Aground — 67
Morrison gestured impatiently. “We were trying to
turn to get out of here. It was night, like I said, and
we couldn’t see anything. And all of a sudden we
heard something that sounded like a beach.”
“You turned the wrong way. But I don’t get what
you were doing in here over the Bank in the first
place. You should have been at least ten miles to the
westward.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. I’m no navigator. It
looks like we could have used one. I tried to get
Hollister to proposition you—”
“Wait a minute. You mean you know me?”
“Sure. I thought I recognized you when you came
aboard, and when the pilot called you Ingram I had
you made.”
“Where did you see me before?”
“In the lobby of the Eden Roc when you went to
see Hollister the first time.”
Rae Osborne broke in. “Why did this man Hollister
want somebody else to inspect the Dragoon instead
of going himself?”
Morrison shrugged. “He said the watchman might
remember him. He was an old boy friend of the
owner, and he’d been aboard before.”
She said nothing, and turned to stare out across
the water to the northward. Well, at least her
question was answered, Ingram thought. “Whose
idea was it, stealing the boat?” he asked.
“Hollister’s. Or whatever you said his name was.”
“Patrick Ives,” she said.
“Anyway, he was supposed to furnish the
transportation and the know-how to get us down
there. Said he’d been around boats a lot, and used to
be a navigator in the Eighth Air Force during the
war. From the looks of it, he wasn’t so hot. We could
have used you.”
“You did,” Ingram said. “That’s why I’m here.
Where did you get the guns?”
“We stole ‘em.”
Aground — 68
“All right, I’ll make you a proposition,” Ingram
said. “I think I can get this schooner afloat when
those guns are off. So we throw them over the side
and take the schooner back to Key West. They’re
contraband. Nobody can claim them legally, so
there’ll be no charge against you except for stealing
the boat. I think Mrs. Osborne’ll agree not to press
that, if she gets the boat back undamaged, so
probably the worst you’d get would be a suspended
sentence.”
“Nothing doing. We’re going to deliver the guns.”
The throbbing in his head was agony, and he had
to close his eyes against the glare of the sun. What
was the matter with the stupid muscle-head; wasn’t
there any way you could make him understand? He
fought down an impulse to shout. “Listen, Morrison,”
he said wearily, “try to use your head, will you?
You’re not in a serious jam yet, but if you go through
with this you haven’t got a chance. You’ll be facing a
federal charge of kidnapping. They’ll run you down
and put you away for life.”
“Not me. I’ll be long gone.”
“You think you’re going to hide out in Latin
America? Did you ever take a look at yourself?”
“It’s easy when you speak the language and you’ve
got money and connections.”
“Not when they want you for something big back
here. The U.S. State Department’s got connections
too.”
Morrison’s eyes began to grow ugly. “I’m not
asking you about this, pal. I’m telling you. We’re
going to put those guns on that island. When we get
the boat loose, we bring ‘em back.”
Ingram looked out toward the narrow strip of
sand. “The raft won’t carry over a couple of hundred
pounds at a time. It’ll take the rest of the week.”
“No, I’ve already got it figured out. We won’t have
to ferry ‘em all the way. The water looks shallow
over there. You haul ‘em to where I can wade out
and meet you, and I take ‘em from there while you
Aground — 69
come back for another load. Like a bucket brigade.
Now let’s get going.” He stood up and called down
the hatchway. “You all set, Carlos?”
“The ropes are off the left side,” Ruiz replied from
below. “I’m starting on the right.”
Ingram looked out at the surface of the water and
could see the faint beginnings of movement. The tide
had passed high slack and was starting to ebb slowly
past the imprisoned hull. Well, let him go ahead and
kill himself, he thought; it’d be one less to contend
with. Then he shrugged uncomfortably, and knew he
couldn’t do it; this wasn’t Ruiz’ fault.
“You’d better tell your boy not to take the lashings
off the starboard side,” he said to Morrison. “Not till
he’s got room to unpile those cases.”
“Why?” Morrison asked.
“The tide’s started to drop. About two more
degrees of port list and you’ll have to bring him out
of there in a basket.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right at that. Youse is a good
boy, Herman. Maybe we’ll put you on permanent.”
“Go to hell,” he said. “If it’d been you, I wouldn’t
have said anything.”
