Gulf Coast Girl - Charles Williams(6)

machinery and several thousand cases of whisky that
somehow hadn’t been smashed.
“So that’s the first time your diamonds were dunked,” I
said. “But where did Macaulay get into the act?”
As soon as I asked, I began to get the connection. Salvage—
underwriters; so she had been telling the truth about part of
it, anyway. The part about his being in the marine insurance
business.
“That is correct,” he said. “They were aboard the Shetland
Queen. But—” He looked up and smiled in the faint glow from
the binnacle. “Through some oversight they didn’t appear on
the cargo manifest or any of the customs lists. To be exact,
they were in some cases of tinned cocoa which had been
loaded in Holland and were consigned to a small importing
firm in New Orleans. Quite an economical way to ship
diamonds, if you follow me, except that it can be damned


embarrassing if something happens to the ship, as in this
case. The cocoa was insured, as I recall, for some two or
three hundred dollars. And naturally we should have looked a
little silly trying to explain to the underwriters at that stage of
the game that we hadn’t really meant chocolate at all, but
diamonds, and that they should pay us three quarters of a
million when we’d paid a premium on a valuation of three
hundred dollars. Hardly sporting, what? And one might
anticipate a certain element of skepticism on their part. To
say nothing of the embarrassment of attempting to explain a
harmless prank like that to the customs chaps. Lacking in
true appreciation of these little matters, the customs people.
“It was something of an impasse, as you may well imagine.
Benson and Teen had paid off all claims, including ours, and
were engaged in salvaging what they could, but naturally this
didn’t mean they were going to waste any time and effort in
bringing up insignificant items of general cargo such as a few
dollars’ worth of tinned cocoa. They paid, and wrote it off. We
made a few tentative feelers. Inasmuch as they were working
inside the ship anyway, and inasmuch as the sea pressure at
that depth probably hadn’t been sufficient to crush the tins,
why didn’t they merely bring up our cocoa and let us
withdraw our claim? They brushed this aside as ridiculous.
They were working in the open sea, salvage operations are
deucedly expensive, and they had no intention at all of trifling
Gulf Coast Girl — 108
with such picayune items. We let the matter drop, knowing
that any insistence would excite suspicion. We’d be forced to
wait until they were finished with the wreck and then
undertake a salvage operation of our own.
“But, unfortunately, some—ah—competitors of ours began
to suspect what was in the wind and also tried to purchase
the cocoa from Benson and Teen. This proved to be a little too
much for the gentleman who was in charge of the operation
for them—the late Francis L. Macaulay. This obviously
valuable chocolate began to intrigue him, so he sent a
confidential emissary down to Mexico to go out to the scene
of operations and look into it on the quiet. This chap asked to
have the cocoa brought up, and since he was ostensibly
acting for Benson and Teen through the person of Macaulay,
they brought it up. It took him only a few minutes, of course,
to determine what made it so valuable. He devalued it
forthwith, saying nothing to anyone. As soon as he was back
in the little Mexican port where the salvaged cargo was being
landed, he called Macaulay by long-distance telephone.
“They had two problems. The first was, of course, our
original one—getting the stones into the United States
without paying duty or having to answer any embarrassing
questions as to where they had come from. The second was to
keep us from recovering them. We had two men in the
Mexican port keeping an eye on the cargo that was brought
in. Macaulay solved both problems at once. He had been a
bomber pilot in the Second World War, and held a pilot’s
license. He came down to the Gulf Coast, chartered a big
amphibian, and came after his colleague and the stones. They
were to rendezvous in a laguna some ten or fifteen miles to
the east of the Mexican port. They did, but our men were
there, too, having become suspicious of Macaulay’s man and
followed him in another motorboat. They lost him in the
jungle, but saw the plane coming in and arrived at the spot
just as the man was climbing aboard. Macaulay was helping
him, and our chaps recognized him. They opened fire, killing
the other man, but Macaulay got the plane off the water and
escaped.”
“With your stupid diamonds,” I said.
He nodded. “So we thought. Macaulay never did go back to
New York, suspecting that inasmuch as our men had
Gulf Coast Girl — 109
recognized him as the pilot of the plane engaged in stealing
three quarters of a million dollars from us we might feel illdisposed
toward him. His wife disappeared also. The firm said
he had suffered a heart attack and resigned. He’d told them,
originally, that he had to go to the Coast because of illness in
the family, or some such story. We tried to trail him. He
escaped us rather narrowly two or three times. But the
strange part of it was that he apparently had never made any
attempt to sell any of his loot. We began to understand then,
just about the time we ran him down in Sanport. He hadn’t
sold it, or tried to, because he didn’t have it.
