Aground — 22
“Not for long, unless they were gluttons for
punishment,” he said. “Except in a dead calm, it’d be
like riding a roller-coaster. With fifty to seventy-five
miles of open water to windward—”
“But it’s all real shallow—or is shoal the word you
use? Less than four fathoms, according to the chart.”
“It can still kick up a nasty chop, in any breeze at
all. Not to mention the surge running in from the
Santaren Channel. It’s more likely they were in
trouble of some kind.”
“Then she might be still there. Will you help me
find her?”
“How?” he asked.
“How would I know?” she asked, rattling the ice in
the glass. “That’s why I’m asking you. Maybe we
could charter a boat?”
He shook his head. “You’d just be wasting money.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think you realize what you’re up against.
In the first place, that position you’ve got marked is
where they think they were when they picked up the
dinghy. Big-game fishing guides aren’t the world’s
greatest navigators, as a rule. That far at sea, on
dead reckoning, they could have been as much as
twenty miles out. Add another thirty for the possible
drift of the dinghy in the currents and tides along
the edge of the Bank, and you’re in real trouble. You
have any idea of the area of a circle with a radius of
fifty miles?”
“God no, you figure it out.”
“Around eight thousand square miles. That’s not
somebody’s front yard.”
“But—”
“Furthermore, that Bank is nothing to fool with—
especially at night or in poor light conditions. It’s
several thousand square miles of shoals, reefs, coral
heads, and sand bars, and it’s poorly charted,
especially down there where you want to go. But
disregarding all that for the moment, what good
would it do if you did get lucky and find her?
Aground — 23
Assuming, I mean, that the people who stole her are
still aboard? There’s no way you can regain
possession or have ‘em arrested until she goes into
port somewhere; out on the open sea’s a poor place
to try to call a cop.”
“Well, you’re sure not much help, are you?” she
asked. “Or maybe you just don’t want the job? Can’t
you use the money?”
He stifled the slow burn of anger. “I’m trying to
keep you from throwing yours away. I’m just as
interested in finding the Dragoon as you are, but
you’ll never do it that way.”
“Well, what about a plane?”
“You’d have a better chance of finding her, if she’s
still in that area. But you couldn’t get aboard, if you
did.”
“At least I’d know where she is—and whether she’s
in trouble. What kind of plane would it take?”
“An expensive one.”
“That doesn’t matter. Where can we get one?”
“Why do you keep saying we?” he asked. “If you
charter a plane, what do you need me for?”
“As I said, for several reasons. You’re an
experienced yachtsman. You’ve been sailing boats
all your life. So you’d be able to tell if she was in
trouble of some kind. But the main reason is I’m not
sure I’d recognize the Dragoon if I saw her. They
must have repainted her and changed the name.”
He remembered then what Schmidt had said about
her not being very familiar with the schooner. It also
occurred to him that he knew nothing about her
whatever except that presumably she was a widow;
the ad in Yachting had listed the schooner under her
own name. Alarm bells began to go off in his head.
He glanced at her left hand. She wore engagement
and wedding rings, but that didn’t prove much.
“Why don’t you think you’d recognize her?” he
asked.
“I’ve been aboard her only once.”
Aground — 24
“How’s that?”
“My husband took her in on some property he sold
about a year ago, just before he died. Since the
estate was settled, I’ve been trying to sell her. But to
get back to the subject, you’d recognize her,
wouldn’t you?”
“I think so,” he said.
“Good. Now, about the plane?”
“Not so fast. Maybe Hollister made me a little gunshy,
but this time I’d like some proof. How do I know
you’re Mrs. Osborne?”
“Well!” He thought for a moment she was going to
tell him that anybody knew who Mrs. C. R. Osborne
was, but she fooled him. “You’re pretty hard-boiled,
aren’t you?”
“Not particularly,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve made
my quota of bonehead plays for this week. But you
don’t have to bother digging up identification. Just
tell me what I said in that letter.”
She repeated it almost exactly as he had written it.
“Are you satisfied now?”
