Dead Calm by Charles Williams 1963(8)

 somewhere near the center, and hauled
Dead Calm — 158
the whole cumbersome bundle over to the base of the mast.
He made the line fast to the halyard above the shackle.
Bellew was passing then with the last of the cans. He
grabbed two of them from his arms and swung the ax on them.
The first was linseed oil. He poured it on the two sails. The
other was kerosene. He dumped this on them also, and onto
the mainsail, which was dangling in folds along the boom. He
could hear the fire beginning to roar below him now, and
smoke was pouring through the broken windows. “Give me a
hand on this halyard,” he called out to Bellew.
They hoisted. The mainsail went up, and with it the great
dangling mass of the two spare sails made fast to the head of
it. Kerosene and linseed oil began to drip on them.
Bellew grunted. “For that real homey feeling, it ought to be
gasoline.”
“If it breaks out of the chartroom,” Ingram said, “go right
over the side;”

“Don’t give it a thought, sport. I just look stupid.”
It was up. Ingram threw the hitches on the pin, and they ran
aft. Flame was beginning to lick through the broken windows.
“Into the dinghy,” he ordered and nodded to Bellew. “You
first. Take the oars.” Bellew stepped down into it and held it
while he helped Mrs. Warriner in.
She protested. “Aren’t you going to get in?”
“It won’t take three; it’ll capsize.”
“But you haven’t even got a lifebelt—”
He cut her off. “I don’t need one. Pull clear and wait for me.
I want this thing to go all at once, and go high—the higher the
better. Get going.” He waved them off. Bellew shipped the
oars and they began to draw away in the thickening dusk,
heaving up and down on the swell.
There were eight of the rectangular cans on deck at the
forward end of the cockpit. He set them up on end one at a
time and began swinging the ax. The first was spar varnish.
He picked it up and threw it forward. It landed just beyond the
mainmast and slid, spilling its contents along the deck. The
next was kerosene. It went up the other side of the deck.
Turpentine. It followed the varnish. Paint-thinner. That was
the trigger, the most volatile of them all. He set it aside,
upright on the cockpit seat with his knee braced against it so
Dead Calm — 159
it wouldn’t turn over and spill. Linseed oil. He threw it
forward.
It bounced and slid, spraying along the deck. The whole
interior of the chartroom was a roaring mass of flame now,
and he could feel the heat on his face. The varnish on the
underside of the main boom was beginning to bubble. He had
to hurry. There were only seconds left before it broke out
through the roof.
He swung the ax on another can, and another. Some of them
had already slid overboard, but their contents had spilled, and
the whole deck forward of him was crisscrossed with trails of
varnish, linseed oil, turpentine, and kerosene, flowing across
the planks and soaking into the seams. The final can was
another of paint-thinner. He dropped the ax and picked it up,
along with the other can, the one beside his knee.
He ran to the after end of the cockpit and jumped up onto
the narrow strip of deck right on the stern. All right, honey,
this is where we are. Wheeling, he threw the first can straight
through a window into the inferno inside the chartroom, and
while it was still in the air he threw the other and dived over
the side.
Thirty yards away in the gathering night, Lillian Warriner
turned and stared in wonder. My God, she thought, they
shouldn’t match him against just one ocean at a time. Even
while his body was still in the air, a great ball of flame burst
out of the chartroom, taking the roof of the deckhouse with it
and igniting the whole ketch forward of the cockpit in one
mighty breath. Fire shot up the oil-soaked mainsail and
ballooned in the two sails at the top of it to form—with the
force of the explosion and the massive updraft from the heat
below— a gigantic torch, a column of flame nearly a hundred
feet high. It lit up the sea for a quarter-mile in every direction,
and she could feel the heat of it on her skin.
Then he was alongside, with a hand on the gunwale. He
dropped his sneakers into the dinghy. They rose as a swell
passed under them. “You haven’t got much freeboard,” he
said, “but I think it’ll ride if you don’t make any sudden moves.
If it does swamp, the flashlights are more important than your
passports and money. Try to keep at least one of them out of
the water. There’s no use staying here; keep rowing west.”
Dead Calm — 160
Bellew turned his head, trying to see the dying band of color
along the western horizon. “I’m blind,” he said, “with that
glare in my face.”
“Set the compass between your feet,” Ingram said to Mrs.
Warriner. “Line it up with the bow, and hold a flashlight on it
so he can see it.”
She did. Bellew began to pull slowly ahead. Ingram held
onto the transom very lightly with one hand and kicked with
his feet. When they were a hundred yards away he turned and
looked back. It was like a scene from hell, he thought, with the
red glare reflected on the black and oily heaving of the sea.
The first great pillar of flame had died now that the sails were
gone, and they were already in the edge of the surrounding
darkness, but she was burning fiercely from bow to stern. The
glow in the sky would still be visible for miles.
“Will it last long enough for her to get here?” Mrs. Warriner
asked above him.
“No,” he said. “It’ll burn to the waterline and sink in twenty
minutes or so. It’ll take her an hour, or an hour and a half. But
it doesn’t matter; she’ll take a bearing on it and have a
compass course.”
She made no reply. They went on toward the darkness. He
thought she might turn for one last look, but she didn’t. She
remained quite still, her face lowered over the compass
between her feet. It was possible she was crying, but if she
was, he thought, nobody would ever know it except her.
The same question was in both their minds, he knew, the
same dread of what they might find aboard Saracen. He
thought of the shotgun and shivered.
* * *
She’d got under way again because she had to keep moving as
long as she could. The silence was out there waiting for her,
and once she stopped and killed the engine with the
acceptance of final defeat she would be defenseless and she
wasn’t sure she would survive it.
It was 7:20 p.m. There was still enough faint light and dying
color along the rim of the horizon to show her where west
was, and there would continue to be, probably, for another ten
minutes. Everywhere else it was already night. Across from
Dead Calm — 161
her, Warriner’s naked shoulders and golden head were only a
faint gleam in the darkness. She was standing up, holding the
wheel with one hand and staring ahead into the north, when
something flickered on the extreme edge of her peripheral
vision. She turned her head and saw the little tongue of
reddish light lick upward over the edge of the world far off to
the eastward.
