Rae came up the ladder. “Your bunk’s
all ready, Mr. Warriner. Try to sleep until this time tomorrow.”
Warriner smiled. “Please call me Hughie. And I don’t know
how to thank you.”

“You don’t have to. Just get some rest.”
“In a little while. For some reason, I don’t feel sleepy at all.”
She nodded. “You’ve been wound too tight for too long. But
I know how to fix that.” She disappeared down the ladder and
came back in a minute with a bottle containing a little over an
ounce of whisky. She poured it into the cup that was still
beside him. “There’s just about enough here to do it.” He
drained it and accepted the cigarette she held out. “By the
time you finish that,” she said, “you’re going to collapse all
over. Just try to make it to the bunk when you feel yourself
start to go.”

“Thank you,” Warriner said. “You’re very nice.”
She tossed the bottle overboard and perched on the edge of
the deckhouse to light a cigarette for herself. The bottle
landed with a faint splash just off the port quarter, rolled over
as a swell passed under it, and started to fill. It righted itself,
its neck out of water. Ingram glanced at it indifferently, and
then forward, conscious that Warriner’s dinghy was bumping
Dead Calm — 24
as Saracen rose and fell. They’d have to cast it adrift; there
was no room to stow it on deck, and of course they couldn’t
tow it. He looked around and was about to mention this when
he stopped, arrested by something in the other’s face.
Warriner was staring past him with an almost frozen
intensity, apparently at something in the water. Ingram
turned, but could see nothing except the bottle, which was
about to sink. It had rolled onto its side again as another swell
upset it, and water was flowing into its mouth. A few bubbles
came up, and it went under. Puzzled, Ingram glanced back at
Warriner. The other had risen from his seat and leaned
forward, clutching the port lifeline with a white-knuckled grip
as he stared down at the bottle falling slowly through sunlighted
water as clear as air. Drops of sweat stood out on his
forehead, and his mouth was locked shut as though he were
stifling, with an effort of will, some anguished outcry welling
up inside him. The bottle was six feet down now, ten, fifteen,
but still clearly visible as it continued its unhurried slide into
the deepening blue and fading light beyond. Warriner’s eyes
closed, and Ingram sensed the effort he was making to tear
himself away from whatever hell he saw in an innocent and
commonplace bottle falling into the depths of the sea, but they
came open again almost immediately, still full of the same
hypnotic compulsion and horror, like those of a bird impaled
on the freezing stare of a snake.
Ingram opened his mouth to ask what the matter was, but
caught Rae’s eyes on him. She shook her head. They both
looked seaward and in a moment heard Warriner sit down
again. The whole thing hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds.
Probably doesn’t know we even saw it, Ingram reflected. But
what was it? Terror? Terror of what? For some reason he was
thinking of the way Warriner had come aboard, the trancelike
stare, the convulsive lunge onto the deck, and the way his
fingers had flattened themselves around the handrail.
“Breeze coming!” Rae called out suddenly. “Anybody for
Papeete?”
Off to the south the surface of the sea was beginning to
darken under the riffles of an advancing cat’s-paw of wind.
Ingram sprang on deck and began casting the gaskets off the
mainsail. Rae had run forward and was breaking out the jib.
Long months of practice had made them a smoothly
Dead Calm — 25
functioning team, and by the time they could feel the faint
movement of air against their faces a cloud of billowing white
Orion was mounting against the sky. Rae came aft to take the
wheel. The mainsail filled. Saracen began to move, almost
imperceptibly at first, and when she had gathered enough way
to come about Ingram looked around and nodded. Rae
brought the wheel hard over; she came up into the wind, hung
for an instant, and fell off on the port tack, toward the
southwest and Tahiti.
For a moment he had forgotten Warriner, but when he
turned from setting up the mainsheet to trim the jib, he found
the other already hauling on it. Warriner threw it on the cleat
and straightened. “How about the mizzen?”
Ingram nodded and began taking off the gaskets. “Might as
well get everything on her; the breeze might last for a while.
But you go ahead and turn in.”
* * *
Warriner smiled. “I think I will, as soon as we get this up.” He
seemed to have recovered completely from the horror of a few
minutes ago. They hoisted the mizzen and trimmed the sheet.
Ingram leaned over to look in the binnacle. “Can we make
235?” he asked Rae.
“Easy,” she replied. “We’re to windward of that now.” She
came right a little. “Here we are—230 … 233 … 235.”
Ingram glanced aloft at the strands of ribbon on the shrouds
and started the mainsheet a little. Saracen heeled slightly
under a puff and began to gather way. He turned to Warriner.
“We’re going to have to cast your dinghy adrift. No room to
stow it.”
Warriner nodded. “Yes. Of course.”
Ingram loosed the painter from the lifeline stanchion, coiled
it, dropped it into the dinghy, and gave the boat a push away
from the side. It drifted back and began to fall behind in the
wake, riding like a cork over the broad undulations of the
swell. Warriner had turned and was staring toward the other
yacht, which was off the starboard quarter now that they had
come about. The dinghy was a hundred yards astern, growing
smaller and looking lost and forlorn in the immensity of the
sea.