“He escaped us in Sanport, taking off in another plane. We
learned that another man had been with him, a man carrying
an aqualung diving outfit. Macaulay, incidentally, couldn’t
swim a stroke. As soon as we learned of the diver, of course,
we knew what had happened. The metal box containing the
diamonds had fallen into the laguna during those few hectic
moments when Macaulay’s friend was killed.
“Our only hope lay in staying so close to Mrs. M. she’d have
to lead us to him eventually. But just about that time we
began to have a strong suspicion he was back in Sanport.
Perhaps you missed the little item in the paper, but just about
five days after Macaulay took off, a fishing boat docked with a
castaway it had picked up in a rubber life raft on the
Campeche Bank. This man, the captain said, gave them some
vague story about being a pilot for some Mexican company
and having crashed while en route from Tampico to Progreso
alone in a seaplane. But he had, strangely, just vanished the
minute the fishing boat docked.”
“I get it now,” I said. “As soon as she got in touch with me
you knew the castaway was Macaulay. He’d gone back to the
laguna with a diver to hunt for the box. But how do you know
he found it, or even got there? Maybe he crashed on the way
down.”
“No. He crashed on the way back. So the box is in the
plane.”
“I see. And from the fact that he was trying to hire me to do
some more diving for him, you realized he knew where the
plane was and could go back to it?”
Gulf Coast Girl — 110
Barclay nodded. “Correct. We also suspected he was right
there in the house, but that taking him alive wasn’t going to
be easy. He was armed, and very scared.”
“The thing that puzzles me,” I said, “is that you and your
meat-headed thugs never did put the arm on her to find out
where the plane was. You’re convinced now she knows where
it is, but you let her come and go there for a week or more
right under your noses.”
“We weren’t certain she knew then.”
“But you are now. Why?”
He hooked a leg over the tiller and used both hands to light
a cigarette. The glow of Sanport’s lights was fading on the
horizon.
“It’s really quite simple,” he explained, filling his lungs with
smoke. “As a matter of fact, I’m a little ashamed I didn’t think
of it before. I merely wrote Macaulay a letter two days ago
and pointed out the advisability of telling her where it was.”
I shook my head. “Maybe you’d better run through that
again. You wrote him a letter—where?”
“Addressed to his house, naturally. Even if he weren’t there
she would get it to him.”
“And he’d be sure to tell her, just because you suggested it?
Don’t be stupid. There’s no reason at all he’d do it.”
He smiled again. “I disagree, old boy. There was a very
good reason he would tell her. Remember, Macaulay was in
the insurance business. He didn’t sell life insurance, but he
was familiar with the necessity for it as well as any married
man and probably more so than most. I simply pointed out
that inasmuch as there was always a chance something might
happen to him, it behooved him to protect her.”
“By telling her where the plane was?” I asked
incredulously.
“Yes,” he said.
“And wouldn’t that be wonderful?” I said. “That way he
could guarantee she’d be kidnapped and beat up and put
through the wringer by you and the rest of your sadistic
bastards—”
He shook his head gently. “I’m afraid you still don’t see it,
at least not from Macaulay’s point of view, old chap. There
Gulf Coast Girl — 111
was no doubt as to her being interrogated; he knew that. But
suppose she didn’t know where the plane was?”
I turned and looked at him, and it took perhaps a full
second for the slow horror of it to catch up with me. “Good
God—”
“Precisely, old boy. Life insurance, you see. He was leaving
her the only thing that could stop the questions.”
I saw then what Macaulay must have gone through in those
last few hours. He couldn’t turn to the police because he had
already left the protection of the law. There was a good
chance he would be killed, and he was going to leave her
right in their hands. He had to tell her.
“Hostage to fortune, you see,” Barclay murmured. “The
exposed nerve end again.”
I leaned my elbows on my knees and looked at him. “You
dirty son—”
I stopped. I’d forgotten him. A number of things were
beginning to click in my mind, all at the same time. She’d told
the truth about his job. She’d told the truth about their trying
to get away to Central America. Barclay had sent that letter
to Macaulay only two days ago. Macaulay had told one lie, to
his company, about where he’d been going when he left New
York. Maybe—
No. He’d been on his way back when he crashed. She’d still
been lying when she said he’d been trying to get to Central
America. But I had to talk to her. I stood up.
“I’m going below,” I said.
“No.” Barclay shook his head. “George is asleep.”
I was tight with rage. “I said I was going below. Wake him
up. Tell him to hold his goddamned gun with both hands. Tell
him to sit on it. Tell him to come up here and jump overboard.
I’m going down there.”