For a second or two she could only stare at it in a sort of
stunned disbelief. Then tears came up into her eyes and
blinded her for an instant as this gave way to a great surge of
joy, but by then she already had the wheel hard over and was
coming around. She lined it up alongside the masts and
reached for the throttle. The engine noise increased to a roar
as it came up the final notch to full wide open.
How far? She’d seen nothing there before, even with the
binoculars, which meant it was clear over the horizon—six,
eight, or even ten miles away. But John must have seen her
against the sunset and then deliberately set Orpheus afire
because he had no other way to signal her. The only way he
could have seen her would have been from the masthead, so
there were probably others aboard. But that was unimportant
at the moment. She had something to guide her now. That was
all that mattered.
In another few minutes the little tip of flame was no longer
showing over the horizon, but the glow was clearly visible
against the sky. She felt a moment’s uneasiness. How long
would it burn before it sank? If it were even eight miles away,
it would take her nearly an hour and a half to get there. It was
almost due east, but that was no help once the last of the light
was gone from the west and all directions were the same. She
had to have a star or some constellation she could recognize,
one still low enough on the horizon to give her the direction.
But ahead of her, above the glow, the sky was becoming
overcast. Almost instinctively she glanced to the north before
she remembered Polaris was below the horizon now. They
were south of the equator.
She turned to look astern, and saw the answer, if the sky
remained clear enough in the west. Venus had just emerged
from behind a cloud. It was perhaps three hours behind the
sun, well down toward the horizon directly behind her. She
faced forward, less worried now. Twenty minutes passed. The
Dead Calm — 162
faint reddish glow was still visible ahead, reflected from the
underside of the clouds above it. She kept it lined up beside
the masts. It began to fade. Then, thirty-five minutes after she
had first sighted it, it disappeared with the abruptness of a
snuffed-out candle. Orpheus had gone down.
Venus was still bright behind her. She went on. It was
awkward and not very accurate, trying to steer looking over
her shoulder, so she stood up, facing aft directly before the
wheel, and tried to keep the planet poised over the end of the
mizzen boom. She reached inside the hatch and switched on
the running lights. Venus began to disappear in the edge of
another cloud. She tried to guess its bearing, but when it
reappeared fifteen minutes later it was far around to
starboard. She’d been running almost south.
She swung the wheel to bring it astern again and turned
herself, to look forward, searching the horizon on both sides
and ahead for any tiny pinpoint of light. She must be within
two or three miles of them. On all sides the darkness was
unbroken. Then Venus faded and disappeared again. The
western sky was becoming overcast. Directly overhead stars
were visible through holes in the clouds but there was nothing
anywhere that was low enough on the horizon to guide her. In
two more minutes she was hopelessly lost, with no more
knowledge of direction than if she were at the bottom of a
well.
She jerked the throttle back and threw the engine out of
gear. It was absolutely imperative now that she stay exactly
where she was; every turn of the propeller could be taking her
away from them instead of nearer. She pulled the twisted
wires apart to stop the engine’s noise so she could listen as
she climbed atop the main boom to search the darkness all
around. There was no light, no cry. She came down from the
boom and ran below for a can of flares.
* * *
There was no fire behind them now; Orpheus had gone down
nearly fifteen minutes ago. “Still nothing,” Mrs. Warriner said
above him in the darkness. Each time they crested a swell she
searched the sea ahead, while Bellew continued to pull at the
oars.
“What time is it now?” he asked.
Dead Calm — 163
She held her watch under the beam of the flashlight. “Eightten.”
It had been fifty minutes. They should have picked up
Saracen’s masthead light by now. “You’ve got too much light
under you,” he said. “Hold the flashlight by the lens so it’s
completely covered by your hand except one spot right over
the compass. Bellew will still be able to see it. Then put that
bundle of oilskins across your lap so no light seeps up at all.
And when you locate the horizon, don’t look directly at it; look
a little above. Night vision’s better out of the edges of your
eyes.”
Down in the water and behind the dinghy, he could see
nothing at all. Another fifteen minutes went by. The dark
undulations of the swell rolled up under them and slid past in
silence except for the creak of oarlocks. “Maybe if I stood up
—” she said.
“No. You’ll capsize. We’re bound to pick her up in a minute.
We’re still right on course? Bellew, I mean; don’t look down at
the light yourself.”
“Due west all the time,” Bellew replied. Then he went on, an
undertone of ugliness in his voice. “You know what, sport?
Wouldn’t it be a real gas if you didn’t see any masts over
there?”
“I saw masts,” Ingram said coldly. It was for Mrs. Warriner’s
benefit. He had no interest at all in what Bellew thought.
There was a sudden cry from Mrs. Warriner. “I see her! I
see her!”
“Where?”
“Way off to the left. My left.”
“All right,” he said calmly. “Don’t take your eyes off it.
Bellew, pull your left oar till she tells you to steady up, and
then check your compass.”
Bellew came around. “Steady. Right there,” Mrs. Warriner
said.
“Almost due south,” Bellew reported. “One-eighty-five to
one-ninety.”
Ingram swam out from behind the dinghy, and when they
rose to the next swell peered into the darkness ahead. He
could see nothing at all. He was too low. But why was she so
Dead Calm — 164
far off course? At a distance of even eight miles she should
have passed within a few hundred yards of them. “Can you see
the port running light?” he asked.
“No. Only the masthead light,” Mrs. Warriner replied. “She
must be a mile, or two miles away. Wait. I think I saw the red
light then. Yes, there it is. She must have been going away
from us, and then turned.”
“All right,” he said. “Forget the compass for a minute. You
can keep Bellew headed straight. Take both your flashlights
and hold ‘em as far over your head as you can—”
He was interrupted by a sudden cry from Mrs. Warriner,
and at the same instant he saw it himself. A rocket arched into
the sky ahead of them, hung poised for an instant, and began
to float down like some great glowing flower.
“She’s lost herself,” Bellew said. “Hell, I thought you said
she could take a bearing—”
Ingram cut him off savagely. “Save it!” Then he went on to
Mrs. Warriner. “As soon as that goes out and she can see
again, start waving your lights, pointed straight at her.”
She held them ready but made no reply, and he wondered if
she were prey to the same chilling thoughts that were running
through his own mind. Probably. Anybody but a stupid
meathead like Bellew would know something must be wrong
aboard Saracen. Was she hurt? Or had she killed Warriner
and now was beginning to go to pieces? Then the flare went
out ahead of them, and Mrs. Warriner was signaling. Several
minutes went by while they rose and fell in silence.
