Charles Williams-Aground by 1960(7)

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off the guy and secured the main sheet again to hold
it in position. Ducking down into the cockpit, he
flicked on the cigarette lighter and looked at his
watch. It was 9:35. Low tide in about two hours, he
thought; the deck was listing sharply to port now.
He slipped forward along the port side and knelt
beside her. She sat up. “We’re all set,” he said.
“Nothing to do now until high tide.”
“That’ll be about dawn, won’t it?”
“Right around there.”
“Do you think we’ll make it then?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “We’ll get off this time. But
why don’t you go back to the cockpit and get some
sleep? I’ll watch for Morrison.”
“You can’t watch both places at once.”
“Yes. I can sit here where I can keep a hand on
this tackle holding the anchor warp. If he tries to
climb it, I’ll feel the vibration.”
“I’d rather stay up and talk,” she said. “We can
talk, can’t we?”
“Sure. As long as we keep a lookout.”

Charles Williams-Aground by 1960(7)

Aground — 133
off the guy and secured the main sheet again to hold
it in position. Ducking down into the cockpit, he
flicked on the cigarette lighter and looked at his
watch. It was 9:35. Low tide in about two hours, he
thought; the deck was listing sharply to port now.
He slipped forward along the port side and knelt
beside her. She sat up. “We’re all set,” he said.
“Nothing to do now until high tide.”
“That’ll be about dawn, won’t it?”
“Right around there.”
“Do you think we’ll make it then?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “We’ll get off this time. But
why don’t you go back to the cockpit and get some
sleep? I’ll watch for Morrison.”
“You can’t watch both places at once.”
“Yes. I can sit here where I can keep a hand on
this tackle holding the anchor warp. If he tries to
climb it, I’ll feel the vibration.”
“I’d rather stay up and talk,” she said. “We can
talk, can’t we?”
“Sure. As long as we keep a lookout.”
They slid aft until they were beside the cleat
holding the tackle, and sat down on the sloping deck
with their backs against the deckhouse in the velvet
night overlaid with the shining dust of stars. There
was no breath of air stirring, and no sound
anywhere, and they seemed to be caught up and
suspended in some vast and cosmic hush outside of
time and lost in space. They sat shoulder to
shoulder, unspeaking, with Ingram’s left hand
resting lightly on the taut and motionless nylon
leading aft, and when he put the other hand down on
deck it was on hers and she turned hers slightly so
they met and clasped together. After a long time she
stirred and said in a small voice, “This is a great
conversation, isn’t it? I hope I didn’t promise
anything brilliant.” He turned and looked at the soft
gleam of tawny hair and the pale shape of her face
in the starlight and then she was in his arms and he
was holding her hungrily and almost roughly as he
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kissed her. There was a wild and wonderful
sweetness about it with her arms tight around his
neck and the strange, miraculous breaching of the
walls of loneliness behind which he had lived so
long, and then she was pushing back with her hands
against his shoulders.
“I think maybe we had better talk,” she said
shakily.
“I expect you’re right,” he agreed. “But you’d
better get started.”
“Two platoons of Morrisons in full pack and
dragging a jeep could walk right over us and we
wouldn’t even notice it.” She took a hurried breath,
and went on. “And as to whether Morrison is the
only hazard, I admit nothing. I plead the Fifth
Amendment. But what do they do to these damn
stars down here, anyway? Polish them? Now it’s
your turn to say something, Ingram. You can’t
expect me to carry on a conversation all by myself.”
“I think you’re magnificent,” he said. “Does that
help?”
“Not a bit, and you know it. As a matter of fact, it
can’t be much of a secret that I think you’re pretty
wonderful yourself, but at least I told you so under
perfectly ordinary, everyday circumstances, in
bright sunlight with a man shooting at me with a
rifle. I didn’t pull a sneaky trick like silhouetting my
big square head against a bunch of cheap, flashy
stars that anybody can see are phony. . . .” Her voice
trailed off in a helpless gurgle of laughter, and she
said, “Oh, I’m not making any sense. Why don’t I just
shut up?”
When he raised his lips from hers she drew a
finger tip along the side of his face and said softly,
“You never have to hit Ingram twice with a cue. Not
ol’ Cap Ingram. Do you think I’m pretty horrible?”
“Hmmm. No-o. That’s not the exact word I’d use.”
“I am, though. I’m as brazen as a Chinese gong
and about as subtle as a mine cave-in. I’ve been
sitting here for twenty minutes wondering when in
Heaven’s name you were going to accept the fact
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you had to kiss me. All escape was cut off, and there
was no honorable way to retreat.” He touched his
lips gently to the puffed and battered eye. “Shut up,”
he said.
“The only thing I didn’t realize was how fast it
might start to get out of control. I should have,
though. I worked so hard at trying to loathe you I
was worn out to begin with. Did anybody ever tell
you you’re a hard man to detest, Ingram? I mean, at
a party or something, where there was one of those
pauses in the conversation when everybody’s trying
to think of something to say—”
She gasped as a bullet struck something above
their heads and screamed off into the night. On the
heels of it came the whiplash sound of the gun from
somewhere directly behind them. They slid down
and lay flat on deck against the side of the house.
The rifle cracked three more times in rapid
succession, two of the bullets striking the hull on the
other side. She lay pressed against him; he could
feel her trembling.
“I’m scared,” she whispered. “It’s gone on too
long.”
“We’ll be away from here in the morning. And
we’re perfectly safe down here.”
“You don’t think we ought to go back to the
cockpit?”
“No. This is fine. We’ve got so much list now he
couldn’t hit us if we were sitting up.” He was
thinking of those boxes of ammunition suspended
back there and wondering what would happen if
they were hit. They probably wouldn’t explode, but
some of the cartridges might fire. There were five
evenly spaced shots then. Two of them struck the
schooner’s hull.
“He’s nearer, isn’t he?” she asked.
“Yes. The tide’s gone out, so he’s waded out on the
flat south of the sand spit.”
“How close can he get?”
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“Not under a hundred and fifty yards. That
channel is still over his head, even at dead low tide.”
I wonder how he’s carrying the ammunition, he
thought. Probably made a pack of some sort out of
the blanket.
“How can he see to shoot in the dark?”
“He can’t, very well. You’ll notice he’s missing a
lot. But he’s right down on the surface, firing at the
silhouette, and he probably has something white on
the muzzle of the rifle. Maybe a strip of his shirt.”
Another bullet struck the hull. Two apparently
missed. Another hit. Subconsciously, he was
counting. They would probably go through the
planking from where he was firing now, and with the
list the schooner had some of them would be below
the water line, which was probably what Morrison
had in mind. It wouldn’t matter, though, unless there
were a great number of them; she had two bilge
pumps, one power-driven, and could handle a lot of
water.
“I’m tired of being shot at,” she said. “And sick to
death of being so stinking brave about it. I want to
have hysterics, like anybody else.”
He held her in his arms and spoke against her ear.
“Go ahead.”
“It was mostly just blackmail. But keep talking
there.”
“Do you know when it first dawned on me that I
was probably crazy about you? It was when Ruiz
came after you this morning, and I watched you
wade out to the raft, torn pants, black eye—”
“Well, it figures, Ingram. Who could resist a vision
like that?”
“No.” He groped for words to express what he had
actually seen, the crazy honesty of her, the
insouciance, the blithe and unquenchable spirit.
“You were so—so damned undefeated.”
“Let’s don’t talk about me. I want to hear about
you.”
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The firing went on. They talked. He told her about
Frances, and about the Canción, and Mexico, and
the boatyard in San Juan. He mentioned the fire only
briefly but she sensed there was more to it, and
drew the rest of the story from him.
“That’s why you limp sometimes, isn’t it?” she
asked quietly. “And what you were dreaming about
when you were beating at the sand.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Ingram, I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right now.”
The schooner’s list increased as the tide
approached dead low, and it was difficult clinging to
the sloping deck. The shooting stopped for fifteen or
twenty minutes, and then started again. He had to
go back after more ammunition, Ingram thought. If
he’s going to swim out here, he’ll do it on the flood
so if he doesn’t get aboard he can make it back. He
wouldn’t tackle it on the ebb because he might get
carried out to sea. Flicking on the lighter for an
instant, he looked at his watch. It was a few minutes
past midnight. The tide should have turned already.
There was another shot. I’d better go below and
check now, he thought, while I’m still sure where he
is. He told her.
“You think water’s coming in?” she asked.
“Maybe a little. If there is, we’ll pump it out.”
“You won’t be long?”
“No.”
“If anything happens to you—”
He kissed her. “What could happen?” He crawled
aft and dropped into the cockpit just as Morrison
shot again. Somewhere in the blackness below there
was the sound of running water. That didn’t make
sense. It couldn’t run in, not that way. He started
down the crazily slanting ladder and even before his
head came below the level of the hatch he smelled it,
and the old nightmare of terror reached up to engulf
him. He lost his grip on the handrail and fell, and
wound up against the port bulkhead under the
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radiotelephone, on his hands and knees in the cold
lake of gasoline that extended up out of the bilge as
the boat lay over on her side. He could hear it still
running out of the punctured tanks in the darkness
behind him as he fought against the whisperings of
panic. If he lost his head completely and ran into
something the fumes might kill him before he could
get out. He pushed off the bulkhead and reached
upward, groping for the ladder. His fingers brushed
it. Then he was up in the cockpit, stretched out on
the cushions on the port side, shaking all over and
trying to keep from being sick. His hands and his
legs from the knees down were very cool from the
evaporation of the gasoline.
Aground — 139
11
He thought of her, and hoped she hadn’t heard him
come up. He needed a few minutes alone to pull
himself together; he couldn’t face her this way. But
still he was going to have to tell her; there was no
way to avoid it. Their chances of escape were almost
gone now, and until he got the last of that gasoline
out of there they were living on a potential bomb. A
pint of gasoline in the bilge could form an explosive
mixture in the air inside a boat, and they had two
hundred gallons of it. Just one spark from anything—
static electricity, a light switch, even a short circuit
in the electrical system from one of Morrison’s
bullets—and the Dragoon would go up like a Roman
candle.
Using the engine was out of the question. Even if
any fuel remained in the tanks when the schooner
righted herself, trying to start it would be an act of
madness when the slightest spark at the starter
brushes or the generator could blow them out of the
water. And even after he pumped the bilges dry, it
wouldn’t be safe; not for days.
They had to be washed out, and ventilated. But the
mere consideration of these technical matters was
beginning to have its calming effect; potentially
ghastly as they might be, they were still technical,
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and fear receded as the professional mind took over.
They didn’t need the damned engine to get back to
Florida, if they could only get her afloat. And there
was still a chance of that—a slight one, but a chance.