“Why?” he asked.
“I want to talk to Shannon Macaulay.”
I could see it in his face in the glow from the binnacle. He
was smart. He had more pure intelligence than anybody I had
ever known. He saw the possibilities of it and knew what I
wanted to ask her. And not only that. He was already adding
it up on his side of the ledger. He hadn’t wanted to prove she
Gulf Coast Girl — 112
was lying, in the first place. Always increase the areas of
vulnerability; don’t decrease them.
“George,” he called. “Are you awake?”
“Yes,” came the weary answer from inside the cabin.
“What’s biting our stupid friend now?”
I went below and switched on the chart lamp. He was lying
in the starboard bunk smoking a cigarette with his jacket and
tie off and his collar unbuttoned. The gun was in a shoulder
holster under his left arm. He was big and tough, and his eyes
blinked sourly at the light.
“Look, Snerd,” he said. “Why don’t you flake out
somewhere and get off my back?”

I walked over and stood staring down at him. “Get out,” I
said.
He started to rise to his elbows. “Why, you dimwit—”
“George, come here a moment,” Barclay called from the
cockpit.
“Better run along, baby,” I said. “Your boss is whistling for
you.”
He swung his legs over the side of the bunk and slowly sat
up. The gray eyes looked hungrily at me for a moment, and
then Barclay called out again.
“Just keep on asking for it, Snerd,” he said. He turned his
back and went out.
I parted the curtains and went into the forward part of the
cabin. She was lying on the starboard bunk with her face in
her arms.
Gulf Coast Girl — 113
Eleven
Shannon,” I said.
“What, Bill?” Her voice was muffled.
“How long have you known what these gorillas are after?”
She turned slowly on her back and looked up at me. The
gray eyes were dry now, but they were washed out and dead.
“Since three o’clock this afternoon,” she said.
I sighed, and felt suddenly weak with relief or joy, or both.
I’d been right. All the cancerous growth of bitterness was
gone and I wanted to kneel beside the bunk and take her in
my arms. Instead I lit a cigarette and put it between her
fingers. “I want to apologize,” I said.
Her head moved almost imperceptibly. “Don’t. I sold you
out, Bill.”
“No,” I whispered. “You didn’t know. I thought you had lied,
but you hadn’t. It doesn’t matter that he was lying to you.”
“Don’t make it any worse, Bill. Don’t you see? I still
betrayed you. I had six hours to call you, and you could have
got away. I tried to, but I couldn’t. I thought I owed him that,
in spite of what he did. Maybe I was wrong, but I think I’d
still do it the same way. I don’t know how to explain—”
“You don’t have to,” I said. “You were telling the truth all
the time. That’s the only thing that matters.”
She stared up at me. “Why does it?”
Gulf Coast Girl — 114
“I don’t know,” I said.
I did know. It was the only thing I knew, or even had room
for in my mind. I wanted to shout it out to her, or sing it, but I
kept my face blank and lit a cigarette for myself.
“I’m sorry about it,” I said gently.
She didn’t answer for a moment. Then she said, “It’s all
right. He didn’t have a chance, anyway. I think they knew he
was in the house, and anything we tried would have failed.”
The ash was growing long on her cigarette. She glanced at
it dully and cast her eyes about for a tray. There was one
made of half a milk can in the rack on the bulkhead above the
bunk. I reached it down and held it for her. She tried to smile.
Just looking at her made my breath catch in my throat. I
squatted on my heels with my back braced against the other
bunk and my face on a level with hers.
“Why hadn’t he ever told you?” I asked.
“Ashamed, I think. He wasn’t a criminal, Bill. He wasn’t
even dishonest. There was just too much of it, and it was too
easy, and no one would ever know.”
“It’s too bad,” I said. “It’s a dirty shame.”
She turned her face a little, and her eyes met mine
squarely. “You know I must have suspected it, don’t you?
Nobody could be stupid enough not to guess there must be
more to it than he told me. I did suspect it. I can’t deny it. I
was cheating when I told you what he told me, because I was
afraid it wasn’t the truth, or not all the truth. But what could I
do? Tell you I thought my husband was lying? Did I owe you
more than I did him? Doesn’t eight years of time mean
anything, or the fact he had never lied to me before, or that
he’d always been wonderful to me? I’d do it again. You’ll just
have to think what you will.”
“If you’re selecting a jury,” I said, “I’ve already formed an
opinion. I’ll tell you about it, some day.”
What some day? We had about five left, if we were lucky.
“Wait, Bill,” she whispered. “You don’t know all of it yet.
When you do you’ll think I’m a fool. You see, he wasn’t on his
way down there when he crashed. He was coming back.”