Then Mrs. Warriner cried out. “She’s turned. I can see both
running lights!”
Ingram sighed. She’d sighted them and was coming.
Dead Calm — 165
16
The range was closing. ahead of her the flashing lights were
less than a quarter-mile away. Then it occurred to her he
might be in the water instead of the dinghy, and she left the
wheel long enough to run forward and hang the ladder over
the side. Her knees were suddenly too weak to support her,
and she almost fell coming back to the cockpit. It was difficult
to breathe, and she was conscious of the pounding of her
heart. She stared ahead at the two flashlights as if trying to
burn away the darkness surrounding them. Two hundred
yards …
She brought the throttle back and reached inside the hatch
to turn on the spreader lights. The sea was illuminated for
twenty or thirty yards on all sides of her, but she could still
see the signals dead ahead.
She came hard left, and then right. She pulled the lever into
reverse and backed down, racing the engine. Saracen came to
rest, and the lights were less than fifty yards away, directly
abeam. She reached down and yanked the wires apart, and in
the sudden silence she could hear the rattle of oarlocks. He
was in the dinghy. She leaned across the cockpit seat, staring
outward.
Now she could see it. It was coming into the outer limits of
the spreader lights. There were two people in it. John was
rowing, and there was somebody smaller in the stern. She
thought it was a woman— It wasn’t John rowing. He was
Dead Calm — 166
bigger than John. It was somebody she’d never seen before,
and the other one was a woman, and there was nobody else.
Then she saw the head come out from behind the dinghy, the
man swimming, and the upraised arm waving to her. She slid
down into the cockpit seat with one hand still feebly clutching
the lifeline above her, unable even to raise her head, and her
diaphragm began to kick so she couldn’t exhale. Every time
she would try to breathe out, it would kick and she would
inhale again.
Ingram saw her slide down and could see no sign of
Warriner. “Ill go aboard first,” he said to Mrs. Warriner. She
was staring straight ahead, and when Saracen rolled down
she thought she saw something on the other side of the
cockpit, beyond Mrs. Ingram. Something sprawled. “Yes,” she
said in a controlled but very fragile voice. “Yes. Thank you.”
Ingram lunged ahead and went up the ladder while they
were coming alongside. Rae was sitting up now, and was
apparently unhurt except for that bruise on her face. Beyond
her he could see Warriner’s body, but in the same glance he
saw the bound wrists and the line going forward to the
stanchion, and all the breath went out of him at once.
Rae was still looking up at him. “He smash—he smu—he
smu—” She tried to point, but he had already seen the
uncovered and empty binnacle, like an eyeless socket, and
understood. Probably wrecked the other one too, he thought.
So she came all the way back and found us with nothing at all.
He wanted to say something, but his eyes had begun to sting,
and he didn’t trust his voice. Without even looking around, he
gestured for the others to come aboard and reached down for
her arm. She made it to her feet. She went down the ladder,
and when she was in the darkness at the bottom of it, she
turned.
She still couldn’t say anything. She couldn’t even cry. She
was wrung out, drained, emptied of everything. She could only
manage to get her arms up around his neck and cling while
his went on crushing her, moving up and down her back as if
they couldn’t find any place they wanted to stay, while water
dripped on her and whiskers ground into her face and the
voice was saying, “Oh, Jesus Christ—oh, Jesus Christ—”
against her throat.
Dead Calm — 167
The last handhold crumbled then, but instead of falling she
was floating upward into some welcoming and completely
sheltered oblivion, like a child’s going to sleep. She felt herself
being lifted and placed on the bunk. The arms still bound her,
and the voice went on with its profane and ragged whispering,
this time into her hair. Then, just before she disappeared
entirely into the mist, she heard her own voice say something
at last.
“Did you have any lunch?” she asked.
“No,” he said. He swallowed and rubbed a hand across his
eyes. “I guess I forgot.” He kissed her again but knew she was
gone. He still knelt beside her, and now he brought a hand up
and placed the finger tips very gently against her throat to
feel the pulse. And even after he was reassured she was all
right, that she had merely reached the limit of endurance and
stopped for a moment, he left the hand there, feeling her life
run steadily on beneath his fingers. He didn’t even know why
he did it.
He got up for a cloth to bathe her face, and when he
switched on the lights he saw the battered shotgun barrels on
the deck beside the ladder. He took a long and shaky breath
and shook his head.
She was just beginning to stir again when he heard the
voices above him, the one a lashing impassioned whisper,
“Leave him alone!” followed by the sharp slap of palm on
flesh, and hoped she hadn’t heard too. After what she’d been
through, she deserved at least a few minutes of thinking it was
all over. He thought of what was ahead of them and suddenly
felt very old and tired. But the only chance they had was to
meet it now, and head-on. He ran up the ladder.
Mrs. Warriner was trying to get up from where she was
sprawled back on the cockpit seat. Beyond her, Bellew was
standing on the narrow strip of deck, trying to turn Warriner’s
face up with the toe of his shoe. “Wake up, old Hughie-boy,
and see who’s here.”
“All right, Bellew,” he ordered, “leave him alone.”
The other turned, and in the glow of the spreader lights
above and forward of them he could see the insolence in the
eyes. “Easy does it, Hotspur. You got your boat back, so just
simmer down. This is mine.”
Dead Calm — 168
“That’s right; I got it back. And I give the orders on it. You
heard what I said.” There was no area for compromise here,
not with Bellew. If it meant forcing the issue now, within the
first five minutes, force it. But at that moment Mrs. Warriner
sat up, the side of her face still red from the slap. Her voice
was level and very cold as she spoke to Bellew. “I warn you.
Don’t touch him.”
Bellew sat down on the opposite side of the cockpit. He
leaned forward and tapped her on the knee with a forefinger.
“Don’t crowd me. I’ve had it. With you and your gold-plated
fag.”
Twelve hundred miles, Ingram thought, in a forty-foot yacht,
with the third one crazy. He wondered what Lloyds would
quote you on that. “That’ll do,” he snapped. He felt a little
better now that Bellew had sat down. The situation wasn’t
going to explode as long as Warriner was asleep, or knocked
out, or whatever he was. If he could leave the three of them
alone for as long as five seconds he might find out.