Pumping the gasoline out would lighten her by
another thousand to fifteen hundred pounds, and
they might be able to pull her off with the kedge
alone now that he had the gear rigged to haul her
down on her side. At that moment another bullet
slapped into the hull up forward and the sound of
Morrison’s rifle came to him across the water. That
completed the job. He had hated few people in his
life, but right now he hated Morrison, and he
thought of him with a cold and implacable anger.
They wouldn’t be defeated by him. If it’s the last
thing I ever do on earth, he thought, I’m going to
beat him.
He slipped forward along the deck. When he knelt
beside her, she said, “I smell gasoline.”
“It’s on me, a little on my trousers.” He told her
about it. She took it well, as he should have known
she would. “I don’t think it’s going to change things
too much. We may still get off on this tide. Just
remember, don’t smoke. Don’t turn on a light. Don’t
even go below. And that means even after I get it
pumped overboard.”
“I understand. What shall I do?”
The schooner creaked as she came up a little in
the darkness. “Just listen for Morrison,” he said. “As
long as he’s shooting, it’s all right, but the tide’s
flooding now and it’ll drive him off that flat pretty
soon. If he’s going to try to get aboard it’ll be within
the next few hours. Go right up to the corner of the
forward deckhouse so you’ll be sure to hear him. The
gasoline going overboard will make some noise.”
“Right, Skipper.”
“You’re magnificent. Or did I tell you that?”
“You can be as repetitious as you want. I don’t
mind at all. Actually, I’m scared green. You just can’t
see it.”
Aground — 141
He took her face between his hands. “I’m going to
get us out of here.”
“Have I ever doubted it?” she asked. “You might
call me a fan. I’ve been watching you in operation
for the past—good Lord, has it only been two days?”
“All I’ve done so far is lose.”
“That could be a matter of opinion, Ingram. But,
listen—if you expect me to keep my mind on
Morrison, we’re going to have to spread out.”
She disappeared into the darkness forward. He
went back to the cockpit. There was no way now to
tell what time it was, but it must be after one. High
tide would be between 4:30 and 5:30; call it four
hours from now. Using the power-driven bilge pump
was out of the question now, of course, since they
couldn’t start the engine, but the hand pump would
empty it easily in less than an hour and still take
care of any water that might seep in through
Morrison’s bullet holes. It was on the narrow bridge
deck between the cockpit and the break of the
deckhouse. He groped around until he found the
plate that covered it, grabbed the handle, and began
pumping. He could hear the gasoline going over the
side in a satisfying stream. Off in the darkness to
starboard Morrison’s rifle cracked, but there was no
sound of the bullet’s striking the boat. Five minutes
went by. The gasoline continued to flow; he’d have it
out in a half hour, he thought, the way it was going.
Then the handle became harder to raise, and the
sound of the stream died to a trickle. It stopped. He
cursed, wearily and bitterly, sunk for a moment in
utter despair. Damn Tango and his filthy
housekeeping. There was no telling what kind of
mare’s nest of litter there was in the bilges.
The answer, of course, was simple enough; go
down there, locate the suction, and clear it. He
thought of it, and shuddered—thought of the dead
blackness so impenetrable that directions ceased to
have any meaning, of kneeling in gasoline and
running his arms down in it while the flaming torch
that was Barney Gifford did its frenzied and
Aground — 142
spasmodic dance along the perimeter of his mind.
He mopped sweat from his face. Well, she thinks
you’re a grown man; either go down and do it, or go
up there and tell her that she’s wrong. It’s all
mental, anyway; as long as there’s nothing to set it
off, it’s harmless, provided you come up for air
before you breathe too much of it. He began taking
off his clothes. He put the gun and his watch and
sneakers on the seat beside them so he could find
them in the darkness, and went down the ladder
clad only in his shorts.
At the bottom, he turned and faced aft, visualizing
the location of the pump. The cabin sole was dry
here, near amidships; the gasoline that had come
out of the bilge was out near the bulkhead as she lay
over on her side. He could hear it still running out of
the tanks, but not as strongly now. Kneeling, he
groped around until he found the access hatch, and
lifted it out. He started to think of Barney, and the
nightmare began to crowd in around the edge of his
mind. He pushed it back and concentrated coldly on
the job. The fumes were choking him; it was time to
go up for air. He went up the ladder until his head
and shoulders were out of the hatch, breathed
deeply for two or three minutes, and returned.
Locating the opening, he groped around in the
gasoline beneath it, but couldn’t find the bilge pump
suction. He stepped down into it, in gasoline up to
his knees, knelt down, and felt further aft. There it
was. He could feel the soggy mass of papers around
it. The fumes were beginning to make him sick now.
He pulled the papers out and threw them toward the
starboard side of the cabin. Then he became aware
that there were more, both on the bottom under his
feet and floating free where he had stirred them up
with his splashing around. He felt one brush against
his hand, caught it, and lifted it out, and from its size
and shape he was pretty sure what it was. Somebody
had stored cans of food in the bilges without
removing the labels.
He swore softly in the darkness, and managed to
fish out three more. A bullet tore through the
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planking with a splintering sound and slapped into
the bulkhead somewhere just forward of him. He
shuddered, thinking of the electrical circuits, but
went on groping. Then it occurred to him that he
was doing more harm than good. As long as they
were lying on the bottom they probably wouldn’t get
into the suction, but he was stirring up more than he
was getting out. He climbed back to the cockpit,
wiped the gasoline off his legs and arms with the
towel, and began pumping. In five minutes the
suction was clogged again.
He went down into the blackness and the fumes
and the border country of nightmare once more, and
was crouched knee-deep in gasoline with his face
just above its surface when he froze suddenly and
the skin along his back drew tight with the stabbing
of a thousand needles. It was a sound, the familiar,
homelike throbbing of an electrical appliance
nobody ever really listened to—the refrigerator
motor. He’d forgotten all about it until now; the
thermostat had tripped, and it had come on. He
waited for the white and blinding flash of the
explosion. Nothing happened. Seconds ticked away.
His legs were trembling, but he breathed again,
softly, almost tentatively, as though even daring to
hope might tip the scales the other way.
There was nothing he could do. He could go
forward to the galley and disconnect it, but breaking
the circuit while there was a load on it would cause
a spark. None of the switches or electrical fittings
aboard were vapor-proof. He went on waiting. A full
minute must have gone by now. Maybe the fumes
weren’t as dense up there, since the bulk of the
gasoline was aft. Strength began to return to his
legs and arms, and his mind cleared sufficiently to
warn him of the other and ever-present danger—
asphyxiation. He hurriedly cleared the pump suction
and went back up the ladder. The motor was still
humming its industrious way along the edge of
eternity.
He caught the pump handle, and for a second he
was conscious of a crazy impulse to laugh and
Aground — 144
wondered if he’d begun to crack. Even this simple
act of pumping the stuff overboard could blow it up;
the friction of the gasoline against the walls of the
pipe and against the air and the water as it fell over
the side into the sea generated enough static
electricity to set it off. Except for the saving grace of
the almost saturated humidity around them, they’d
probably be dead already. He went on pumping.
After a while you get numb, he thought; you can’t
absorb any more, so it rolls off. This time it was
nearly ten minutes before the pump clogged. As the
trickle died and silence closed over the boat once
more, he became aware that the refrigerator motor
had cut out. He went below, groped his way forward,
and pulled out the plug. He cleared the suction, and
returned to the pump. In less than two minutes it
choked off again. He went below and cleared it.
When he came back he vomited over the side and his
skin was inflamed and itching from immersion in the
gasoline. He pumped. It was scarcely twenty strokes
before the stream died to a trickle and quit. He sat
down on the cockpit seat.
It was hopeless. He was never going to pump it
overboard until it was light down there and he could
see those papers and get them all out at once.
Dipping the towel over the side to wet it, he
scrubbed at his legs and arms in an attempt to get
some of the gasoline off them, and put his clothes
back on. The taste of defeat was bitter in his mouth
and he wanted to smash his fists against the deck.
Maybe they would never get the Dragoon off. They
were doomed to stay here forever—or until some
random spark blew them into flaming wreckage.
No! He stood up. They weren’t whipped yet; there
was still the fresh water. He slipped forward and
knelt beside Rae Osborne. “I may have got a third of
it out,” he added, after he had told her about it.
“Pumping some of the fresh water overboard will
help too. We’ve still got a chance.”
“Of course we have. She’s coming up all the time.”
He’d been oblivious to the passage of time, and
wondered how long they had now until high tide.
Aground — 145
“How long has it been since there was a shot from
Morrison? I forgot about him.”
“Nearly a half hour.”
That was ominous. He hated leaving her up here
alone, trying to watch both ends of the boat at once,
but he had to get that water out. Every pound was
important. Then he had an idea. “Did you ever do
any fishing?”
“Once or twice.” She sounded puzzled. “Why?”
“That’s what you’re going to do right now.” He
went aft to the cockpit and groped around for a
piece of line that was long enough. Making one end
fast around the anchor warp, he came forward,
paying it out, and put it in her hand. “Pull it taut,
and just hold it. If he gets on back there, you’ll feel
him.”
“Fine. Where will you be?”
“In the galley. Just yell, and I’ll be here in five
seconds.”
He slipped down the forward hatch and felt his
way back to the galley. The pump was over the sink.
He groped around until he found several pots, filled
them with water, and set them aside for insurance.
There was no telling how much was in the tanks, and
if he pumped them dry before he realized it, they
would be in trouble. He began pumping into the sink
and letting it run overboard. The gasoline fumes
weren’t as bad here as in the after cabin, but they
were still too strong to breathe for very long. He
opened the porthole above the sink and leaned
forward to get his face in front of it. He was all right
then. A timber creaked as the schooner righted
herself a little more on the rising tide. He wondered
how much longer they had, and increased the tempo
of his pumping. Sweat dripped from his face. If he
could get even a hundred gallons overboard it would
lighten the schooner by at least another eight
hundred pounds. Then it occurred to him that if
many of Morrison’s bullet holes were below the
water line as the tide came up and she righted
herself, salt water might be running into the bilges
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faster than he was pumping out the fresh. Well,
there was nothing he could do about it. Maybe it was
hopeless, and had been from the first. It was
beginning to seem now that he had been aboard this
grounded boat forever, and he wondered if he would
even recognize the feel of one that was afloat and
free beneath his feet.
He heard her footsteps on deck, and then she
spoke softly near the porthole. “Skipper?”
Morrison, he thought, and felt for the gun against
his stomach. “Yes?”
“Everything’s all right. I just wanted to tell you it’s
getting pink in the east. I can see the water a little
now, and it seems to be hardly moving.”
He hurried on deck. She was right. It was still too
dark to see the sand spit, but there was definitely a
touch of color in the east. He strained his eyes
outward toward the surface of the water, and could
make out that the tide was flooding very slowly now.
