Dead Calm — 136
She dropped the blanket beside her on the ladder and
brought up the gun, pushing the safety button forward. The
barrels reached up and out, resting on the coaming in front of
her, and when she put her shoulder against the stock and
sighted along them they were pointing just slightly to one side
of his face. She moved them over, and when she closed her
left eye they were lined up, foreshortened and centered on his
forehead ten feet in front of her. She could no longer breathe
at all. Her right index finger, like some great unwieldy
sausage, came in against the gun, felt the forward edge of the
trigger guard, slipped back around it, inside, and lay against
the trigger. All she had to do was pull. She tried.
She closed both eyes and let her head fall forward, wanting
help from somewhere, but there was no help; she was alone,
and if it was to be done she had to do it. When she opened her
eyes and looked along the barrels again, the beautiful, hated,
mad, impervious head was still there on the ends of them like
a permanent decoration installed in a moment of gruesome
whimsy by some gunsmith gone mad himself. She tried once
more to pull the trigger, and then came down from the ladder
with the gun, remembering just in time to push the safety
back before she sank down at the foot of it. She couldn’t even
cry. There were no tears left.
In a few minutes she had strength enough again to gather
up the gun and blanket and go back inside the forward cabin
with them. She unloaded the gun, dropped it on the bunk, and
put the two shells back in the box. That ended it. She knew
now. Not even to save John’s life could she assassinate in cold
blood a boy who didn’t know what he was doing.
Or had she actually proved that? she wondered. Maybe all
she’d really proved was that she couldn’t do it now, at one
p.m., still five hours before the deadline, the point of no
return. What about then, when she knew she was renouncing
all hope of ever seeing him again? But she was too tired, too
emptied to think about it now. She had to rest. She sat down
on the edge of the bunk, and almost immediately, as the
tension uncoiled inside her, she remembered that strange
pause or hesitation when she was reaching into the drawer for
the shells. Something had been trying to get her attention
through the protective armor of concentration. What was it?
Dead Calm — 137
It had to be one of the things she’d seen in the drawer. The
medicine kit! That was it. But why? Was there some
connection with that story Warriner had told about the deaths
from’ botulism and his vain attempts to treat it? No-o. But,
wait. She had it then. The narcotics! Hope blossomed, and
then just as suddenly it was gone and she sank back into the
depths. Of course there was morphine in the kit, and a
hypodermic syringe, but what good was it? It was hardly likely
Warriner was going to let her stick a needle in his arm and
inject him full of opiates. She stopped. Inject? No. There was
something else. Then she sat upright. Codeine! There was a
bottle of codeine tablets in it.
She ran out into the after cabin and yanked open the
drawer. The medicine kit was in a wooden box with a hinged
cover. She threw the cover up and began searching hurriedly
through the bottles, plastic vials, and small cardboard cartons.
Aspirin, paregoric, iodine, aureomycin, alcohol, sulfa, sutures
—here, this was it. It was a small, square-shouldered bottle
with a screw top, its neck stuffed with cotton. She lifted it out
and read the typewritten label. “One tablet for relief of pain.
Do not repeat within six hours.”
There seemed to be fifteen or twenty in it. One, she thought,
would make you very drowsy, depending on individual
tolerance. She had no idea what a lethal dose would be, but
probably anything above four or five might be fatal even to a
young man in the prime of life such as Warriner. She didn’t
want to kill him, even in this painless and unmessy way, but
on the other hand, too small a dose would be worse than none
at all. It would only warn him that he’d been drugged. Three,
she thought; that should be safe enough both ways. But how
to administer it?
In food, or in something to drink? There’d probably be less
chance of his suspecting anything if it were in something to
eat. She could pulverize three of them, mix the powder with
canned potted ham or something equally spicy to cover the
taste, and make a sandwich of it. No, she thought then. The
chances were he was going to be suspicious of anything she
offered him. Irrational he might be, but he was no fool. She
thought for a moment. Then she saw the answer, and she
smiled for the first time in four hours.
Dead Calm — 138
She slammed the drawer shut and strode back to the galley
section of the cabin. Having shaken three of the tablets from
the bottle, she set them on the tiny drainboard shelf next to
the sink and reached up into the stowage racks for a glass.
She took two teaspoons from a drawer, set one of the tablets
in one spoon and used the heel of the other to crush it,
pressing them between her fingers. She dropped the resultant
powder in the glass and was reaching for the second tablet
when she felt Saracen go into a hard left turn and at the same
time roll down to starboard. Both the glass and the bottle of
codeine tablets started to slide. She caught the glass, but the
bottle escaped her and fell on deck. It didn’t break, but it
rolled and slid all the way across to the starboard side, spilling
the tablets as it went. She set the glass in the sink, so it
couldn’t roll off too, and went lunging after the bottle. She had
it and was down on her knees picking up the scattered tablets
at the foot of the companion ladder when Warriner screamed
just above her. He was already in the hatch, coming down the
ladder.