I realized I’d forgotten that. “I know. To Sanport.”
Gulf Coast Girl — 115
“Not to Sanport. To somewhere on the Florida coast, where
he was going to destroy the plane and disappear. Don’t you
see? He was leaving me.”
I got it then. “And you’d have gone on to Honduras,
thinking he would be there? And when he wasn’t, you’d have
been certain he was dead? Down somewhere in the Gulf, or in
the jungle?”
“Yes,” she said. Then she smiled a little bitterly. “But I
wasn’t the one he wanted to convince. He was just trading
me, you see—”
“Oh.” I really saw it at last. “So if Barclay and his men had
managed to follow you down there, they’d give him up as
dead, too. That was what he was after.”
She nodded.
“Maybe it gets easier as you go along,” I said.
“He was scared. He’d been hunted too long, and I guess it
does things to you.”
“But running out on you? Deserting you, leaving you
stranded in a foreign country?”
“Not quite stranded, if you mean money,” she said. “You
see, it wasn’t in the plane. I thought it was, but it was in a
bag of his I was supposed to bring down with me. None of it’s
clear-cut, Bill. He was leaving me, and he had to double-cross
his friend who bought the plane, but he wanted me to have
the money. Maybe he thought it was just sort of a ball game. I
was being sacrificed to advance the runner to second.”
And maybe the money was a way of buying off his
conscience, I thought, but I said nothing. Macaulay was a
little mixed up for me.
Suddenly her eyes were full of tears and she was crying
silently. “Does it make much sense to you that I still didn’t
call and tell you, after that?”
“Does it have to?” I asked.
She put both hands alongside her face and said slowly,
around the tightness in her throat, “I would like to explain it,
but I don’t know how. When he told me that, I knew I would
leave him, but I couldn’t run out on him until he was safe.”
I tried to see Macaulay, and failed again. How could he
inspire that kind of loyalty on one hand and be capable of the
Gulf Coast Girl — 116
things he had done on the other? I said nothing about it
because it might not have occurred to her and it would only
hurt her, but he had killed that diver, or intended to until the
airplane crash saved him the trouble. The way he had it
planned, there couldn’t be any second person who knew he
was still alive. He’d probably have killed him as soon as the
poor devil brought up the box in that Mexican laguna. And he
would have killed me, in some way.
That was the only way it would add up. He didn’t want his
wife to know what he was mixed up in. So when I went down
into that plane he had to tell me what he was really after, and
when he’d done that the chances were I’d have fallen
overboard the next night. He was a great Macaulay, I
thought. He’d started out with an itching palm and wound up
itching all over.
“How much chance do you think we have?” she asked.
I tried to think of something to say. But what? They were
going to kill us. Everything said they had to. Escape? At sea
in a small boat with two of them watching us? And if we did
get rid of them some way, what then? I was wanted by the
police. In a very short time she would be, too. We had
nowhere to go. The trap had double walls.
Then I thought of something else, even worse. “Do you
really know where that plane is?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes. He told me very carefully. And I
memorized everything he said.”
I wondered. She thought she did. Barclay was convinced
she did. But apparently I was the only one aboard who had
any idea of the immensity of the Gulf of Mexico and the
smallness of an airplane. If you didn’t know within a few
hundred yards you could drag for a thousand years and never
find it.
Not that I cared if they found their damned diamonds or
not. It was something else. If they didn’t, Barclay would think
she was stalling, “—suppose she didn’t know,” he’d said
softly. The implication was sickening.
“He didn’t show you on a chart?” I asked. “Or make a
drawing?”
“No,” she said. “But it’s near a shoal. The shoal is about
fifty miles north-northeast of Scorpion Reef, and is around a
Gulf Coast Girl — 117
half mile long, running north and south. The plane sank two
miles due east of it.”
“Was there white water, or did he just see the shoal from
the air before he crashed?”
“He didn’t say.”
It was silent in the cabin except for the swish of water
across the deck above us. I didn’t say anything for a moment.
It was pretty bad. You had to assume too many things. You
had to assume, to begin with, that Macaulay had known
where he was himself. Then you had to believe the water was
shallow enough at that spot to cause surf, so we could find it.
If he’d merely seen a difference in the coloration of the water
from above, we didn’t have a chance. Then you had to have
faith in his ability to estimate his bearing and distance from
the shoal in the wild scramble to get out of the plane and
launch the rubber raft before he went down.
I tried to reassure myself. He could navigate, or he
wouldn’t have tried to fly the Gulf in the first place. He gave
the location in reference to Scorpion Reef, so he must have
sighted Scorpion. Fifty miles was only a few minutes in a
plane, so he couldn’t have gone far wrong in that distance.
