now we’re prepared for the next bulletin that he’s dead.
Or are we? He thought uneasily of Madeleine Lennox.
No, she was all right. She was up; he’d heard her
taking a shower.
Karen excused herself and left. He finished his
poached egg and lit a cigarette while he drank another
cup of coffee. When he went outside and walked aft, the
bos’n and two sailors were knocking out the wedges
that secured the tarpaulins on number three’s hatch
cover. Smoke was filtering up here and there around
the edges of it. Another man was unrolling a fire hose.
He wondered if they had gas masks aboard; the smoke
was going to be pretty bad down there.
He reached for a cigarette, but discovered the pack
was empty. He tossed it over the side and went back to
his cabin for another. As he was tearing the cellophane
from it he was arrested by the faint sound issuing from
the open door of his bathroom. He frowned, and
stepped inside to be sure. The shower was still running
in the one next door. After nearly forty-five minutes? He
hurried out into the passageway.
Only the screen door was closed, and through it he
could just hear the slight hissing of the water. He
knocked. There was no answer, no sound of movement.
Could she have gone off and forgotten it? He checked
the dining room and the lounge and then the deck
outside. She was nowhere around. Uneasy now, he
came back and knocked again, and when there was still
no response he stepped next door to Karen’s cabin and
rapped. She looked out.
He explained quickly, and added, ‘I wonder if you’d
look in and see if something’s happened to her.’
‘Yes, of course.’ She knocked on the door herself, and
called out, ‘Madeleine.’ She went in. Almost
And The Deep Blue Sea — 132
immediately, Goddard heard her startled exclamation.
‘She’s lying under the shower! Wait’ll I get a sheet.’
He heard the shower stop, and then quick footsteps,
Karen opened the screen door, her eyes frightened. He
hurried into the bathroom. Madeleine Lennox lay
almost face down on the tile in the open shower stall, a
little stain of pink still spreading from the hair
plastered wetly to her skull, and the sheet Karen had
spread across her nude body was already soaked.
Goddard rolled her over and raised her to a sitting
position, wrapping the sheet about her as he gathered
her up. Karen threw a towel across the pillow, and he
laid her on the bunk.
He grabbed her wrist while Karen watched anxiously.
‘She’s alive,’ he said. The pulse was slow, but steady,
and now they could see the rise and fall of her chest.
‘I’ll tell Barset to get Mr. Lind,’ Karen said. She hurried
out.
Goddard stepped to the door of the bathroom and
looked in. He saw the bar of soap lying on the tile, but
it was two other things that caught and held his
attention. One was the shower head itself; it was the
same as the one in his bathroom, fixed, directly
overhead, like those in any men’s locker room. The
other item was the dry, unused shower cap hanging
from a hook on the bulkhead. And the shower had come
on during, or immediately after, all that din the bos’n
was making with his fire hose at seven thirty. Well, he
thought, you wanted to know. Now you do.
She’d been unconscious for nearly an hour, which
meant that unless she’d been slugged hard enough for
a genuine concussion she’d been given something to
keep her under. He whirled and went back to the bunk.
Sliding her arms from under the sheet, he examined
both of them. There was no indication of puncture. He
looked around then, and saw the tray with its coffeepot
and cup on the desk. So it was given orally, beforehand.
And the blow on the head was merely to provide a
visible wound and some blood, another touch of artistry
by the great master of illusion.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 133
She would die without ever regaining consciousness,
just as would Captain Steen—unless he was already
dead. Lind would simply continue giving her enough
morphine to keep her out for several days to simulate
the coma from a severe concussion, and then inject the
massive overdose that would kill her.
Well, he asked himself bleakly, was it abstract
knowledge he’d been after, or did he intend to do
something about it? Do what? Challenge Lind openly,
tell him he knew the whole thing? What would that
accomplish except to get him put on the list himself?
Lind was the leader of the conspiracy, the ship’s doctor,
and its acting master. Mount his soapbox and incite the
rest of the crew to mutiny, not even knowing which
ones he was talking to? That would be good for a laugh.
Get a load of that goofy bastard; he’s not only a Jonah,
but he hears voices.
Karen returned, but remained outside the door. There
was the sound of hurrying footsteps along the
passageway, and Lind came in. Barset appeared and
passed in the first-aid kit. Goddard moved back. Lind
checked her pulse, apparently with satisfaction, and
raised one eyelid to look at the pupil. He had to wash
his hands before he examined the wound, and as he
scrubbed, Goddard told him how they’d come to find
her.
Lind’s face was serious. ‘Hmmm. Unconscious for
nearly an hour. She must have given herself a pretty
good rap.’