He walked aft to the helmsman’s station while
Morrison was talking to Ruiz. Something still didn’t
quite ring true; they shouldn’t have been in here
over the Bank. He stood frowning at the binnacle.
He stepped down into the cockpit, removed the
hood, and checked the heading on the compass. The
lubber line lay at 008 degrees. There was no
compass-deviation card posted anywhere that he
could see.
Rae Osborne came aft and stood beside him.
“What are we going to do?”
“Just what he says, from the looks of it.”
“Maybe there’ll be a search for us.”
Probably not until it was too late to do any good,
Ingram thought, but he said nothing. There was no
point in scaring her. She probably didn’t realize how
sad this situation was, anyway. Even if they
Aground — 70
managed to refloat the schooner, their troubles were
only beginning. The Dragoon was dangerously
overloaded, her trim and buoyancy destroyed; in
anything except perfect weather, she could founder
and go down like a dropped brick. And as for landing
a cargo of guns on a hostile coast—His thoughts
broke off. She was staring out at the empty horizon
to the northward. Well, the chances were a million
to one nobody would ever see Ives again, now that
the tide had turned and the body was floating
seaward.
“All right, Herman, let’s go,” Morrison called out.
They went forward to the break of the deckhouse.
Ruiz was pushing one of the wooden crates up the
companion ladder into the cockpit. Morrison had put
on a shirt and a soft straw hat and carried a gallon
jug of water in his other hand. “You take me across
first,” he said, “and then start bringing the rifles.
They’re packed ten to a crate, so each crate’ll go a
little over a hundred pounds. The raft ought to carry
two at a trip. Dreamboat, you stay here in the
cockpit and guide ‘em up the ladder for Ruiz. And
don’t bother trying to get to that radio when he’s not
looking. We took some of the tubes out of it.”
He gestured with the gun. Any further argument
was useless. Ingram stepped down into the raft and
passed up his suitcase and Rae Osborne’s purse.
Morrison got in and seated himself aft with the BAR
across his legs while Ingram cast off the painter.
They rowed up the side of the schooner and around
the bow. The narrow sand spit ran north and south,
its nearest point some three hundred yards off the
starboard bow. The channel of slightly deeper water
which ran astern of the schooner and westward
toward the edge of the Bank continued on around
and up the starboard side approximately a hundred
yards away, passing between the schooner and the
western edge of the spit. Beyond the channel the
water appeared to shoal abruptly, judging from its
color, extending in a wide and barely submerged flat
on all sides of the dry ridge.
Aground — 71
There was still no wind. The water lay flat as oil,
reflecting the metallic glare of the sun. The day was
going to be like the inside of a furnace, Ingram
thought; and in a little over an hour the tide would
be running out across here at two or three knots. He
wondered if Morrison had even thought of that.
Probably not; he seemed to be in the grip of
obsession and incapable of seeing obstacles at all.
They crossed the channel, and the sandy bottom
began to come up toward them. Morrison was
peering down into the water. “Hold it,” he ordered.
He slid his legs over and stood up; the water was
only waist deep. They were still a little over a
hundred yards from dry ground, and it was
approximately twice that far back to the schooner.
“All right,” he said. “Start bringing ‘em over.”
Ingram turned and rowed back toward the Dragoon.
The big man waded on ashore through progressively
shallower water, put the BAR and his bottle of water
on the sand, and stood watching. The pain in
Ingram’s head had subsided to a dull throbbing, but
the dried blood made his face feel stiff and caked.
He dipped up water and washed it while he coldly
sized up their chances of escape. You couldn’t give
them much. How about trying for it in the raft? The
BAR was a short-range weapon and not very
accurate at this distance, so if they could give Ruiz
the slip—No. The nearest land was the west coast of
Andros, seventy-five miles away, and even if they
made it before they choked to death on their
tongues, they were still nowhere. There were no
settlements on that side, nothing but swamp and
mosquitoes and a maze of stagnant and forbidding
waterways; they’d never get across the island.
Forget the raft. They had to take the schooner. Play
for Ruiz, he thought; they’d be working together
loading the crates onto the raft. Watch for a chance
to yank him overboard and make him lose the gun.
He came alongside. Ruiz had four cases out of the
cabin now, stacked on deck beside the forward end
of the cockpit with their ends projecting outward.
Aground — 72
The Latin himself was standing in the cockpit behind
them with the .45 stuck in his trousers.