They’d be at the peak in less than half an hour.
“Here we go,” he said. “Keep your fingers
crossed.”
“Right. But is there anything I can do of a more
practical nature?”
“There will be, very shortly. Just wait here. It’ll be
almost an hour before he has light enough to use
that scope-sighted rifle, so I’m going to haul with the
anchor windlass this time. We’ll get this schooner off
or pull her in two.”
He hurried aft and gathered up the free end of the
warp. Then he returned to the bow, threw five or six
turns on the windlass drum, set the ratchet, and
handed her the end. “Just hang on,” he said. He
inserted the bar in one of the slots at the edge of the
drum, and winched it upward. The warp came taut.
Going aft again, he slacked the tackle and cast it off.
The warp was clear the full length of the deck except
at the corner of the forward deckhouse. It wasn’t
much of a fairlead, but it would have to do.
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She was on an absolutely even keel, as nearly as
he could tell. If she was ever going to come off, she
should do it now. He wondered if he should dog
down the ports along that side. No, it would take a
lot more weight on that boom than he had now to
bring her down that far. “Hang on,” he called out to
Rae Osborne. “We’re going to take a list.”
“Okay, Skipper,” she called back.
He slacked off the main sheet, and hauled on the
guy. The main boom with its dangling cluster of
ammunition boxes swung slowly outward. The deck
began to list. The boom came up against the sheet
and stopped. He ran back and pulled some more
slack through the blocks, and hauled the guy again.
The boom came directly outboard and the deck
rolled down until the scuppers were almost awash.
Then he wanted to cry out with joy; there had been a
definite tremor under his feet, the feeling of a boat
that was alive. She’d moved!
Rae Osborne called out excitedly. “I felt
something!”
He laughed. “What you felt was a schooner trying
to see if it remembers how to float.”
He quickly tied off the guy and made the main
sheet fast to hold the boom in position. The
ammunition boxes dangled just above the water,
directly abeam. He ran forward. It was growing light
now, and the tide was at a standstill. They had to get
her off before it started to drop. Ten or fifteen
minutes at the most, he thought.
He slid the bar into a slot in the drum, and heaved
upward. The ratchet clicked, and clicked again. Just
taking up the slack, he thought. Come on, baby. You
can do it. The warp ran aft as rigid as iron. He took a
fresh purchase and heaved. The ratchet clicked
three times in rapid succession, and then once more,
and Rae Osborne cried out, “Ingram! She moved—”
Her voice broke, and he realized for the first time
that she was crying.
They got a foot. Another foot. She stopped. He
heaved upward with his shoulder under the bar,
Aground — 148
praying the anchor would hold and that the warp
wouldn’t part. She came free, and moved back a few
inches. Her keel’s still dragging in the sand, he
thought. But if they could get her back another
fifteen feet they’d have it made. Sweat was pouring
off his face. Rae Osborne was leaning back with her
feet braced against the deck, pulling against the
windlass with all her strength. “You don’t have to
pull,” he gasped. “Just keep a strain.” “I know,” she
said brokenly, “but I can’t help it.” They were
gaining steadily now. Five feet of warp came in over
the stern. She stopped again. He put his shoulder to
the bar. God, he prayed, don’t let her hang up now.
Just a few more feet. Just a few more—She came
free. She moved ten feet. Fifteen. The line began to
come in smoothly, almost easily. The keel was off the
sand now, and she was completely afloat. He
dropped the bar and ran aft. Jumping down into the
cockpit, he caught the warp and hauled.
She was moving freely, and they could pull her
faster without the windlass as long as they kept her
momentum alive. Rae Osborne ran back and joined
him. They pulled side by side, gasping for breath,
while the coil of dripping nylon grew larger in the
cockpit. Then they were in the channel, with at least
six feet of water under the keel. The warp began to
lead downward. He took a turn and a hitch around
the cleat, and stood up.
Rae Osborne straightened, and stood looking at
him with tears streaming down her face. She
brushed at them with her hand, and laughed, but her
voice broke and she started to cry again. “Don’t
mind me,” she said in a very small voice. “I’m just
having the hysterics you promised me.” Then she
was in his arms, and he was kissing her on the
mouth and throat and all over the tear-streaked face.
They both began to laugh, somewhat crazily, and
collapsed on the cockpit seat.
“Ingram, you did it! You’re wonderful.”
“We did it,” he corrected.
“Was I any help?”
Aground — 149
“You don’t think I could have done it alone, do
you?”
“What do we do now?”
“Hold her here until the tide starts to ebb, and
then let her drift down this channel until we’re at
least out of range of Morrison and his rifle. Then
we’ll have to wait for a breeze to sail her off the
Rank. We’ve got no control over her at all this way,
and we might go aground again.”
“Good Lord! I forgot all about Morrison. Why do
you suppose he didn’t shoot at us when he saw we
were getting away?”
“He may not know it yet,” Ingram said. “He must
have gone to sleep. I just hope he doesn’t wake up
until we get farther away.” He reached for the
glasses and focused them on the sand spit, but the
light was still too poor to see anything at that
distance. He could be asleep behind the boxes,
anyway.
“What’ll happen to him now?” she asked.
“He’s got water. He’ll be all right until the Coast
Guard can send a boat or plane down to pick him
up.”
They sat and rested, suddenly aware now with the
release of tension just how near complete exhaustion
they were. “Do you realize,” she asked, “that it was
only two days ago, almost to the hour, that we
landed out here?”
He shook his head. “It’s not possible.”
The schooner swung around. The tide was
beginning to ebb. There was enough light now to
judge the water’s depth with some degree of safety.
He heaved up the anchor and let her drift slowly
seaward, watching the water ahead. After about four
hundred yards he let go the anchor again, gave her
enough scope to hold, and took the warp forward so
she would lie bow to the tide in the normal manner.
He heaved the lead. “Fifteen feet,” he said. “And
plenty of water on all sides. We’re at least a half mile
from him now, so he won’t even bother to shoot.
Aground — 150
We’ll wait here till we get a breeze, and in the
meantime I’ll start cleaning out the bilge so we can
pump that gas overboard.”
The sun was just coming up. She looked around,
and sighed, almost in wonder. “I just can’t seem to
grasp the fact we’re off that sand bar at last.”
Something fell below in the cabin. It sounded as
though books were sliding out of the rack because of
the schooner’s extreme list to port. “I’ll take care of
it,” Ingram said. “I want to open the rest of those
portholes, anyway.”
He went down the ladder. The light below was
quite good now, and he could see the lake of
gasoline extending up out of the bilge along the port
side for almost the full length of the cabin. He
thought it was higher than it had seemed in the
dark; the chances were that water had come in
through some of Morrison’s bullet holes and the gas
was floating on top of it. Well, no more could come
in while she was over on her side, and he could take
care of it as soon as he cleared the litter out of the
bilge. The fumes were sickening. Two books had
fallen out of a rack and were lying in the edge of the
gasoline near the forward end of the cabin. He
picked them up and tossed them onto a bunk.
“Youse is a good boy, Herman,” a voice said
behind him. “I knew all the time you could do it.”
He whirled. Morrison was leaning against the
ladder, naked except for a pair of shorts. He had a
cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, a
pack of them in his left hand, and a large kitchen
match in his right, its head poised under his
thumbnail. He grinned, and tossed the pack.
“Smoke?”
Aground — 151
12
Ingram let them fall into the gasoline. It’s all been
for nothing, he thought, in some detached and icy
calm that was beyond terror. That’s exactly the spot
he was standing in that other morning three
hundred years ago, and nothing has changed at all
except he’s wearing a little less and he’s got a match
in his hand instead of a Browning Automatic Rifle.
Maybe there is no way you can defeat him; he’s a
natural force of some kind. He’s waiting for me to
panic, to scream. Don’t strike that match. Well,
maybe I will; I don’t know.
He had to say something, but he was afraid his
voice would crack. If he ever knows how near the
edge I am, he thought, we’ve had it. And if he really
is insane, we’ve had it anyway, but the only thing to
do is try to wait him out. He pushed the cigarettes
out of the gasoline with his foot, reached down, and
tossed them onto the bunk. Then he heard Rae
Osborne cry out. She’s even in the same place, he
thought. Morrison didn’t bother to look up the hatch;
he merely took a step up the inclined deck to
starboard so as to be out from under it. Then he
chuckled. “The gun, Herman.”
Aground — 152
Ingram shook his head. Maybe he could speak
now. At least he had to try. “When did you get
aboard?” he asked. It seemed to sound all right.
“When you both ran back here to pull on the
rope,” Morrison replied. “I ducked into that front
cabin. About that gun, Herman. I don’t know
whether you ever made a study of ‘em, but when you
shoot one, some of the grains of powder that’re still
burning come out behind the slug—”
“Yes,” Ingram said. “I know about that. Excuse me
—” He raised his voice just slightly, and addressed
the top of the ladder. “Rae, there’s a life ring on
either side of the cockpit. Take one and go forward,
right to the bow. And remember to go upstream,
against the tide.”
Morrison shook his head. “You’re a pretty hard
boy, Herman, but not that hard. Pass the gun over,
and let’s get started to Cuba. It’s only a hundred
miles. You land me—”
“Sure,” Ingram said. “We land you, and then we
sail the boat back to Key West, the same way we
were going to sail it back from Bahia San Felipe. As
far as you’re concerned, I’ve had it, Morrison. I’m up
to here. Go ahead and strike your match.”
Morrison’s eyes were cold. “You think I won’t?”
“I don’t know,” Ingram replied. “But if you do,
don’t forget I’ll be the lucky one. I’ve got the gun.”
He saw that penetrate. Silence tightened its grip
on the scene. The Dragoon rocked gently on some
remnant of surge running in from the Santaren
Channel and a little wave of gasoline slapped against
the bulkhead and ran back to spread itself up across
the steep incline of the cabin sole. He has to go with
the bluff, Ingram thought; we’ve probably got less
than a minute left before the fumes get us, and he
knows he can’t take the gun away from me and get
out of here alive. It would take longer than that. One
of us has to crack.
He saw movement then in the hatch. A hand had
reached in and lifted the fire extinguisher from its
bracket on the bulkhead near the ladder, and was
Aground — 153
pointing it—quite steadily, he thought—down into
the cabin. Something came up in his throat, and he
didn’t know whether he was going to laugh or cry.
She might as well try to put out hell with a damp
Kleenex, but she was ready to tackle it.
“I don’t think you read me, Herman,” Morrison
said. “In a deal like this, you’ve got to consider who
has the most to lose. Now, you take you and Mamasan—”
Ingram breathed softly. He’s not quite so sure
now, he thought; when he has to drive home his
point by explaining the obvious. “Who’d you kill in
Florida?” he asked. “Was it Ives?”