“It does seem to me,” Mrs. Warriner said then, “that one of
us might make at least some casual inquiry as to how Mrs.
Ingram is.” She turned to him. “Is she hurt?”
“No,” he said. “Not as far as I could tell. She’s had a little
too much for one day, and she fainted, but she’s coming
around now.” He turned to go back below. It should be safe
enough now, and Mrs. Warriner would sing out if anything
happened.
“How’d she get the creep tied up?” Bellew asked.
“How the hell do I know?” he said. “I had some stupid idea
that after a whole day of it I might get a chance to talk to her
for a minute and a half—” He broke off, realizing he had to
keep his temper.
“Sure, sure.” Bellew grinned coldly. “I can understand you
might have been a little worried. That’s where I was one up on
you, chum. I didn’t have to worry about mine; I knew where
she was.”
That was the question you always had to ask yourself,
Ingram thought, before you jumped all the way down his
throat. Suppose it had been Rae? But it didn’t change
anything; it would be as stupid as hating the Pacific Ocean
because she’d been swept overboard by a sea. “Bellew, for
Dead Calm — 169
Christ’s sake, don’t you think I realize what it’s like? But it’s
just something you can’t change; you’ll only make it worse—”
“What do you mean?” Mrs. Warriner interrupted.
She knows, he thought; she knows, all right, but she just
won’t accept it. At that moment Rae’s head appeared above
the hatch. So he wasn’t even going to get a moment to talk to
her alone, to fill her in on who these people were and what
had to be done. In fact, for at least the next twenty to twentyfive
days—assuming they lived that long—he’d never have a
minute completely alone with her. He was conscious of a dark
and futile anger but choked it off. The situation was still far
too dangerous to be crying over lost privacy and interrupted
honeymoons.
He sprang to help her and seated her on the after edge of
the deckhouse. “Are you all right now, honey?”
She managed a smile. “Yes. Just a little weak from the
reaction.”
“Aren’t we all?” He turned, indicating the others. “This is
Mrs. Warriner. And Mr. Bellew.”
“Hi,” Bellew said. Mrs. Warriner leaned forward and took
her hand, and said simply, “Thank you. And I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Rae said. “It’s all over now—” She broke off
and gasped. “John! The other compass! He smashed that too.
We haven’t got anything.”
Ingram nodded. “I figured he had, or you’d have had it up
here. But it’s all right. There’s one in the dinghy. I can make it
do.”
He stepped forward and lifted it out. The others had already
removed the flashlights and the oilskin package containing
their passports. He cast off the painter and pushed the dinghy
away from the side. Holding the compass very carefully, he
went below and stowed it in a drawer. It was beyond price
now, and nothing was going to happen to it until he could get
it secured in or on the binnacle. He still didn’t know what was
going to happen up there. He went back and sat down beside
Rae. “All right, honey, if you’re up to it now, can you tell us
what happened? How did you get him tied up?”
“Codeine,” she said. “I gave him three of those codeine
tablets from the medicine chest, in a glass of lemonade. I
think he’s still all right, and it’s been over six hours.”
Dead Calm — 170
The others watched silently while he stepped over and
reached down to check Warriner’s pulse. He knew Mrs.
Warriner would have already, but he wanted to be sure
himself. It was steady. “He’s okay,” he said. He came back.
Rae told them the rest of the story. When she had finished,
she looked at Mrs. Warriner. “I still don’t know. I mean, if the
codeine idea hadn’t worked, and he hadn’t smashed the
shotgun.”
Mrs. Warriner touched her on the arm. “I understand, dear.
And you’ll forget it eventually. We all just thank God it ended
the way it did.”
“Well, don’t break up, girls,” Bellew said. “Mama’s precious
is a-l-l right; he’s not hurt. Tomorrow you can draw straws to
see who’s the lucky girl he’ll kill next.”
Rae shot a startled and puzzled glance at Ingram. “What
happened to him? I couldn’t make any sense of what he was
saying. Something about a shark.”
Before Ingram could reply, Mrs. Warriner and Bellew both
spoke at once. Bellew overrode her. “Well, nothing much.” He
spread his hands in a deprecating gesture. “He killed my wife,
and then this morning he slugged me and locked us in the
cabin on there to drown when he abandoned ship. But, I
mean, hell, nobody minds these little jokes as long as they
keep Hughie happy—”
“He didn’t kill your wife!” Mrs. Warriner lashed out. “And
why don’t you go ahead and tell the Ingrams why he locked us
in there?”
“Wait a minute! Hold it!” Ingram cut them both off. “Rae’s
entitled to know what this is all about.” As briefly as he could,
he told her something of it.
Then he went on, to Mrs. Warriner and Bellew. “I want both
of you to listen to me a minute. After your experience on
Orpheus I shouldn’t think you’d have too much trouble
understanding what we’re up against. We’re twelve hundred
miles from land, we still don’t know when we’ll pick up the
Trades, and with the very best of luck it could be twenty days
or more we’re going to be jammed in here. There are five of us
on a yacht with cruising accommodations for two, and one’s
unbalanced and dangerous and is going to have to be tied up
Dead Calm — 171
and watched every minute to keep him from killing himself or
somebody else—”
“Unh-unh,” Bellew interrupted. “No sweat at all, pal. All he’s
going to need is a basket.”
“So you’re going to kill him? In front of three witnesses. Just
what do you do then? Kill us too?”
“I’m not going to kill him. You think I’m stupid, or
something? You might say I’m going to immobilize him—”
“Maybe you’d better wait till I get through,” Ingram said.
“You might change your mind. If you don’t, there’s a good
chance none of us will ever reach land. We’ve got enough
food, and the water will stretch, with rationing. But that’s not
it. I’m the only one on here that can take this boat down there
—the only one who can navigate well enough, in the first
place, and the only one who can compensate that compass so
we won’t be wandering all over hell and halfway back, trying
to make a landfall. And I’m not going to stand here and just
look on—any more than Mrs. Warriner is—while you make a
cripple or a permanent imbecile out of a boy who’s not
responsible for his actions—”
“Jesus Christ, you too?”