She sprang to her feet and wheeled to run, but it was too
late. When she slid through the doorway into the forward
cabin he was right behind her and there was no time even to
close the door. Trapped now, she turned, seeing the agony of
his face and trying to will herself not to fight him. “It was a
shark!” he cried out. He caught both her arms in a grip that
made them hurt. “It was a shark!” And while she was still
struggling with the panic inside her, she began to grasp that
he hadn’t come down here to attack her. He wanted help,
comfort, something he thought she could give him, and if she
could soothe him, or at least keep from antagonizing him, she
might survive this crisis too. And it would be the last one.
Then she remembered she still had the opened bottle of
codeine tablets in her hand. She shoved the hand down beside
her thigh to keep them out of sight.
“Don’t you see, it was the shark!” Then Saracen, running at
full throttle with no one at the wheel, careened off the side of
a swell and went into another hard turn. They lost their
balance in the welter of sailbags and cases of stores around
the door, and she fell backward onto the bunk. She sat up.
Warriner dropped to his knees between the bunks and pressed
his face into her lap, encircling her legs with his arms. His
Dead Calm — 139
shoulders shook. Her left hand was free, but the other,
holding the bottle, was trapped by his arms.
She reached down and gently stroked his head. “Of course it
was the shark, Hughie.”
He raised his head then and looked up at her, and while his
eyes were still wild there was nothing dangerous in them. On
the contrary, they were almost beseeching, like those of a
frightened child. The words began to pour out, tumbling over
each other. “It was a big hammerhead, over twelve feet long. I
tried to drive it away. I tried to save her. I hit—I hit it on the
nose. But she was up on the surface, splashing too much. If
she’d come down where I was—they won’t bother you under
the water, you know that, everybody does—but she wouldn’t
dive. It was horrible, the shark cut her in two, the water was
all bloody…”
She had no idea what he was talking about, but what he
wanted was plain enough. He was asking her for exoneration.
It was the other boy who’d started the fight or had thrown the
football through Mrs. Cramer’s window. She stroked his head
again. “It wasn’t your fault, Hughie. Of course it was terrible,
but you did everything you could.”
His arms had relaxed their grip around her legs, and she
was able to slide her right hand free. While he was still
looking up at her face, she brought it up the side of her thigh
and shoved the bottle into the pocket of the Bermuda shorts.
She sighed. He hadn’t seen it.
“You believe me, don’t you?” he asked.
“Of course I believe you,” she said.
“I knew you would. Somehow I knew it.” He hugged her legs
again, almost as if in gratitude, and pressed his face against
her knees. His voice was almost normal as he went on, “You
won’t leave me, will you? It’s so awful—” He stopped.
She glanced down. He had raised his head again, but this
time he was looking at something behind her on the bunk. It
was the shotgun. She felt the chill of gooseflesh spread up her
back. He went on staring, and then he whispered, “You were
going to kill me.”
“No. Hughie, no. Listen—please, it’s not even loaded.”
He still hadn’t moved, and his voice was no louder than
before. “You want to kill me too.”
Dead Calm — 140
He reached around behind her and slowly pulled it out by
the barrels. There was nowhere she could run, nothing she
could do. There wasn’t even anything in her mind except the
bitterness of the thought that after four hours she’d been
within a few minutes of winning, and now she’d lost. Maybe
the fear would come in a minute. She was simply too tired to
handle more than one thing at a time.
With a wild outcry he lunged to his feet then and swung the
gun against the side of the boat. The stock splintered and
broke off against an oaken frame above and behind her head.
She ducked down between the bunks as he swung again—not
even at her, as far as she could tell, but merely in some fury of
destruction directed against the gun itself. The barrels rang
against the upright pipe of the bunk frame. He beat it twice
more against the pipe and threw it behind him, into the after
cabin. Above the noise of the engine she heard it slide and
bounce along the deck and crash into something, probably the
ladder at the after end. At the same moment, while he was
turning and off balance, Saracen rolled down and the bow
swung off on another violent change of course. He fell over
against the bulkhead beside the door and slid down atop the
sailbag behind which the compass was wedged. He was on his
feet almost immediately, facing her. When she’d seen him lose
his balance she’d started to scramble up, hoping to get out the
door, but there wasn’t time. He was right beside it. There was
nowhere to go, anyway. She sat down on the bunk again,
trying to conceal her fear. Don’t fight him, she thought; don’t
try to run. Her only chance to survive was to use her weapons
instead of his; there was a lost and frightened boy inside the
maniac, and maybe she could reach him. And he could already
have killed her with the gun barrels, but he hadn’t.
He stared at her wildly for a moment and had taken a step
toward her, when he turned, as if he’d remembered
something. When he bent over the sailbag she knew what it
was. He’d seen the compass when he fell, and the scratch pad
with its penciled notations of the course. He lifted the
compass out and with another cry of fury he turned and threw
it against the starboard side of the cabin. The box splintered,
and it fell to the deck in a ruin of broken glass and spilled
alcohol.
Dead Calm — 141
Then, before he even had a chance to look back at her, she
said gently, “Hughie, come here.” When the frenzied eyes
swung around and fastened on her, she touched her knees,
where his head had rested before.