Dead Calm — 26
“Well, if it’s all right with you, I guess I’ll turn in,” he said at
last. “If the breeze holds, I can take over tonight.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Rae said. “You’d better rest for a
couple of days. There’ll be something for you to eat when you
wake up.”
“It’ll be pretty hot down there,” Ingram added, “but if you
leave the door open you’ll get a little circulation of air from
the ventilator.”
Warriner nodded and went down the ladder. He paused
once to turn for a last look at the other boat before his head
disappeared below the level of the hatch. When Ingram looked
around at Rae, her eyes were misted with tears. He leaned
forward and peered down the hatch. Warriner was going
through the passage into the forward compartment. He
couldn’t hear them if they spoke in normal tones.
He slid back close beside her. “What do you make of it?”
“That thing about the bottle?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. But grief does strange
things—grief and complete isolation.”
“But just a sinking bottle—”
“Obviously it wasn’t a bottle he was seeing.” She paused,
her eyes fixed moodily on the compass card. Then she went
on, “What’s a sea burial like?”
“I’ve never seen one, thank God, but from what I’ve read,
you sew the body in canvas and weight it with something.
Why?”
“I’m not sure, but …” She gestured helplessly.
“I think I know what you mean,” Ingram said. “But I’m not
sure I agree with you.” Wrapped in white Orion, with the
water this clear and the boat lying dead in the water above
them, the bodies would still be visible a long way down if you
wanted to torture yourself by leaning over the side and
watching them disappear into the dark down there. “But that’s
only morbid. This was worse. Horror—I don’t know what you’d
call it.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “I know. But being utterly alone
afterward …” Her voice trailed off. The breeze had dropped to
a whisper. Saracen ghosted through the bald spot for a few
Dead Calm — 27
yards, the sails beginning to slat; then it picked up again, only
to die out once more in less than fifteen minutes. Saracen
rolled heavily, booms aswing. Ingram sheeted them in. He
stood up, still disturbed, and annoyed at himself because he
didn’t know why, and trained the binoculars on the other
yacht. Then, with a gesture of impatience, he made up his
mind.
“I’m going aboard her.”
Rae looked up. “Why?”
“I don’t know. There’s something about the whole damned
thing I can’t quite swallow; no matter how I turn it, it won’t go
down. Look, Rae, anybody who managed to get this far from
land in a boat without killing himself must be a sailor, and
that’s not the way a sailor abandons one. Just because
somebody else comes along going in the same direction—like
a hitch-hiker. You’d bring something off, or you’d go back for
what you could salvage.”
“You don’t believe she’s sinking?”
“All I know is she’s still afloat.” He continued to study the
other yacht. As far as he could tell, there was no change in her
trim or amount of freeboard. Well, it didn’t mean anything,
actually; it could be hours, or even days, before she went
under. He was probably being silly.
“Did he say whether she was insured or not?” she asked.
“He says she’s not.”
“Then it’d be pretty expensive, wouldn’t it, just going off and
leaving her in the middle of the ocean?”
He frowned. “Yes, but that’s still not what I mean. If she’s
leaking at all, he’d never make port in her alone; she’s too big
for singlehanded sailing, to say nothing of being at the pump
all the time. He almost has to abandon her, but not the way he
did. I keep getting the feeling he doesn’t want anybody to go
aboard.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. Admittedly, it doesn’t make any sense. But
look—you’ll notice he didn’t turn in until we were under way.
And had cast his dinghy adrift.”
“That was probably just coincidence.”
“Sure. It could be.”
Dead Calm — 28
“You’re going to put our dinghy over?” Rae asked.
“No.” He turned, searching for the other one. He could still
see it when it crested a swell, several hundred yards astern.
“Well pick his up again. No strain, if we get another breeze.”
Saracen had begun to swing around on the swell, to a
southerly and then a southeasterly heading. Ingram stood up
again with the glasses and could see the water beginning to
darken once more to the southward. He looked at his watch. It
had been nearly thirty minutes since Warriner had gone
below. He slipped down the ladder, crossed to the passage
going into the forward compartment, and looked in. Warriner
lay on his back, his eyes closed, breathing heavily.
He came back to the cockpit just as the breeze began to stir
again. It was out of the south, to starboard on the heading
they were on now, and the other yacht lay perhaps a mile and
a half away on the port bow, with the dinghy somewhere in
between. Saracen began to move ahead. He motioned for Rae
to steady up where she was, and stepped forward to search
out the dinghy. In a moment he saw it top a swell almost dead
ahead. There was a long boathook lashed atop the deckhouse.
He slid it free and looked down to windward, hoping the
breeze would continue strong enough to give them steerageway.
As far as he could see the surface was riffled and dark.
He stepped back to the break of the deckhouse and spoke
quietly to Rae. “See it?”
She nodded. “Now and then. When it comes up.”
“Good. We’ll take it on the starboard side.”
Five minutes passed. The breeze faltered but came on again
before they lost steerageway. It was less than fifty yards away
now. Ingram motioned her a little to port and stood ready with
the boathook. The dinghy began to slide past along the
starboard side, less than ten feet off. He hooked it neatly at
the bow, hauled it inward, and got hold of the painter. He led
it aft and made it fast with a grin at Rae. “Nice going.”