You couldn’t fault the performance anywhere,
Goddard thought as he watched. Lind shaved a small
area around the scalp wound, sponged away the blood,
and examined it. It wasn’t a bad cut, he announced; two
stitches would close it. He probed with fingertips; the
skull felt intact and certainly wasn’t depressed. Only an
X-ray could tell whether or not there was a fracture,
but he didn’t think there was. He cleaned the wound
expertly with antiseptic, and put in the two stitches and
added a small dressing. He checked her pulse again
with a profound air, gently lowered the wrist, and
radiated optimism. The great healer, Goddard thought.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 134
So? So I open my stupid mouth, and I get killed too.
And what good would it do her, except she’d have
company on the bottom of the ocean? They might even
sew us both in the same sack, if they’re running short
of canvas.
And what was Madeleine Lennox to him anyway?
He’d known her for three days, they’d had a couple of
casual and utterly impersonal rolls in the hay, and once
they’d reached Manila he’d never have seen her again
anyway. He wasn’t involved any more; all he asked of
the human race was to be left alone. That wasn’t an
exorbitant demand, was it? All he had to do was mind
his own business. And let her die.
He sighed then. It was a nice try, but, maybe he’d
known it wouldn’t work. However he’d have to wait till
he got Lind alone to heave it into the fan; he didn’t
want to involve Karen in it.
‘Nothing more we can do at the moment,’ Lind said. 'I
don’t know how bad the concussion is, but all we can
do is wait till she comes around. I’ll look in on her every
hour or so.’
‘Fine,’ Goddard said. ‘We’ll keep checking her too.’
Lind went out, carrying the first-aid kit. Barset
sighed, shook his head in silent comment on this
endless chain of disasters, and left. Karen watched
them go down the passageway; then she stepped inside
and closed the door. She took a cigarette from a pack
on the desk, and leaned close as Goddard struck the
lighter.
‘Well,’ she asked quietly, ‘how do we stop him?’
Goddard marveled at his own stupidity. If a man
could figure out that she wouldn’t have been under the
shower without her cap, washing her hair with a bar of
soap instead of shampoo, twenty minutes before
breakfast when it would take four hours to dry in this
humidity, how had he expected another woman to fail
to grasp it?
Before he could reply, the screen door swung open
and Rafferty appeared, carrying a mop and a can of
scouring powder. The beefy face was set in an
expression of bland innocence and concern, which
And The Deep Blue Sea — 135
Goddard expected and dismissed, but there were two
items he did find of more interest. One was the slight
sag to the right-hand pocket of the jacket, and the other
was a faint but undeniable thump of something inside
the pocket as it brushed against the door facing.
‘Geez, I guess she really took a header, huh?’ Rafferty
asked with a glance toward the unconscious figure on
the bunk.
‘Yes, I guess she did, Rafferty,’ Goddard said
pleasantly. We’re not in your way here?’
‘Naw, I’ll just crumb up the bathroom a little.’ He
disappeared inside it.
Karen was watching Goddard in wonder. He had
taken a handkerchief from his pocket and was winding
it tightly about his right hand like a cestus, and the
expression in his eyes was one she’d never seen before
in those of a civilized man. There was something feral
and wicked and almost hungry about them as he shook
his head for silence and stepped casually over toward
the doorway. He unhooked and closed the heavy
wooden door and silently slid the bolt. The slapping
sound of Rafferty’s mop continued inside the bathroom.
Goddard stepped back and stationed himself beside its
open doorway.
‘Look!’ he exclaimed. ‘She’s coming around. Her eyes
are open.’
For a moment it fooled even Karen. She jerked her
head around to look at Madeleine Lennox, and by the
time she’d turned back Rafferty was emerging from the
bathroom door, his eyes turned in the same direction.
Goddard stepped out in front of him and swung, from
far down and way back, with no necessity for subtlety
or feinting, feet planted and all his weight moving
forward. The fist clenched into a bound and rock-hard
projectile at the instant of impact and buried itself to
the wrist in Rafferty’s unsuspecting belly.
Rafferty grunted and doubled over. Goddard caught a
jacket lapel with his left hand, clawed him out of the
doorway toward him, and shot the right again. It
smashed into the side of Rafferty’s jaw just below and
in front of the ear. The head weather-cocked with the
And The Deep Blue Sea — 136
force of it and he started to spin, went off balance, and
crashed back against the heavy wooden door with his
head and shoulders as he fell to the deck. Goddard
leaped on him, landing with one knee in the belly and
slashing the wrapped hand across his throat. Rafferty
was a bull and not much more than twenty, and the
inexorable law in this kind of thing was that if you were
going to win it at forty-six you had to win it fast. The
second round was doubtful, and there was never any
third.