And there had to be visible white water. He’d been intending
to go back to it in a boat, hadn’t he? He must have known
what he was doing.
Then something else struck me. “Wait,” I said. “Barclay told
me to set a course to the west of Scorpion Reef. Are you sure
you told him east?”
“Yes. He must have misunderstood. I said north-northeast.”
“Just a minute,” I said. I went out into the after part of the
cabin and leaned over the chart. Barfield was still on deck.
With the parallel rulers I laid down a line 22 degrees from
Scorpion Reef, picked fifty miles off the edge of the chart
with the dividers, and set them on the line. I stared. There
was no shoal there. The only sounding in the vicinity was 45
fathoms. I grew more uneasy.
Beyond, another 20 or 25 miles, lay the Northern Shelves, a
wide area of shoaling water and one notation that three
fathoms had been reported in 1907. Could he have meant
that? But if he had, we didn’t have a chance. Not a chance in
the world.
Gulf Coast Girl — 118
In the first place, if he couldn’t fix his estimated position
within 25 miles that short a time after having sighted
Scorpion Reef, his navigation was so sloppy you had to throw
it all out. There went your first assumption, the one you had
to have even to start: that Macaulay had known where he was
himself. And in the second place, that whole area was shoal.
God knew how many places you might find white water at
dead low tide with a heavy sea running. Trying to find an
airplane with no more than that to go on was so absurd it was
fantastic.
Fumbling a little with nervousness, I swung the rulers
around and ran out a line NNW from Scorpion Reef. Barclay
had said she’d told him that direction. I looked at it and shook
my head. That was out over the hundred-fathom curve.
Nothing there at all. And if he’d been headed for the Florida
coast he wouldn’t have been over there in the first place.
I thought swiftly. We’d never find that plane. To anybody
even remotely acquainted with salvage work the whole thing
was farcical, except there was nothing funny about it here,
under the circumstances. They were going to think she was
stalling. She’d already contradicted herself once, or Barclay
had misunderstood her.
Three quarters of a million dollars was the prize. Brutality
was their profession. I thought of it and felt chill along the
back.
I was still looking at the chart when the idea began to come
to me. I hurriedly slid the parallel rulers over on our course
and looked at my watch. It was just a little less than two
hours since we’d cleared the sea buoy. Guessing our speed at
five knots would put us ten miles down that line. Growing
excited now, I marked the estimated position and spanned
the distance to the beach westward of us with the dividers. I
measured it off against the edge of the chart. It was a little
less than nine miles.
Hope surged up in me. We could do it. There was still
enough glow in the sky over Sanport to guide us, and if there
wasn’t, all we had to do was keep the sea behind us and go
downwind. The water was warm. You could stay in it all day
without losing too much body heat.
Sure, the police would get me, and her, too. We wouldn’t
have a chance, half clothed and with no money. But that was
Gulf Coast Girl — 119
nothing compared to what lay ahead for us here. She might
go free. If we could sell them the story soon enough, the
Coast Guard might pick up the sloop and take them. There
was a chance it would clear her. I’d go to prison, but that was
better than going crazy out there when they started getting
rough with her.
But we had to have a life belt. She probably couldn’t swim
anything like that distance, and it was just a tossup whether I
could or not. But how to get one out there on deck without
their seeing it? They were big and bulky, and even down here
in the cabin Barfield would notice it as she went by. I looked
swiftly around the cabin and had an idea that might work.
Taking one of the big, cork-slab belts from under the
starboard settee, I put it on top of the icebox, which was right
beside the companionway.
I hurried back through the curtain and knelt beside her
again. Leaning close, I whispered, “Can you swim?”
Her eyes widened in surprise, but when she replied her
voice was low. “Just a little,” she said.
“Good,” I whispered. “Listen. We’ve got to get off here.
Now. There’s not a chance in the world of finding that plane
with the information you’ve got, and when they begin to find
it out it’s going to be murder. And even if we could locate it,
they’d probably kill us anyway. So we’ve got to swim for it.
Maybe we make it, maybe we drown; but it’s better than this.
How about it?”
“How far?” she asked quietly.
“About nine miles.”
“I can swim about a hundred yards, in calm water.”
“That’s all right. I’m pretty good at it, and we’ll have a life
belt. It’s our only chance.”
The big eyes looked at me gravely, without fear. “All right,”
she whispered.