“I said wait till I get through. To beat up a man in his mental
condition, you’d have to be sicker than he is. And as I told you,
none of us is going to stand here and watch it, so if you lay a
hand on him this thing is going to blow wide open. I’d say
there’s a good chance you can whip me, but if I get beaten up
so badly I can’t sail this boat or navigate, you’re not doing
yourself any favor, unless you think you’d like drifting around
out here while your tongue swells up and you go crazy.
“And there’s another thing I don’t think you’ve thought of.
He’s scared to death of you, and if you touch him he’ll go
completely berserk. You may be stupid enough to want to see
what’ll happen when a man runs amok on a forty-foot yacht
with four other people on it, but the rest of us are not. Also,
this is no hospital, so what do you do if he dies? So far,
everything that’s happened has been the result of an accident
or bad luck or his crackup, and nobody’s committed a
deliberately criminal act—”
“You call what he did to my wife an accident?”
Dead Calm — 172
“For Christ’s sake, Bellew, he panicked! You want to beat
him to death because he got scared and lost his head?”
“Captain Ingram!” It was Mrs. Warriner this time. Well, he’d
been expecting it.
He turned to her. “Bellew’s right,” he said wearily, “and you
know it. I don’t know why you want to saddle yourself with the
blame for the whole thing, but your husband didn’t crack up
because he thought you and Bellew tried to kill him. That’s
just another place to hide, another way to try to pass the buck.
There’s no doubt he’s afraid of Bellew, and he’ll be ten times
as afraid of him now, but nobody in his right mind who’d
known you for as long as an hour would ever believe anything
as stupid as that. He was already irrational when he came up
with that gem—”
“Wait a minute!” Mrs. Warriner interrupted. “You still don’t
know the whole story. Why do you think we were both in that
one cabin when you found us? Hughie hit Bellew and locked
us in there because when he came below he found this vermin
—this incredible, filthy, loathsome pig—already there trying to
get into bed with me. What was he supposed to think? If he’d
had any doubts before, that would settle them. I hadn’t made
any noise; being raped was preferable to having Hughie come
running down there and probably be beaten to death.”
Ingram looked at Bellew, trying to keep the contempt from
showing any more than necessary. Don’t push him, he
thought; he’s pretty close to the edge. But the latter was
completely at ease. “Rape! Geez! So maybe I was trying to
collect what you owed me; it had nothing to do with it,
anyway. Hughie-boy already had his club with him when he
came down there. He brought it from deck, because he’d
already sighted this boat over here.”
The son of a bitch, Ingram thought. The dirty, sad—
“If you were that broken up over your wife’s death,” Rae
asked, “how did you ever happen to notice she was missing?”
Ingram gripped her arm and shook his head at her, but
neither of the others had heard her anyway.
At least he knew now why Mrs. Warriner insisted on
assuming all the guilt, even if she was probably still wrong.
“Listen,” he said, “that doesn’t change anything. He locked
you in there because he was already irrational, and he was
Dead Calm — 173
irrational simply because his mind refused to accept the fact
he’d been responsible for Mrs. Bellew’s death.” Then he
wondered if he was being very smart. This would only inflame
Bellew even more. No, Bellew already knew it anyway, and if
he was brutal and stupid enough to want to smash up a boy
who was mentally sick, this was merely superfluous and would
have no effect on him one way or the other. And somehow he
had to reach Mrs. Warriner.
Even while he was conscious of a faint self-disgust for
beginning to sound like a cocktail-party psychiatrist, he
couldn’t escape the feeling that her illogical burden of guilt
was probably as dangerous here as Bellew’s vindictiveness,
and just as likely to trigger an explosion. And certainly it made
it a lot more dangerous, and unnecessarily dangerous, for her.
Not having any interest at all in what happened to her if
anything happened to Warriner, she’d attack Bellew with
anything in sight, and the consequences of that wouldn’t be
anything you’d ever want to remember—if you lived long
enough to remember anything. Then, just for a moment, he
was tempted to throw up his hands and let the three of them
go ahead and kill themselves. Why did he have to defend
Warriner, who’d caused the whole thing, when obviously his
responsibility was to Rae? Was he going to endanger her life
again for that alibi-artist, merely because he was helpless? But
he knew he couldn’t turn his back on it, even aside from the
fact that once it started it couldn’t be contained or avoided
anyway. And, in the end, there was always Mrs. Warriner. She
was worth fifty of the other two, and you couldn’t let her
throw herself into the meat-grinder from some misguided
feeling of guilt.
“For God’s sake,” he went on wearily, “none of it was your
fault, and you’re not even doing him any good by trying to
take the blame. I’m no head-shrinker, but it seems to me the
chances are very good he can be brought out of it, with proper
treatment. But he has to admit it. I don’t think it’s a feeling of
guilt that made him crack up, but just the refusal to accept the
blame. And as long as you go on grabbing all of it in sight, he
never will. Jesus, there’s no crime in losing your head.
Anybody can do it; it’s unpredictable. You know that yourself,
Bellew—”
Dead Calm — 174
“No, I don’t, good-buddy. I say nobody but a limp-wristed
punk like Hughie-boy could do it, but then I’d never argue
with a smart bastard like you. Why don’t you write a book?”
He bit down hard on his temper. The whole attempt to
appeal to the man had been futile, and any minute it was
going to get out of hand. He had to move Warriner, and he’d
better do it now, before he waked up. If he could get him shut
up in that forward cabin, out of sight, they might make it
through the night without an eruption of violence, and by
morning Bellew would have had a chance to think twice about
it. But getting him out from behind the wheel and down the
ladder wasn’t going to be easy. He was on the point of telling
Bellew to give him a hand when he remembered the old
axiom: never give an order you know is going to be ignored.
He turned to Mrs. Warriner. “I think the best place for him
is in the forward cabin. The rest of us can use the two bunks
in the main cabin in relays, or flake out on deck, subject to the
watches we work out. So if you’ll take his feet, we’ll move him
down there now.”
“Yes, of course,” she said. She stood up.
“No,” Bellew said. “As you were.”
“What?” she asked.
“Goldilocks stays right where he is.” Bellew reached out a
foot, put it against her midriff, and pushed. She sat down
again.
There was no point in even saying anything, Ingram thought
coldly. The act was deliberate and self-explanatory. He was
already on his feet, and he hit Bellew as hard as he could just
under the ear, as he was getting to his. The only chance he
had was to hurt him, and hurt him badly, right at the start.