Rafferty gagged, but heaved upward under him,
sheer strength pushing him off the deck. Goddard
opened a cut above one eye, smashed him across the
mouth, and pushed back, as though trying to hold him
down. Rafferty was still scrambling up. Goddard
suddenly removed his weight, came up with him,
reached backward, got an arm around his neck, heaved
forward, and threw him. Rafferty’s body cartwheeled
and slammed into the bulkhead. He fell down it on his
head and one shoulder, and sprawled, reaching for the
gun in the pocket of his jacket. It came clear. Goddard
stamped down on the wrist and ground his heel. The
gun slipped from Rafferty’s fingers. Goddard grabbed it
and slashed the barrel down across the side of his head
hard enough to open the scalp. Rafferty pushed back
against the bulkhead, dazed now, and tried to sit up.
Blood ran down across his face.
Karen watched in horror. A face appeared
momentarily at the closed porthole, and there were
running footsteps on deck. Goddard jerked back the
slide of the .45 to arm it. A cartridge jumped out,
glinting as it spun across the deck. There was already
one in the chamber. He shoved the slide back, slid off
the safety, and pushed the muzzle against Rafferty’s
teeth.
‘All right, you son of a bitch! What’d you give her, and
how much?’
‘Up yours,’ Rafferty said, and then wished he hadn’t.
Goddard grinned, and he’d never seen a face like that
before. Goddard flicked on the safety, caught him by
the shirt collar, leaned in on him, hard, and slashed his
head again with the gun barrel.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 137
‘You want to wear your scalp around your neck like a
lei, go ahead,’ he said, fighting for breath. Somebody
was hammering on the door. He raised the gun again.
‘Two tablets,’ Rafferty said.
‘Of what?’
‘I don’t know. He just give ‘em to me. He didn’t say
what they was.’
Probably codeine, Goddard thought. But whatever it
was, two couldn’t be any more than double a
prescription dose and unlikely to be fatal.
‘Where’s Mayr?’ he asked.
‘Mayr? He’s dead and buried, you jerk.’ He looked at
Goddard’s face, and at the gun, rising again. ‘All right,
he’s down below somewhere. I don’t know where.’
‘How’s he supposed to get off the ship? And where?’
‘A boat, somewhere ahead of us.’
‘How far?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How many are there besides Lind?’ ‘Otto, Sparks,
Karl, Mueller—’ ‘Who’s Mueller?’
‘The bos’n.’
There were more people in the passageway now.
Somebody was battering on the door with what
sounded like a sledge. ‘And who else?’ Goddard asked.
‘One of the black gang, but I don’t know which one.’
‘Any more?’
'I don’t know. You think he tells me anything?’
‘You’re in it for the money, is that it?’
‘Partly.’
The bolt was beginning to tear out of the door.
Rafferty looked at it. Help was coming. ‘What else?’
Goddard asked.
Rafferty spat in his face. ‘What do you think, Jew
boy?’
'I see,’ Goddard said. ‘You’re dedicated.’ He wiped
the spittle from his face. Without looking around, he
spoke to Karen Brooke between crashes on the door.
‘Karen, see if you can find that cartridge; we’ve only
And The Deep Blue Sea — 138
got one clip. Stay close to me, and don’t let anybody get
behind you.’
He stood up and gestured to Rafferty with the gun.
‘All right, save the hammering out there,’ he called
through the door. ‘We’re coming out.’ He worked the
bolt back and pulled the door open. The screen door
had been torn from its hinges and was lying on deck.
Otto was standing in front of it with the nozzle of a fire
hose, Lind was beside him, and Karl was coming up the
passageway behind them with a fire ax. Otto started to
raise the nozzle until he saw the 0.45 dangling in
Goddard’s hand.
Goddard shoved Rafferty out. ‘Here’s your boy,’ he
said to Lind.
Lind nodded, but said nothing.
Goddard jerked his head at Otto. ‘Throw that thing
forward, and go aft. You too, Karl.’
The nozzle and fire ax clanged on the deck. Goddard
looked out and checked to his right. There was nobody
in the passageway forward. He gestured for Lind and
the other three to go on aft and out on deck, and
followed close behind them with Karen on his heels.
Barset was in the thwartships passageway near the
entrance to the dining room, looking frightened.
‘Don’t get behind me,’ Goddard said. Barset turned
and went the other way.
The four men went out on deck. Goddard checked to
be sure they were all in view before he stepped out
himself, followed by Karen. He moved to the right to
get out from in front of the passageway. There was no
breeze at all now and the sea was like polished metal.
Just ahead and to starboard the sky was a poisonous
mass of cloud veined with the nervous play of lightning.
Thunder growled on the horizon, and the acrid odor of
burning cotton stung his throat. Mueller, the bos’n, was
running up the ladder from the deck below. Goddard
gestured for him to stand clear, near the others, and
spoke to Lind.
‘Where Mayr is, or what you’re going to do with him,
I couldn’t care less. But I’m going to move Mrs. Lennox
into my cabin, and Karen and I are going to be there
And The Deep Blue Sea — 139
with her from now on. I don’t know how many of your
crew are in this, but I’ve got a blanket policy that
covers it; anybody who tries to get in will be shot. We
may not make it to Manila, but some of you won’t
either.’