Morrison studied the match in his hand, and then
looked across at him with a very cold smile. “That’s
a good question, Herman. It was a cop.”
Ingram felt the dark fingers of panic reaching for
him, and Barney’s flaming figure began to beat
against the outer defenses of his mind. Here we go,
he thought. Then suddenly, it was gone, and he was
all right again; maybe the accumulated hours of
bilge-diving in gasoline had earned him some sort of
immunization against horror so that it no longer had
the power to break him. He could feel himself
growing drunk on the fumes, however, and knew
that time was growing very short. Wait him out, he
told himself. “What happened to Ives?” he asked.
Morrison grinned. “So you figured that out?”
“Sure.”
Everything seemed to be growing wine-colored, as
if it were late afternoon. And he noticed now that the
fire extinguisher no longer showed in the hatch. Rae
Osborne had moved. Maybe she had fainted.
“This deputy sheriff stopped us on a back-country
road just after we got the guns in the truck,”
Morrison went on. “I think all he wanted was to give
us a ticket because one of the tail lights was out, but
that stupid Ives panicked and shot at him. The cop
killed Ives, and I got the cop. I had to then. We
dumped ‘em out in the swamp and took all of Ives’
identification so they couldn’t trace him back to us,
Aground — 154
but if he had a record they’ve probably got him
made by now. So you figure out whether I’m going
back or not.”
Ingram saw the nozzle of the fire extinguisher then
at the porthole just above and to the right of
Morrison’s head. So that’s where she went, he
thought dully, as the cabin began to eddy slowly
around him in the gathering darkness.
Morrison flourished the hand holding the match.
“You call it, Herman. Toss me the gun, or up we go.
And I mean now.”
The stream from the fire extinguisher hit his hand,
and, as the soggy and harmless match dropped from
it and he turned, he caught the carbon tetrachloride
full in the face. He threw up an arm to cover his
eyes. Ingram leaped, swinging the .45. He felt the
shock as it connected with the side of Morrison’s
head, and they were both falling, with Morrison on
top of him. He clawed his way out from under the
inert mass and tried to climb to his feet. His legs
gave way under him and he fell, but one of his
outstretched arms was across the bottom rung of the
ladder. It was all dark now. He held his breath and
started up. Don’t breathe till you’re off the ladder,
he told himself. You’ll fall back. It’s the first breath
of fresh air that knocks you out. Don’t breathe—
He felt a pair of arms catch him and pull him
forward into the cockpit just as he fell.
* * *
Late the following afternoon, the Dragoon, under all
working canvas, lay over gently on the starboard
tack in a light northeasterly breeze as she stood up
the Santaren Channel toward the coast of Florida.
The breeze had come up shortly after ten that
morning, and the treacherous sand bars and pastel
blues and greens of the Great Bahama Bank were
already over the horizon to starboard and astern as
their course gradually took them farther offshore
into the comforting indigo and the ageless heave and
surge of deep water. Ingram was dead tired, but
Aground — 155
content. It had been a period of back-breaking labor
at the pump, but there had been time for a little
sleep and a bath and a shave. He stood now on the
foredeck and took a quick look at the trim of the
sails and the ventilating lash-up he had rigged.
Everything was drawing beautifully. He ducked
down the forward hatch, squeezing past the canvas
throat of the wind chute. The air was sweet below.
Morrison lay in one of the bunks in the forward
cabin with the air from the ventilator washing over
him. His hands and feet were tied, and made fast to
the head and the foot of the bunk. There were bad
rope burns under his arms and across the naked
chest from the sling and the tackle they’d rigged to
get him up the hatch into the cockpit, and a lump on
the side of his head, but otherwise he was all right.
After the gasoline was overboard and the ventilator
rigged, they’d brought him back down here. He lay
now with his eyes closed. Ingram didn’t know
whether he was asleep or merely faking it. He
leaned over the bunk and checked his hands and
feet for circulation. They were warm, and a healthy
flesh color; the ropes were all right.
“Get lost, Herman,” Morrison said, without
opening his eyes.
Ingram looked down at him in the waning light of
afternoon. There was no feeling about him at all any
more—no hatred, nothing. “Who was the man that
drowned? He have any name besides Herman?”
The lips scarcely moved in the big, rugged face
with its brown splotches of freckles. “Reefers.”
“Reefers what?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Judson, Jensen—something
like that. Everybody just called him Reefers. He
smoked ‘em.”
“Marijuana?”
“Sure. Tea. Pod, the Beats call it.”
“Did you know he used heroin?”
“No. So that’s the reason he kept his shirt on all
the time.”
Aground — 156
“I guess so,” Ingram said. “You want to go to the
head?”
“No. Get lost, will you?”
“If you ditched all of Ives’ identification, why’d you
let Reefers keep his watch?”
“I didn’t know the dumb clown had it. He must
have kept it in his pocket.”
Ingram walked back through the galley and the
passageway to the large after cabin. The air was
fresh and clean here too, with good circulation from
the ventilator forward and no odor of gasoline at all.
Since pumping the last of it overboard shortly before
noon yesterday they’d flooded the bilges twice with
sea water and pumped them out. Then he’d used
fifty gallons of fresh water and a half case of soap
powder to scrub down the cabin and engine
compartment, everything the gasoline had touched,
letting the soapy water run into the bilge and
pumping it overboard. They were taking some sea
water through a few bullet holes below water line,
but a few minutes at the pump every four hours took
care of it.
He stepped quietly up the first two rungs of the
ladder and his eyes softened as he paused with his
head just above the level of the hatch. She hadn’t
seen him. She was perched on the helmsman’s seat
in back of the wheel, wearing a pair of his khaki
trousers rolled up to the knees and gathered in folds
about the slender waist with a piece of line, and one
of his shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Her mouth
was nicely painted, but the tawny hair was
windblown, and there was an expression of pure joy
on her face. Or maybe you’d call it half an
expression, he mused with tender humor. Some of
the swelling was gone from the eye now, but it still
retained all its startling and chromatic grandeur
with its blues and blacks and purples splashed so
spectacularly against the blonde and handsome face.
She looked happily around the sea for a moment,
and when her eyes returned to the binnacle he could
tell she was off course. Her face took on the sudden
Aground — 157
and furious concentration of a child’s and her tongue
protruded from the corner of her mouth as she
wrestled with the problem of which way to turn the
wheel. He could almost hear her repeating to
herself: Don’t try to move the compass, move the
lubber-line. Don’t try to move the compass, move
the lubber-line.
He grinned, erased it from his face, and said
sternly, “How’s your course, Mate?”
She glanced up at him, her face alight. “I’m off five
degrees to—to—Oh, the devil.” She gave up and
pointed to windward. “That way. That’s not too bad,
is it?”
He smiled. “Not too bad, considering we don’t
even know whether the compass is within ten
degrees of being right. Anyway, I wouldn’t worry
about it. From a hundred miles out, North America’s
a pretty big target.”
He came up the ladder and sat down beside her.
“We should raise Miami sometime after daylight in
the morning if this breeze holds.”
“I’m not in any hurry,” she said. “Are you?”
“No.”
She glanced up at the great curving expanse of
white dacron cutting across the sky. A little dollop of
spray blew back and spatted against the cushions.
“How long has this been going on?” she asked.
“Several thousand years,” he replied.
They fell silent for a moment. Then he asked, “You
want me to take it for a while?”
She shook her head. “No. Just watch, and tell me
when I do something wrong.” She brought the wheel
up a couple of spokes. “Ingram?”
He turned. She was staring fixedly, and a little
self-consciously, into the binnacle. “What?” he
asked.
“Do you have any great desire to get rich?”
“Not particularly,” he said.
Aground — 158
“Could two people sail this boat? Very far, I
mean?”
“Hmmm. Under some circumstances. But most of
the time they’d have their hands full.”
“But what about two people who’d just as soon
have their hands full of each other, at least a good
part of the time?”
“I’d recommend something a little smaller. Say a
forty- to forty-five-foot ketch. Why?”
“That would still be large enough for the charter
business?”
“Sure.” He grinned. “At least, for somebody who
didn’t care whether he got rich or not.”
She continued to stare at the compass. “Well, say
you knew two people like that who had a forty-fivefoot
ketch. And they wanted to go in the charter
business—maybe in Nassau—but one of them didn’t
know anything about boats and sailing at all.
Wouldn’t you think the ideal solution would be for
them to sail the boat from Miami to Nassau so this
second party could learn all about it?”
He gave her a thoughtful glance, wondering what
she was up to. “Sure,” he said. “It’s at least a
hundred and fifty miles, and if this hypothetical joker
of yours is as brilliant as he is lovely—”
“I was thinking of another route. By way of the
Indian Ocean.”
“What?”
“That’s the reason I asked you if you really cared
much about making money. I don’t think you do. I
don’t either.”
“It’d take two or three years.”
She removed her attention from the binnacle long
enough to give him a delighted, low-comedy leer. “I
know. I know.”
He started to reach for her.
“Hands off, sailor. I’m at the wheel. And I want to
talk to you.”
“All right. But talk fast, Mate.”
Aground — 159
“We’ve kicked this around quite a bit already. I
mean, how adult we are and how we’ve got sense
enough to know that people don’t fall in love with
each other in four days, and you’ve told me at least
six times that I’ve seen you only in your own special
environment, doing the things you do best, and all
the rest of that wisdom-of-the-ages routine, and how
we have to be sensible, and so on. But I also know
what you told me when you were coming to here in
the cockpit yesterday with your head in my lap,
trying to get your breath through an overcast of
large, soggy blonde. You said you loved me. And, in
between raising the mean annual rainfall of the
Bahamas, that was what I was telling you. But we’re
going to be sensible about it, aren’t we?”
“Yes. I think so. Or I mean, I did think so.”
She went on, still staring intently into the
binnacle. “You bet we’re going to be sensible,
Ingram. This way. When we get into Miami, I’m
going back to my own environment, and take a long,
slow look at it—as you suggested—while you do
another of these technical jobs you never let me pay
you for. I want you to put the Dragoon in shipyard,
have her replanked in those places you said she
needed it, overhauled, and repainted, and then sell
her. You’ll have my power of attorney. Then you buy
a forty- or forty-five-foot ketch—”
“Sure, but—”
“All right, all right, if you insist on being stuffy
about it, you can pay half of it. But let me finish. You
put this second boat in the shipyard and have
everything done to it that has to be done to put it in
absolutely perfect condition. And if you keep
watching the shipyard gate, some afternoon you’re
going to see a car with Texas license plates pull up
in front of it and stop. Inside will be a big fading
blonde with a big fading black eye, and if you
happen to be close to the car door when it opens
you’re going to think somebody just dynamited a logjam
of blondes somewhere upriver without warning
the settlers to get out—”
Aground — 160
He still had one knee against the wheel even after
they both forgot about it, and after a long time when
he had raised his lips from hers just to look at her
again he became conscious at last of the rattle of
slides against the tracks and the rolling slap of
canvas as the Dragoon came up into the wind.