But even as the blow landed, he knew he’d lost. Bellew rolled
back with it with the ease and the beautiful reflexes of a pro
and counterpunched with almost unbelievable speed for a man
his size. Ingram felt the wind go out of him as a fist like a
concrete block slammed into his stomach; and then another,
which he only partially blocked, hit him over the heart. He
started to fall but came back against the mizzen. Bellew hit
him twice more in the stomach. Sickness ballooned inside him.
He heard Rae shriek behind him, and Mrs. Warriner was
trying to get past him to reach Bellew herself.
Dead Calm — 175
It was no place to fight; there was no room. He pushed off
the mast, blocked Bellew’s next punch, and managed to get
under his guard with a right. Saracen rolled down to
starboard. Bellew straightened, off balance, and Ingram hit
him again. Bellew went back across the cockpit seat. Ingram
swung again, lost his balance, and came down on top of him.
They were in the after end of the cockpit, against the binnacle,
and Ingram landed with his right forearm across the side of
Warriner’s face. Warriner stirred and groaned.
Ingram felt an arm lock around his neck and the thumb of
the other hand groping for his eyes. He ducked his face down
in Bellew’s throat and brought his right hand up, grinding the
heel of it as he pushed upward, and felt the nose flatten with
the tearing of cartilage. Bellew released his neck, pushed him
upward, and then kicked out with both feet against his chest.
He came up and back, felt his head strike the mizzen boom,
and sagged to his knees. Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw
Rae emerging from the hatch with the shotgun barrels in her
hand, raising them to swing.
Bellew whirled as lightly as a cat, caught her arm, and
yanked. She came catapulting up on deck. Bellew plucked the
gun barrels from her, threw them outward into the sea, and
cuffed her backward across the deckhouse in three smooth
and almost simultaneous blurs of motion. Ingram was on his
feet again. Bellew turned back to him, grinning and hideous
with blood running down his face and onto his chest from the
pulpy ruin of his nose. Ingram tried to swing, and then
something like the popping of a flash bulb went off inside his
head and he was on the bottom of the cockpit.
He wasn’t completely out, but dazed and too sick and too
weak to get up. He tried. He pushed upward with his arms,
felt Saracen roll all the way over and spin end-for-end, and
collapsed again. He was under the edge of the wheel, and
inches in front of his face two feet in white canvas shoes were
bound to the bottom of the binnacle with a section of old
heaving line. He was absorbing and cataloguing this
phenomenon with the bemused wonder of a baby discovering
its navel, and only beginning to fit it back into its position in a
framework of time and place where everything had blown up
and hadn’t yet finished settling, when somewhere far off he
heard the scream begin. Then the feet moved upward—quite
Dead Calm — 176
casually, it seemed to him—and the heaving line parted as if it
were rotten string.
His mind was clear now, but he still couldn’t get up. He fell
back on his side and was looking up past the wheel and the
binnacle. Bellew, the gory face split in its wolfish grin, was
leaning over Warriner. And Warriner was sitting up, cringing
backward, still screaming.
“No, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, no! No—no—!”
Ingram vomited. He could feel the warmth of it on his
hands, and the deck was slick with it as he tried again to push
himself up. Mrs. Warriner materialized out of somewhere,
flinging herself across his line of vision onto Bellew’s
shoulders. Bellew shrugged her off. Only half turning, he
slapped her backward, and she fell on Ingram’s legs.
“Come on, old Hughie-boy, old shark-killer.’’ Bellew grabbed
Warriner’s shoulders and lifted. He was apparently still
talking, for Ingram could see his lips move, but all sound was
lost then in another cry from Warriner, a mindless, unceasing,
animal screaming that lifted the hair on Ingram’s scalp and
ran like ice along his back. Warriner lunged upward from
behind the wheel, his legs kicking free of the remaining turns
of line around them. The line from his wrists to the stanchion
gave way. Muscles writhed in his arms. His hands burst apart.
Bellew shifted his grip, caught him about the waist, and
lifted. He stepped up on the narrow strip of deck between the
cockpit and the rail.
Mrs. Warriner was off Ingram’s legs then, springing up and
toward Bellew. Ingram made it to his knees. Warriner’s cry
cut off as he saw the water below him, and he spun around in
Bellew’s grasp, locking his arms and legs around him as if he
were clinging to the bole of a tree, and nothing was visible of
his eyes except the whites. Ingram got to his feet but fell
backward onto the seat. Saracen rolled down to starboard.
Bellew and Warriner began to topple outward. They were
already over the lifeline and almost horizontal when Mrs.
Warriner leaped out onto Bellew’s back and clamped one arm
around his neck while she beat at him with the other hand. All
three of them, in one welded and inseparable unit, wheeled
slowly over and fell into the sea.
Dead Calm — 177
17
“Flashlight!” he shouted to Rae, who was getting up now. He
pushed himself off the cockpit seat and raised it to grope in
the locker under it for a diving mask. Leaping to the rail, he
looked down. None of them had come up. Bellew, even his
tremendous strength powerless in Warriner’s cataleptic
embrace, couldn’t break free, and Mrs. Warriner wouldn’t.
She’d still be trying to separate them when she lost
consciousness. Yanking the mask down over his face, he fell
backward into the water.
He turned and peered downward but could see nothing.
Farther out, the water was faintly illuminated from the
spreader lights, but here directly under the side it was in deep
shadow and it was impossible to see under the boat at all. He
had only a minute or two at the most. Saracen was swinging
around on the swell, and by the time he could dive twice
there’d be no way of telling where they’d gone under. He
kicked downward, swinging his arms in all directions, groping
for them. He felt nothing.
Conscious of Saracen’s deadly mass plunging up and down
on the swell within feet of him, he felt a moment’s panic. If he
lost his bearings and came up under her he could be knocked
unconscious. He swam to his right and started up, and at the
same instant he heard them. They were under her, bumping
and kicking against the hull in their struggle. Then a beam of
light penetrated the water just in front of his face. His head
Dead Calm — 178
came out of the water. Rae was leaning over the side with a
flashlight, shining it downward.
“They’re underneath.” He gasped. “Shine it in under the
counter.”