“Fine,” I said. “Now, I’m going back on deck. As soon as I’m
up there, Barfield will probably come back down here and
turn in. Wait about five minutes, and then come on deck
yourself. If he tries to stop you, make a gagging sound and
pretend to be seasick. Say you’ve got to have fresh air. Now
look—” I pulled the curtain back a little so she could see
straight through to the companionway. “There’s the life belt,
Gulf Coast Girl — 120
on top of the icebox. He won’t see it, because I’ll turn the
light out before I go back up. When you’re on the step, grab it
fast and hug it to you and come on up in a hurry. Don’t try to
put it on. Just hold it. The minute you step out onto the bridge
deck, head for the rail, and go right over the side. By the time
Barclay sees you’ve got a life belt it’ll be too late. Got it?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good,” I whispered. “See you in the water. Better take
your shoes off before you start up. And go for the lee rail.”
“Which one is that?”
I grinned. “The one downhill.”
She nodded. “Thank you for everything,” she said softly.
She thought we were going to drown.
I put my hand against her cheek. “We’ll make it,” I said.
Just touching her brought back that intense longing to take
her in my arms. I stood up abruptly and turned away.
I went back on deck after turning out the lamp over the
chart table. It was very dark at first. Barfield growled
something and I heard him going below. I sat down in the
cockpit, on Barclay’s right and as near him as I dared.
“Have a nice conference?” he asked with urbane humor.
“Very nice,” I answered.
“She really didn’t know what he was doing, did she?”
“No.”
“Curiously enough, I rather believe her. The possibility
didn’t occur to me, however, until I was telling you about it.
Macaulay was an odd one, and there was a good chance he
didn’t want her to know about it. Or anyone else. Came from
a rather prominent family.”
“She did?”
“No. Macaulay. She was a show girl. Danced in a cabaret.”
My eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness now. I
looked astern and could still see the faint glow over the city.
Involuntarily, I shuddered. There was a lot of dark water
between here and the shore.
But we could make it. One life belt will support two people
if they don’t try to stand on it or fight the water. We’d each
hold an end of it and I could tow her, resting when I was
Gulf Coast Girl — 121
tired. The sky was clear; even if we couldn’t see the glow of
the city from down there in the water, we’d have Polaris to
orient us until dawn and after that the sun. All we had to do,
anyway, was go with the sea and wind and we’d hit the beach
eventually.
“You’d best stretch out and get some sleep,” Barclay said.
“I should like to be relieved at six.”
I had to be careful not to arouse suspicion. “All right,” I
said. “In a minute.” If he got an inkling of what we were up to
they wouldn’t let her on deck until we were a hundred miles
at sea.
I thought of the hours we’d be in the water and wished
longingly for one last cigarette, but did not light it because it
would momentarily destroy night vision. Things were going to
happen fast, and I had to find her there in the water before
she could become frightened and cry out. I waited, trying not
to tense up. She should be coming up any moment now.
Suppose Barfield stopped her?
“Did she tell you where the plane was?” Barclay asked.
“Yes,” I said. I repeated what she had said, and asked,
“Where did you get the impression it was west of Scorpion
Reef?”
“From her, naturally,” Barclay answered. “I hope we aren’t
going to have any of that. She distinctly said northnorthwest.”
“She was suffering from shock,” I said coldly. “I believe she
had just seen her husband butchered in cold blood. And,
anyway, it’s a cinch he wouldn’t have been to the westward of
Scorpion Reef if he’d been heading for the Florida coast.”
“True enough,” he said. “But we’ll take the matter up after
breakfast. And I would advise you both not to attempt any
evasiveness or lying. Unfortunately, we are quite in earnest
about this.”
I started to say something, but at that moment I heard
voices in the cabin. She had started up.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Barfield’s voice
growled.
“I—I feel nauseated,” she said. I could barely hear her. “—
fresh air—”
Gulf Coast Girl — 122
“Hey, Joey,” Barfield called. “All right to let her up?”
I waited, holding my breath.
“No,” Barclay said. “Find her a pail and tell her to stay
down there—”
If she was beyond him we had no chance at all, but it was
now or never. I swung. My fist crashed into the blurred
whiteness of Barclay’s face, and at the same time I yelled,
“Run!”

Barclay fell back, clawing in his pocket for the gun. She
came up through the hatch, moving fast, with Barfield
shouting behind her. I could see her for a brief second,
standing erect on the deck at the forward end of the cockpit
with the bulky life preserver clutched to her breast. Then she
was lunging and falling outward. I grabbed Barclay’s jacket
and hauled, rolling him into the bottom of the cockpit.
Barfield came lunging up out of the hatch. I heard her splash.
