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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.”

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Aground — 111
radio, book racks, clothing lockers, and even in the
bilge. He found a carton of radiotelephone spare
parts which contained several tubes, but they were
apparently all for the receiver; at any rate, none
matched the type numbers stamped beside the
empty sockets. He moved into the two double
staterooms that faced each other across the narrow
passageway connecting the main cabin and the
galley, but found nothing except the suitcase which
had apparently belonged to Ives.
By this time Rae Osborne had been through
everything in the galley. “No tubes,” she said. “But
here’s a diving mask I found in a locker up forward.”
They went aft. Ingram looked at his watch; it was
2:20 p.m.

Charles Williams-Aground by 1960(5)

Aground — 89
spreader lights. With that radio and the lights and
refrigerator they would run the batteries down. Then
he was conscious of annoyance with himself. You’ve
lived alone too long, he thought; you’re beginning to
sound like Granny Grunt. You form a mule-headed
prejudice against a woman merely because nobody’s
ever told her you don’t set highball glasses on
charts, and now while you’re living one hour at a
time on the wrong end of a burning fuse you’re
stewing about the drain on a set of batteries. You
ought to be playing checkers in the park.
The pillow and the folded blanket were beside him.
He picked up the blanket and gave it a flipping
motion to spread it, and heard something drop
lightly on the sand. Apparently whatever it was had
been rolled up inside; he leaned forward and felt
around with his hands, wondering idly what it could
be. He failed to find it, however, and after another
futile sweep of his arms he flicked on the cigar
lighter and saw it, just beyond the end of the
blanket. It was a black plastic container of some
kind, apparently a soap dish from a toilet kit or
travel case. Well, at least he’d be able to wash up in
the morning. He retrieved it, and was about to set it
on the crates behind him when he heard a faint
metallic click inside. He pulled the lid off, and
flicked on the fighter again. There were several
things in it—none of them soap.

Charles Williams-Aground by 1960(4)

Aground — 67
Morrison gestured impatiently. “We were trying to
turn to get out of here. It was night, like I said, and
we couldn’t see anything. And all of a sudden we
heard something that sounded like a beach.”
“You turned the wrong way. But I don’t get what
you were doing in here over the Bank in the first
place. You should have been at least ten miles to the
westward.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. I’m no navigator. It
looks like we could have used one. I tried to get
Hollister to proposition you—”
“Wait a minute. You mean you know me?”
“Sure. I thought I recognized you when you came
aboard, and when the pilot called you Ingram I had
you made.”
“Where did you see me before?”
“In the lobby of the Eden Roc when you went to
see Hollister the first time.”
Rae Osborne broke in. “Why did this man Hollister
want somebody else to inspect the Dragoon instead
of going himself?”
Morrison shrugged. “He said the watchman might
remember him. He was an old boy friend of the
owner, and he’d been aboard before.”
She said nothing, and turned to stare out across
the water to the northward. Well, at least her
question was answered, Ingram thought. “Whose
idea was it, stealing the boat?” he asked.
“Hollister’s. Or whatever you said his name was.”
“Patrick Ives,” she said.
“Anyway, he was supposed to furnish the
transportation and the know-how to get us down
there. Said he’d been around boats a lot, and used to
be a navigator in the Eighth Air Force during the
war. From the looks of it, he wasn’t so hot. We could
have used you.”

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Aground — 44
She looked down at her glass. “I suppose so.”
“Was he a doctor?” he asked.
“No,” she said, without looking up. “He was a
phony. He liked to pass himself off as a doctor when
he was cashing rubber checks.”
He nodded. “That sounds like him. I’ve got one of
his checks.”
“Well, it’s no collector’s item.”
“You don’t have any idea at all why he would steal
the boat?”
“None whatever, as I told you once before. Would
you like me to have that statement notarized,
Captain?”
Well, Ingram reflected, he could tell her to take
her schooner and go to hell—there was always the
easy way out, if you wanted to quit. But it would be
an admission of defeat in just as real a sense as any
other failure to finish the job. And there was no use
getting hacked at a drunk; that was stupid. If she is
drunk, he thought. He’d given up trying to guess
that one.

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Aground — 22
“Not for long, unless they were gluttons for
punishment,” he said. “Except in a dead calm, it’d be
like riding a roller-coaster. With fifty to seventy-five
miles of open water to windward—”
“But it’s all real shallow—or is shoal the word you
use? Less than four fathoms, according to the chart.”
“It can still kick up a nasty chop, in any breeze at
all. Not to mention the surge running in from the
Santaren Channel. It’s more likely they were in
trouble of some kind.”
“Then she might be still there. Will you help me
find her?”
“How?” he asked.

Charles Williams-Aground by 1960(1)

1
They were down at Miami International between
thunder showers at 3:40 p.m. Ingram, a big, flatfaced
man with aloof gray eyes and an almost
imperceptible limp, followed the other passengers
out of the DC-6 into the steamy vacuum left behind
by the departing squall. His leg had stiffened a little,
as it always did when he had to sit still for very long,
and he thrust the foot down savagely against the
pull of tendons as taut as winched halyards. He
checked through Immigration, and when he was
cleared by Customs he waved off the porter with a
curt shake of his head, carried the old suitcase out
to the lower ramp, and took a taxi downtown to the
La Perla, the shabby third-rate hotel he’d first
checked into some fifteen days before and had used
as a base of operations ever since. There was no
mail for him. Well, it was too soon.