She ran back and threw herself flat on deck aft of the
cockpit. Reaching an arm over, she threw the beam of light
down and forward, past the rudder. He went under again. He
was below the turn of the bilge now and could see the light
angling down astern, but everything forward of it was in
impenetrable shadow. Saracen plunged up and then down,
rolling to starboard, toward him. He put a hand up and felt the
planking, slick with marine growth, come lunging down
against it. He shot downward. It stopped. Pain bit into his
palm where it had been cut by a barnacle. As Saracen went
back to port he swam down and in, raking the area with his
arms. Then he saw Warriner and Bellew.
They were almost straight below him, falling away now and
dropping into the beam of light. They were still locked
together, but no arms or legs moved, and something like a
plume of dark smoke was drifting upward and diffusing in the
water above them. It was blood, either from Bellew’s broken
nose or from some wound inflicted on one of them by the keel
or hull. He kicked downward but knew at the same time it was
impossible. He was already running out of breath, and they
were nearly fifteen feet below him, still drifting down. But
Mrs. Warriner must be still above them. He had to find her.
Then his hand brushed something just below him, something
soft and fern-like. It was her hair. He entwined his fingers in it
and began swimming up and out, away from the hull above
him. His chest hurt now, and he wondered if he would make it.
He’d been a fool to come under here; his first responsibility
was to Rae. Just before he blacked out, his head broke surface
and he gulped hungrily at the air.
He was almost under the counter, still too near the rudder
and propeller. He swam out, trying to get Mrs. Warriner’s
head above the surface. Rae had seen him now. “Others—too
far down—no use—” He gasped. “Ladder—” It would take too
long to tow her around to the other side. Rae disappeared
above him, and almost immediately the ladder was dropped
over the starboard side, just forward of him. He swam up to it,
towing the inert figure behind him. With the beating he had
Dead Calm — 179
taken from Bellew, he was very weak now, and he wondered if
he could get her aboard. Time was precious. She’d been
unconscious for minutes.
He ducked under the surface and pulled her across his
shoulder. When Saracen rolled down to starboard, he got one
foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, caught a lifeline
stanchion with his free hand, and heaved upward, with Rae
helping from above to haul her in under the lifeline until her
body was on deck. He came on up himself. They lifted her
down onto one of the cockpit seats. Her hair was plastered to
her face and she was bleeding from a half-dozen barnacle cuts
on her bare legs and shoulders, but she appeared to be
uninjured otherwise.
He turned her face downward and began applying artificial
respiration. Water ran out of her mouth and drained from her
hair, but there was no movement. A minute went by. Two.
Three. He was on the point of turning her on her back to try
the mouth-to-mouth method he’d read of when he felt her
begin trying to breathe again.
She retched and began to gag from the salt water she’d
swallowed. He stepped back. She was breathing regularly and
without difficulty now. In a few more minutes she opened her
eyes. She looked around, blankly at first, and then she
screamed. She came off the seat, trying to get to her feet to
lunge toward the rail where they’d all gone over. He’d been
expecting it. He caught her and forced her back. She fought
him, still screaming. Then just as abruptly all the strength
went out of her again and she collapsed. She lay face
downward while her whole body shook with sobs.
Rae had disappeared. She came running up the ladder now,
carrying a glass. Between them they got her upright and
forced her to drink. They eased her gently back on the
cushion. In a few minutes the crying ceased and she lay still.
“What was it?” he asked.
“Codeine tablet,” Rae said. She fumbled a cigarette out of
her pocket, but it fell from her fingers into the bottom of the
cockpit. She made as if to reach down for it, then merely
sighed and collapsed on the other seat. Ingram bent and
picked it up for her, but with his wet hand and the water
pouring off him and down his arm it was mush by the time
Dead Calm — 180
he’d straightened. He tossed it overboard. Saracen rolled.
They looked at each other in silence.
Then Ingram’s face twisted. “Maybe if I hadn’t hit him …”
She looked up. Her voice was thin and very near the edge as
she said, “Stop it! And never say that again. He was going to
do it, no matter what you did, and you know it. And you saved
her, didn’t you?”
“I guess you’re right.”
She rubbed a hand across her face. Then she brought the
hand down and looked at its trembling. She clenched it into a
fist and opened it. “With luck,” she said, “maybe I can keep
from thinking about it for ten minutes, and keep from hearing
—from hearing—” She swallowed, and went on. “That should
be—just about long enough—to get her into that forward bunk
and into dry pajamas and wrap a towel around her hair. And
then take one of those codeine things myself. Because if I
don’t make it, you’re going to be picking up springs and
cogwheels the rest of the night. Let’s go.”
* * *
Ingram awoke just at dawn. He ached all over, and his
stomach muscles felt as if he’d been run over by a truck. He
turned his head in the beginnings of light inside the cabin and
looked at Rae asleep in the opposite bunk. She was wearing
the same sleeveless short pajamas she’d had on yesterday
morning, and the mop of tawny hair was spread across the
pillow, encircled by her arms. The only thing different was the
discolored and swollen area on her face where Warriner had
hit her. Just beyond his feet the tea kettle slid and bumped
gently against the rails that kept it on the galley stove. Dishes
shifted minutely in their stowage above the sink. A timber
creaked. It was hot. And it was still dead calm.
He rolled out of the bunk and donned khaki shorts,
remembering he could no longer run about the boat naked or
clad only in a towel. His eyes softened as he looked down at
Rae, and as he put on water for coffee he was careful to make
no sound. He went up on deck. It could be yesterday morning
all over again, he thought; everything topside was wet with
dew, and the surface of the Pacific was as slick as oil except
for the heaving of the swell. It was full daylight now, and the
few clouds overhead were already edged with pink. Wind or
Dead Calm — 181
no wind, it was morning, it was beautiful, and it was good to
be alive. Then suddenly he was thinking of Warriner and
Bellew somewhere in the eternal darkness and the ooze two
miles below, and he swore softly as he tried to wrench his
mind away. He knew that for years it would keep coming
back, leaping out at him in odd moments and without warning
to hit him with that unanswerable question: Would something
different, some other way, have worked?
No. Nothing could have changed it. He’d done everything he
could, and in the only way it could have been done. If he’d let
Bellew’s deliberate provocation go unchallenged, any control
he might have had over the situation and any chance he’d
have had of saving all of them would have been gone forever.
Once authority was lost, you never got it back. And with
Bellew doing as he pleased, Warriner would have been
doomed anyway. And at some other time, particularly if they
were under way, he might not have been lucky enough to save
Mrs. Warriner.