Ingram caught one of the lifeline stanchions. “Give
me a hand.”
Ruiz shook his head. “You don’t need any help.”
“So. A general.”
“Go ahead. Slide them down.”
“El Libertador himself. It’s too bad we haven’t got
a horse so you could pose for an equestrian statue.”
Ruiz looked bored. “Put away the needle, Ingram.
You’re wasting your time.”
Apparently he’d guarded prisoners before. It didn’t
look very promising.
“Cómo está la cabeza?” Ruiz asked.
So he couldn’t resist the temptation to do a little
needling of his own, Ingram thought. “The head is
nothing, my General,” he replied in Spanish. “In the
great cause of freedom, I spit on all discomfort. Rut
let us consider the General’s neck. How does it
stretch?”
“Shut up and start moving those crates,” Ruiz said
in English, “before you get another lump on your
head.”
Ingram shrugged, and began easing one of the
boxes down into the raft. It was an awkward
maneuver, but he managed it without capsizing. He
slid another down beside it. They lay between his
outstretched feet and projected out over the stern.
“Will it carry another?” Ruiz asked. “See for
yourself, cabrón.” The raft was down by the stern,
and cranky. One more would make it unmanageable
or capsize it. “Okay. Get going.”
He rowed up around the bow of the schooner and
across the channel. Morrison had waded out again,
without the gun, and was standing in waist-deep
water waiting for him. The shirt stretched across his
massive chest and shoulders was wet with sweat.
“Shake it up, Herman. You’re taking too long.”
“This is not my idea,” Ingram replied coldly.
Aground — 73
“Never mind your idea. Try dragging your feet,
and you’ll get worked over with a gun barrel.” He
heaved one of the crates over his left shoulder, took
the other under his arm, and went plowing across
the flat toward dry ground. As if they were empty,
Ingram thought. He looked at his watch; it was
seven minutes past eight. At the end of the next
round trip he checked the time again and saw it had
taken eleven minutes. Call it five trips an hour. Two
hundred pounds each time—that would mean at
least fourteen hours to move seven tons. And just
one way. They’d still have to wait for the next tide,
try to get her off, and bring it all back. And he was
clocking it at slack water; wait’ll that tide started to
run.
On the next trip, while Morrison was picking up
the crates, he said, “This’ll take three days, at the
minimum.”
The big man scarcely paused. “So?”
“She’ll never make it across the Caribbean,
anyway. She’s overloaded.”
“This is June; she’ll make it. Hollister said so.”
“Sure. He said he could navigate, too. And look
where you are.”
“Shut up and get going.”
An hour went by. The current was picking up now
as the tide ebbed westward off the bank; with each
trip it became worse. By ten o’clock perspiration
was running from his body and his arms ached from
the battle with the oars. It was the loaded trip that
was the killer; he was quartering across the current
with the raft low in the water, and he had to point
farther and farther upstream in order to make it
before he was swept away to the west of the sand
spit. In another half hour he had to row straight
upstream from the schooner until he was above
Morrison, and then turn across. It took fifteen
minutes of furiously paced rowing, during which a
slow or missed beat meant losing ground already
gained. When Morrison caught hold of the raft,
water was running past his legs.
Aground — 74
Ingram looked at him through the blur of sweat in
his eyes. “That’s it until the tide slacks. Unless you
want to do it.”
Morrison nodded. “I see what you mean. We’ll
knock off and have a sandwich. Hold it here till I get
back.”
Ingram stepped out and held the raft while the big
man carried the two crates ashore; it was easier
than doing it with the oars, and he couldn’t get any
wetter than he was already. Morrison came back
carrying the BAR, and got in. “That makes twentyfour,”
he said.
A little over a ton, Ingram thought; they’d barely
started. He rowed back to the Dragoon. When he
stepped aboard, the cramped leg gave way under
him, and he had to grab a lifeline to keep from
falling. A light breeze had come up at mid-morning,
but it had died away again, and the deck was
blistering under the brutal weight of the sun. Rae
Osborne’s face was flushed, and tendrils of hair
were plastered to her forehead as she collapsed on
the cushions in the cockpit. Not far from a case of
heat prostration or sunstroke, he thought. And there
was no escape from the sun; below decks would be
unbearable.
“There’s an awning down in the sail locker,” he
told Morrison. “If you thought you could take that
gun out of my back for five minutes, I’d bring it up
and rig it.”