“Yes.” Then it occurred to him that his manners
were almost as bad as hers. “And, incidentally, I
want to thank you for going to all that trouble to call
back to Houston to verify it.”
She shrugged. “No trouble. Now what about the
plane?”
“You’re sure you want to go to all that expense,
just to see if she’s out there? She’s insured, isn’t
she?”
She nodded. “Against marine risk, as I get the
picture. But I don’t think the policy covers theft, and
if something happens to her out there and I’ve got
no witnesses or actual proof of loss, it might be
years before I could collect.”
That was possible, he thought. But the feeling
persisted that she wasn’t telling the truth—or at
least not all of it. Well, it was none of his business.
He bent over the chart, studying the position she
had marked and estimating the distances. “I think
Aground — 25
Nassau would be the best bet. It’s a little nearer,
and McAllister Air Service used to have some big
twin-engine amphibians that should be able to do it.
Want me to call them now?”
“Sure.”
He reached for the telephone on one of the small
end-tables. While the operator put through the call
he sat frowning thoughtfully at the chart. What
could they have been doing out there? He was
connected then with the office at Windsor Field in
Nassau. McAllister had left for the night, but one of
the pilots was still around, a man named Avery. He
said they were still flying the amphibians.
“What’s their range?” he asked.
“It depends on the load. What do you want to
carry?”
“Just a couple of passengers. Here’s the deal. . . .”
He explained briefly, and asked, “Do you have a
chart handy, any general chart that takes in the area
west of Andros?”
“Yes, sir. There’s one right in front of me.”
“Good. Take a look at the outer edge of the Bank,
opposite Cay Sal. Got it? They picked up the dinghy
at about 23.30 north, just off the hundred-fathom
curve in the Santaren Channel. If we wanted to fly a
search pattern around that point, how much of the
area could we cover and still not have to walk
home?”
“Hmmm . . . Just a minute . . . We could stay down
there close to two hours and still get back all right.”
“What’s the rate?”
“A hundred and twenty-five dollars an hour.”
“Just a minute.” He placed a hand over the
transmitter and relayed the figure to Mrs. Osborne.
She nodded. “Tell him we’ll be there as soon as we
can.”
He spoke into the instrument. “Okay. I think
there’s a Pan American flight out of here early in the
morning—”
Aground — 26
“Yes. Flight 401. Arrives Nassau at nine a.m.”
“Check. And if we can’t get space on it, I’ll cable
you what flight we will be on. That okay?”
“Yes, sir. So unless we hear from you, we’ll have
her fueled and ready for nine a.m.”
He broke the connection, got the hotel operator
again, and asked for Pan American Airways. They
were in luck; space was available on flight 401. He
made the reservations and hung up.
“It’s all set,” he said. “Ill meet you at the Pan Am
counter at the airport about three-quarters of an
hour before flight time.”
“Good. Now about your pay—”
“There’s no charge,” he said.
She frowned. “What?”
“I helped them steal the boat, didn’t I? The least I
can do is help you find it.”
“You can’t be serious.”
He stood up to leave. “Whether or not I did it with
intent, as the police call it, doesn’t change the facts.
I’m at least partly responsible for their getting away
with it.”
“Well, you’re an odd one, I must say.” She
regarded him for the first time with something
approaching interest. “How old are you?”
“Forty-three.”
“You don’t look it.”
“Thanks,” he said. She didn’t bother to rise. He
walked to the door, fighting the stiffness in his leg,
but paused with his hand on the knob. “That dinghy
—when they found it, were there any oars in it?”
“No,” she said. “Just the motor.”
“Was there any gasoline in it? Or did they look?”
She stared down at the glass in her hand. “They
looked,” she said. “It was empty.”
He nodded. The silence lengthened. “See you in
the morning,” he said, and went out.
Aground — 27
3
It was a long time before he got to sleep. On the
evidence, the theft of the Dragoon was no harebrained,
spur-of-the-moment stunt; it had been
carefully thought out by men who knew what they
were doing. Then by the same token they must have
known they couldn’t enter any port in the western
hemisphere without the necessary documentation—
which they couldn’t possibly steal. So what had they
planned to do? Stay at sea, or put her into orbit?