He took a look around the horizon for squalls and went back
below. He made the weather entries in the log and wound the
chronometer. Just as he finished pouring the water through
for the coffee, he heard Rae whimper in her sleep. He set the
tea kettle down and stepped swiftly over beside her bunk.
Her head was turning from side to side now, and the little
cry of pain or of terror was growing in her throat. He dropped
to his knees and put his arms about her and began to whisper
softly in her ear. She jerked spasmodically, fighting the grip of
his arms, and cried out once, but then she was awake. Her
eyes were wide with terror, and then confused for a moment
before she relaxed and all the tension went out of her. “Just
hold me for a minute,” she said.
“It won’t last forever. You’ll quit dreaming about it.”
She nodded. “I know. But it may be a long time. The rest of
it you could handle, but—oh, God, if only he hadn’t said that,
Daddy, Daddy, Daddy—” Her chin began to quiver and she
clenched her teeth to stop it, but tears welled up in her eyes.
“He tried to kill you,” Ingram said. “Does that help any?”
“No.”
“I guess it wouldn’t.” He was silent for a moment, and then
he went on, “There’s not going to be much privacy on here till
Dead Calm — 182
we get to Papeete, so I want to tell you this now, while I can. I
love you.”
“That does.”
“Does what?”
She managed a smile. “Helps.”
He put his mouth down and whispered against her ear.
“You’re the only one they ever made. Nobody else could have
done it—”
“Never mind the junk about what I did. Just tell me again
that you love me.”
He told her. Then he nodded toward the door into the
forward compartment. “While I’m pouring your coffee, take a
look in there and see if she’s all right.”
She rolled off the bunk, opened the door a crack, and peered
in. She closed it and nodded. “Still sleeping quietly,” she
whispered.
She dressed, and they took their coffee on deck to drink it.
Ingram lit a cigar, and they watched the sun come up, neither
of them saying anything. She started to tremble once as she
looked down at the water, but got control of it. He went below
to get the compass, to see what it was going to take to secure
it in the binnacle, but when he was opening the drawer he
heard Mrs. Warriner moving in the forward cabin. He stepped
back up the ladder and motioned to Rae. She came down.
“Take her something to put on,” he said quietly, “and a comb
and whatever else she needs to fix herself up. Ill pour her
some coffee and take it up on deck.”
It was several minutes before they came up. Mrs. Warriner
was wrapped in Rae’s seersucker robe. Her hair was combed
and there was a suggestion of lipstick on her mouth, but her
eyes were dead and washed-out, and there were dark circles
under them. Her movements were those of a sleepwalker as
she sat down in the cockpit and accepted the cup of coffee.
She said good morning and thanked him, but it was pure
reflex, the ingrained and automatic good manners, and he
realized she would have said the same thing if she’d been
blind drunk or bleeding to death from a severed artery. But at
least she hadn’t come running past him to try to jump
overboard again. Maybe he was going to get through to her.
Dead Calm — 183
She took a sip of the coffee and accepted the cigarette Rae
held out to her. “Thank you,” she said. She turned to Ingram.
“Thank you for saving my life last night.” Same tone, he
thought. Same inflection. They were of equal value.
He waited till she had finished the coffee, for what strength
it could give her. He was sick of making speeches and dreaded
it, but it had to be done.
“You heard what he said?” he asked then, abruptly, and
apparently with complete callousness. Rae looked at him
wonderingly.
“Yes,” Mrs. Warriner replied in the same flat tone. The pain
showed in her eyes for only an instant and was replaced by
that quality of deadness.
“I didn’t ask because I enjoy torturing people before
breakfast,” Ingram went on. “I usually wait till later in the
day. But what I’m driving at is that if you did hear him, you
know by now it wasn’t you he was slamming the door on when
he slugged Bellew and left the two of you to drown. It was his
father—”
“Yes. Wait,” Rae broke in. “I don’t know why I didn’t
remember it before.” She told them of Warriner’s strange
reaction when she’d asked him if his father was still alive.
Ingram nodded. “So there you are,” he went on. “He didn’t
blame you for anything. He didn’t think you betrayed him, and
he didn’t think you deliberately went off and left him to
drown. It’s just as I told you all along; he was already
irrational and didn’t know what he was doing; he was
confusing Bellew with his father. Probably nobody will ever
know what his father did to him, but it was there in his
subconscious all the time, and when his mind began to let go
—” He gestured wearily. “God, I’m tired of sounding like a
discount-house psychiatrist. But don’t you see, that was the
reason he backed down from Bellew the way he did? When
Bellew started bullying him and riding him, the old patterns
began to come to the surface again. But I’ll get on to what I’m
trying to say. You’re an adult, and you’ve probably got more
sense than I have, and if you want to go on blaming yourself
for something that was never any of your fault from first to
last, that’s your affair. Aside from the fact that I like you and
have a great deal of admiration for you, it’s none of my
business at all.
Dead Calm — 184
“But sailing this boat is my business, and there’s a lot of
work attached to it. You can help us, if you will, or you can
make it tougher by keeping us busy heading you off from the
rail because you want to go on torturing yourself like some
mixed-up adolescent. Am I making any sense to you at all?”
She nodded, and for a moment there was a trace of life
about her eyes, a touch of the old coolness and intelligence.
“Yes, you’re doing quite well.” She turned to Rae. “Mrs.
Ingram, I like your husband.”
I’m fond of him at times myself,” Rae said.
Mrs. Warriner tossed her cigarette over the side and stood
up. “What do we do first? Can I help get breakfast, or shall I
be dishwasher?”
Ingram sighed gently. “The first project is that compass. As
soon as I can get it installed in the binnacle some way, we’ll
swing ship and compensate it while we’ve got the sun low on
the horizon. We’ll need the azimuth tables, and a watch, and
something to use for a new deviation card—” He broke off and
stood up himself, looking out to starboard.
“What is it?” Rae asked.
“Wind.”
She stood up, and they all turned to look. Off in the
northeast the surface of the sea was darkening with the riffles
of an advancing breeze. It might die out in ten minutes, or it
might never even reach them at all, but it was wind. And
today, or tomorrow, or the day after that, they’d pick up the
Trades.
Dead Calm — 185