It was a run almost downwind now to the other yacht. He
started the main and mizzen sheets and studied her through
the glasses. She was lying on a westerly heading, abeam to
the breeze. “Right just a little,” he said to Rae. “Well come up
astern and lay to about a hundred yards off.”
Dead Calm — 29
The gap began to close slowly, and then more slowly as the
breeze faltered. It stopped altogether, and the sea became like
heaving billows of silk, blinding off to starboard with the glare
of the sun. Then, just before Saracen began to yaw on the
swell, it came on again. The sails filled. The distance was less
than a half-mile now.
“I don’t like that sluggish way she rolls,” Rae said.
“She’s got water in her, all right,” Ingram agreed.
“Are you sure it’s safe to go aboard?”
“Sure. She won’t capsize, with all that keel under her. And
she won’t go under all at once.”
“But suppose you’re below? You might get trapped.”
“I won’t go below if she’s that close. I can tell when I get on
her.”
They were still over two hundred yards away when the
breeze died again. Saracen drifted forward a few yards and
began to wallow as she slewed around. Ingram surveyed the
remaining distance with exasperation, and searched the
horizon on all sides. “Slick as a bald head,” he said and
sheeted the booms in. “This’ll have to do. I’m going aboard.”
“Why not start the engine?” she asked.
“He might wake up.”
“I doubt it.” Then she caught his meaning. “Why? What
difference does it make if he does?”
He hesitated; then he shrugged. “I don’t like the idea of
leaving you on here alone with him. Unless he’s asleep, I
mean.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“I don’t know. It’s stupid, I realize, but there’s just
something about him I don’t quite buy. Not till I know more
about him.”
“Well, of all the worriers.”
He grunted. “You’re probably right. But let him sleep,
anyway.” He loosed the dinghy’s painter and hauled the boat
up alongside. Before he stepped down into it he took a careful
look around the horizon for squalls. It could be highly
dangerous if one made up suddenly while Rae was alone, with
all sail on her. There was nothing, however, that looked even
remotely suspicious. “If you get another whisper of breeze,”
Dead Calm — 30
he said, “work her on down and come about off the stern. I
won’t be long.”
“Right. You will be careful, won’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Wait. Don’t you want to put on that life-jacket?” It was still
lying where Warriner had taken it off.
He grinned. “What for?” Nobody could capsize a dinghy in a
sea like this. At the same time, he wondered why Warriner
had been wearing it. Timing himself with Saracen’s roll, he
stepped lightly down into the dinghy and pushed away from
the side.
It rode like a chip on the oily groundswell, and reflected
sunlight glared in his face as he shipped the oars and began
pulling toward the other yacht. As he drew nearer, he could
see the sails were sloppily furled and that the deck was
littered with an unseamanlike mess of uncoiled and unstowed
lines. The main boom rested on its gallows frame, but the
mizzen swung forlornly back and forth, banging against its
slackened sheets. She was at least six inches below her
normal waterline, he thought, and her movements were heavy
and sluggish, like those of a dying animal, as she lurched over
and back under the punishing rays of the sun. He felt sorry for
her, as he always did for a boat in trouble. He changed course
slightly to pass under her stern and come up on her starboard
side. Her name and home port were spelled out in ornate
black letters edged with gilt against the white paint of her
transom.
Orpheus
SANTA BARBARA
He was still some twenty yards away, rounding her stern,
when he heard a crash from somewhere inside the hull,
followed in a moment by another. Apparently something had
come adrift, a drawer or a locker, and was slamming back and
forth on the water inside her. He pulled quickly up along the
starboard side and, as she rolled down on the swell, caught
one of the lifeline stanchions. After shipping the oars, he
gathered up the painter and stepped on deck. He was near
amidships, opposite the doghouse. As he made the painter fast
he could hear the flow and splash of water inside her hull,
Dead Calm — 31
sweeping from side to side as she rolled. He didn’t like the
feel of her under his feet. Better make it short, he thought.
Aft of the doghouse was a slightly raised deck, enclosed by a
low railing, which extended back almost to the mizzen-mast
and the helmsman’s cockpit. There was a skylight in the
center of this, apparently above the after cabin. It was closed
and secured. He stepped aft, feeling her unsteady lurch as she
rolled, ducked under the main boom, and looked into the
doghouse hatch. There were only four steps leading down,
since the top of it was quite high above the deck outside.
There was no water here, but the deck was covered with a
litter of charts and scratch pads and pencils from a drawer
that had slid out of the chart table on the starboard side. He
came on down the steps and looked quickly around. The port
side and that part of the starboard side forward of the chart
table were taken up with settees covered with some white
plastic material. On racks above the chart table were a
radiotelephone and radio direction-finder.
Aft, beside the steps leading up on deck, was a low doorway,
and amidships at the forward end was another. The latter was
open. He stepped over to it and peered through. Steps led
downward to the main cabin, which was in ruin. At the after
end, on the port side, were a sink, stove, refrigerator, and
stowage cupboards, while to starboard was a table
surrounded on two sides by a leather-covered settee.