“You wanted to kill me!” he cried out. His hands clenched
and opened, and he took a step toward her, coming between
her and the door. She saw the hands come up level with her
throat, but there was a faint uncertainty or hesitation in his
movements now, and she’d detected just a trace of defiance in
the outcry. Without that, perhaps she couldn’t have found the
self-control to do it. She continued to look up at him with
perfect serenity.
“Don’t be silly, Hughie,” she said. “You know I wouldn’t hurt
you.” She wasn’t sure herself how she accomplished it, but the
tone was squarely on pitch, the voice of all the mothers in the
world, firm but still gentle, compassionate, and forgiving. She
touched her knees again and said, “Come here, dear.”
He came with a rush then. He fell to his knees before her
with his face pressed against her legs, and he was crying
uncontrollably.
The strength drained out of her, but she managed to remain
erect while she gently stroked his head. The clatter of the
engine went on. Saracen pitched, and the bow swung off onto
another tangent in her blind flight across the surface of the
sea. Part of it had been luck, she thought, in that the first,
compulsive outburst had been directed against the shotgun,
but she knew she could control him now. She had nothing
more to fear from him. Except that she still couldn’t make him
go back. But the codeine would take care of that.
Then she remembered the compass and looked across to the
opposite side of the cabin, where spilled alcohol still dripped
down the planking of the hull. Well, she thought wearily, there
must be some answer to that too; she’d think of it in a minute.
Apparently after four hours of improvising and feeling your
way along the rim of disaster you began to develop a belief
there was always another handhold just beyond.
Dead Calm — 142
14
Russell Bellew had been dreaming he was packing into the
Bitterroot country again for elk when he awoke and he was
back on that sinking abortion of a boat and the Duchess of
California was poking his shoulder with a pair of rulers. She
was looking down at him with that usual expression of hers, as
if he were something that had just crawled out of the drain in
a bus-station washroom. What the good Duchess needed,
besides being knocked on her can a few times, was exactly
what she’d have had this morning in about five more minutes
if Goldilocks hadn’t sighted that other boat and come charging
down there with his club just as he got her pinned down on
the bunk. Rub it on him for practice, would she?
“Madam called?” he asked.
“Ingram said to wake you.”
He loved that bit with the rulers. He slid a hand up the back
of her thigh and squeezed. “You should have used a longer
stick.”
“Obviously.” There was no attempt to draw back, or hit him,
and she didn’t even bother to change expression. “Then you
are awake?”
He sat up. “What does Hotspur want now?”
“There’s a squall coming up.”
“So?”
Dead Calm — 143
“So the bird of time has but a little way to fly—”
“Shove it.”
She tore him off about three-sixteenths of an inch of another
supercilious smile, dropped it in his eye, and said, “Yes, of
course.” She went back on deck.
Cuddly type, the good Duchess. But somebody should have
warned her before this that nobody was quite as hard as she
thought she was. No doubt she was a better man than drat
boar’s tit she was married to, but she was in for a shock when
she found out what it’s really like out there when they take the
cover off and let you look in. When that ocean started
climbing up her leg she’d be screaming her tonsils loose. He
didn’t like to think about it himself. Well, it couldn’t be any
worse than jumping into France in the dark with those
jugheads down there waiting for you. But that was a long time
back. Sport, that was a long time back.
But, hell, you had to look on the bright side. Think about
Hughie-boy. He wasn’t going to drown. It brought the lump
right up there in your throat just thinking that Mama’s
precious made it up the ladder before he chopped it loose.
And he only had to kill four people to do it. But we don’t mind,
do we, fellows?
He went up on deck…
It was 5:10 p.m. when the sun was blotted out and the squall
burst around them. Ingram clung to the pump and looked
along the deck in the fury of spray and horizontal, wind-hurled
rain. Mrs. Warriner and Bellew crouched in the lee of the
deckhouse, seeking the little protection they could find. Mrs.
Warriner’s hair was plastered to her head and face, and
Bellew’s Mexican hat was long since gone, blown overboard in
the first onslaught of the wind. The deckhouse hatch was
closed, as well as the two where they’d been bailing, and he
and Bellew had lifted the dinghy aboard and lashed it. There
was nothing else you could do. Except pray, and keep
pumping.
Now that they were inside it, where all directions were the
same and visibility was cut to a few yards, perspective was
gone and there was no way of telling which way it was moving
or how far they were from the edge, but he believed from
having watched it as it made up that the worst of it was
passing to the northward of them—for what that was worth. It
Dead Calm — 144
wasn’t the wind itself he was afraid of; it was the sea, and that
was the same all around them.