Barclay grabbed my left leg and was trying to pull me
down. Barfield jumped into the cockpit. The Ballerina rolled,
and he lost his balance and came slamming into me. I lashed
out at his jaw and felt the jolt as I connected. He was trying
to get his arms around me. I kicked loose from Barclay and
knew he was going for the gun again. I lunged backward,
onto the seat, put a foot in Barfield’s chest, and shoved. He
peeled off. I kicked backward once more, slid over the rail,
and water closed over me.
Even as I was going down I tried to keep myself oriented. I
had to find her back there in the darkness with nothing to
guide me except the spot I’d gone in and the direction I was
facing. In a moment the Ballerina would come up into the
wind, the continuity of its course shattered and all the angles
gone. My head came out. I looked at her lights. She was
swinging now.
I started swimming back. I was hampered by my shoes and
clothing, but there wasn’t time to shed them until I’d found
her. A sea lifted me and broke over my head. I angled up
against the next one, afraid of drifting below her.
The sloop was 50 or 75 yards away now, broadside, as she
came about. I could see only the port running light, glowing
like a ruby in the darkness, swinging up and back as she
rolled. I swung my head and looked about me. I should see
Gulf Coast Girl — 123
the white of the life belt or the blond gleam of her head, but
the whitecaps all around were too confusing.
I lifted my head and called out, not too loudly, “Shannon.
Shannon!” There was no answer. I wondered if I had gone
beyond her. I began to be afraid, and called out again.
This time I heard her. “Here,” she said. “Over this—” The
voice cut off as if she had strangled, and I knew she had gone
under. She was off to the left, downwind. I turned.
Another sea broke over me. Then I was floundering in the
trough. The blond head broke surface right beside me.
“Thank God,” I said silently, and grabbed her dress. She
clasped her arms tightly about my neck and tried to pull
herself up. We went under. I felt suddenly cold in water that
was warm as tea. She had both arms about me.
Our heads came out. I shook water from my face.
“Shannon! Where’s the life belt?”
She sputtered and fought for breath. “It—I—” she said, and
gasped again. “I lost it.”
Gulf Coast Girl — 124
Twelve
Another sea broke over us. She clung to me, choking. “When I
went under—” she said, “the water pulled it out of my hands.
When I came up—I saw it once—a wave knocked it away.”
I fought the sudden whisperings of panic and tried to think.
It had to be near, probably within twenty feet. Downwind. Go
downwind. It floated high and would drift faster than she had.
We were pushed upward by a sea. I shook water from my face
and looked wildly about. I saw nothing but whitecaps and
foam, gleaming faintly in the darkness. She pulled us under
again. I kicked upward.
She was fighting the water, trying to climb out of it, the
inevitable way to drown. I broke her grip around my neck and
snapped, “Relax! Take hold of my belt and lie down in the
water.”
It worked. She got hold of herself and did as I told her. As
soon as she was stretched out low in the water and buoyant I
no longer had to support her. I turned on my side and kicked
ahead, lifting my face every few seconds to peer desperately
around in the darkness for the life belt.
Minutes dragged by. We must have passed it. We had to go
back. But back where? Direction had no meaning because we
had no idea where we had been or which way the current was
setting us. There was no point of reference. Even the sloop’s
position meant nothing; it was drifting in the same trackless
Gulf Coast Girl — 125
void. In another five minutes I knew it was all over, as far as
the life belt was concerned. It could be a hundred yards in
any direction. We’d never find it now.
I heard the growl of the starter on the sloop, and the engine
took hold. They had the sail off her now and were coming
back under power to look for us. The running lights swung,
and then I could see them both, lined up. They were bearing
down directly on us. A flashlight was probing the darkness on
each side. I swam away, towing her.
They went slowly past. Light swept the water ten feet away.
The engine stopped in a minute and she slowed, rolling
heavily in the trough.
“Manning!” It was Barclay’s voice. “Can you hear me?
You’ll never make it ashore. You’re ten miles off the beach.
Call out and we’ll pick you up.”
We were treading water with just our faces out. My arms
were around her and I could feel her shaking.
“Can we make it—without the life belt?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. I couldn’t lie to her here.
“Could you, alone? If I went back?”
“No,” I said.
A sea lifted us and broke over our heads. When we came
clear she gasped, “Maybe you could, without me. I owe you
that.”
She didn’t know what I meant. I told her. “If they have you,
they can make me come back.”
She understood then.
“Let’s try it, Bill,” she said.
“We’ll probably drown,” I said. “I’ve got to tell you that.”
She was frightened by water and she could panic like
anybody else, but when the bets were down she was calm.
There was a wonderful quiet courage about her now. She
knew what would happen if we went back, and she knew we’d
probably be dead by sunrise if we didn’t. She made the
decision coolly.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Help me take these clothes off.”