“Mate, I think you’re off course.”
She drew a finger tip very thoughtfully along the
fine of his jaw. “Don’t you believe it, Skipper. Don’t
believe it for a minute.”
Aground — 161

Charles Williams-Aground by 1960(7)

Aground — 133
off the guy and secured the main sheet again to hold
it in position. Ducking down into the cockpit, he
flicked on the cigarette lighter and looked at his
watch. It was 9:35. Low tide in about two hours, he
thought; the deck was listing sharply to port now.
He slipped forward along the port side and knelt
beside her. She sat up. “We’re all set,” he said.
“Nothing to do now until high tide.”
“That’ll be about dawn, won’t it?”
“Right around there.”
“Do you think we’ll make it then?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “We’ll get off this time. But
why don’t you go back to the cockpit and get some
sleep? I’ll watch for Morrison.”
“You can’t watch both places at once.”
“Yes. I can sit here where I can keep a hand on
this tackle holding the anchor warp. If he tries to
climb it, I’ll feel the vibration.”
“I’d rather stay up and talk,” she said. “We can
talk, can’t we?”
“Sure. As long as we keep a lookout.”
They slid aft until they were beside the cleat
holding the tackle, and sat down on the sloping deck
with their backs against the deckhouse in the velvet
night overlaid with the shining dust of stars. There
was no breath of air stirring, and no sound
anywhere, and they seemed to be caught up and
suspended in some vast and cosmic hush outside of
time and lost in space. They sat shoulder to
shoulder, unspeaking, with Ingram’s left hand
resting lightly on the taut and motionless nylon
leading aft, and when he put the other hand down on
deck it was on hers and she turned hers slightly so
they met and clasped together. After a long time she
stirred and said in a small voice, “This is a great
conversation, isn’t it? I hope I didn’t promise
anything brilliant.” He turned and looked at the soft
gleam of tawny hair and the pale shape of her face
in the starlight and then she was in his arms and he
was holding her hungrily and almost roughly as he
Aground — 134
kissed her. There was a wild and wonderful
sweetness about it with her arms tight around his
neck and the strange, miraculous breaching of the
walls of loneliness behind which he had lived so
long, and then she was pushing back with her hands
against his shoulders.
“I think maybe we had better talk,” she said
shakily.
“I expect you’re right,” he agreed. “But you’d
better get started.”
“Two platoons of Morrisons in full pack and
dragging a jeep could walk right over us and we
wouldn’t even notice it.” She took a hurried breath,
and went on. “And as to whether Morrison is the
only hazard, I admit nothing. I plead the Fifth
Amendment. But what do they do to these damn
stars down here, anyway? Polish them? Now it’s
your turn to say something, Ingram. You can’t
expect me to carry on a conversation all by myself.”
“I think you’re magnificent,” he said. “Does that
help?”
“Not a bit, and you know it. As a matter of fact, it
can’t be much of a secret that I think you’re pretty
wonderful yourself, but at least I told you so under
perfectly ordinary, everyday circumstances, in
bright sunlight with a man shooting at me with a
rifle. I didn’t pull a sneaky trick like silhouetting my
big square head against a bunch of cheap, flashy
stars that anybody can see are phony. . . .” Her voice
trailed off in a helpless gurgle of laughter, and she
said, “Oh, I’m not making any sense. Why don’t I just
shut up?”
When he raised his lips from hers she drew a
finger tip along the side of his face and said softly,
“You never have to hit Ingram twice with a cue. Not
ol’ Cap Ingram. Do you think I’m pretty horrible?”
“Hmmm. No-o. That’s not the exact word I’d use.”
“I am, though. I’m as brazen as a Chinese gong
and about as subtle as a mine cave-in. I’ve been
sitting here for twenty minutes wondering when in
Heaven’s name you were going to accept the fact
Aground — 135
you had to kiss me. All escape was cut off, and there
was no honorable way to retreat.” He touched his
lips gently to the puffed and battered eye. “Shut up,”
he said.
“The only thing I didn’t realize was how fast it
might start to get out of control. I should have,
though. I worked so hard at trying to loathe you I
was worn out to begin with. Did anybody ever tell
you you’re a hard man to detest, Ingram? I mean, at
a party or something, where there was one of those
pauses in the conversation when everybody’s trying
to think of something to say—”
She gasped as a bullet struck something above
their heads and screamed off into the night. On the
heels of it came the whiplash sound of the gun from
somewhere directly behind them. They slid down
and lay flat on deck against the side of the house.
The rifle cracked three more times in rapid
succession, two of the bullets striking the hull on the
other side. She lay pressed against him; he could
feel her trembling.
“I’m scared,” she whispered. “It’s gone on too
long.”
“We’ll be away from here in the morning. And
we’re perfectly safe down here.”
“You don’t think we ought to go back to the
cockpit?”
“No. This is fine. We’ve got so much list now he
couldn’t hit us if we were sitting up.” He was
thinking of those boxes of ammunition suspended
back there and wondering what would happen if
they were hit. They probably wouldn’t explode, but
some of the cartridges might fire. There were five
evenly spaced shots then. Two of them struck the
schooner’s hull.
“He’s nearer, isn’t he?” she asked.
“Yes. The tide’s gone out, so he’s waded out on the
flat south of the sand spit.”
“How close can he get?”
Aground — 136
“Not under a hundred and fifty yards. That
channel is still over his head, even at dead low tide.”
I wonder how he’s carrying the ammunition, he
thought. Probably made a pack of some sort out of
the blanket.
“How can he see to shoot in the dark?”
“He can’t, very well. You’ll notice he’s missing a
lot. But he’s right down on the surface, firing at the
silhouette, and he probably has something white on
the muzzle of the rifle. Maybe a strip of his shirt.”
Another bullet struck the hull. Two apparently
missed. Another hit. Subconsciously, he was
counting. They would probably go through the
planking from where he was firing now, and with the
list the schooner had some of them would be below
the water line, which was probably what Morrison
had in mind. It wouldn’t matter, though, unless there
were a great number of them; she had two bilge
pumps, one power-driven, and could handle a lot of
water.
“I’m tired of being shot at,” she said. “And sick to
death of being so stinking brave about it. I want to
have hysterics, like anybody else.”
He held her in his arms and spoke against her ear.
“Go ahead.”
“It was mostly just blackmail. But keep talking
there.”
“Do you know when it first dawned on me that I
was probably crazy about you? It was when Ruiz
came after you this morning, and I watched you
wade out to the raft, torn pants, black eye—”
“Well, it figures, Ingram. Who could resist a vision
like that?”
“No.” He groped for words to express what he had
actually seen, the crazy honesty of her, the
insouciance, the blithe and unquenchable spirit.
“You were so—so damned undefeated.”
“Let’s don’t talk about me. I want to hear about
you.”
Aground — 137
The firing went on. They talked. He told her about
Frances, and about the Canción, and Mexico, and
the boatyard in San Juan. He mentioned the fire only
briefly but she sensed there was more to it, and
drew the rest of the story from him.
“That’s why you limp sometimes, isn’t it?” she
asked quietly. “And what you were dreaming about
when you were beating at the sand.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Ingram, I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right now.”
The schooner’s list increased as the tide
approached dead low, and it was difficult clinging to
the sloping deck. The shooting stopped for fifteen or
twenty minutes, and then started again. He had to
go back after more ammunition, Ingram thought. If
he’s going to swim out here, he’ll do it on the flood
so if he doesn’t get aboard he can make it back. He
wouldn’t tackle it on the ebb because he might get
carried out to sea. Flicking on the lighter for an
instant, he looked at his watch. It was a few minutes
past midnight. The tide should have turned already.
There was another shot. I’d better go below and
check now, he thought, while I’m still sure where he
is. He told her.
“You think water’s coming in?” she asked.
“Maybe a little. If there is, we’ll pump it out.”
“You won’t be long?”
“No.”
“If anything happens to you—”
He kissed her. “What could happen?” He crawled
aft and dropped into the cockpit just as Morrison
shot again. Somewhere in the blackness below there
was the sound of running water. That didn’t make
sense. It couldn’t run in, not that way. He started
down the crazily slanting ladder and even before his
head came below the level of the hatch he smelled it,
and the old nightmare of terror reached up to engulf
him. He lost his grip on the handrail and fell, and
wound up against the port bulkhead under the
Aground — 138
radiotelephone, on his hands and knees in the cold
lake of gasoline that extended up out of the bilge as
the boat lay over on her side. He could hear it still
running out of the punctured tanks in the darkness
behind him as he fought against the whisperings of
panic. If he lost his head completely and ran into
something the fumes might kill him before he could
get out. He pushed off the bulkhead and reached
upward, groping for the ladder. His fingers brushed
it. Then he was up in the cockpit, stretched out on
the cushions on the port side, shaking all over and
trying to keep from being sick. His hands and his
legs from the knees down were very cool from the
evaporation of the gasoline.
Aground — 139
11
He thought of her, and hoped she hadn’t heard him
come up. He needed a few minutes alone to pull
himself together; he couldn’t face her this way. But
still he was going to have to tell her; there was no
way to avoid it. Their chances of escape were almost
gone now, and until he got the last of that gasoline
out of there they were living on a potential bomb. A
pint of gasoline in the bilge could form an explosive
mixture in the air inside a boat, and they had two
hundred gallons of it. Just one spark from anything—
static electricity, a light switch, even a short circuit
in the electrical system from one of Morrison’s
bullets—and the Dragoon would go up like a Roman
candle.
Using the engine was out of the question. Even if
any fuel remained in the tanks when the schooner
righted herself, trying to start it would be an act of
madness when the slightest spark at the starter
brushes or the generator could blow them out of the
water. And even after he pumped the bilges dry, it
wouldn’t be safe; not for days.
They had to be washed out, and ventilated. But the
mere consideration of these technical matters was
beginning to have its calming effect; potentially
ghastly as they might be, they were still technical,
Aground — 140
and fear receded as the professional mind took over.
They didn’t need the damned engine to get back to
Florida, if they could only get her afloat. And there
was still a chance of that—a slight one, but a chance.
Pumping the gasoline out would lighten her by
another thousand to fifteen hundred pounds, and
they might be able to pull her off with the kedge
alone now that he had the gear rigged to haul her
down on her side. At that moment another bullet
slapped into the hull up forward and the sound of
Morrison’s rifle came to him across the water. That
completed the job. He had hated few people in his
life, but right now he hated Morrison, and he
thought of him with a cold and implacable anger.