It was high, steep-sided, and confused, fighting the groundswell
running up from the south. Orpheus had too little
freeboard now, and she was too heavy-bellied and sluggish to
ride with the punch and escape any of the beating she was
taking. She pitched, lurched over, and was swept from bow to
stern by every breaking sea, wallowing helplessly like some
huge but mortally wounded animal. She rolled down too far
and hung, pinned there on her beam ends for long moments
by the inertia of the water inside her, and Ingram winced,
thinking of the stresses as the enormous weight of the keel
pulled the other way to bring her back. He could hear the
creak and groan of her timbers even above the shrieking of
the wind and knew that all the while more of her fastenings
were working loose and pulling out of rotten frames and
planks below him. Swung around and crouched to protect his
face from the stinging of the rain and spray, he continued to
pump, wondering about the bed bolts of the engine. And the
great keel bolts themselves …
But they continued to hold, and in another twenty minutes it
began to subside. The sun broke through. The wind dropped
and then died completely, and they were still afloat. At six
p.m., with the sun low on the horizon, the sea had quit
breaking aboard, and they were able to open the hatches to
resume bailing. When Ingram looked down at the depth of
water in the after cabin he knew there was very little chance
she would live through the night.
* * *
It was 1:40 p.m., five minutes now since Warriner had
suddenly sprung to his feet and run back on deck to take the
wheel. Saracen was plowing steadily ahead, back on course—
whatever it was. Rae Ingram stood beside the sink in the after
cabin, crushing the last of the three codeine tablets between
the spoons. The bottle containing the others was recapped
and stowed in one of the drawers, ready in case she needed
more. She dropped the powder into the glass, but it was the
other problem she was thinking of. This idea of hers, she felt
sure, would still work. Within a few minutes—with any luck at
Dead Calm — 145
all-she might be in command of Saracen again. But what good
was it if she couldn’t find her way back to the other boat?
The 226 degrees her compass had been reading meant
nothing now that he’d smashed it and there was no way to
compare it with the steering compass. It could have been as
much as twenty or thirty degrees from the actual course. So
as far as knowing what their course had been from the other
boat, she was little better off than she’d been at the
beginning, and now they were at least twenty-five miles away.
Somehow she had to find out what he was steering. But how?
Try to get a look into the binnacle when she went up? No, that
wouldn’t work. It was covered, so you could see into it only
from the helmsman’s seat, and he would be instantly
suspicious if she tried to work her way around behind him. He
wouldn’t let her, and it might even trigger him into another
outburst, which would wreck her chances of success with this
idea. She couldn’t risk it. Getting control of the boat came
first. Wait, she thought, beginning to see the solution. The
sun. It was shining, and far enough down from the meridian
now to cast a good shadow. It wouldn’t be exact, but it would
be a good approximation, probably near enough to bring her
back within sight of the other boat.
Working rapidly now, she dropped sugar into the glass with
the powder from the pulverized tablets, put in a few spoonfuls
of water to start it dissolving, and squeezed in a whole lemon.
Then she opened the door of the tiny electric refrigerator inset
in the after bulkhead and took two ice cubes from the tray.
She finished filling the glass with water and stirred until there
was no trace of the powder left in the bottom and the glass
itself was beaded with moisture from the cold. Warriner had
been sitting there in the sun since nine this morning with
nothing to drink; there wasn’t much chance he could resist it
—especially if she didn’t offer it to him and was drinking from
it herself. A little of it wouldn’t hurt her.
She carried it up the ladder into the hot glare of sunlight on
deck. Warriner looked up from the compass with watchful
appraisal but appeared to relax when she sat down on the
after edge of the deckhouse beside the mizzenmast, rather
than coming down into the cockpit. He said nothing. She
ignored him, looking aft as if hoping to see the other boat
following them. She took a sip of the lemonade.
Dead Calm — 146
The sun was diagonally behind her, falling over her left
shoulder, which meant their course was somewhere in the
vicinity of southwest. There was a good chance he was
steering for the Marquesas or for Tahiti, but she couldn’t
depend on that because there was no guarantee he even knew
the correct course to either of them. She had to narrow it
down. Moodily, as if lost in thought, she let her gaze run idly
along the scupper on the port quarter, the extreme edge of
the deck where it was crossed by the shadow of the
mizzenmast.
Of course the shadow was by no means stationary. With
Saracen’s corkscrew motion as she quartered across the
swell, and his deviations on either side of the course he was
steering, it moved forward and aft along the edge of the deck
as much as two feet or more. But by catching it several times
when the boat was on an even keel to cancel out the rolling,
she was able to strike an average between the extremes of his
steering. The after edge of the shadow would be about three
inches forward of that lifeline stanchion, the second one
counting from astern. All she had to do, if and when she got
the wheel, would be to line the shadow up on that spot, note
the heading on the compass, and figure out the reciprocal. But
was he going to take the bait? It had already been several
minutes.
She looked aft and, without appearing even to notice him,
saw that his eyes had been on the glass. She raised it to her
mouth, took another sip, and set it beside her on the
deckhouse while she reached in her pocket for a cigarette. It
was well beaded with moisture, and she knew he could see the
ice. How much longer could he stand it?
“What’s that you’re drinking?” he asked then.
“Lemonade,” she said.
“Oh.”
She put the cigarette in her mouth, and returned the pack to
her pocket. Let him wait. Make him ask for it. Then she saw
him look at the glass again and knew she had won. Her only
problem had been to make him want it.
There was no way she could lose now, whether he suspected
anything or not. If he asked her to bring him a glass, she
would merely make another with three of the tablets in it. And
whether he did or did not demand to trade after she’d given it
Dead Calm — 147
to him, it made no difference. But she had an idea he would
take the simple way. He did.