There were no threats, no bluster. Lind merely
listened, and waited for him to finish. He turned to
Rafferty then, and said quietly, 'I thought I told you not
to carry that gun.’
Rafferty’s eyes were crawling with fear, but he tried
to bluff it out. ‘Well, Chrissakes, we got plenty more—’
It was swift, deadly, and sickening. Lind made a quick
movement of his hand. Rafferty threw up an arm. Lind
caught it, twisted it behind his back, and ran him
headfirst into the bulkhead. There was a meaty thud,
and a grunt like that of a pole-axed steer. Lind picked
him up by coat collar and crotch, stepped to the rail,
and threw him overboard.
The whimpering little yunh-yunh-yunh-yunh he
mouthed as he fell was cut off by the sound of the
splash below them. Goddard winced. In spite of himself
he turned and looked aft as Rafferty surfaced in the
white water beyond the line of the poop and began to
drop astern, his mouth open in a soundless scream and
his arms flailing as he tried to swim after the ship like a
dog chasing a car.
‘Oh, God!’ Karen cried out in a strangled voice beside
him. She ran to the rail and gagged. Goddard raised the
gun, but it was too late; Lind had already leaped and
caught her. With his left arm about her waist, he swung
her up over the rail as if to throw her into the sea. He
caught a handful of her skirt and slip with his right
hand and let her dangle over the rushing water below
as the garments slid up under her arms. The slender
body writhed as she struggled, face outward, trying to
turn inward and grab the stanchion. Braced against the
rail and holding her out behind him, Lind turned and
looked at Goddard. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘toss Otto the
gun.’
Goddard heard a brief, blood-freezing sound of seams
beginning to tear. He tossed the gun to Otto. At the
And The Deep Blue Sea — 140
same time a voice in the after well-deck shouted,
‘Mayr!’ Lind turned and looked.
There was another ripping sound. ‘Get her up!’
Goddard shouted. He lunged for the rail. There was no
way to tell whether Lind tried to lift her back or not.
The dress tore away, she slid out of the half slip, and
Goddard saw her body drop feet-first into the sea.
In the madness then, he didn’t know who hit him
first. A fist crashed against his jaw. He reeled
backward, swung at one of the faces boring in, and
then he was down as they swarmed him under. He got
a knee into somebody’s groin, smashed another in the
face and managed to fight his way momentarily to his
feet, trying to get to Lind. As he went down the second
time, he saw Mayr running up the ladder just beyond
him, carrying a machine pistol.
Somebody got a clear swing at his face, knocking his
head back against the deck. The barrel of the .45
chopped downward. He could see it, but there was no
way to avoid it. They heaved him up, dazed but still
conscious, and threw him over the rail. He was turning
as he fell, and he saw the sky wheel above him, and the
far line of the horizon, and then the water rushing up.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 141
11
The impact was numbing, and he was close to blacking
out as he went under. The urge to fight his way upward
and try to keep from being drawn into the wheel was
instinctive—and admittedly irrational if he’d had time
to think about it. The quick and sensible way would be
to go on through the propeller and emerge in slices.
But there was little danger of it with the ship loaded;
the propeller was too far down. Then, slammed back
and forth in the millrace of its turbulence and whirled
and spun around by blows from water as solid as oak,
he lost all sense of direction and had no idea which way
was up anyway. His lungs were bursting and he was
drifting off into a darkening winy haze when he came
out on top, kicked to the surface by the violence itself.
The counter loomed black and massive above him,
drawing rapidly away to the thumping beat of the
propeller. He was whirled again and kicked backward
in the foaming water of the wake.
Blind panic seized him for a moment, and he had
already taken two or three frenzied strokes after the
ship before he got it under control. He didn’t know
whether it was his hatred of Lind and contempt for
Rafferty, or whether he was still partially immunized by
the massive charges of adrenaline, but he was able to
stop the ludicrous flailing of his arms. No doubt he
And The Deep Blue Sea — 142
would panic at the end or go completely out of his mind
when he saw the ship go over the horizon, but at least
he could do it in private. He treaded water instead, and
turned to search the sea behind him. There wasn’t
much chance he would see her, though, even if she
were still afloat. She would be several hundred yards
astern, only a head showing above the surface and still
below the intervening billows of the swell. Only, he
thought, if they both rose to a crest at the same time.
He was still being thrown about in the diminishing
turbulence of the wake, and now he was facing toward
the ship again. He stared unbelievingly. It was well
over a hundred yards away, but it was beginning to
swing in a hard-over turn to port, and he could see two
figures out on the port wing of the bridge, undeniably
looking back at him. Gooseflesh spread between his
shoulder blades, but he killed the cruel surge of hope
before it had time to start. It was only somebody who
hadn’t heard the word. Then he saw the big figure that
could only be Eric Lind, running up the ladder to the
boat deck. The word was on its way.