Everything was drowned, and the cabin was filled with the
dank odor of wetness and decay. Water at least two feet deep
swirled back and forth, crashing into the stove and
refrigerator and settee and dripping from the bulkheads and
ceiling, all intermingled with rolling cans from some burst
locker, sodden articles of clothing, and books from an emptied
bookshelf. It was sickening. At the forward end was a doorway
which probably opened into a lavatory, and to the left of it a
curtained passage to the forward cabin. He stepped down and
splashed through the swirling debris to the passage and
peered in. The two bunks were rumpled and dripping, and
water rocked back and forth between them. It was just as
Warriner had said. He wondered what he was looking for.
He turned and hurried back to the doghouse. Through the
windows he caught a quick glimpse of Saracen gracefully
riding the groundswell two hundred yards away, still
Dead Calm — 32
becalmed. The mere sight of her was comforting after the ruin
below. The door at the aft end of the doghouse was closed and
secured with a hasp, through the staple of which a pair of
dividers had been dropped. He pulled the dividers out, and as
he turned to toss them on the chart table his eye fell on the
ship’s log, behind a clip on the bulkhead above it. He frowned,
puzzled. Warriner had apparently been telling the truth
otherwise, so why had he lied about that? He’d said the
logbook was pulp, sloshing around in the bilges. And that the
radio and chronometer and sextant were all ruined. Nothing
up here was wet at all. And as water rose in the cabins below,
wouldn’t he have brought his passport and money and other
valuables up here where they’d stay dry? It would be the
natural thing to do. They might be in one of the other drawers
of the chart table. Well, he’d look for them in a minute. He
pushed open the door and peered down into the after cabin.
A dark-haired woman who appeared at first glance to be
completely nude was huddled on the far end of the right-hand
bunk, her back against the bulkhead at the foot of it and her
legs drawn up under her chin as if to get as far as possible
from the door. One hand was up to her mouth and her eyes
were wide with fear, which changed to amazement and
disbelief as she stared into his face. She cried out, “Stop!
Stop, it’s not him!” And in the same fraction of a second
Ingram saw the other one reflected in the panel mirror
mounted on the after bulkhead between the bunks. A man was
standing just below him, to the left of the steps leading down,
a big man, naked from the waist up, with a broad, beardstubbled
face smeared pink with diluted blood running down
from a wound somewhere in the sodden mess of his hair. In
his upraised hand was a billet of wood, apparently the end of a
drawer he’d pulled from under one of the bunks and smashed.
He’d been poised to bring it down on Ingram’s head, and
when the girl’s piercing outcry stopped him he tried to
recover. At the same moment Orpheus lurched over to
starboard, and he fell into the water washing back and forth
across the cabin sole. He pushed himself to a sitting position
in the water with his back against the other bunk, brushed a
hand across his bloody face, and looked up at Ingram with a
hard and bitter grip.
“Welcome to Happy Valley,” he said. “Where’s the All-
American psycho?”
Dead Calm — 33
“Get on deck!” Ingram snapped. “Ill be back.” He whirled
and plunged up the steps into the open, ducked under the
main boom, and dropped into the dinghy. His hands fumbled
as he loosed the painter. Two explosive strokes with the oars
brought him into the clear past Orpheus’s stern, where he
could see across to Saracen. Her position was unchanged
except that she had swung around and was lying broadside to.
Rae was alone in the cockpit.
He breathed softly and dug in the oars, feeling sweat begin
to run down into his eyes. He came up the broad slope of a
swell and ran down the other side like some frenzied, twolegged
waterbeetle in flight for its life. It’s all right, he told
himself. It’s all right. There’s no reason the crazy son of a
bitch would wake up. Then, across a hundred and fifty yards
of open water, he heard the growl of the starter. Rae was
coming to pick him up.
Dead Calm — 34
4
He tried to signal to her. At the risk of capsizing, he stood up
in the dinghy and frantically sliced the air in horizontal
sweeps of his opened hands, but she was bent over the
controls now and didn’t see. The starter growled again, and
this time the engine started with a coughing backfire that
spread gooseflesh between his shoulderblades. One of his oars
started to slide overboard. He grabbed it and dropped to the
seat again. Muscles writhed across his back as he dug them in
and lunged, flinging the dinghy up the side of the swell. He
was to blame. She’d been watching with the glasses and had
seen the way he’d exploded out of the doghouse and run
across the deck, and, knowing only that there was something
urgent about his getting back, was trying to help. Saracen was
swinging now, under way and foreshortened as she began to
bear down upon him. The gap was only a hundred yards, and
closing. Some of the fear began to leave him. It was going to
be all right. He heard her cut back the throttle and drop the
engine out of gear. Then when he turned his head again he
felt himself grow cold all over. There was a spot of golden
color just to the left of the lined-up masts. It was Warriner’s
head. He was standing on the companion ladder, looking aft.
Nothing seemed to move. There was a piercing clarity about
every detail of the scene—the foreshortened hull pointed
toward him, the little curl of bow wave under her forefoot, the
tall spires of Orion achingly white against the sky, and just
Dead Calm — 35
this side of Rae’s face that spot of gold like a medallion poised
on edge above the cambered top of the deckhouse—but the
whole thing was frozen like a single frame of motion-picture
film with the projector jammed. Saracen was seventy-five
yards away, with Warriner’s head just beginning to turn. A
few seconds either way could decide it, but they were
something over which he no longer had any control.