“It looks good,” he said.
“Would you like me to make you one?” she asked.
There was a trace of slyness in his eyes now. Mother was all
right when he was scared and needed her, but she wasn’t
going to put anything over on him. He was too smart for that.
“Why not just give me that one and make another for
yourself?”
“But I’ve already drunk out of it,” she protested.
“That doesn’t matter.” He smiled, as if thinking of some
secret joke, and held out his hand.
She shrugged and handed it to him and started down the
ladder. Then she turned and asked, “Would you like me to
make you another while I’m at it?”
“No, this will do,” he replied, still smiling. “And thanks a
lot.”
Once out of sight at the foot of the ladder, she hurried
forward. That should have dispelled the last doubt, she
thought, and he’d gulp it right down. How long would it take?
Not more than five to ten minutes, probably, but with the first
wave of drowsiness he was going to know she’d tricked him
and he’d be dangerous until he finally collapsed. She’d better
stay here, ready to barricade the door if she saw him start
down the ladder, though she didn’t believe he’d ever make it
this far. Of course there was the chance he might think to
close and fasten the hatch to lock her below, but it couldn’t be
helped. She didn’t dare remain on deck. Anyway, noise would
never wake him, that thoroughly drugged, and she could tear
the hatch cover apart with a hammer and marlinspike and
force her way out.
She grabbed a coiled heaving line, which was soft and easy
to handle, and the knife she’d used to cut open the box of
shotgun shells. With the door just cracked, she peered out,
watching the hatch. A minute went by. Three. Ten. Saracen
continued to plow ahead, apparently still on course. Had he
become suspicious of it after all? She was sure there’d been
no taste; it was well covered by the lemon and sugar. Then
she felt Saracen lurch and begin to turn. At the same time a
demonic cry shot up above the noise of the engine, like a
Dead Calm — 148
prolonged scream of rage, and the glass came flying in the
open hatch. It narrowly missed the radio and smashed against
the bulkhead at the forward end of her bunk. Saracen rolled
down and turned in the opposite direction. She continued to
watch the hatch with apprehension, but sunlight fell through
it unobstructed. Almost a full minute went by. Nothing
happened except that Saracen continued to turn, as if she
were going around in a tight circle. She could visualize what
had happened. Trying to get up, holding onto the wheel, he’d
turned it, and then collapsed across it.
She ran through the after cabin, mounted the first step of
the ladder, and peered out. Then she froze. He had fallen
forward across the wheel, but now he was moving again,
making one last effort to get up. His face was distorted, and
he cried out as though in rage against the darkness swimming
around him. One hand reached down to the engine control
panel. The noise of the engine cut off abruptly, his arm swung,
and she saw the ignition key flash in the sunlight as he threw
it overboard.
The brass cover of the binnacle followed it over the side,
and then, still screaming, he had hold of the compass itself,
swinging in its gimbals. Muscles writhed in his arms and
shoulders, and the tendons stood out in his throat. It tore free,
and while he was turning with it in his hands to throw it into
the sea he fell back onto the seat and collapsed with his head
and shoulders on the narrow strip of deck beside him. The
compass dropped on deck, burst with an eruption of alcohol,
and slid over the side as Saracen rolled down to starboard. In
the abrupt and almost terrifyingly lonely silence as Saracen
slowed and came to rest she could only cling to the handrail of
the ladder in defeat, and for a moment she wished she had
killed him when she’d had the chance. There was no other
compass aboard.
Then it was gone, and she was moving ahead. After what
she’d been through to get this far, nothing was going to stop
her. She had no idea how she was going to find her way back
across all those miles of open sea with nothing to guide her,
but that would have to wait till she could get to it. The first
thing was to tie him. Why, she wasn’t quite sure, because he’d
probably be unconscious for at least eight or ten hours and if
she hadn’t found the other boat in five or less she’d never find
Dead Calm — 149
it at all and after that nothing mattered anyway, but he had to
be immobilized once and for all. Maybe it had something to do
with having been completely at his mercy for all those years
since early this morning, and if there had been any way to
embed him in a barrel of hardening concrete up to his neck
she would have done it. She stood above him in the cockpit
with her heaving line and her knife.
He hadn’t moved since he’d fallen. She reached down to
touch him, a little fearfully, and then realized nothing was
going to rouse him now. He was still behind the wheel, and
there was no possibility at all of moving him. He must weigh
180 or 190 pounds, and, inert as he was, it would take a
professional weight-lifter to get him out of there. But it didn’t
matter. She could handle the wheel from the port seat of the
cockpit, or standing up. The only thing that did matter was
that she had to hurry.
She cut a piece about twelve feet long from the heaving line
and bound his wrists together in front of him, going around
them and then between them to form an unslippable pair of
handcuffs. She stretched his arms out along the strip of deck
and made the end of the line fast to a lifeline stanchion. Then
she tied his ankles together and anchored them to the base of
the binnacle. There was no way he could move at all. His face
rested on his outstretched arms.