And how had they lost the dinghy? The police
seemed to accept this as merely a routine incident—
they’d been towing it, it came adrift, so what? But it
wasn’t that simple. They wouldn’t have been towing
it at sea; and certainly not with the motor and
somebody’s clothes in it. It would have been aboard,
lashed down on the deckhouse. So they had put it
over the side for something. But for what? The
watch and the clothes were easier to understand, at
least up to a point. The man—whoever he was—had
taken them off to go in the water for some reason.
But what reason? You were stumped again.
And what about Mrs. Osborne—aside from the
obvious things like the good looks and bad manners?
Something didn’t quite ring true. The theft would
have been reported to her as soon as the police
Aground — 28
learned of it themselves—last Friday, at the latest.
That was four days ago. But she apparently hadn’t
thought it necessary to come to Miami until this
morning; and then presumably she’d grabbed the
first available plane after the police called to tell her
about the dinghy. Why? It wasn’t to identify the
dinghy. She’d admitted over the phone she wasn’t
familiar enough with the Dragoon’s gear to be sure.
And it wasn’t necessary, anyway, because Tango
identified it. So could it have been that watch that
brought her flying in from Houston? Maybe she had
an idea whose it was. But if so, why hadn’t she told
the police?
Forget it, he thought. All you have to do is find the
schooner. He closed his eyes, and in back of them
was the deadly flower of explosion. He had seen it
nearly every night for the past two months, the same
unvarying and frozen scene like a nightmare
captured intact and imbedded in plastic. It was too
late to stop him. Barney leaned forward to strike the
torch. . . .
* * *
She was waiting near the Pan American counters
when he arrived at the airport the next morning, and
had already picked up the tickets and checked her
bag. He tried to pay for his, but she brushed the
money aside impatiently. “Don’t be silly, I’ll pay the
expenses.”
She was as attractive in the light of early morning
as she had been under the softer illumination of the
night, but her face showed signs of weariness, as
though she hadn’t slept well. She wore a crisp white
linen skirt and short-sleeved blouse, and carried a
heavy binocular case slung over her shoulder. When
their flight was announced they went out and
boarded the plane, and she slept all the way across
to Nassau. They landed at Windsor Field at nine a.m.
and filed through Immigration and Customs. He was
gathering up their suitcases at the Customs counter
when they were approached by a tall and sun-
Aground — 29
reddened man in tropical whites. “Captain Ingram?”
he asked.
He nodded. “You’re from McAllister?”
“Yes. I’m Robin Avery.”
They shook hands, and he introduced Mrs.
Osborne. Avery had a spiky red mustache and very
cool blue eyes and spoke with a clipped economy of
words that was suggestively British, though with no
discernible accent. He motioned for a porter to
collect the bags. “Leave those in the office until we
get back, if you like,” he said.
They followed him over to the office next to the
McAllister hangar. Mrs. Osborne produced a sheaf
of traveler’s checks and made a deposit on the
charter. Avery unrolled a chart on the counter and
brought out a pair of parallel rulers. “Any particular
preference as to a starting point?”
“Yes,” Ingram said. “Why not hit the southern end
of the area first?” He lined up the parallel rulers and
walked them across the chart to the compass rose.
“A course of two hundred True will put us over the
hundred-fathom curve about forty miles south of
where the dinghy was found. From there we could
fly an east-west pattern out over the Channel and
back in over the Bank with about ten-mile spacing.”
“Right,” Avery agreed. He rolled up the chart and
they went out to where the big amphibian squatted
on the apron in white sunlight. There were three
seats on each side of the narrow aisle in the after
compartment. “Who’d like the co-pilot’s seat?” Avery
asked, with a hopeful glance at Mrs. Osborne.
“Visibility’s much better up there.”
She nodded to Ingram. “Your eyesight’s probably
better than mine at this sort of thing. I’d rather you
took it.”
“Okay.” He followed Avery through the narrow
doorway. They strapped themselves in. Avery started
the engines, taxied out to the end of the runway, and
called the tower for clearance. The engines roared,
and they began to gather speed. Then they were
airborne and climbing in a long turn toward Andros.