Maybe nothing would happen. Maybe he actually had
forgotten the people he’d locked in there to drown. Or if he’d
really been asleep, maybe his reaction time would be off just
enough to make the difference— The film jerked then,
between the down-thrust oars and the stroke, and the
projector began to run. Warriner’s head swung on around, and
he saw the dinghy and the sinking Orpheus beyond. He leaped
the rest of the way into the cockpit, and his figure merged
with Rae’s.
Ingram heard the engine race, still out of gear. It slowed
and came back up again almost in the same instant, with the
load on it now. Which way would he turn? At the risk of a
fraction of a second’s raggedness in the beat of the oars, he
had to turn his head and look. Saracen loomed over him less
than four lengths away, the gap closing faster now as she
gathered speed, but she was already beginning to swing to
starboard. He dug in his left oar and spun the dinghy around
almost at right angles to cut across her course.
Saracen, in a hard-over right turn, was on his left now. He
could see Rae fighting to reach the ignition switch. Warriner,
holding the wheel with one hand, threw her back. She fell to
her knees on the short section of deck aft of the cockpit, but
sprang up and flung herself on him again. Ingram’s eyes stung
with sweat, and the oars were bending as he threw the dinghy
forward. The engine roared at full throttle; Saracen’s bow was
swinging off faster now than he was gaining, but the stern was
still coming down toward him. Twenty yards … fifteen … The
locked and struggling figures in the cockpit suddenly burst
apart. Warriner’s fist swung, and Ingram saw her fall. She lay
in a crumpled heap on the afterdeck, unmoving, one arm
dangling over the stern as if she were calling out for help. Ten
yards … four … three … The turn was completed now, and the
stern was beginning to draw away from him. He gave one
more desperate heave on the oars, stood up, and flung himself
Dead Calm — 36
at the rail. The dinghy kicked backward under him. His
outstretched hands were two feet short, and then he was in
the churning white water under the quarter.
He was already behind the propeller, or he might have lost
an arm. He felt the solid kick of the water thrown back from it
whirl him over, and then his head was above surface and
Saracen’s stern was ten yards away. It dipped as her bow rose
to an oncoming swell, and for an instant he could see Rae’s
figure face down on the afterdeck, her hair very dark against
the bleached and weathered teak. “Jump!” he yelled. “Jump!
Get off!” She lay motionless.
For the first time in his life at sea he completely lost his
head. It lasted for only a moment, and when he realized what
he was doing, that he was threshing madly at the water, trying
to swim after Saracen’s receding stern, he got control of the
panic inside him and brought himself up. Lifting his face
above water, he roared out once more with all his remaining
breath, “Jump, Rae! Jump!” The limp and dangling arm was
his only answer. She was either badly hurt or unconscious.
The dinghy was behind him. Both oars had slipped
overboard. He found them, threw them back in, and lifted
himself in over the transom. He was more scared than he had
ever been in his life, and the whole scene came to him through
the winy haze of a desire to get his hands on Warriner and kill
him, but there was no time to give way to futile emotion. He
whirled the dinghy about and sent it racing across the two
hundred yards of open water toward Orpheus, trying not even
to think except of what he had to do, as if it were an exercise.
Saracen was going straight away, and he could still see Rae’s
figure on the stern.
He turned his head. The man and woman had come on deck
and were standing just aft of the doghouse, watching him. He
shot the dinghy across the few remaining yards, slammed into
Orpheus’s port side, and pulled in the oars. Neither of them
had made a move to take the painter. He grabbed it himself,
leaped on deck, and made it fast. “Have you got any glasses?”
he asked.
The man grinned bleakly. “You didn’t seem to do any better
than we did. Maybe you have to be crazy yourself to outguess
him.”
Dead Calm — 37
Ingram caught himself just short of smashing him in the face
—not because the man was already hurt or because he was
probably in no way to blame, but merely because it would
waste time. “Binoculars?” he asked again. “Where are they?”
The man jerked a thumb toward the doghouse. “Rack, just
inside the door.” But the woman had already taken a step
down the ladder and reached for them. Ingram lifted them
from her hand without thanks, without even seeing her, and
whirled, bringing them to bear on Saracen. She was still going
straight away on the same course. As he adjusted the knob,
she leaped sharply into focus, every detail distinct. Rae still
lay huddled on the afterdeck, as far as he could tell in the
same position. Warriner was at the wheel, looking forward,
apparently into the binnacle. Maybe he had forgotten she was
there. Then Ingram realized the futility of any conjecture as to
what went on in Warriner’s mind. “Have you got a spare
compass?” he asked without lowering the binoculars. “Boat
compass, or a telltale in one of the cabins—”
“There’s a little one in a box in the chartroom,” the man
said.
“Get it,” Ingram ordered, “and set it in the dinghy. Then put
your azimuth ring on the steering compass and keep calling
out the bearing of that boat.”
“And what’s all that jazz for?” the man asked. He hadn’t
moved.
Ingram lowered the glasses then and looked at him for the
first time. “You do what I tell you to, you son of a bitch,” he
said, “and do it now. My wife’s still on there. If he throws her
overboard, I want to know where. And if I don’t get to her in
time because I didn’t have a course, and a compass in that
dinghy, you’ll go next.”