* * *
Antonio Gutierrez, the Filipino messman, had just
emerged from the passageway at the after end of the
crew’s deck when he thought he heard something
splash in the water on the starboard side. He walked
over and looked down, but could see nothing; Rafferty
was a hundred feet aft by that time and still below the
surface. He looked off momentarily toward the squall,
and was about to turn away when a gilt sandal fell past
his face, followed by another, and then a long and very
beautiful pair of legs dropped into view and stopped,
suspended in front of his eyes so near he could have
touched them if he had been capable of movement.
Apparently performing some sort of airy dance to
unheard music, they were slender and tanned, and
nude all the way to the fragment of white nylon at their
juncture, and could belong only to the pretty blonde
one he had embraced so often in the fantasies of his
nights. He heard voices on the deck above him then, a
shout, and a sound of tearing cloth, and she dropped
And The Deep Blue Sea — 143
past him and fell into the sea. There were more sounds
from above, and then a cry in the well-deck below. He
drew a shaking hand across his face and looked down
to see a tall figure running toward the ladder, carrying
some kind of strange pistol in his hand. It was the dead
man they had buried two days ago.
Harald Svedberg, the young third mate, didn’t know a
word of Spanish or Tagalog, and even if he had it is
doubtful he would have made any sense of the chaotic
outpouring about dancing legs and ghosts with pistols
and naked women falling so close you could reach out
like that and touch them, but there is something
universally compelling about the pointed finger, even
that of an obvious madman. The eye follows
involuntarily. He looked aft in the direction indicated by
the stabbing and palsied hand and saw Goddard’s head
in the white water of the wake.
‘Hard left!’ he called out to the helmsman. He lifted
the life ring from its bracket on the port wing of the
bridge, yanked loose the canister, and threw them
outward.
* * *
Goddard saw the ship steady up from her turn to port
and then begin to swing back to starboard, as he had
known she would as soon as Lind had reached the
bridge. Almost at the same time he spotted the white
circle of the life ring as it rose to the crest of a swell
ahead of him, its attached flare glowing feebly in the
sunlight.
Kicking off his slippers, he began to swim toward it.
When he had reached it, the Leander had steadied up
again and was back on course, going straight away
from him a quarter mile ahead, trailing a plume of
smoke from her ventilators as she headed into the dark
line of the rain squall beyond. He tore his eyes from
her, took the knife from his pocket, and cut loose the
canister and its flare. Letting the knife drop, he tore off
the shirt and the encumbering flannel slacks.
From here, where the Leander had started her first
turn, the wake ran straight back, traces of it still visible
And The Deep Blue Sea — 144
for several hundred yards. With no conscious thought
as to why he was doing it, he slipped inside the ring,
pushed straight down on it with both hands to give
himself all the buoyancy possible, and raised his head
as high as he could to look back along the line of the
wake. He was lifted by a gentle swell, and then another,
and it was while the third was passing under him that
he was sure he saw her, a golden dot in the immensity
of blue behind him. He dropped away down the slope
and began to rise again, and this time there was no
doubt. He marked her position against the edge of a
cloud formation beyond, and began to swim back to
her, towing the life ring.
It was slow work, but he had covered what he
thought must be half the distance and had paused
momentarily to hold onto the ring and rest when the
question finally occurred to him. In the name of God,
why? Wasn’t it more merciful to let her drown?
Unconsciousness came in probably less than a minute,
and then it was over. Wasn’t that better than four or
five days, and ultimate madness and death by thirst?
He looked around then, and the Leander was gone,
swallowed up in the squall, and he was only a speck in
all this vast and aching void. He began kicking ahead,
hurrying now, driven by fear that he might be too late.
Each time he rose to the crest of a swell he looked
anxiously ahead in the direction she had to be. Then he
saw her. She rose to the top of a swell less than fifty
yards away, only the back of her head visible above the
surface.
She disappeared, and looked as though she had gone
under. No, she’d probably just dropped away behind
the swell. He threshed ahead. He saw her again, closer
now, but she was in trouble. She went under, and he
could see her struggling weakly. A hand came out.
Then her face emerged for a few seconds. Her eyes
were closed, but her mouth opened as she tried to gulp
for air, water ran into it, and she sank from sight. She
didn’t come up again. He was still twenty yards away.
Gasping for breath himself and driven by the awful
compulsion to hurry, he tried to keep his eyes fixed on
the spot as he flailed ahead, but it was next to
And The Deep Blue Sea — 145
impossible in the tilting planes of the swell. He was
above it, then cut off from it, and then below it. The sun
was in his face, glaring off the surface and making it
impossible to see beneath. The only thing to do was go
beyond, and turn, with the sun over his shoulder so he
could see down. He should be over it now. He lunged
on for a few more strokes, and swung around,
searching frantically. It might already be too late.