They wouldn’t be defeated by him. If it’s the last
thing I ever do on earth, he thought, I’m going to
beat him.
He slipped forward along the deck. When he knelt
beside her, she said, “I smell gasoline.”
“It’s on me, a little on my trousers.” He told her
about it. She took it well, as he should have known
she would. “I don’t think it’s going to change things
too much. We may still get off on this tide. Just
remember, don’t smoke. Don’t turn on a light. Don’t
even go below. And that means even after I get it
pumped overboard.”
“I understand. What shall I do?”
The schooner creaked as she came up a little in
the darkness. “Just listen for Morrison,” he said. “As
long as he’s shooting, it’s all right, but the tide’s
flooding now and it’ll drive him off that flat pretty
soon. If he’s going to try to get aboard it’ll be within
the next few hours. Go right up to the corner of the
forward deckhouse so you’ll be sure to hear him. The
gasoline going overboard will make some noise.”
“Right, Skipper.”
“You’re magnificent. Or did I tell you that?”
“You can be as repetitious as you want. I don’t
mind at all. Actually, I’m scared green. You just can’t
see it.”
Aground — 141
He took her face between his hands. “I’m going to
get us out of here.”
“Have I ever doubted it?” she asked. “You might
call me a fan. I’ve been watching you in operation
for the past—good Lord, has it only been two days?”
“All I’ve done so far is lose.”
“That could be a matter of opinion, Ingram. But,
listen—if you expect me to keep my mind on
Morrison, we’re going to have to spread out.”
She disappeared into the darkness forward. He
went back to the cockpit. There was no way now to
tell what time it was, but it must be after one. High
tide would be between 4:30 and 5:30; call it four
hours from now. Using the power-driven bilge pump
was out of the question now, of course, since they
couldn’t start the engine, but the hand pump would
empty it easily in less than an hour and still take
care of any water that might seep in through
Morrison’s bullet holes. It was on the narrow bridge
deck between the cockpit and the break of the
deckhouse. He groped around until he found the
plate that covered it, grabbed the handle, and began
pumping. He could hear the gasoline going over the
side in a satisfying stream. Off in the darkness to
starboard Morrison’s rifle cracked, but there was no
sound of the bullet’s striking the boat. Five minutes
went by. The gasoline continued to flow; he’d have it
out in a half hour, he thought, the way it was going.
Then the handle became harder to raise, and the
sound of the stream died to a trickle. It stopped. He
cursed, wearily and bitterly, sunk for a moment in
utter despair. Damn Tango and his filthy
housekeeping. There was no telling what kind of
mare’s nest of litter there was in the bilges.
The answer, of course, was simple enough; go
down there, locate the suction, and clear it. He
thought of it, and shuddered—thought of the dead
blackness so impenetrable that directions ceased to
have any meaning, of kneeling in gasoline and
running his arms down in it while the flaming torch
that was Barney Gifford did its frenzied and
Aground — 142
spasmodic dance along the perimeter of his mind.
He mopped sweat from his face. Well, she thinks
you’re a grown man; either go down and do it, or go
up there and tell her that she’s wrong. It’s all
mental, anyway; as long as there’s nothing to set it
off, it’s harmless, provided you come up for air
before you breathe too much of it. He began taking
off his clothes. He put the gun and his watch and
sneakers on the seat beside them so he could find
them in the darkness, and went down the ladder
clad only in his shorts.
At the bottom, he turned and faced aft, visualizing
the location of the pump. The cabin sole was dry
here, near amidships; the gasoline that had come
out of the bilge was out near the bulkhead as she lay
over on her side. He could hear it still running out of
the tanks, but not as strongly now. Kneeling, he
groped around until he found the access hatch, and
lifted it out. He started to think of Barney, and the
nightmare began to crowd in around the edge of his
mind. He pushed it back and concentrated coldly on
the job. The fumes were choking him; it was time to
go up for air. He went up the ladder until his head
and shoulders were out of the hatch, breathed
deeply for two or three minutes, and returned.
Locating the opening, he groped around in the
gasoline beneath it, but couldn’t find the bilge pump
suction. He stepped down into it, in gasoline up to
his knees, knelt down, and felt further aft. There it
was. He could feel the soggy mass of papers around
it. The fumes were beginning to make him sick now.
He pulled the papers out and threw them toward the
starboard side of the cabin. Then he became aware
that there were more, both on the bottom under his
feet and floating free where he had stirred them up
with his splashing around. He felt one brush against
his hand, caught it, and lifted it out, and from its size
and shape he was pretty sure what it was. Somebody
had stored cans of food in the bilges without
removing the labels.
He swore softly in the darkness, and managed to
fish out three more. A bullet tore through the
Aground — 143
planking with a splintering sound and slapped into
the bulkhead somewhere just forward of him. He
shuddered, thinking of the electrical circuits, but
went on groping. Then it occurred to him that he
was doing more harm than good. As long as they
were lying on the bottom they probably wouldn’t get
into the suction, but he was stirring up more than he
was getting out. He climbed back to the cockpit,
wiped the gasoline off his legs and arms with the
towel, and began pumping. In five minutes the
suction was clogged again.
He went down into the blackness and the fumes
and the border country of nightmare once more, and
was crouched knee-deep in gasoline with his face
just above its surface when he froze suddenly and
the skin along his back drew tight with the stabbing
of a thousand needles. It was a sound, the familiar,
homelike throbbing of an electrical appliance
nobody ever really listened to—the refrigerator
motor. He’d forgotten all about it until now; the
thermostat had tripped, and it had come on. He
waited for the white and blinding flash of the
explosion. Nothing happened. Seconds ticked away.
His legs were trembling, but he breathed again,
softly, almost tentatively, as though even daring to
hope might tip the scales the other way.
There was nothing he could do. He could go
forward to the galley and disconnect it, but breaking
the circuit while there was a load on it would cause
a spark. None of the switches or electrical fittings
aboard were vapor-proof. He went on waiting. A full
minute must have gone by now. Maybe the fumes
weren’t as dense up there, since the bulk of the
gasoline was aft. Strength began to return to his
legs and arms, and his mind cleared sufficiently to
warn him of the other and ever-present danger—
asphyxiation. He hurriedly cleared the pump suction
and went back up the ladder. The motor was still
humming its industrious way along the edge of
eternity.
He caught the pump handle, and for a second he
was conscious of a crazy impulse to laugh and
Aground — 144
wondered if he’d begun to crack. Even this simple
act of pumping the stuff overboard could blow it up;
the friction of the gasoline against the walls of the
pipe and against the air and the water as it fell over
the side into the sea generated enough static
electricity to set it off. Except for the saving grace of
the almost saturated humidity around them, they’d
probably be dead already. He went on pumping.
After a while you get numb, he thought; you can’t
absorb any more, so it rolls off. This time it was
nearly ten minutes before the pump clogged. As the
trickle died and silence closed over the boat once
more, he became aware that the refrigerator motor
had cut out. He went below, groped his way forward,
and pulled out the plug. He cleared the suction, and
returned to the pump. In less than two minutes it
choked off again. He went below and cleared it.
When he came back he vomited over the side and his
skin was inflamed and itching from immersion in the
gasoline. He pumped. It was scarcely twenty strokes
before the stream died to a trickle and quit. He sat
down on the cockpit seat.
It was hopeless. He was never going to pump it
overboard until it was light down there and he could
see those papers and get them all out at once.
Dipping the towel over the side to wet it, he
scrubbed at his legs and arms in an attempt to get
some of the gasoline off them, and put his clothes
back on. The taste of defeat was bitter in his mouth
and he wanted to smash his fists against the deck.
Maybe they would never get the Dragoon off. They
were doomed to stay here forever—or until some
random spark blew them into flaming wreckage.
No! He stood up. They weren’t whipped yet; there
was still the fresh water. He slipped forward and
knelt beside Rae Osborne. “I may have got a third of
it out,” he added, after he had told her about it.
“Pumping some of the fresh water overboard will
help too. We’ve still got a chance.”
“Of course we have. She’s coming up all the time.”
He’d been oblivious to the passage of time, and
wondered how long they had now until high tide.
Aground — 145
“How long has it been since there was a shot from
Morrison? I forgot about him.”
“Nearly a half hour.”
That was ominous. He hated leaving her up here
alone, trying to watch both ends of the boat at once,
but he had to get that water out. Every pound was
important. Then he had an idea. “Did you ever do
any fishing?”
“Once or twice.” She sounded puzzled. “Why?”
“That’s what you’re going to do right now.” He
went aft to the cockpit and groped around for a
piece of line that was long enough. Making one end
fast around the anchor warp, he came forward,
paying it out, and put it in her hand. “Pull it taut,
and just hold it. If he gets on back there, you’ll feel
him.”
“Fine. Where will you be?”
“In the galley. Just yell, and I’ll be here in five
seconds.”
He slipped down the forward hatch and felt his
way back to the galley. The pump was over the sink.
He groped around until he found several pots, filled
them with water, and set them aside for insurance.
There was no telling how much was in the tanks, and
if he pumped them dry before he realized it, they
would be in trouble. He began pumping into the sink
and letting it run overboard. The gasoline fumes
weren’t as bad here as in the after cabin, but they
were still too strong to breathe for very long. He
opened the porthole above the sink and leaned
forward to get his face in front of it. He was all right
then. A timber creaked as the schooner righted
herself a little more on the rising tide. He wondered
how much longer they had, and increased the tempo
of his pumping. Sweat dripped from his face. If he
could get even a hundred gallons overboard it would
lighten the schooner by at least another eight
hundred pounds. Then it occurred to him that if
many of Morrison’s bullet holes were below the
water line as the tide came up and she righted
herself, salt water might be running into the bilges
Aground — 146
faster than he was pumping out the fresh. Well,
there was nothing he could do about it. Maybe it was
hopeless, and had been from the first. It was
beginning to seem now that he had been aboard this
grounded boat forever, and he wondered if he would
even recognize the feel of one that was afloat and
free beneath his feet.
He heard her footsteps on deck, and then she
spoke softly near the porthole. “Skipper?”
Morrison, he thought, and felt for the gun against
his stomach. “Yes?”
“Everything’s all right. I just wanted to tell you it’s
getting pink in the east. I can see the water a little
now, and it seems to be hardly moving.”
He hurried on deck. She was right. It was still too
dark to see the sand spit, but there was definitely a
touch of color in the east. He strained his eyes
outward toward the surface of the water, and could
make out that the tide was flooding very slowly now.
They’d be at the peak in less than half an hour.
“Here we go,” he said. “Keep your fingers
crossed.”
“Right. But is there anything I can do of a more
practical nature?”
“There will be, very shortly. Just wait here. It’ll be
almost an hour before he has light enough to use
that scope-sighted rifle, so I’m going to haul with the
anchor windlass this time. We’ll get this schooner off
or pull her in two.”