“Just a minute, friend—” the man began, but Ingram had
already turned away and locked the glasses on Saracen again.
She was at least a half-mile away; he could still see Rae lying
on deck, but less clearly now. He heard the woman say, “Oh,
stop it; just do as he says. You find the compass, and I’ll get
the azimuth ring.” He paid no attention. He was trying to
make a cold appraisal of the several possibilities while at the
same time struggling in the back of his mind with the dark
animal of fear. This might be the last time he would ever see
her, this dwindling spot of color fading away toward the outer
Dead Calm — 38
limit of binoculars, but that was something he couldn’t think
about. If he lost his head, there was no chance at all.
She must be still unconscious, because as far as he could
tell she hadn’t moved. If Warriner threw her over now, while
she was still out, she’d drown. The longer he waited, the more
chance there was she’d be conscious and able to swim, but on
the other hand, the farther out she was, the more it increased
the odds against finding her in time, even with a compass
course to follow. In a dinghy you were too low in the water,
with a groundswell that was running higher than your head.
And he had to see when it happened.
It was already growing difficult to make out the deck. He
was too low. He tore his eyes away from the glasses long
enough to leap up on the doghouse and brace his legs against
the doomed and melancholy rolling of the boat, and for an
instant he was conscious again of the forlorn banging of her
gear and the rushing sound of water inside the hull. If he got
her back, they’d only drown together when this derelict finally
gave up and died. Well, you could only take one thing at a
time.
Somebody was calling him from the cockpit. It was the
woman. “Bearing 240 degrees.”
“Thanks,” he said, without looking around. It was difficult to
hold the glasses steady enough now to make out the figures
on deck; Warriner must be still running the engine at nearly
full throttle, to be that far away. Rae was still there, but in
another few minutes he wouldn’t be able to see her at all. But
if Warriner let go the wheel long enough to put her over,
Saracen would swing around; that he’d be able to see.
“No change. Still 240,” the woman said.
“Right—” Minutes dragged by. He lost all track of time. His
arms ached, trying to hold the glasses still. The sun beat down
on his head, and he could feel sweat run in little rivulets
across his face. He could no longer see Saracen’s deck at all,
but her course continued straight on toward the southwest
without a bobble. She must be still there…
“Still 240.”
It was hopeless now; he might as well admit it. Even if he
knew exactly where it happened, the odds were astronomical
against finding her in time at that distance. It would take the
Dead Calm — 39
dinghy three-quarters of an hour to get there, and even the
slightest deviation from the course would increase the area by
square miles of rolling ocean, all of it exactly alike.
“That’ll do for the moment,” he called out to the woman.
“Your auxiliary’s under water? I mean, it won’t run at all?”
“No,” she said. “It’s completely submerged. There’s no fuel,
anyway; we used it all.”
He swung the glasses, searching for signs of wind. It would
take a half-gale, he thought, to move this cistern through the
water, even if they could keep it afloat. As far as he could see
in every direction, the surface was as slick as oil. Saracen was
hull down, fading over the rim of the horizon. Swept by fear
for Rae and black rage at his own helplessness, he wanted to
curse and slam the binoculars through the doghouse roof.
Instead, he leaped down on deck and turned to the man, who
was in the cockpit beside the woman. “How long have you
been pumping?”
“It’s been getting a little worse every day for the past two
weeks,” the other replied.
“And you haven’t been able to hold it at all, or locate the
leaks?”
“I think all her seams are opening up. We could keep up
with it at first by pumping two or three hours a day. After a
while it took six. And for the past thirty-six hours there’s been
somebody on the pump every minute—that is, till around
sunup this morning, when he slugged me and locked us in
there. No warning at all—the crazy bastard just blew his
gasket and tried to kill us—”
Ingram cut him off. “We haven’t got time for the story of
your life. How bad’s that cut on your head?”
The other shrugged. “I’ll live. Long enough to drown,
anyway.”
“Better have it looked after.” Ingram addressed the woman.
“Take him below and clean it and put Mercurochrome or
something on it. If it needs stitches, cut the hair away, and
call me—I mean, if you’ve got sutures and a needle. When you
come back, bring up two buckets and a couple of pieces of line
eight or ten feet long.”
“What for?” the man asked.
Dead Calm — 40
Ingram turned toward him. “That’s twice you’ve asked me
that when I told you to do something. Don’t do it again.”
The other’s grin hardened. “So don’t throw your weight so
hard, sport; you might throw it overboard. You may be
Captain Bligh on your own boat—”
Ingram walked back to the break of the raised deck and
stood looking down at him. “You finished?”
“For the moment. Why?”
“I’m going to tell you, if you’re sure you’ve said all you’ve
got to say. You mentioned my boat.” He gestured bleakly
toward the southwest. “There it goes. My wife’s on it, with a
maniac, unless he’s already killed her. I don’t know what he is
to you, and I don’t care, but he came off this boat, if you follow
me. So let’s understand each other, once and for all; we’re
going after him in this tub if we have to walk and carry it on
our backs, and it’s going to stay afloat if you have to drink the
water out of it with a straw. I haven’t got time to kiss you or
draw you a diagram every time I tell you to do something, so
don’t ask me any questions. And I’m pretty close to the edge,
so don’t bump me. That clear now?”