“Go ahead,” Morrison said.
He went down the forward hatch with Ruiz
watching him from above. There were three bunks in
the narrow cabin just forward of the galley, with
suitcases and scattered articles of clothing on two of
them. He opened the small access door to the locker
in the eyes of the ship and poked around in stifling
semi-darkness among coils of line and bags of spare
sails until he found the awning. He boosted it up the
hatch to Ruiz, then carried it aft and rigged it above
the cockpit. The air was still far from cool beneath it,
but it did offer shelter from the pitiless glare of the
Aground — 75
sun. They sat down, with Morrison perched on the
corner of the deckhouse holding the BAR. It’s an
extension of his personality, Ingram thought; he
probably never feels comfortable without it.
“Who wants a sandwich?” Morrison asked.
Ingram shook his head; it was too hot to eat
anything.
“Makes me sick at my stomach to think about it,”
Rae Osborne said. She sat up and dug listlessly in
her purse for a cigarette.
Ruiz went below and returned a few minutes later
with two sandwiches. He and Morrison ate in
silence. Morrison threw the remainder of his
overboard, watched it float away on the tide, and set
the gun behind him on the deckhouse. “Mind the
store,” he said to Ruiz, and went below. Ingram
looked at the gun. Ruiz intercepted the glance, and
shook his head, the slim Latin face devoid of any
expression whatever. It was useless, Ingram knew.
They were a team, and a good one, in the skilled
profession of violence—whatever their particular
branch of it was.
When Morrison returned he was carrying a tall
glass containing some colorless fluid and three ice
cubes. Rae Osborne looked at it with interest.
“What’s that?”
“Rum,” he said.
“Is there any more?”
“Whole case of it, Toots. You’ll have to use water,
though. We’re out of Cokes.”
She brightened visibly. “You’ve convinced me.
Which way’s the bar?”
“Straight ahead till you come to a room full of dirty
dishes. Bottle’s on the sink, reefer’s under it. Bring
Herman one while you’re at it.”
“I don’t want any,” Ingram said.
She disappeared below. Well, maybe that was the
practical attitude; if you couldn’t whip ‘em, join ‘em,
especially if they had anything to drink. He removed
the soggy leather case from his shirt, found a cigar
Aground — 76
that might be dry enough to burn, and lighted it. He
stepped back to the binnacle, removed the hood, and
looked at the compass again. The heading had
changed to 012. He nodded thoughtfully. Rae
Osborne came up the ladder, carrying her drink, and
sat down with her feet stretched out across the
cockpit.
“This is more like it,” she said to Morrison. “What
about these guns? Where are you going with them?”
“A place called Bahia San Felipe, just north of the
Canal.”
“You going to start a revolution, or what?”
Morrison shook his head. “We’re just supplying the
stuff this time.”
“How did Patrick Ives get mixed up in it? It’s a
little out of his line.”
Morrison chuckled. “Money. That’s in his line, isn’t
it?”
“Yes. I think you could say that. And then say it
again. But just how did you meet?”
“I ran into him in a bar in Miami two or three
weeks ago. We got to talking about gun-running,
among other things. It was a big business around
there for a while during the Cuban fracas, you
remember, and the Feds were still uncovering a
batch now and then. Anyway, I happened to mention
I knew where there was a whole shipment hid out in
an old house down near Homestead—”
“How did you know about it?” Rae Osborne asked.
“From one of the boys that’d been flying it in for
this particular outfit. I was in the racket myself, and
knew quite a few of ‘em. Anyway, this Hollister—or
Ives as you call him—got interested in it and wanted
to know what I thought the shipment was worth. I
told him probably a hundred grand—that is,
delivered to somebody that needed it bad enough.
So he wanted to know if it would be possible to lift
the stuff and maybe peddle it somewhere. I told him
getting away with it would be a cinch, but that there
wasn’t much market for it at present. Then I
Aground — 77
remembered Carlos. We’d been in a couple of
Central American revolutions together, besides the
Cuban one, and he knew most of the politicos-inexile
that Miami’s always full of, and could probably
come up with a customer if we could figure out a
way to deliver. That’s when Ives got the idea of
liberating the Dragoon. He said he could sail it, and
knew how to navigate. The only trouble was, it’d
been some time since he’d been aboard the boat,
and he didn’t know what kind of condition it was in—
naturally, we couldn’t steal it and then go in a
shipyard somewhere—so we’d have to look it over
first. He couldn’t go himself because the watchman
might recognize him and blow the whistle on him
afterward, and Carlos and I didn’t know anything
about boats, so we had to send somebody else.”