I helped her. I fumbled a little, unsnapping the back of the
dress, but we got it free and I held her with an arm about her
Gulf Coast Girl — 126
waist while she stripped it and the slip off over her head. We
sank through the water, tight in each other’s arms, and I
could feel the wonderful smoothness of her against me. When
we came up the Ballerina was drifting away to leeward and to
the north of us, and I could hear Barclay still calling out,
making promises. I cursed them, monotonously and
helplessly, and with an infinite bitterness.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I know the same words. I’d use
them but I haven’t got the breath.”
She wore no girdle. She unfastened the garter belt and I
helped her strip off the nylons. “Will that do?” she asked,
gasping a little with water in her throat.
“Yes,” I said. I stripped to my shorts and told her to hook
the fingers of her left hand in the waistband. “Kick with your
feet,” I said. “Very slowly. Don’t struggle. And when you’re
tired, just float and rest.”
I couldn’t see the glow over the city at all, but I swung my
face and oriented us with Polaris, heading a little north of
west. I swam slowly. The seas rolled up behind us, raising us,
and then broke in white water about our heads and passed on
downwind in the darkness. There was no sound except the
roll and swish of water. I could scarcely feel the drag of her
weight, and knew she was kicking with her feet.
“Don’t work too hard,” I said. “Slowly. Very slowly. And
don’t think about it.”
And shut up and don’t waste breath talking, I added silently
for my own benefit.
I tried to remember which way the current set along here,
but I couldn’t. The tide should be flooding now, which would
help, but it would reach high water and start to ebb long
before we were anywhere near shore. That was when it would
get us. We might go on for hours, but inevitably our arms and
legs would grow heavier and heavier until it took everything
we had merely to stay afloat. After that it would come fast.
I wondered if we could make it, by some miracle. I had
swum that far once or twice, I was sure. You lost body heat
very slowly in this Gulf water. The sea and wind were behind
us. No, I was just kidding myself. I’d done it before, but never
after having been nearly 48 hours without sleep, and never
Gulf Coast Girl — 127
towing somebody else. She would become exhausted, even if
I didn’t, and begin to struggle in panic, and when she
dragged us under we were finished. I tried not to think about
it.
I saw the lights of the Ballerina. She was coming back now,
and passed several hundred yards to seaward. When she
returned the next time she was half a mile downwind. They
thought we had the life belt, and would keep right on
searching.
Time passed somehow. The reach, pull, reach became
monotonous, and then mechanical, and at last eternal. I had
never done anything else; I’d been born swimming through
warm water toward a shore that receded nine miles ahead as
fast as I advanced. Ursa Major wheeled over and down in the
northwest and Cassiopeia swung up like the other arm of a
giant counterbalance turning around Polaris. It would soon be
dawn.
My arms began to grow heavy long before I would admit I
was tiring. My breathing was ragged now, and sometimes I
inhaled water and choked. I looked around once and the sky
was pink in the east. Then, suddenly, it was full daylight. I
looked ahead. There was nothing but water, and the sea
running, and far off to our left the bare mast of the Ballerina.
Land didn’t even exist any more.
We couldn’t have covered much more than a third of the
distance, and I knew I was almost done. I let my feet down,
treading water, and she came up against me with only her
head above the surface. Her face was drawn with weariness,
and there were blue circles under her eyes. She put a hand
on my arm under water and tried to smile. A sea picked us up
and threw us together. Her face was only inches from mine.
“I’m sorry about the life preserver,” she said, her voice thin
with exhaustion.
“It’s all right,” I said. There was a bad pain in my side and
my breathing was labored. I knew it was stupid to waste
breath talking, but suddenly I wanted to tell her.
I put a hand on each side of her face. “I couldn’t tell you
before,” I said. “Even—if he had run out on you. But it doesn’t
matter now. Have to tell you. I love you. More than anything
—in the world. You’ve never been out of my mind since you
walked out on edge of that pier—”
Gulf Coast Girl — 128
She didn’t say anything. She brought her arms up very
slowly and put them about my neck. We went under, our lips
together, arms tight about each other. It was like falling
endlessly through a warm, rosy cloud. I seemed to realize,
very dimly, that it was water we were sinking through and
that if we didn’t stop it and swim up we’d drown right there,
but apparently there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t
want to turn her loose long enough to swim up. We went on
falling, through warmth and ecstasy and colors.
White water crashed about our heads. We were right on the
surface and hadn’t fallen anywhere. We gasped for breath
and I held my face against hers. “Shannon—Shannon—” I
said.
“Don’t talk,” she whispered.