Luck was with him; he saw her almost at once. A
swell passed under him, and with the sun’s rays
striking almost perpendicularly into the plane of its
retreating slope, it was like looking into a shop window.
A flash of gold caught the corner of his eye off to the
right, and he turned, and she was only three or four
feet below the surface less than ten feet away. He
swam over and dived, twined his fingers in the aureole
of blonde hair streaming outward from her head, and
kicked to the surface.
Her eyes were closed, and there was no responsive
movement from her body, no attempt to clutch at him
at all as he held her against him with her face above
the surface. How did he get the water out of her when
they were both immersed in it to their chins, with no
way to raise her above it? Maybe if he lay flat with the
life ring under his back he would have enough
buoyancy. When he was positioned, he hauled her body
over his and pushed up hard into her midriff, but before
her face could clear the water they both went under.
That was hopeless, and he had wasted precious
seconds. He threw one leg over the rim of the life ring
and stood vertically in the water astride it. It supported
them with no need to tread water when he took her in
his arms and held her upright against him. He brushed
back the wet hair plastered to her face. Taking a deep
breath, he forced her mouth open, placed his over it,
and blew. He pressed in hard on her ribs to force her to
exhale.
He took another breath and blew it into her lungs,
and repeated the cycle. Twice, three times, four times.
He was doing it too fast, driven by the frantic need to
sense in her some sign of returning life. Slow down,
damn it, he told himself harshly; it has to be the same
And The Deep Blue Sea — 146
rhythm as natural breathing. Keep going. She’s not
dead. She can’t be. Please, she can’t be.
He looked around at the numbing emptiness of the
horizon and wondered if he were already mad. So after
he had revived her, they’d have a scared and shaky
laugh at what a close call it had been, get in the car,
and drive home. Why the hell couldn’t he leave her
alone? She was free, already beyond the agony and the
consciousness of dying; why condemn her to go
through it again? He didn’t know. She just had to open
her eyes.
He had his lips against hers, blowing inward, when he
felt her move. There was a little shudder, and a gasp,
and a hand brushed against his side. He pressed, and
she exhaled, and when he started to force breath into
her again, her rhythm caught and she inhaled herself.
He was suddenly aware then of the intimacy of the way
he was holding her, as if they were kissing or making
love, with his mouth over hers and her breasts pressed
tightly against his chest. The bra had gone, apparently
ripped away by the force of her plunge feet-first into
the water or when she was whirled through the
maelstrom of the wake.
He cursed himself for a voyeur and a ghoul, but he
was aware at the same time there was nothing erotic
about it; he just wanted her to open her eyes. When she
did, and saw him, and said something, he would no
longer be alone. Admittedly, this made no sense, but as
far as he could see that was why he’d come back here.
He freed the life ring, put it over her and under her
arms, and held an arm across it behind her to keep her
in it and to support himself. She gagged and retched
and was briefly sick from the salt water she had
swallowed. He washed her lips and continued to hold
her while her breathing became stronger, and in a
moment she opened her eyes.
There was no comprehension in them at first. She
looked blankly at him, and then around at the lonely
expanse of sea and the squall bearing down on them.
He expected her to cry out, or become hysterical, or
faint, but she didn’t. Perhaps it couldn’t penetrate fast
enough to slug you all at once. She turned her eyes
And The Deep Blue Sea — 147
back to his face, still seeming more bewildered than
anything. ‘You—’ She gagged, and tried again. ‘You
didn’t jump in—after me?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘They threw me over.’ He explained
briefly how he happened to have the life ring. She said
nothing. Her chin trembled for a moment, and he could
sense her struggle for control.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘No.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘It was my fault. If I’d
stayed behind you—’
‘That wasn’t what I meant.’ His gesture included
them and all the empty sea. ‘You had it made, if I’d left
you alone.’
‘Oh. You’re apologizing for saving my life?’
‘Saving?’
‘Well, all it ever is is a postponement.’ She choked,
and began to cough. ‘And the ship might come back if
the others know about it.’
‘The others haven’t got guns,’ Goddard said. He told
her of Mayr’s running out into the well-deck. ‘Either the
smoke drove him out or they’d already moved him to
another hiding place and somebody discovered him.’
‘Well, it’s failed now. Everybody knows he’s still alive.
What can Lind do?’
'I don’t know,’ Goddard said. The thing that baffled
him was that Lind could have saved himself any time in
the past two days if he’d wanted to, simply by getting
rid of Mayr. He’d apparently sacrificed Krasicki without
a qualm; why not Mayr too? When he saw the illusion
was coming apart at the seams and they were all going
to be exposed it would seem the simplest way out, for a
man as ruthless as Lind, would be to destroy the
evidence. Instead, he had gone on in his futile and
dangerous attempts to shore up the dike by getting rid
of Captain Steen and Mrs. Lennox. Discipline?