Rae Osborne took another sip of her drink. “Do the
people who owned the guns know who got away with
them?”
Morrison shook his head. “Not a chance. We took
‘em out of the house at night with a truck we rented
under a phony name.”
“How did you get them aboard the Dragoon?”
“We brought her into a place down in the Keys
after dark and put ‘em aboard with a couple of skiffs,
along with the supplies and gasoline we’d picked up
at different places. We spent the rest of the night
slapping a coat of paint on her, and got out just
before daylight. That was still before anybody even
realized she was stolen.”
“And you’re still determined to deliver the guns?”
“Of course.”
“How long do you think it’ll take?”
“Less than two weeks. After we get loose here, I
mean. What do you think, Herman?”
“It would depend on the weather,” Ingram said.
“And to a great extent on whether you ever got there
at all.”
“You’ve got a negative attitude, pal. Learn to look
on the bright side.”
Aground — 78
Rae Osborne shrugged, and drained her glass.
“Well, I’d have given odds I’d never be in the gunrunning
business, but I guess you never know. I
think we ought to have another one.”
“Sure.” Morrison grinned. “I’ll go with you. I could
use one too.”
They went down the ladder. In a moment the
sound of laughter issued from below. Ingram puffed
his cigar and tried to read Ruiz’ expression, but it
was inscrutable. He knows it, though, he thought;
we’re headed for more trouble, if we didn’t have
enough already. The two of them came back shortly
with fresh drinks.
“You’re sure I get the Dragoon back?” she asked.
“Natch. What do I want with it? As soon as the
guns are off and we get paid, Carlos and I take it on
the Arthur Duffy, and you and Herman can sail it
back to Key West. We’ll see you get enough supplies
and fresh water for the trip. What’s to complain
about—a Caribbean cruise, with me along as social
director? Hell, if we’d advertised, we’d have had to
fight the girls off with clubs.”
She laughed. “You know what I like about you? It’s
your modesty.”
Ingram looked at her with disgust, thinking that
boredom must be a terrible thing. She was already
telling people about it at cocktail parties. All the way
across the Caribbean, darling, with this whole load
of guns and bullets and stuff that might blow up any
minute or something, and this absolute brute of a
man that looked like Genghis Khan except he was
kind of cute in a hairy sort of way if you know what I
mean, and always carrying this awful machine gun
in his arm ... It was just a lark, like trying to get an
extra carton of cigarettes past the Customs
inspector.
He wondered if it would do any good to tell her the
chances were excellent she’d never even get across
the Caribbean in a boat loaded as the Dragoon was,
and that if she did and was lucky enough not to be
killed outright by the Guarda Costas she’d probably
Aground — 79
have her boat confiscated and spend several years in
a verminous prison where the United States State
Department couldn’t do anything for her at all. Then
he shrugged. It didn’t seem worth the effort.
Aground — 80
7
By 12:30 p.m. the outgoing tide had slowed enough
to permit resumption of the unloading operation.
The work went on through the blistering heat of
afternoon. The tide was at slack low shortly after
two, with the Dragoon’s list at its most pronounced.
Ingram’s shoulders ached, and he lost count of the
number of trips he had made. On the sand spit, the
pile of boxes grew larger hour by hour. The tide
began to flood. By five p.m. the current was again
becoming a problem, and at a little before six
Morrison called a halt and rode the raft back to the
Dragoon.
“That’s all the rifles,” he said, as they sat in the
cockpit in their dripping clothes. “Let’s see—sixty
times a hundred. . .”
Three tons off, Ingram thought. The schooner’s list
was decreasing now by slow degrees as the tide
rose, and it should be about two hours more until
slack high. It would be interesting to see how far she
might be from floating then, but he was almost too
tired to care. Ruiz brought up a plate of sandwiches
and they ate on deck while sunset died beyond the
Santaren Channel in a thundering orchestration of
color. Ingram watched it, remembering other
tropical sunsets down the long roll of the years and
Aground — 81
wondering how many were left now in his own
personal account. Probably not many, from the looks
of things at the moment. He couldn’t see any way
out, and all he could do was go on waiting for
something to break.