She stood up, wiped sweat from her face, and looked at her
watch. It was 2:20 p.m. Her mind was instantly swamped with
all the problems clamoring for attention, calculations of time
and distance and the unknown factor of direction and the
need to do everything at once, but she brushed them aside.
One thing at a time, and the next was to start the engine. She
couldn’t stand the silence. Normally she disliked the noise as
much as John did, but now she needed the comfort of it to be
able to think. Saracen had come to rest and was rolling
forlornly on the groundswell, completely becalmed and
helpless on a sea as unruffled as glass and achingly empty in
all directions to the far rim of the visible world, where it met
the converging bowl of the sky. With John there, it was
privacy, but now it was a loneliness that screamed.
She knelt and reached in under the engine-control panel.
There were wires coming up to the ammeter as well as to the
ignition switch, but she could identify them by location. There
Dead Calm — 150
were only two to the switch. She twisted and yanked until she
had broken them loose. She pulled them down into view and
peeled the insulation from them with the knife; then she
twisted the ends together, pulled the lever back to neutral,
and pressed the starter button. The engine rumbled into life
and began to roar. She eased the throttle back to idle.
Now …
All she had was the sun, and she’d only have that for
another four hours—unless it disappeared before then behind
a cloudbank or in a squall. She’d been facing directly aft, and
it had come diagonally over her left shoulder, so facing
forward she’d want it in the same place. It wasn’t much, she
thought fearfully. But wait—she could do better than that.
What about the shadow of the mizzenmast, and her mark? If
she projected the mark to the opposite side of the boat along
the same plane she should be very near the reciprocal of the
course he’d been steering. She grabbed up what was left of
the heaving line, whirled, and caught the wire lifeline on the
port quarter beside the cockpit. Three inches forward of the
second stanchion, counting from aft. Right here. She made the
end of the line fast, passed it ahead of the mizzen, and went
up the starboard side with it. She pulled it taut, and then
moved her end aft until it just touched the forward side of the
mast. It intersected the starboard lifeline nearly midway
between the third and fourth stanchions, again counting from
aft. She tied it there, winding the surplus line three or four
times around the wire to make it easier to see from the wheel.
At best it was still only a prayer, a stab in the dark. The
bearing of the sun was going to change as it moved down
toward the horizon, and there was no guarantee at all that
Warriner had even gone back to his original course when he’d
returned to the deck after smashing her compass. But, she
thought, trying to still the fear inside her, all she had to do
was come within four miles of Orpheus and she’d be able to
see her.
She jumped back into the cockpit, pushed the lever into
gear, ran the throttle up to about where Warriner had had it,
and put the wheel over. Sitting on the port seat of the cockpit
beside it, she could see her marker all right. She brought
Saracen on around until the shadow of the mizzenmast fell on
Dead Calm — 151
it, swinging back and forth on either side of it as she rolled. As
she steadied up, she looked at her watch. It was 2:35 p.m.
How far, how many hours? It was a few minutes past two
when Warriner had stopped the engine and thrown the key
overboard. From nine this morning, that would be five hours
since they’d left Orpheus—less the time he’d been below while
Saracen was running God knew where with no one at the
wheel. Call it four and a half hours—twenty-five to twentyseven
miles. At the same speed going back, she should be in
the area at seven p.m. That would be a little after sunset,
perhaps not quite dark, but by then she would be running
blind.
So Orpheus had to be in sight by then, because there would
be no second chance. If she weren’t there, she’d already sunk,
or the course had been wrong, and with no compass the latter
was as irreversible as the first. Within a half-hour she’d be
hopelessly lost herself, with no idea where she was going or
where she’d been. She couldn’t think about it. She tried to
force everything from her mind but the mechanics of steering
by the shadow of the mizzenmast and the continuing prayer
that the sun would go on shining.
At a little after three she began to see the dark cloud in the
north. The squall was still far over the horizon, but she
couldn’t take a chance of running into it with all sail set; they
might be knocked down or dismasted. But she hated to stop,
even for a few minutes. It appeared to be moving to the
westward at the same time it was coming nearer; maybe it
would be gone by the time she got there. But she should take
in sail anyway; the main and the jib were going to interfere
too much with her view ahead. At a little after four, while the
sun was momentarily obscured by a passing cloud, she
stopped and took in everything. She was under way again in
less than twenty minutes, with the sun visible once more on
the thinning edge of the cloud.
Warriner had never moved since he’d fallen. She began to
be afraid the three tablets had been too much and she’d killed
him. She reached over and touched his throat, and she could
feel the pulse. It was slow but steady.
At four-thirty she reached inside the hatch for the binoculars
and began to search the horizon to port and then to starboard
Dead Calm — 152
between corrections to the helm. There was the chance
Orpheus had got a breeze and John had tried to follow them.
Her eyes encountered nothing but the empty miles of water
and the far rim of that circle in which they seemed to be
forever centered. The noise of the engine went on, they rose
and fell in a long pitching motion as the glassy billows of the
swell rolled up under her quarter, but they never appeared to
move at all.