Aground — 30
* * *
The blue chasm of the Tongue of the Ocean passed
beneath them, and then the coral-toothed white surf
of the barrier reef along Andros’ eastern shore. The
interior of the largest island of the Bahamas chain
was a green mat of vegetation broken only by
meandering creeks and great marshy lakes dotted
with mangroves. The plane came out at last over the
desolate west coast where the land shelved almost
imperceptibly into the vast shallow seas of the
Bahama Bank and the patterns of sand bars were
like riffled dunes beneath the surface. Ahead and on
both sides the horizon faded into illimitable distance,
merging finally with the sky with no line of
demarcation and seeming to move forward with
their progress so that they remained always in the
center. It was only by looking down at the varying
terrain of the bottom and the shifting patterns of
color that it was possible to tell the plane was
moving at all. The colors themselves were
indescribable, Ingram thought; you had to see them
to realize they could be that way, and he didn’t
believe that anybody ever entirely forgot them
afterward. He wondered if Mrs. Osborne was
enjoying them. He glanced aft, and she was leaning
back in the seat with her eyes closed, smoking a
cigarette. Well, maybe nobody’d ever told her it was
an expensive ocean.
Andros faded away astern and they were alone
above the immensity of the sea. Another thirty
minutes went by. Then, a little over an hour after
their take-off from Windsor Field, Avery said, “We
should be coming up on the area now.”
Ingram nodded. Ahead, just emerging from the
haze of distance, was the long line sweeping across
the horizon where the delicate shades of turquoise
and powder blue and aqua changed abruptly to
indigo as the western edge of the Bank plunged into
the depths of the Santaren Channel. He stepped into
the after compartment. Mrs. Osborne opened her
Aground — 31
eyes, and he pointed out the small window next to
her seat.
She nodded, removed the binoculars from their
case, and slung them about her neck. He bent down
so as not to have to shout above the noise of the
engines, and said, “I wouldn’t try to use those too
much. With this vibration, they’ll pull your eyes out.”
“All right,” she said. She turned back to the
window. Ingram returned to the co-pilot’s seat. He
unrolled the chart, penciled a mark on it where their
course intersected the hundred-fathom curve, and
set a clip-board in his lap.
As they came over the drop-off, Avery banked in a
gentle right turn, steadied up on the new course,
and checked the time. “Two-seven-oh,” he said. “Ten
twenty-six.”
“Right.” Ingram wrote the figures on the pad
attached to the clip-board without looking down as
his eyes continued their search of the surrounding
sea—ahead, starboard, out to the horizon, and
below. The wind was out of the southeast with a
light sea running, dotting the surface with random
whitecaps that winked and were gone, but as far as
the eye could see there was only emptiness. Fifteen
minutes went by. They banked to the right and
headed due north. Ingram noted the time and
course. At the end of seven minutes they turned
right again. “Ninety degrees,” Avery called out as
they steadied up. They were now flying back parallel
to their first course and approximately ten miles
north of it. Between changes of course, no one
spoke. Avery flew mechanically while he searched
the sector to port along with Mrs. Osborne. They
came in over the Bank, turned north again, and then
west once more. There was no sign of life, no craft of
any kind, anywhere in the emptiness below them.
An hour dragged by. An hour and a half. They
came up to and passed the area where the dinghy
had been found. His leg began to bother him, and his
eyes ached from staring. Once they sighted a small
dot far to the westward and changed course with
Aground — 32
sudden hope. It was a commercial fishing boat over
the Cay Sal Bank on the opposite side of the
Channel. They picked up the pattern again, and went
on, twenty-five miles west, ten miles north, twentyfive
east, and then north again, squinting against the
sunlit water below them and straining to pierce the
haze of distance far out on the horizon. At 12:15
p.m., Avery made a last check of the fuel gauges,
and said, “That’s it for now.” They flew back to
Nassau and re-fueled.