But what? he wondered. Even if Morrison took off
that prosthetic BAR when he went to sleep, which
appeared unlikely, he was still no match for the man
in a fight. Not now, at forty-three—and the chances
were he never had been. And there was always Ruiz
and his Colt. There was something a little mad, he
thought, in this harping on those two guns when the
Dragoon’s whole cargo consisted of a hundredthousand-
dollar assortment of deadly weapons, but
they were all crated and out of reach, and the
ammunition for them was crated separately.
He was roused from the quiet futility of his
thoughts by a shrill laugh from Rae Osborne. She
and Morrison were dipping into the rum again, and
apparently Morrison had just said something very
funny. He let his gaze slide past their oasis of
alcoholic gaiety to where Ruiz sat cross-legged atop
the deckhouse, and this time the grave
imperturbability of the mask had slipped a little and
he could see, in addition to the Spanish contempt for
drunkenness, the growing shadow of concern. Ruiz
knew him, so that probably meant he was inclined to
get pretty goaty and unbuttoned among the grapes.
You had to admit they had all the ingredients for a
memorable cruise—a boisterous giant, an arsenal of
weapons, plenty of rum, and a bored and stupid
woman apparently bent on agitating the mixture to
see what would happen.
“Maybe Herman’d like a drink,” Morrison said.
Rae Osborne shrugged. “Herman’s not stapled to the
deck. Let him go get one.”
Morrison lighted a cigarette and spoke to Ruiz.
“We better figure out what we’re going to do with
‘em tonight, unless we want to take turns standing
watch. Tie ‘em up, or lock ‘em in one of those
staterooms?”
Aground — 82
“It’s pretty stuffy down there till after midnight,”
Ruiz said. “Why not put them on the island? They
can’t get off as long as we’ve got the raft.”
“Sure, that’d do it. Lieutenant, you’re now a
captain.” Rae Osborne rattled the ice in her glass
and said sulkily, “You mean I’ve got to go over on
that crummy sand bar and sleep on the ground like
Daniel Boone? I want another drink first.” “Sure,
Baby Doll. Have all you want.” “Besides, what could
I do to that hunk of brute force, anyway? You afraid I
might overpower you, or something?”
Morrison grinned. “On second thought, maybe
we’ll reconsider the first thought. Our yacht is your
yacht. Drink up.”
“Open another bottle, Commodore, and alert the
riot squad. Can you get any mambo music on that
radio?”
Ruiz stood up and spoke to Ingram. “You ready to
go?”
“Yes,” Ingram said. He looked at Rae Osborne.
“You’re sure you want to stay?”
She considered this thoughtfully. “If I have your
permission, Herman. Tell you what—you go check
the action on that sand bar, and if it’s real frantic,
drop me a line.”
Morrison spread his hands. “Looks like you lose,
Herman.”
“I guess so,” Ingram said. “Anyway, it’s one
interpretation.”
Rae Osborne smiled. “Don’t mind Captain Ingram.
He’s full of deep remarks like that. He’s a
philosopher. With corners, that is.”
Ingram nodded curtly to Ruiz. “Let’s go.”
He took the oars while Ruiz sat in the stern
holding the Colt. It was dusk now, and the flow of
the tide was decreasing as it approached high slack.
The sand spit was a low, dark shadow marked by the
pale gleam of the boxes where Morrison had stacked
them near the southern end. Neither of them said
anything until the raft grounded in the shallows
Aground — 83
beyond the channel. Ingram got out. Ruiz moved
over and took the oars. “Buenas noches.”
“Buenas noches,” Ingram said. The raft moved
away in the thickening twilight, and he waded
ashore to stand for a moment beside the piled boxes,
savoring the unbroken quiet and the clean salt smell
of solitude and night. Then some faint remnant of
deep-water surge flattened by miles of shoals and
bars curled forward and died with a gentle slap
against the sand, and somewhere beyond him in the
darkness a cruising barracuda slashed at bait.
Everybody, he supposed, had something he hated
above all else to leave, and this was his: the tropic
sea. In a dozen lifetimes he’d never have grown tired
of it.
The bottle of water was near his feet. He picked it
up, and judged it was still half full. He wondered
how many cigars he had, wishing he’d thought to get
more from his suitcase before leaving the schooner,
but when he opened the case and probed with his
fingers he discovered he had three. That was plenty.