There was no fear in the other’s eyes and no bluster, only
that hard-bitten humor. “Sounds fair enough, sport, if you
know what you’re doing. But be sure you do; I’m allergic to
stupid orders.”
“Right,” Ingram said. “How about the radio?”
“Kaput.”
“The receiver too?”
“Yeah. Whole thing was powered by the main batteries.”
“Why didn’t you bring the batteries up here somewhere
before the water covered them? That occur to you?”
“They were already discharged. No more gas for the
generator.”
No power, no radio, no lights, Ingram thought bitterly. “All
right. Go fix your head. And don’t be gone all day.”
They went below. He turned to the pump, which was located
against the after side of the doghouse. It had a stirrup handle
which was normally covered by a plate flush with the surface
of the deck when stowed, but the plate was off now, the
handle extending upward. Warriner was up here alone,
Dead Calm — 41
pumping, when he sighted us, he thought. But instead of
calling the others, he slugged the man and locked them in the
cabin. Why? He muttered savagely and grabbed the handle;
there was no time to waste wondering about the motivations
of a psychopath. It was a good pump that could lift a lot of
water, and there was no indication of its being clogged. He
could hear the water going overboard in a solid-sounding
stream as his back bent and straightened.
He started to think of Rae and then tried furiously to make
his mind go blank. He’d go crazy. He stepped up the tempo of
his pumping. Where the hell were those two? Were they going
to take the rest of the summer? Then he realized they hadn’t
been gone five minutes. They came back up, carrying two tenquart
buckets, one of them apparently the gurry-bucket from
the galley. The man was carrying a length of small line. The
blood was washed from his face, and he was wearing a
Mexican straw hat with an untrimmed and unbound brim, to
protect his head from the sun. “No hemstitching necessary,”
he said.
“Okay. Take the pump a minute,” Ingram directed.
“Jawohl, mein Führer.” He grabbed the handle as Ingram let
go, and began throwing a hard, steady stream of water over
the side. Ingram glanced at him as he stepped back to the
cockpit. Clown? Hard case? Idiot? What difference did it
make? The azimuth ring was still on the compass. When
Orpheus rose to a swell he got a snap bearing of the tiny
feather-tip of white that was all that remained now of
Saracen’s mainsail. It was 242 degrees. Apparently Warriner
was still holding the same course. What did that mean?
Anything, or nothing, he thought. Dealing with a deranged
mind—what was the use even trying to guess?
The ventilating hatch above the after cabin was closed and
secured with a steel pin. He slid the pin out and threw the
cover all the way back on deck. The opening was on the
centerline, directly above the space between the two bunks
below. The other two watched, the man continuing to pump,
while he grabbed up the line, cut off a piece about eight feet
long, and made one end fast to one of the buckets. He
dropped it through the opening, gave a flip of the line to
upend it as it landed in the water swirling back and forth
across the cabin sole, and hauled it up again hand over hand.
Dead Calm — 42
He pivoted and threw the water over the side. It was going to
work, but it was awkward because of the main boom, which
was directly over the opening. He freed the end of it from its
notch in the center of the gallows frame, shoved it out to the
end, and lashed it. It was all right now. He could stand right
over the hatch with his legs on opposite sides. He dropped the
bucket again, filled it, and flung the water overboard.
“Okay, let your wife take the pump,” he said to the man.
“That’s a little easier. You bail here.”
The man made a burlesque bow to the woman, with a
flourish toward the pump. “Pamela, little helpmeet—”
“Shut up,” she said. She began pumping. There was
something puzzling about the exchange. Ingram didn’t know
what it was—or care.
He handed the man the bucket. “You know how to dip water
at the end of a fine?”
“Well, I once poured some out of a boot. Not that I like to
brag—”
“Have at it,” Ingram said.
The bucket landed on its side, shipped a pint of water, came
upright, and floated. After yanking the line back and forth a
half-dozen times, the man succeeded finally in sinking it. He
hauled the water up.
“I meant without taking all day,” Ingram said. “Look.” He
demonstrated, flipping the bucket so it landed in a dipping
position and came up full all in one motion. “I want five or six
buckets a minute out of there.”
“Think it’ll do any good?”
“I don’t know,” Ingram replied curtly. “But you haven’t been
able to keep up with it with the pump alone. If we don’t gain
on it this way, put on your swim trunks. The nearest land’s
over that way, twelve hundred miles.”
“Geez, don’t scare me like that. For a minute I thought you
said twelve thousand.”
Ingram turned away without reply and gathered up the
other bucket and the rest of the line. Between the forward
side of the doghouse and the foot of the mainmast was
another hatch, secured with dogs. He kicked the dogs loose
with his feet and opened it. It was over the centerline of the
Dead Calm — 43
main cabin, and in the dim light below he could see the debrisladen
water pouring mournfully back and forth as Orpheus
rolled. He made the line fast to the bucket and dropped it. He
hauled it up, full, and threw the water overboard. This near
the mainmast, the boom was in his way, and he had to crouch
to avoid it. It was uncomfortable, and after a while it would be
back-breaking.