They took off again, made the long run down
across Andros and the Bank once more, and were
back in the search pattern shortly after three. It was
almost hopeless now, Ingram thought. They were
already north of where the dinghy had been picked
up, and working farther away from the area all the
time. They went on, not speaking, eyes glued to the
emptiness below and on all sides of them.
At 4:35 p.m. they were on an eastward leg. As they
came in over the edge of the Bank, Avery checked
the time and the remaining fuel, and said, “Best
make the next leg a short one. Only about thirty
minutes before we have to start back.”
Ingram nodded. They started to turn to the left,
while his eyes searched the blurred distance in over
the Bank. “Hold it!” he called out suddenly. “I think I
see something.”
It was only an indistinct speck, far ahead and
below them. He pointed. Avery saw it, and nodded.
They continued on course, heading straight toward
it. In another ninety seconds he could make out that
there were two separate objects. One was a narrow
rock or sand spit showing just above the surface; the
other, however, was a boat, and he felt a tingle of
excitement along his nerves. He started to call out to
Mrs. Osborne, and then was aware she had come
forward and was crouched behind him, peering over
his shoulder. Avery changed course slightly to put
the boat on the starboard side, and nosed down to
lose altitude. He could see the masts now. There
were two of them, the taller aft. The boat was a
Aground — 33
schooner, and a large one. He saw the large cockpit
aft, the long, low deckhouses, the rakish bowsprit.
“There she is,” he said. It was the Dragoon.
She was lying dead in the water, listing slightly to
port, with her sails furled. They went over at a
thousand feet, still losing altitude. Avery banked
right to swing back. Ingram stared down to keep her
in view, conscious of Mrs. Osborne’s face touching
his and her hand digging into his shoulder. She was
clutching the binoculars in her other hand, trying to
bring them to bear on the schooner’s deck. He slid
out of the seat, pushed her into it, and stood behind
her. The schooner was momentarily lost to view then
as Avery lengthened the radius of his turn. When
they straightened out at last they were some four
hundred feet above the water and about a mile
astern. They flew up past her, less than a hundred
yards off her port side, and he could see everything
quite clearly.
Her hull was painted a light blue now, instead of
white, and while he couldn’t make out the name
lettered on her stern it was shorter than Dragoon.
She lay roughly on a northerly heading about three
hundred yards southwest of the dry sand bar, which
was itself approximately that long, very narrow, and
not over two or three feet above water at its highest
point. The water was very shoal on all sides of the
bar except for one twisting channel of slightly
darker blue extending along its western side, past
the Dragoon’s stern, and then on westward toward
the outer edge of the Bank. The tide was flooding
onto the Bank, flowing around her hull, but she lay
broadside to it and unmoving. The deck was empty
of any sign of life. Then they were past her, and
Avery was climbing to gain altitude for another turn.
Mrs. Osborne had put down the binoculars and
had her face pressed against the window, trying to
see aft. “Are you sure it’s the Dragoon?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “There’s no doubt of it.”
“There’s something funny about the way she’s
lying. What is it?”
Aground — 34
“She’s aground.”
“I didn’t see anybody. Did you?”
“No. I think she’s been abandoned.”
“There must be somebody. . . . What could have
happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
Avery completed the turn and they came back, still
lower and off the schooner’s starboard side this
time. She was in no immediate danger, Ingram
thought, as long as the wind held out of the
southeast. There was a short, choppy sea running
across the Bank, but she was completely protected
in the lee of the shoal surrounding the sand spit. A
norther would break her up, but there was little
chance of one in June. As they went past he swept
the deserted deck with a cool professional eye.
There appeared to be no damage. The sticks and
rigging were all right as far as he could tell. The
sails were sloppily furled, as though they had been
stowed in the dark by farmers, but the booms were
inboard, the main resting on its gallows. There was
only one thing that appeared to be amiss, and that
was hard to judge with the list she had. She could be
a little low in the water. Maybe she had been holed
on a reef somewhere and they’d deliberately
beached her. But there was no anchor out, which
would seem to indicate she’d been abandoned before
she went aground. It was baffling.
Then they were past, and climbing. Ingram made
an estimate of the position and marked it on the
chart. Avery checked the time, and cautioned, “Can’t
cut it too fine. We’d best start for home.”