He lighted one and sat down on the sand with his
back against the boxes.
Could he get aboard later on when they would be
asleep? He could swim that far, but getting onto the
schooner would be something else. They’d be too
smart to leave the raft in the water so he could climb
into it and reach the deck. How about the bobstay?
He should be able to reach the lower end of that and
work his way hand over hand up to the bowsprit. But
the chances of doing it without waking either of
them were admittedly dim; at any rate, he’d have to
wait until after midnight.
A shriek of laughter reached his ears, and then the
sound of music. They’d switched on the all-wave
radio. He lay back on the sand and watched the slow
wheel of the constellations while the sound of
revelry came to him across the night. For a while he
pictured the inevitable progress of the brawl, but
gave it up with the accumulation of disgust and tried
to shut it out. It was none of his business. His
thoughts broke off then as he caught the sound of
Aground — 84
oars. He heard the raft scrape on sand, and stood
up. The slender figure would be Ruiz. It waded
ashore in the starlit darkness and pulled the raft
onto the beach. He appeared to be carrying
something in his arm.
“Over here,” Ingram said quietly.
“Don’t try to get behind me, amigo.”
“I’m not,” Ingram replied. He flicked on the cigar
lighter. “Party get a little rough for you?”
Ruiz came into the circle of light, the fatal olive
face as expressionless as ever. “I brought you some
bedding,” he said, dropping a blanket and pillow on
the sand. “Gets a little cool out here before
morning.”
“Thanks a lot,” Ingram said. “Sit down and talk for
a while. You smoke cigars?”
“I’ve got cigarettes, thanks.” He took one out and
lighted it, squatting on his heels just precisely out of
reach with the eternal vigilance of the professional.
A shellburst of maracas and Cuban drums came to
them across the water. “Están bailando,” he said
with faint reluctance, as though he felt he should say
something of the party but wished to make it as little
as possible. Well, if they were dancing, Ingram
thought, the brawl must be still on a more or less
vertical plane. He wondered what difference it
made.
“What kind of guy is Morrison?” he asked.
“Rugged. And very smart.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Off and on, since the war. We were in New
Guinea together, and later sent in with a kind of
shaggy and irregular outfit in the Philippines. On
that guerrilla stuff, he could write the book.”
“That where he learned Spanish?”
“Yes, but not during the war. He was born in the
Philippines; his father was in the mining business.
But he has the knack—some people have it, some
don’t. He also speaks Tagalog and German and a
couple of very useless Central American Indian
Aground — 85
dialects. And Beatnik. Incidentally, where did you
learn it?”
“Mexico, and Puerto Rico. But my accent’s not as
good as his.”
“No,” Ruiz said.
“Where are you from?”
“Here and there. I went to school in the States.”
“U.S. citizen?”
“Yes. Since the war.”
He fell silent. Ingram waited. He hadn’t come out
here merely to exchange biographical information.
Maybe, with the Spaniard’s innate dislike for
drunkenness, he was just escaping from the party,
but he could have something else on his mind.
“How far are we from the coast of Cuba?” Ruiz
asked then.
“Hundred miles,” Ingram said. “Maybe a little less.
Why?”
“I just wondered. What would you say were the
chances of making it in that raft?”
“How many people?”
“Call it one.”
“Still very dim, even with one. It’s too small.”
“That’s what I thought. But when we get started
again, if we do, we pass pretty close, don’t we?”
“That’s right. The way into the Caribbean from
here is through the Windward Passage between
Cuba and Haiti. You’ll be within sight of Cape
Maysi.”
“Maysi?”
“Punta Maisí. It’s the eastern tip of Cuba.”
“I get the picture.”
He’s going over the hill, Ingram thought. But why?
They’ve got it all their way at the moment.
Something nibbled at the edge of memory, and then
was gone. “What’s the trouble?” he asked. He
wouldn’t get the truth, but he might get one of the
wrong answers he could eliminate.
Aground — 86
“This is a sad operation,” Ruiz said. “And getting
sadder. We’ll never make it.”
“There is that chance. And a very good one. But
then I wouldn’t say that knife-and-run stuff in the
Philippines was anything that’d make you popular
with insurance companies.”
“Maybe I was younger then. When you’re
nineteen, it’s always somebody else that’s going to
get it.”
What is it? Ingram thought. “You worried about
the booze?”