Drop … haul … turn … throw … He counted. It was nine
seconds. Call it a conservative six buckets a minute—ten a
minute between them. They were ten-quart buckets, twenty
pounds of water. Six tons of water an hour, with maybe half
that much more from the pump. They’d soon know how fast it
was coming in; if they didn’t lower it this way, and damned
fast, they were done for. They couldn’t keep up this pace for
very long, all three of them working at once. Somebody had to
sleep, and if they ever got a breeze one had to be at the wheel.
There was something else that had to be done, too, within
the next few minutes. He straightened, looking down toward
the southwest. There was no trace now of Saracen; she was
gone over the horizon. He reached up and unshackled the
halyard from the head of the mainsail and made a sling from
what was left of the line they’d brought up, leaving a free end
about four feet long. He shackled the sling to the end of the
halyard, retrieved the binoculars, and slung them about his
neck.
I’ll need both of you for a few minutes,” he called out to the
man. They came forward. “Think you can hoist me to the top
of the mast?”
“Sure.” The other looked up at the spar swinging its dizzy
arc across the sky. “Better you than me.”
“Why not me?” the woman asked. “I’m the lightest.”
Ingram shook his head. “It’s not easy. If you lost the mast
it’d beat you to jelly before we could get you down.”
He didn’t like the prospect himself, with Orpheus rolling her
rails under and two people he didn’t know on the other end of
the line, but there was no help for it. He loosed the halyard
fall from the pin on the forward side of the mast. “Keep a turn
around the pin,” he said. “And take it slow. When I get up to
the spreaders I’ll tell you when to stop and when to heave.”
Dead Calm — 44
He climbed atop the boom, stepped into the sling, took a
turn around the mast with the free end of the line, and made it
fast to the shackle. “Okay. Hoist away.” The halyard came
taut, with his weight suspended in the sling, and he began to
move upward in short jerks, two or three feet at a time, with
his legs locked around it while he pulled upward with his
arms. The first twenty feet were not too bad, but as he
continued to mount his arc increased, both in distance and in
velocity, with the resultant snap at the end more abrupt and
punishing. He reached the spreaders, the horizontal members
extending out at right angles to the mast. This was the
dangerous part. He had to cast off his safety belt momentarily
in order to pass it around the mast above them.
“Hold it a minute,” he called out. With both legs and one
arm locked around the mast, he worked at the knot with his
free hand. It came loose. If he lost his grip now he’d swing out
and then back against the mast with enough force to break his
skull. The mast swung down to starboard, snapped abruptly at
the end, and came back. His arms and legs were slick with
sweat, almost frictionless against the varnished surface. He
changed arms, caught the dangling piece of line with his right
hand, passed it up over the spreader and around the mast.
Gripping the mast with his right arm again, he made the end
of the line fast once more to the shackle with his left hand,
working solely by feel.
“Up easy,” he called out. “Slow. About two feet.”
He came up, got one leg across the spreader, and then the
other. “Okay, hoist away.” He went on up. Three feet from the
masthead light and the blocks at the top of the mast, he called
out, “That’ll do. Make it fast.” He hoped they knew how.
This was no place for a queasy stomach, he thought. It was
like riding a bucking horse making forty feet at a bound. While
he was groping for the binoculars he looked down at the deck
sixty feet below. Most of the time he was out over the water;
he crossed the deck only through the vertical sector of his
swing from one side to the other. The centrifugal force at the
end of the roll when the mast stopped abruptly and started
back felt as if it were going to tear him loose and hurl him
outward like a projectile from a catapult.
He brought the binoculars up with both arms wrapped about
the mast, and swept them along the line of the horizon off to
Dead Calm — 45
port. At first he was afraid he’d waited too long. Then his
pulse leaped. There she was, a minute sliver of white poised
just over the rim of the world.
“If you’re made fast down there,” he called out, “one of you
give me the heading.”
“We can’t see her from down here,” the man yelled back.
“No. I mean our heading. How are we lying?”
The woman went aft and peered into the binnacle. “Twonine-
oh,” she shouted up at him.
He looked down at the deck, estimating the angle on the
bow. Call it four points, he thought. Forty-five from two-ninety
left two-forty-five. Saracen’s bearing had remained practically
unchanged from the first. Warriner was apparently headed for
the Marquesas.
If he had thought to fool them by changing course after he
was over the horizon, the chances were he would have already
done it. Orpheus, with her bare masts, had long since dropped
from sight from over there, and he’d probably assume he was
equally invisible. Or would he? Just because he was
unbalanced or mentally sick didn’t mean he had to be stupid.
Witness that story he’d made up about the deaths from
botulism.
He put the glasses back to his eyes. The little point of white
thinned and disappeared, then came up again. Was she still on
there? What was happening now, or had happened already?
He closed his eyes for an instant and prayed. When he opened
them and looked through the glasses again, Saracen was gone
over the curvature of the earth. He looked around at the
slickly heaving, empty miles of the equatorial Pacific
shimmering under the sun without even the suspicion of a
breeze and felt sick. Automatically he glanced at his watch to
note the time. It was 9:50.
Dead Calm — 46