It was five o’clock. Five-thirty. The squall ahead was moving
into the west and breaking up. Scattered clouds began to
obscure the sun at intervals, but she went on, looking over her
shoulder and trying to judge its position. She continued to
search the horizon to port and starboard with the glasses. The
sea was empty all around her. By six the tightness in her chest
was becoming almost unbearable.
Six-thirty. The sun came out from behind another cloud, and
it was far down now, less than a diameter above the horizon
and beginning to redden in the haze. The shadow of the
mizzenmast was gone. She stood up, holding the wheel with
her right hand and steering with the sun just behind her left
shoulder while she held the binoculars to her eyes and
scanned the sea ahead.
The colors began. Far overhead the fleecy edges of clouds
were touched with gold and then pink, darkening to crimson.
The sun slid downward into the low cloudbank on the horizon,
and in a moment it was gone from sight and there were only
the vertical rays of pale lemon extending upward against the
sky. Just for an instant the defenses of her mind gave way and
she remembered sunsets she had watched with John here in
this cockpit in the Bahamas and Caribbean and the Gulf of
Panama. She began to tremble. She dropped the engine out of
gear, pulled the throttle back to idle, and leaped up on deck.
She climbed atop the main boom with an arm about the mast
and slowly swung the binoculars all the way around from the
already darkening east to the great flame of the afterglow in
the west, and there was no sign of Orpheus anywhere. It was
7:05 p.m.
Dead Calm — 153
15
Ingram’s eyes were bleak as he looked down into the fading
light of the main cabin. If you had any talent for kidding
yourself, he thought, now would be a good time to break it
out. With the two of them bailing and Mrs. Warriner at the
pump, the water had gained several inches in the past halfhour.
They must have lost whole planks off her outer skin in
that squall.
He turned and searched the emptiness of the sea down to
the southwest and then glanced at his watch. It was 6:50. He
dropped the bucket on the deck and went back to the others.
“Knock off a minute.”
Bellew looked at him inquiringly. Mrs. Warriner
straightened and pushed damp hair back from a face deeply
lined with fatigue. “You mean we’re gaining on it?”
He shook his head. “No. We’re not even keeping up with it.
But a quarter of an hour one way or the other’s not going to
make any difference, and before it gets too dark to see I want
to have one more look around from the masthead.”
He slung the glasses around his neck and shackled the sling
to the main halyard again. He climbed atop the boom and
stepped into the sling with his lifeline around the mast. “Haul
away,” he ordered. In the confused sea left behind by the
squall, Orpheus was wallowing even worse than before, but he
managed the tricky business of getting past the spreaders
Dead Calm — 154
without accident. When he was up just short of the masthead
light, he called down, “That’ll do. Make fast.”
They were lying on a southerly heading at the moment. Legs
locked against the dizzying swing of the mast, he looked
around him. In the east the blue was already beginning to
darken with the coming of night, while off to starboard the
sun had dropped over the horizon and the western sky was
aflame. It was impossible to escape entirely the beauty of it or
to seal the mind against all of memory’s infiltration, and he
was glad he was up here where they couldn’t see his face.
Then he put the glasses to his eyes and began a cold and
methodical search of the horizon to the southwest, fighting
the lunging of the mast. He moved on into the south, and
around to the east, where the light was beginning to fade.
Nothing. Still nothing …
Where was she now? Was she still alive? The glasses began
to shake. He lowered them and closed his eyes. The feeling
passed in a moment, and he had control of himself again. He
raised the glasses and came back, very slowly, across the
whole area he had searched before, and then on into the dying
fire and the wine-red sea of the west. He stopped abruptly.
Something came up into his throat, and he swallowed. He
tried to swing the glasses back, but for an instant he couldn’t.
He was afraid to look again.
All right, he thought savagely; maybe you should have sent
one of the men. He brought them back.
It was a mast.
Or was it? Orpheus rolled, and in the sickening swing out to
port and back he lost the spot again. He got the line of the
horizon in the glasses once more and inched to the right.
There! It was only a tiny pencil stroke seen for an instant
against the red glow of sunset. He locked his arms more
tightly around the mast in an effort to stop the tremor of the
glasses. It came into view, and this time he was certain he saw
the other one beside it, the two of them like the tips of two
toothpicks held at arm’s length before a fire. The shorter one
was to the left.
“Lower away!” he shouted.
He knew what they had to do and made up his mind as he
came down the mast. Below him, the others looked up silently,
Dead Calm — 155
their faces almost red in the winy light. He landed on the
boom, stepped out of the sling, and jumped down beside them.
“She’s over there,” he began. When they started to
interrupt, he cut them off with a curt gesture. “Wait till I get
through. She’s going to miss us. She’s hull down, even from
up there; all I got was a glimpse of the masts against the
sunset. She’s due west of us, headed north, and she won’t get
any closer. From where she is, down on deck, we’re clear over
the horizon, so there s no way in God’s world she can see us
—”
“There’s no way we can signal her?” Mrs. Warriner asked.
“Just one. Set this one afire.”
“Oh.” She gave him a startled look, and then she was calm
again. “Could she see it from over there?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?” Bellew interrupted. “That’s great.”