“Could we go by just once more?” Mrs. Osborne
asked.
Avery nodded. They made the turn and came back,
higher this time. She stared down at the empty deck.
Then the schooner was falling away behind them,
looking helpless and forsaken in the lonely distances
of the sea. When she disappeared at last, Mrs.
Osborne turned away from the window. “How do we
get aboard?”
Aground — 35
“Charter a boat,” Ingram replied.
“How long will it take?”
“Two days, at least. Maybe three.”
“That’s too long. Why don’t we land out there with
the plane?”
He glanced at Avery. The latter nodded. “Could be
done, if there’s not too much sea running. Early in
the morning would be the best time. But you’d have
to take it up with McAllister.”
He started to point out that merely getting aboard
wouldn’t solve anything; the chances were they were
going to need the help of another boat, and one with
plenty of power, to pull her off. Then he
reconsidered; there were several things in favor of
it. He could size up the situation at first hand, see
just what it was going to take to get her afloat again,
and find out if there was any damage below the
water line. Also, she might not be fast aground at all;
she might merely have lodged there on a change of
tide and float off herself on the next flood. With no
anchor out, there was no telling where she would
wind up. An abandoned boat was always in danger.
“What about getting over to her?” he asked.
“We have some rubber life rafts,” Avery replied.
They landed in Nassau shortly before six.
McAllister was still in the office. He was a portly
Irishman with curly black hair, a cigar, and the
affable charm of a successful politician. Ingram
unrolled the chart on his desk and explained the
situation.
“You’re sure that’s the position?” McAllister asked.
“The chart doesn’t show a sand bar there.”
“I know,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything. A lot
of the Bank’s pretty sketchy in the survey
department, and those shoals and bars change with
every storm. We checked the course on the way in,
and wouldn’t have any trouble finding it again.”
“Any rocks or coral heads close to the surface?”
Avery shook his head. “No. There’s plenty of water
to the westward of the sand spit. Early in the
Aground — 36
morning, before the breeze gets up, we could bring
her in well off the shoal and taxi up in the lee of it
while they go aboard.”
“Okay,” McAllister replied. “If it looks safe to you.
What time do you want to take off?”
“The earlier the better. As soon as it’s light.”
“All right. We’ll put one of those surplus life rafts
aboard and have her ready.”
Ingram retrieved their suitcases and they went
around in front of the terminal and took a taxi
downtown. As they pulled away from the loading
zone, she asked, “What do you think happened?
What became of them?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You don’t think there’s a chance anyone is still
aboard?”
“No. They’d have made some attempt to get her
off. There would have been a kedge anchor out
astern, or some roily water downstream if they’d
been turning the engine. She was apparently
abandoned even before she drifted in there.”
“But how? And why?”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t even try to guess.
There’s been no bad weather, and I didn’t see any
sign of damage. Hollister couldn’t have taken her
down there alone. There had to be others. And as far
as we know, they didn’t even have another dinghy to
get off with even if they’d wanted to. It makes no
sense at all.”
“But what about Hollister?”
“There’s a good chance he’s dead.”
It was a moment before she answered. “Why?”
“He took off his clothes and that watch to go in the
water after something. He didn’t come back into the
dinghy. And if he’s not aboard the Dragoon, that
doesn’t leave much.”
“I see,” she said. He turned and glanced at her,
but she was staring out the window on the opposite
side. She was silent during the rest of the ride into
Aground — 37
town; when he suggested the Pilot House Club as a
good place to stay, she merely nodded. When they
came into the central business district she asked the
driver to stop, and got out.
“I want to do some shopping,” she said to Ingram.
“Take my suitcase and the binoculars, and reserve a
room for me. I’ll be along later.”
After he’d shaved and showered he ate a solitary
dinner in the patio near the pool. He didn’t see her
anywhere. He crossed the road to the Yacht Haven;
none of the skippers he knew were around, so he
walked downtown, driven by restlessness, and had
several bottles of beer in the Carlton House bar.