“Sure. Aren’t you?”
So that wasn’t it.
“How about a deal?” Ingram asked.
“No deal.” The voice was quiet, but there was
finality in it.
“Stealing a boat’s not such a terrible charge.
Especially if the owner doesn’t want to press it.”
“No,” Ruiz said. “I told you we’d been friends a
long time.”
“But you’re looking for a way out.”
“That’s different. If you don’t like the action, you
can always walk out. You don’t have to sell out.”
“Okay, have it your way,” Ingram said. He leaned
back against the boxes. “This Ives—what kind of guy
was he?”
“He wasn’t a bad sort of Joe if you didn’t believe
too much of what he said. He talked a good game.”
“So I gather,” Ingram said.
There was a moment’s silence, and then he asked,
“By the way, where’s the deviation card for the
compass? Do you know?”
“The what?” Ruiz asked.
“It’s a correction card you make out for compass
error. You did make a new one, didn’t you, when you
swung ship?”
“Swung ship? What for? I think you’ve lost me,
friend.”
Aground — 87
“To adjust compass,” Ingram explained. “Look—
you did swing it, didn’t you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You mean you loaded three or four tons of steel
down in that cabin and it didn’t occur to you it might
have some effect on the compass?”
“Oh, that. Sure, we knew about it. You wouldn’t
have to be a sailor. Any Boy Scout would know it.
Anyway, Ives took care of it.”
“How?” Ingram asked.
“He took a bearing on something ashore before we
loaded the guns, and then another one afterward.
Whatever the difference was, he wrote it down
somewhere. Al probably knows where it is.”
“I see,” Ingram said quietly. “Well, I’ll ask him
about it.”
Ruiz slid the glowing end of his cigarette into the
sand and stood up. “Guess I’ll go back and see if I
can get some sleep. I hope.”
“Hasta manaña,” Ingram said. He started to get
up.
“No,” Ruiz said in his cool, ironic voice. “Don’t
bother following me to the door.”
“Okay. About Ives—did he ever actually tell you
that was his name?”
“No. I figured Hollister was phony, of course, but
that’s the only way I knew him. That and Fred.”
“What did Morrison call him?”
“Herman. What else?”
“Excuse a stupid question,” Ingram said. “Thanks
for the bedding.”
“De nada,” Ruiz said. He melted into the darkness.
* * *
Ingram leaned back against the boxes and relighted
his cigar. Somebody was lying, that was for certain.
But who? The thing was so mixed up and the
possibilities so endless you couldn’t put your finger
on where it had to be. Why did Ruiz want out? That
Aground — 88
stuff about being afraid of the trip was almost
certainly a smoke screen. That is, unless he knew of
some other danger Ingram himself hadn’t learned of
yet—something that made death or capture an
absolute certainty instead of merely another chance
you took. He was a professional soldier of fortune
who’d lived along the edge of violence since his
teens; he didn’t scare that easily, at nineteen or
thirty-nine.
But there was another possibility. Could there be
something unnatural in the Morrison-Ruiz
relationship, in which case it was Rae Osborne
who’d thrown the dungarees in the chowder? No, he
decided; that was ridiculous. Deviation wasn’t
necessarily accompanied by the limp wrist and
effeminate mannerisms, but you nearly always
sensed it, and there was none of it here. He was glad
somehow; in spite of the circumstances, Ruiz was a
man you could like. He’d been opposed to this thing
from the beginning, and if he hadn’t been overruled
by Morrison—Ingram sat up abruptly. There it was.
Would you like to go back?
That was the thing he’d almost remembered a
while ago. It was what Morrison had said in Spanish
before they realized he understood the language, the
thing that had stopped Ruiz’ protests.
So they couldn’t go back.
But why? Because of the charge of theft? It had to
be more than that. Were they afraid of the men from
whom they’d stolen the guns? That might be it, of
course, but he had a feeling it was still something
more. Then it occurred to him that this didn’t really
answer the question, anyway. Ruiz’ problem wasn’t
simply that he couldn’t go back; for some reason he
couldn’t go back, or ahead. You’ll go crazy, he
thought; there couldn’t be any one answer to that.
He smoked the cigar down to the end and tossed it
away. It described a fiery parabola and fell hissing
into the water at the edge of the sand. Cuban music
and the sound of off-key singing came from the
Dragoon, and he saw now that they’d turned on the
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