Ideological fanaticism? That made no sense. Of what
value was Mayr to any resurgence of Naziism? He
couldn’t surface anywhere on earth without being
arrested, and he was the symbol of nothing but
butchery and final defeat. But still Lind was apparently
And The Deep Blue Sea — 148
willing to destroy the whole crew if he had to in order
to pull it off.
Thunder crashed, nearer now, and erratic puffs of
wind began to riffle the surface of the swell. To the
north and west the sky was blotted out, and the
impenetrable curtain of rain swept down toward them
only a few hundred yards away. Suddenly Karen cried
out, ‘Look!’
Goddard turned and stared. Less than a half mile to
the west of them the Leander had emerged from the
gray line of rain. A towering column of smoke poured
up from her after well-deck, shot through with red
tongues of flame to the height of her stack. The fire had
burst out of number three hold at last. She seemed to
be on a southerly heading, but before he could be sure,
the squall engulfed them and she was blotted out.
* * *
Antonio Gutierrez crossed himself, but seemed to be
incapable of any further movement. He had never been
on the bridge of a ship before and he wished devoutly
that he had never seen this one, but if he moved
somebody might notice him. He was no longer sure any
of this was really happening, anyway; his belief in his
own sanity already shaken by the resurrection of a dead
man, he was now confronted with the fact that he had
seen a woman with long blonde hair fall overboard but
when he’d told the officer and pointed, what they had
seen emerge from the foamy water back there was a
man’s head with short black hair. Fortunately, the
officer hadn’t seemed to notice this discrepancy in his
story; he had told the steering man to turn the ship
around and had thrown over the salvavida, but now the
big first officer was striding through the wheelhouse
toward them. Somebody had said he was now the
captain, and his eyes were very cold and mean.
The ship had already started her swing and Harald
Svedberg was staring aft, trying to determine whether
the man in the water had seen the life ring fall, when
he looked around and saw Lind coming through the
wheelhouse.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 149
‘Mr. Svedberg!’ Lind snapped. ‘Back on your course!’
‘There’s a man overboard,’ the third mate started to
explain, when Lind cut him off.
'I said back on your course!’ Lind turned to the
helmsman. ‘Hard right.’
The helmsman, a Greek ordinary seaman, glanced
with momentary helplessness toward the third mate at
this conflict of orders, and then began spinning the
wheel back to the right. There was no arguing with that
tone of voice, not from Lind.
‘Mr. Lind! I tell you there’s a man in the water back
there!’ the third mate said angrily. Lind might be the
acting master, but this was his watch and he’d give the
orders on it. He strode to the door of the wheelhouse. ‘I
saw him myself.’
The third mate’s protest cut off then. He started.
Hugo Mayr, now minus the eye patch, the beardstubbled
face wearing a chill smile, had just entered
the opposite door of the wheelhouse carrying a
machine pistol. Behind him was Karl with a Luger in his
hand. The helmsman looked around at them, and his
eyes grew wide with fear. The ship was swinging hard
to starboard now and the squall was bearing down on
them from dead ahead.
Antonio Gutierrez, still frozen into immobility out on
the wing of the bridge, saw the big sailor called Otto
come up across the port side of the boat deck, also
carrying a black slab of a pistol. He stepped onto the
bridge behind the third mate, looked beyond him to
Lind standing in back of the helmsman, and nodded. He
raised the pistol and slashed it down on the third
mate’s head. Svedberg’s knees buckled. He fell forward
against the door facing and slid to the deck just as the
advancing curtain of rain swept down on them. Otto
caught him by the arm and started to drag his body to
the wing of the bridge where Gutierrez was still
cowering.
‘Ease your helm!’ Lind snapped to the young Greek.
The latter, still petrified, gave no indication he had ever
heard. Lind yanked him away from the wheel and flung
him toward the door. He fell to his hands and knees on
And The Deep Blue Sea — 150
the bridge in the gusts of windswept rain, scrambled to
his feet, and fled. ‘Otto, take the wheel,’ Lind ordered.
Otto left the unconscious third mate lying in the rain
and hurried in. Lind gave him the course. He spun the
wheel left to steady up.
Lind turned to Mayr and started to say something in
German just as the bos’n hurried in. Water streamed
down his face, and he had a Luger shoved into the
waistband of his dungarees.
He spoke rapidly to Lind. ‘Those carboys are
breaking in number three. Before the squall hit, you
could smell alcohol all over the well-deck.’
Lind nodded. ‘Nothing we can do about it. If it blows,
maybe we can keep it under control. Where’s Sparks?’
‘He’s coming.’
‘Good. Cover the ladders. Shoot anybody who tries to
get up here.’