You’re getting old, he told himself; you’ve been too
many places for too many forgotten reasons, and
now you’re going around again. Remembering the
same place offset in different layers of time makes it
too easy to count the years in between and wonder
where they went. You wake up in the morning and
they’re speaking Spanish outside your window, so it
could be Mexico again, and you remember lightering
bananas down the Grijalva River in a wheezy
gasoline-powered tug with a string of cranky barges
and the goofy invincibility of youth, and the salvage
job off the Panuco River bar below Tampico when
the tanker piled up on the south jetty because the
skipper wouldn’t wait for a pilot and didn’t know
about the bad southerly set across the entrance
during a norther, and then you realize the two
memories are eleven years apart and somehow
they’ve shoved a whole war, several other countries,
and a good deal of the western Pacific in between.
And Nassau . . .
That had been the good time. Seven years of it,
with Frances and the Canción. He’d met Frances in
1948 when she’d been one of a party of five Miami
schoolteachers who’d chartered the Canción for a
week’s trip to Eleuthera. They were married that
same year, and lived aboard the ketch as skipper
and mate in a very special and private world of their
own happiness while carrying charters along the
New England coast in summer and around the
Aground — 38
Bahamas in winter—until 1955. She’d flown home to
Seattle to visit her mother, and was going to drive
back to Chicago with friends to take the plane down
to Miami. Everything had seemed to run down and
stop then, on that endless bright November
afternoon in the Berry Islands with the wind blowing
blue and clean from the north, when he got the word
by radio. She’d been killed in an automobile accident
at a place called Manhattan, Montana. While he
stood there holding the handset of the
radiotelephone in his hand waiting for the numbness
to wear off and the thing to begin to get to him
wherever it was going to start, it seemed the only
thing he could think of was that if he could only
isolate it and pin it down there must be a question in
here somewhere for the boys who could always
explain everything. After all the places he’d been in
the world, the only thing he’d ever been handed that
he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to handle had
happened to him in a place he’d never even heard of.
You’ve had too much beer, he thought, or you
think too much when you drink. He left the bar and
walked back, and it was after eleven when he came
into the lobby of the Pilot House. The girl at the desk
said Mrs. Osborne had tried to call him several times
in the past hour. “Thank you,” he said. He went on
up to his room, looked at the telephone, and
shrugged. The hell with Mrs. Osborne; he was going
to bed. While he was unbuttoning his shirt, the
telephone rang. He ignored it until the third ring,
when it occurred to him the girl would have told her
he was in now. He picked it up.
“I want to talk to you,” she said. Her voice
sounded blurred, and the words tended to run
together. “I was just going to bed.”
“At eleven o’clock? Do you get a merit badge or
something?”
“Can’t it wait till morning?”
“No. Come over to my room. Or I’ll come over
there.”
Aground — 39
Stoned, he thought. He’d better humor her, or
she’d be banging on the door. “All right.” He put the
instrument back on the cradle and went down the
hall.
Aground — 40
4
The door was ajar. When he knocked, she called out,
“Come on in.” He stepped inside. She had on a blue
dressing gown and was sitting on the studio couch
with her stockinged feet stretched out on the coffee
table in front of it. Beside her feet there were a
bottle of Bacardi about two-thirds full, two or three
opened bottles of Coca-Cola, a pitcher of ice, and a
paperback mystery novel. She had a glass in her
hand.
She regarded him solemnly, and sniffed. “It’s all
right to close the door. You can always scream.”
He was aware for the first time that she had a
definite southern accent. Perhaps he’d heard it
before but it just hadn’t registered; he was a Texan
too, and, although he’d been away so long that he’d
lost all trace of it himself, he didn’t always notice it
in others when he heard it. She didn’t appear to be
outstandingly drunk, aside from the solemnity. The
flamboyant mop of tawny hair was all in place, and
her mouth nicely made up. But you never knew.
There might possibly be other things in the world
more unpredictable than a woman with too much to
drink, but he’d never run into any of them. He
wondered, without caring particularly, if she hit it
this hard all the time. It’d be a shame. She was still a
Aground — 41
fine figure of a woman, but she must be between
thirty and thirty-five, and at that age they didn’t stay
in there long against the sauce without being
marked.