He hurried aft and gathered up the free end of the
warp. Then he returned to the bow, threw five or six
turns on the windlass drum, set the ratchet, and
handed her the end. “Just hang on,” he said. He
inserted the bar in one of the slots at the edge of the
drum, and winched it upward. The warp came taut.
Going aft again, he slacked the tackle and cast it off.
The warp was clear the full length of the deck except
at the corner of the forward deckhouse. It wasn’t
much of a fairlead, but it would have to do.
Aground — 147
She was on an absolutely even keel, as nearly as
he could tell. If she was ever going to come off, she
should do it now. He wondered if he should dog
down the ports along that side. No, it would take a
lot more weight on that boom than he had now to
bring her down that far. “Hang on,” he called out to
Rae Osborne. “We’re going to take a list.”
“Okay, Skipper,” she called back.
He slacked off the main sheet, and hauled on the
guy. The main boom with its dangling cluster of
ammunition boxes swung slowly outward. The deck
began to list. The boom came up against the sheet
and stopped. He ran back and pulled some more
slack through the blocks, and hauled the guy again.
The boom came directly outboard and the deck
rolled down until the scuppers were almost awash.
Then he wanted to cry out with joy; there had been a
definite tremor under his feet, the feeling of a boat
that was alive. She’d moved!
Rae Osborne called out excitedly. “I felt
something!”
He laughed. “What you felt was a schooner trying
to see if it remembers how to float.”
He quickly tied off the guy and made the main
sheet fast to hold the boom in position. The
ammunition boxes dangled just above the water,
directly abeam. He ran forward. It was growing light
now, and the tide was at a standstill. They had to get
her off before it started to drop. Ten or fifteen
minutes at the most, he thought.
He slid the bar into a slot in the drum, and heaved
upward. The ratchet clicked, and clicked again. Just
taking up the slack, he thought. Come on, baby. You
can do it. The warp ran aft as rigid as iron. He took a
fresh purchase and heaved. The ratchet clicked
three times in rapid succession, and then once more,
and Rae Osborne cried out, “Ingram! She moved—”
Her voice broke, and he realized for the first time
that she was crying.
They got a foot. Another foot. She stopped. He
heaved upward with his shoulder under the bar,
Aground — 148
praying the anchor would hold and that the warp
wouldn’t part. She came free, and moved back a few
inches. Her keel’s still dragging in the sand, he
thought. But if they could get her back another
fifteen feet they’d have it made. Sweat was pouring
off his face. Rae Osborne was leaning back with her
feet braced against the deck, pulling against the
windlass with all her strength. “You don’t have to
pull,” he gasped. “Just keep a strain.” “I know,” she
said brokenly, “but I can’t help it.” They were
gaining steadily now. Five feet of warp came in over
the stern. She stopped again. He put his shoulder to
the bar. God, he prayed, don’t let her hang up now.
Just a few more feet. Just a few more—She came
free. She moved ten feet. Fifteen. The line began to
come in smoothly, almost easily. The keel was off the
sand now, and she was completely afloat. He
dropped the bar and ran aft. Jumping down into the
cockpit, he caught the warp and hauled.
She was moving freely, and they could pull her
faster without the windlass as long as they kept her
momentum alive. Rae Osborne ran back and joined
him. They pulled side by side, gasping for breath,
while the coil of dripping nylon grew larger in the
cockpit. Then they were in the channel, with at least
six feet of water under the keel. The warp began to
lead downward. He took a turn and a hitch around
the cleat, and stood up.
Rae Osborne straightened, and stood looking at
him with tears streaming down her face. She
brushed at them with her hand, and laughed, but her
voice broke and she started to cry again. “Don’t
mind me,” she said in a very small voice. “I’m just
having the hysterics you promised me.” Then she
was in his arms, and he was kissing her on the
mouth and throat and all over the tear-streaked face.
They both began to laugh, somewhat crazily, and
collapsed on the cockpit seat.
“Ingram, you did it! You’re wonderful.”
“We did it,” he corrected.
“Was I any help?”
Aground — 149
“You don’t think I could have done it alone, do
you?”
“What do we do now?”
“Hold her here until the tide starts to ebb, and
then let her drift down this channel until we’re at
least out of range of Morrison and his rifle. Then
we’ll have to wait for a breeze to sail her off the
Rank. We’ve got no control over her at all this way,
and we might go aground again.”
“Good Lord! I forgot all about Morrison. Why do
you suppose he didn’t shoot at us when he saw we
were getting away?”
“He may not know it yet,” Ingram said. “He must
have gone to sleep. I just hope he doesn’t wake up
until we get farther away.” He reached for the
glasses and focused them on the sand spit, but the
light was still too poor to see anything at that
distance. He could be asleep behind the boxes,
anyway.
“What’ll happen to him now?” she asked.
“He’s got water. He’ll be all right until the Coast
Guard can send a boat or plane down to pick him
up.”
They sat and rested, suddenly aware now with the
release of tension just how near complete exhaustion
they were. “Do you realize,” she asked, “that it was
only two days ago, almost to the hour, that we
landed out here?”
He shook his head. “It’s not possible.”
The schooner swung around. The tide was
beginning to ebb. There was enough light now to
judge the water’s depth with some degree of safety.
He heaved up the anchor and let her drift slowly
seaward, watching the water ahead. After about four
hundred yards he let go the anchor again, gave her
enough scope to hold, and took the warp forward so
she would lie bow to the tide in the normal manner.
He heaved the lead. “Fifteen feet,” he said. “And
plenty of water on all sides. We’re at least a half mile
from him now, so he won’t even bother to shoot.
Aground — 150
We’ll wait here till we get a breeze, and in the
meantime I’ll start cleaning out the bilge so we can
pump that gas overboard.”
The sun was just coming up. She looked around,
and sighed, almost in wonder. “I just can’t seem to
grasp the fact we’re off that sand bar at last.”
Something fell below in the cabin. It sounded as
though books were sliding out of the rack because of
the schooner’s extreme list to port. “I’ll take care of
it,” Ingram said. “I want to open the rest of those
portholes, anyway.”
He went down the ladder. The light below was
quite good now, and he could see the lake of
gasoline extending up out of the bilge along the port
side for almost the full length of the cabin. He
thought it was higher than it had seemed in the
dark; the chances were that water had come in
through some of Morrison’s bullet holes and the gas
was floating on top of it. Well, no more could come
in while she was over on her side, and he could take
care of it as soon as he cleared the litter out of the
bilge. The fumes were sickening. Two books had
fallen out of a rack and were lying in the edge of the
gasoline near the forward end of the cabin. He
picked them up and tossed them onto a bunk.
“Youse is a good boy, Herman,” a voice said
behind him. “I knew all the time you could do it.”
He whirled. Morrison was leaning against the
ladder, naked except for a pair of shorts. He had a
cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, a
pack of them in his left hand, and a large kitchen
match in his right, its head poised under his
thumbnail. He grinned, and tossed the pack.
“Smoke?”
Aground — 151
12
Ingram let them fall into the gasoline. It’s all been
for nothing, he thought, in some detached and icy
calm that was beyond terror. That’s exactly the spot
he was standing in that other morning three
hundred years ago, and nothing has changed at all
except he’s wearing a little less and he’s got a match
in his hand instead of a Browning Automatic Rifle.
Maybe there is no way you can defeat him; he’s a
natural force of some kind. He’s waiting for me to
panic, to scream. Don’t strike that match. Well,
maybe I will; I don’t know.
He had to say something, but he was afraid his
voice would crack. If he ever knows how near the
edge I am, he thought, we’ve had it. And if he really
is insane, we’ve had it anyway, but the only thing to
do is try to wait him out. He pushed the cigarettes
out of the gasoline with his foot, reached down, and
tossed them onto the bunk. Then he heard Rae
Osborne cry out. She’s even in the same place, he
thought. Morrison didn’t bother to look up the hatch;
he merely took a step up the inclined deck to
starboard so as to be out from under it. Then he
chuckled. “The gun, Herman.”
Aground — 152
Ingram shook his head. Maybe he could speak
now. At least he had to try. “When did you get
aboard?” he asked. It seemed to sound all right.
“When you both ran back here to pull on the
rope,” Morrison replied. “I ducked into that front
cabin. About that gun, Herman. I don’t know
whether you ever made a study of ‘em, but when you
shoot one, some of the grains of powder that’re still
burning come out behind the slug—”
“Yes,” Ingram said. “I know about that. Excuse me
—” He raised his voice just slightly, and addressed
the top of the ladder. “Rae, there’s a life ring on
either side of the cockpit. Take one and go forward,
right to the bow. And remember to go upstream,
against the tide.”
Morrison shook his head. “You’re a pretty hard
boy, Herman, but not that hard. Pass the gun over,
and let’s get started to Cuba. It’s only a hundred
miles. You land me—”
“Sure,” Ingram said. “We land you, and then we
sail the boat back to Key West, the same way we
were going to sail it back from Bahia San Felipe. As
far as you’re concerned, I’ve had it, Morrison. I’m up
to here. Go ahead and strike your match.”
Morrison’s eyes were cold. “You think I won’t?”
“I don’t know,” Ingram replied. “But if you do,
don’t forget I’ll be the lucky one. I’ve got the gun.”
He saw that penetrate. Silence tightened its grip
on the scene. The Dragoon rocked gently on some
remnant of surge running in from the Santaren
Channel and a little wave of gasoline slapped against
the bulkhead and ran back to spread itself up across
the steep incline of the cabin sole. He has to go with
the bluff, Ingram thought; we’ve probably got less
than a minute left before the fumes get us, and he
knows he can’t take the gun away from me and get
out of here alive. It would take longer than that. One
of us has to crack.
He saw movement then in the hatch. A hand had
reached in and lifted the fire extinguisher from its
bracket on the bulkhead near the ladder, and was
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pointing it—quite steadily, he thought—down into
the cabin. Something came up in his throat, and he
didn’t know whether he was going to laugh or cry.
She might as well try to put out hell with a damp
Kleenex, but she was ready to tackle it.
“I don’t think you read me, Herman,” Morrison
said. “In a deal like this, you’ve got to consider who
has the most to lose. Now, you take you and Mamasan—”
Ingram breathed softly. He’s not quite so sure
now, he thought; when he has to drive home his
point by explaining the obvious. “Who’d you kill in
Florida?” he asked. “Was it Ives?”
Morrison studied the match in his hand, and then
looked across at him with a very cold smile. “That’s
a good question, Herman. It was a cop.”