The bos’n went out into the gray confusion of wind
and rain. Sparks came up the inside companion way
through the chart room. ‘Call the Phoenix,’ Lind
ordered. ‘Tell them to get under way on our reciprocal
course at full speed. Give him a signal once an hour to
home on with his RDF.’
Sparks looked questioning. ‘Won’t we rendezvous
before dark?’
‘What difference does it make now?’ Mayr asked. ‘We
all board her,’ Lind said.
‘And what about—?’ Sparks’ gesture was inclusive—
the ship and the rest of the crew. Lind drew a finger
across his throat. Sparks nodded and went out.
The third mate still lay face down where Otto had left
him, almost at Gutierrez’ feet. His sodden cap was
nearby, blown against the canvas dodger by the
buffeting gusts of wind, and a pink stain ran out of his
hair across the deck that streamed with water. The
messman looked down at this man he assumed was
dead, and then through the flung sheets of rain at the
others inside the wheelhouse. Maybe they wouldn’t
notice him now if he moved. He had taken one step
And The Deep Blue Sea — 151
when there was a sound like a gigantic exhalation of
breath that made his ears pop. He turned.
Numb by now and beyond any emotion, he watched in
a sort of bemused wonder as a great ball of fire and
smoke shot skyward from the after well-deck, carrying
with it the cartwheeling planks and flaming sections of
tarpaulin from number three hatch cover, shattered
and burning cases, baled cowhides, splintered
dunnage, and an eruption of sparks like the climax of a
fireworks display.
This fiery debris began to rain down on the poop and
into the sea alongside to die a hissing death in the
water above and below, but the column of flame
continued to mount, shooting up from the hatch to the
height of the stack and giving off boiling clouds of
smoke and a rushing and crackling sound that could be
heard above the lashing of rain and the shouts of men
on the decks below. Lind ran out onto the starboard
wing of the bridge, looked aft, and strode back to grab
up the telephone on the bulkhead behind the
helmsman.
‘Give us pressure on the fire line,’ he barked. He
threw the phone back on the hook, rang the engine
room telegraph to STOP, and ran back across the boat
deck, followed by the others. With no one on the bridge
except an unconscious third officer and a Filipino
messman, the Leander continued blindly ahead into the
squall.
Gutierrez stepped to the wheelhouse door and looked
in, his face still suffused with wonder. The pretty
blonde one was back there somewhere, and if they
returned there was no doubt she would simply come
aboard again. Perhaps not even wet. How was it the
steering man had started to perform the return? This
way? Yes, a la izquierda, without doubt. He grasped the
spokes of the wheel and began turning it to the left.
When it would go no farther, he left it, dragged the
third mate inside out of the rain where he might await
resurrection in more comfort, and went out onto the
boat deck to watch the fire. On any other ship, a thing
like that would be very unusual and frightening.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 152
The Leander, her engine stopped but with full way on
her and still plowing ahead at nearly twelve knots,
began a hard-over turn to port through the opaque and
wind-lashed sheets of rain where one direction was like
another.
* * *
In a violent gray world less than a hundred yards
across, they floated face to face with the rim of the life
ring between them, eyes half closed against the beating
of the rain. Thunder exploded on the heels of a jagged
flash of lightning.
‘Why do you suppose she was going that way?’ Karen
asked. ‘They couldn’t be looking for us?’
‘No,’ Goddard said. It was brutal, but raising false
hopes was even more so. Lind would still be in
command, even now that she was afire; there were at
least six of them, and they’d all be armed. ‘She could be
out of control, or they changed course to keep the fire
off the midships house.’
‘Well, they couldn’t find us, anyway. You can’t see
fifty yards.’
‘Did you ever see anything of Rafferty?’ he asked.
‘No.’ She wiped water from her face, and shivered.
‘Why do you suppose he did it? One of his own men?’
‘Rafferty was stupid. Lind would probably have killed
him later, anyway. I mean, if the thing had worked.
They’d never trust a secret like that to some two-bit
punk who’d spill it in the first bar he hit.’
There was also a good chance Lind had done it with
the knowledge her reaction would be just what it had
been, to get her to the rail, but he saw no point in
saying so.
‘Do you suppose he was a Nazi too? An American?’
‘Probably,’ Goddard said.
The squall was kicking up a sharp and confused sea
atop the swell. Spray blew off it to mingle with the rain.
There was so much water in the air that breathing was
difficult.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 153
‘It’s strange,’ she said, ‘but I don’t even know if you
have any family or not.’
‘A brother in Texas,’ he replied. ‘And an ex-Mrs.
Goddard, somewhere in Europe. We communicate
through a power of attorney and a bank account; if the
dollar holds firm, it’ll be years before she hears about
this.’
‘You didn’t have any children?’
‘A daughter,’ he said, ‘by a previous marriage. She
was killed in a car crash.’ Then he was surprised. Had
he really said that?
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