“Shut up.” He went on. “There’s a good chance. We’re to the
east of her, so it’ll be dark behind us in another fifteen
minutes. And there are enough clouds overhead to reflect the
glow.”
“And if she doesn’t see us?” Bellew asked. “But don’t bother
to tell me, let me guess. We take a taxi to the McAlpin Hotel
—”
“We do the same thing we’re going to do anyway,” Ingram
said coldly. “We drown. The water’s gained at least three
inches on us in the past half-hour, with all three of us working.
She won’t last till midnight.” They were wasting time with this
idiotic argument. He swung around to Mrs. Warriner. “It’s
your yacht, and you’re still aboard it—”
“Burn it, of course,” she said coolly.
Bellew shrugged. “Okay. What are we waiting for?”
“Will it burn?” she asked. “I mean, this low in the water, and
with everything up here wet from the squall?”
“We’ll fire it in the chartroom,” Ingram replied. “There’s no
gasoline left at all?”
“No.”
“What does your galley stove burn? Bottled gas, or
kerosene?”
Dead Calm — 156
“Kerosene. There should be several cans of it in the locker
forward.”
“Right. What about paint stores—turpentine, linseed oil,
thinner?”
“There should be some of each.”
“Good.” He began to issue terse orders. “Get your
passports, money, and the logbook; you can’t take anything
else. Wrap them in something waterproof. Dump the water out
of that dinghy and stow ‘em in there, along with a couple of
flashlights. Put on lifebelts, and then you can give me a hand.”
Without even waiting for a reply, he whirled and ran down
into the chartroom. He grabbed a flashlight from its bracket
and went on down the steps and through the main and
forward cabins, where the debris-laden water washed around
his thighs. Opposite the sail bin was another locker. He
unlatched the doors and yanked them open but could see
nothing in the thickening gloom here below. He switched on
the flashlight and wedged it between two of the sailbags. In an
upper compartment were some tools and paint brushes. He
spied a small hand ax and stuck the handle of it in his belt.
The bottom of the locker was filled with buckets and
rectangular one-gallon cans submerged and bumping together
in the water that surged back and forth.
The buckets would be paint. He ignored them and began
fishing out the cans. There were a dozen of them, mostly
unidentifiable, the labels long since washed off, but it didn’t
matter. An armful at a time, he carried them up the ladder
going on deck from the forward cabin and dumped them
beside the hatch. As he made the last trip he saw that Bellew
and Mrs. Warriner had returned to the deck, wearing lifebelts,
and Bellew had the dinghy up on its side, pouring the water
out of it.
The great flame in the west was dying now, and the brief
twilight of the tropics had already begun. He grabbed up two
of the cans and ran aft.
“What now?” Bellew asked.
“Let’s get the dinghy over.” With a swing of the hand ax he
knocked out one of the windows of the deckhouse and tossed
the two cans in on the chartroom table. Mrs. Warriner was
holding two flashlights and a package wrapped in oilskins. As
Dead Calm — 157
she stowed them in the dinghy he noticed the compass had
fallen out when Bellew had dumped out the water. It wasn’t
broken. He put it back in.
“Grab the bow,” he said to Bellew. They lifted it over the
lifeline and, when Orpheus rolled down, set it in the water. It
rode lightly on the heavy swell passing beneath them. He
handed the painter to Mrs. Warriner. “Take it aft and just
wait. Keep it fended off so it doesn’t get caught under the
counter.”
Whirling to Bellew, he said, “Bring up a couple of those
spare sails from the locker. It doesn’t matter which ones.
Dump ‘em there alongside the mainmast. And then bring all
those cans aft, the ones around the forward hatch.”
“Where do you want ‘em?” Bellew asked.
“Just forward of the cockpit’s all right.” He turned and ran
down the steps into the chartroom. Quick blows of the hand ax
knocked out the rest of the windows. He began yanking
drawers out of the chart table and smashing them with the ax
after he had dumped out the charts. He tore charts into strips
until he had a great armful of paper. He piled this on a corner
of the table and threw the splintered drawers on top of it.
With another blow of the ax he cut through one of the cans. As
the liquid gushed out, he could tell by the smell of it that it
was paint-thinner. He poured it over the paper and wood and
cut open the other can. This one was kerosene. He swung it,
splashing the bulkheads, the deck, and the table. Grabbing up
another chart, he nicked his cigar lighter. The lighter was wet
and required several attempts before it worked. He held it to
the corner of the chart and, when it was burning, tossed it on
the pile. With a great sucking sound it all burst into flame at
once. He threw the rest of the charts on it and ran out.
Bellew had the two sailbags piled beside the mainmast now
and was hurrying back and forth, carrying the cans aft. With
his knife open, beginning at the end of the boom, Ingram went
forward, slicing through the gaskets of the furled mainsail.
When he reached the mast he unshackled the sling and made
the halyard fast to the head of the sail again. Two more quick
slashes split the sailbags. He hauled the sails out and
stretched them along the deck, one atop the other. He
grabbed up a line at random, cut off a length, made it fast
around the two sails
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