Ingram felt the dark fingers of panic reaching for
him, and Barney’s flaming figure began to beat
against the outer defenses of his mind. Here we go,
he thought. Then suddenly, it was gone, and he was
all right again; maybe the accumulated hours of
bilge-diving in gasoline had earned him some sort of
immunization against horror so that it no longer had
the power to break him. He could feel himself
growing drunk on the fumes, however, and knew
that time was growing very short. Wait him out, he
told himself. “What happened to Ives?” he asked.
Morrison grinned. “So you figured that out?”
“Sure.”
Everything seemed to be growing wine-colored, as
if it were late afternoon. And he noticed now that the
fire extinguisher no longer showed in the hatch. Rae
Osborne had moved. Maybe she had fainted.
“This deputy sheriff stopped us on a back-country
road just after we got the guns in the truck,”
Morrison went on. “I think all he wanted was to give
us a ticket because one of the tail lights was out, but
that stupid Ives panicked and shot at him. The cop
killed Ives, and I got the cop. I had to then. We
dumped ‘em out in the swamp and took all of Ives’
identification so they couldn’t trace him back to us,
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but if he had a record they’ve probably got him
made by now. So you figure out whether I’m going
back or not.”
Ingram saw the nozzle of the fire extinguisher then
at the porthole just above and to the right of
Morrison’s head. So that’s where she went, he
thought dully, as the cabin began to eddy slowly
around him in the gathering darkness.
Morrison flourished the hand holding the match.
“You call it, Herman. Toss me the gun, or up we go.
And I mean now.”
The stream from the fire extinguisher hit his hand,
and, as the soggy and harmless match dropped from
it and he turned, he caught the carbon tetrachloride
full in the face. He threw up an arm to cover his
eyes. Ingram leaped, swinging the .45. He felt the
shock as it connected with the side of Morrison’s
head, and they were both falling, with Morrison on
top of him. He clawed his way out from under the
inert mass and tried to climb to his feet. His legs
gave way under him and he fell, but one of his
outstretched arms was across the bottom rung of the
ladder. It was all dark now. He held his breath and
started up. Don’t breathe till you’re off the ladder,
he told himself. You’ll fall back. It’s the first breath
of fresh air that knocks you out. Don’t breathe—
He felt a pair of arms catch him and pull him
forward into the cockpit just as he fell.
* * *
Late the following afternoon, the Dragoon, under all
working canvas, lay over gently on the starboard
tack in a light northeasterly breeze as she stood up
the Santaren Channel toward the coast of Florida.
The breeze had come up shortly after ten that
morning, and the treacherous sand bars and pastel
blues and greens of the Great Bahama Bank were
already over the horizon to starboard and astern as
their course gradually took them farther offshore
into the comforting indigo and the ageless heave and
surge of deep water. Ingram was dead tired, but
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content. It had been a period of back-breaking labor
at the pump, but there had been time for a little
sleep and a bath and a shave. He stood now on the
foredeck and took a quick look at the trim of the
sails and the ventilating lash-up he had rigged.
Everything was drawing beautifully. He ducked
down the forward hatch, squeezing past the canvas
throat of the wind chute. The air was sweet below.
Morrison lay in one of the bunks in the forward
cabin with the air from the ventilator washing over
him. His hands and feet were tied, and made fast to
the head and the foot of the bunk. There were bad
rope burns under his arms and across the naked
chest from the sling and the tackle they’d rigged to
get him up the hatch into the cockpit, and a lump on
the side of his head, but otherwise he was all right.
After the gasoline was overboard and the ventilator
rigged, they’d brought him back down here. He lay
now with his eyes closed. Ingram didn’t know
whether he was asleep or merely faking it. He
leaned over the bunk and checked his hands and
feet for circulation. They were warm, and a healthy
flesh color; the ropes were all right.
“Get lost, Herman,” Morrison said, without
opening his eyes.
Ingram looked down at him in the waning light of
afternoon. There was no feeling about him at all any
more—no hatred, nothing. “Who was the man that
drowned? He have any name besides Herman?”
The lips scarcely moved in the big, rugged face
with its brown splotches of freckles. “Reefers.”
“Reefers what?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Judson, Jensen—something
like that. Everybody just called him Reefers. He
smoked ‘em.”
“Marijuana?”
“Sure. Tea. Pod, the Beats call it.”
“Did you know he used heroin?”
“No. So that’s the reason he kept his shirt on all
the time.”
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“I guess so,” Ingram said. “You want to go to the
head?”
“No. Get lost, will you?”
“If you ditched all of Ives’ identification, why’d you
let Reefers keep his watch?”
“I didn’t know the dumb clown had it. He must
have kept it in his pocket.”
Ingram walked back through the galley and the
passageway to the large after cabin. The air was
fresh and clean here too, with good circulation from
the ventilator forward and no odor of gasoline at all.
Since pumping the last of it overboard shortly before
noon yesterday they’d flooded the bilges twice with
sea water and pumped them out. Then he’d used
fifty gallons of fresh water and a half case of soap
powder to scrub down the cabin and engine
compartment, everything the gasoline had touched,
letting the soapy water run into the bilge and
pumping it overboard. They were taking some sea
water through a few bullet holes below water line,
but a few minutes at the pump every four hours took
care of it.
He stepped quietly up the first two rungs of the
ladder and his eyes softened as he paused with his
head just above the level of the hatch. She hadn’t
seen him. She was perched on the helmsman’s seat
in back of the wheel, wearing a pair of his khaki
trousers rolled up to the knees and gathered in folds
about the slender waist with a piece of line, and one
of his shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Her mouth
was nicely painted, but the tawny hair was
windblown, and there was an expression of pure joy
on her face. Or maybe you’d call it half an
expression, he mused with tender humor. Some of
the swelling was gone from the eye now, but it still
retained all its startling and chromatic grandeur
with its blues and blacks and purples splashed so
spectacularly against the blonde and handsome face.
She looked happily around the sea for a moment,
and when her eyes returned to the binnacle he could
tell she was off course. Her face took on the sudden
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and furious concentration of a child’s and her tongue
protruded from the corner of her mouth as she
wrestled with the problem of which way to turn the
wheel. He could almost hear her repeating to
herself: Don’t try to move the compass, move the
lubber-line. Don’t try to move the compass, move
the lubber-line.
He grinned, erased it from his face, and said
sternly, “How’s your course, Mate?”
She glanced up at him, her face alight. “I’m off five
degrees to—to—Oh, the devil.” She gave up and
pointed to windward. “That way. That’s not too bad,
is it?”
He smiled. “Not too bad, considering we don’t
even know whether the compass is within ten
degrees of being right. Anyway, I wouldn’t worry
about it. From a hundred miles out, North America’s
a pretty big target.”
He came up the ladder and sat down beside her.
“We should raise Miami sometime after daylight in
the morning if this breeze holds.”
“I’m not in any hurry,” she said. “Are you?”
“No.”
She glanced up at the great curving expanse of
white dacron cutting across the sky. A little dollop of
spray blew back and spatted against the cushions.
“How long has this been going on?” she asked.
“Several thousand years,” he replied.
They fell silent for a moment. Then he asked, “You
want me to take it for a while?”
She shook her head. “No. Just watch, and tell me
when I do something wrong.” She brought the wheel
up a couple of spokes. “Ingram?”
He turned. She was staring fixedly, and a little
self-consciously, into the binnacle. “What?” he
asked.
“Do you have any great desire to get rich?”
“Not particularly,” he said.
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“Could two people sail this boat? Very far, I
mean?”
“Hmmm. Under some circumstances. But most of
the time they’d have their hands full.”
“But what about two people who’d just as soon
have their hands full of each other, at least a good
part of the time?”
“I’d recommend something a little smaller. Say a
forty- to forty-five-foot ketch. Why?”
“That would still be large enough for the charter
business?”
“Sure.” He grinned. “At least, for somebody who
didn’t care whether he got rich or not.”
She continued to stare at the compass. “Well, say
you knew two people like that who had a forty-fivefoot
ketch. And they wanted to go in the charter
business—maybe in Nassau—but one of them didn’t
know anything about boats and sailing at all.
Wouldn’t you think the ideal solution would be for
them to sail the boat from Miami to Nassau so this
second party could learn all about it?”
He gave her a thoughtful glance, wondering what
she was up to. “Sure,” he said. “It’s at least a
hundred and fifty miles, and if this hypothetical joker
of yours is as brilliant as he is lovely—”
“I was thinking of another route. By way of the
Indian Ocean.”
“What?”
“That’s the reason I asked you if you really cared
much about making money. I don’t think you do. I
don’t either.”
“It’d take two or three years.”
She removed her attention from the binnacle long
enough to give him a delighted, low-comedy leer. “I
know. I know.”
He started to reach for her.
“Hands off, sailor. I’m at the wheel. And I want to
talk to you.”
“All right. But talk fast, Mate.”
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“We’ve kicked this around quite a bit already. I
mean, how adult we are and how we’ve got sense
enough to know that people don’t fall in love with
each other in four days, and you’ve told me at least
six times that I’ve seen you only in your own special
environment, doing the things you do best, and all
the rest of that wisdom-of-the-ages routine, and how
we have to be sensible, and so on. But I also know
what you told me when you were coming to here in
the cockpit yesterday with your head in my lap,
trying to get your breath through an overcast of
large, soggy blonde. You said you loved me. And, in
between raising the mean annual rainfall of the
Bahamas, that was what I was telling you. But we’re
going to be sensible about it, aren’t we?”
“Yes. I think so. Or I mean, I did think so.”
She went on, still staring intently into the
binnacle. “You bet we’re going to be sensible,
Ingram. This way. When we get into Miami, I’m
going back to my own environment, and take a long,
slow look at it—as you suggested—while you do
another of these technical jobs you never let me pay
you for. I want you to put the Dragoon in shipyard,
have her replanked in those places you said she
needed it, overhauled, and repainted, and then sell
her. You’ll have my power of attorney. Then you buy
a forty- or forty-five-foot ketch—”
“Sure, but—”
“All right, all right, if you insist on being stuffy
about it, you can pay half of it. But let me finish. You
put this second boat in the shipyard and have
everything done to it that has to be done to put it in
absolutely perfect condition. And if you keep
watching the shipyard gate, some afternoon you’re
going to see a car with Texas license plates pull up
in front of it and stop. Inside will be a big fading
blonde with a big fading black eye, and if you
happen to be close to the car door when it opens
you’re going to think somebody just dynamited a logjam
of blondes somewhere upriver without warning
the settlers to get out—”
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He still had one knee against the wheel even after
they both forgot about it, and after a long time when
he had raised his lips from hers just to look at her
again he became conscious at last of the rattle of
slides against the tracks and the rolling slap of
canvas as the Dragoon came up into the wind.
“Mate, I think you’re off course.”
She drew a finger tip very thoughtfully along the
fine of his jaw. “Don’t you believe it, Skipper. Don’t
believe it for a minute.”
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