“You don’t have to look so smug,” she said. “I’m
perfectly aware of it.”
“What?”
“That my feet are on the coffee table.”
“Los pies de la Señora Osborne están en la mesa,”
he said, with a parrot-like intonation.
She frowned. “What’s that mean?”
“The feet of Mrs. Osborne are on the table. I don’t
know—it just sounded like one of those phrase-book
deals. Would it be all right if we talked about your
feet in the morning?”
“Captain, I have a feeling that you don’t entirely
approve of me. Do you?”
“I hadn’t given it any thought,” he said. “Does it
matter?”
“Of course it matters. Don’t you realize I might
slash my wrists?”
He said nothing, wondering if two adults could get
into a more asinine conversation. She probably
wasn’t drunk enough to throw things, so maybe after
she got a little of it out of her system, whatever it
was, he could leave without starting a scene that
would bring down the hotel. There seemed no point
in even trying to guess what had brought it on. It
was possible, of course, that he’d muffed the cue
back there when she’d asked him to register for
them, though that was pretty farfetched; if she’d
wanted to indulge in a little away-from-home affair,
she was certainly attractive enough to do better.
There were plenty of younger and more personable
men available in a place like Nassau. It was more
probable, if that were the case, that she’d merely
expected him to make the bid so she could turn it
down. In any event, it hadn’t even occurred to him,
so maybe he was getting old. Or, as she charged, he
just didn’t like her. Well, he didn’t, particularly.
Aground — 42
Maybe that was the answer; she’d sensed it, and
resented it—though he couldn’t imagine why. With
those green eyes and that high-cheekboned and
suggestively arrogant face she didn’t strike you as
somebody who normally bled a great deal over the
opinions of the rabble.
She was apparently lost in thought; maybe she’d
forgotten he was there.
“What did you want to see me about?” he asked.
She poured some more rum in the glass.
“Hollister.”
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “What about
him?”
“I wanted to ask you something. When he was
giving you this snow job, did he ever say anything
about being a doctor?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Just this moonshine about being president of a
drug firm? Well, it is in the pattern, at that.”
He began to have the feeling now that she wasn’t
as drunk as she appeared. She was faking it. “What
are you talking about?”
“Still that same old medical angle,” she mused, as
if speaking to herself. “His mother must have been
frightened by a pregnancy test.”
“You know him, don’t you?”
“Who says I do?”
“You spent over a thousand dollars today just to fly
over the Dragoon with a pair of binoculars, looking
for him.”
“Maybe I was trying to find out.”
“Who do you think he was?”
“It’s nothing to you.”
“No, but it might be to the police. Or had you
thought of that?”
Aground — 43
“Never mind the police. If I have to go out and
recover my own boat, they can look after
themselves. I tell you I don’t know, anyway. I’m just
guessing.”
“Did he have a watch like that?”
“Yes,” she said. “But that’s no real proof. They’re
not too common, but still there are others.”
“What about the description I gave you?”
“It could fit him. Along with a lot of other men.
There’s another thing, though, that’s more
important. You must have wondered why he wanted
somebody else to survey the boat instead of going
himself.”
“Sure.”
“He couldn’t have gone himself because Tango
would know him. He’d been aboard the Dragoon
before.”
He nodded. “That would make sense. But what
would he want to steal it for?”
“I have no idea.”
“Who was he?”
“He’s just a man I used to know. His name’s
Patrick Ives. That is, if all these guesses are right.”
“Did he know anything about sailing?”
“A little, I think. I know he’s sailed small boats.”
“Do you think he could have handled the Dragoon
—with help, I mean? She’s a little out of the
plaything class.”
“That I couldn’t judge; I don’t know enough about
it myself. He did know navigation, though; he was a
B-17 navigator during the Second World War.”
“He was just asking for trouble if he didn’t know
how to handle a boat that size.”
“Well, he seems to have found it, judging from
where the Dragoon is now. Do you really think he’s
dead?”
Ingram nodded. “Naturally, there’s no way to be
sure, but I think he drowned.”
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