And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(9)

'I want a gun,’ he said.
‘La madre.’
‘Where is it?’ Goddard leaned back and could just
reach the head of the dropped fire ax. He set the
pointed side of it on Sparks’ throat. ‘Why not tell me
now? When this goes through your voice box, you’ll
have to point.’
‘I haven’t got one.’
‘I guess I should have told you,’ Goddard said. ‘I’m
short of time.’ He began to press on the ax.
‘If I had a gun, I’d be glad to give it to you.’
‘Sure, I know. And where.’
‘Listen. If you’ll take that thing out of my throat,
maybe I can tell you so you’ll believe me. I hate you. I
hate your guts. I hate all of you arrogant pigs. But if I
had a gun and thought you could stop that murdering
cabrón, I’d give it to you.’

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(8)

‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was five months ago.’
Why? he wondered. Was it the imminence of death, or
some latent tendency to spill himself he’d never
suspected before, just waiting for a captive audience
with no bra to get in the way? Since he’d walked away
from the hospital that afternoon in his private and
invisible bubble he’d never said anything to anybody
except to call Suzanne and tell her that Gerry was
dead, he would be home in three hours, and not to be
there.

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(7)

now we’re prepared for the next bulletin that he’s dead.
Or are we? He thought uneasily of Madeleine Lennox.
No, she was all right. She was up; he’d heard her
taking a shower.
Karen excused herself and left. He finished his
poached egg and lit a cigarette while he drank another
cup of coffee. When he went outside and walked aft, the
bos’n and two sailors were knocking out the wedges
that secured the tarpaulins on number three’s hatch
cover. Smoke was filtering up here and there around
the edges of it. Another man was unrolling a fire hose.
He wondered if they had gas masks aboard; the smoke
was going to be pretty bad down there.
He reached for a cigarette, but discovered the pack
was empty. He tossed it over the side and went back to
his cabin for another. As he was tearing the cellophane
from it he was arrested by the faint sound issuing from
the open door of his bathroom. He frowned, and
stepped inside to be sure. The shower was still running
in the one next door. After nearly forty-five minutes? He
hurried out into the passageway.

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(6)

make you long for the Norwegian fiords, Captain.’
He nodded and managed a wan smile. ‘Yes. And it’s
been nearly two years since I was home.’
Lind said to her, ‘But it just takes one winter gale in
the North Atlantic to make this look good again.’
'I agree with you,’ Madeleine Lennox said. She began
an account of being on a freighter that had been hove
to for three days in the Bay of Biscay and how
eventually she’d been physically exhausted just from
And The Deep Blue Sea — 109
the endless holding onto something and trying to keep
from being thrown from her bunk.
Captain Steen interrupted her in a voice not much
more than a whisper. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’ Goddard
looked around. Steen’s face had gone white and was
stamped with anguish as he pushed himself to his feet.
He started to collapse, but caught himself with a hand
braced on the table.

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(5)

‘It’s perfectly safe,’ he reassured her. The darkness
was impenetrable after the flash. ‘Sparks grounds his
antenna, and it acts as a lightning rod.’
‘Thank you, Dr. Faraday,’ she said. A groping hand
brushed his arm, and then she was against his chest.
‘Who the hell needs science?’
He took her in his arms; if she needed comforting,
why be a churl about it? She felt very slender and soft
inside the nylon robe, and her arms came up around his
neck. In the next jagged flash of lightning he could see
her uptilted face with the eyes closed, waiting to be
kissed. He kissed her. Her mouth opened under his,

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(4)

Karen frowned thoughtfully. ‘No, they came aboard at
different times; Mr. Krasicki just before we sailed, I
think. Then he must have become ill almost
immediately; we thought for the first day or so he was
just seasick, until Mr. Lind said he had a fever. They did
see each other once before today, though.’ She told
them about the episode when Goddard was being
rescued. ‘It was the same thing,’ she added. ‘I mean,
the impression that Mr. Krasicki thought he recognized
Mr. Egerton, but Mr. Egerton had never seen him at
all.’

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(3)

‘You asked me if I was the mate, remember? Not
chief mate or first mate.’ Lind opened a closet. ‘I’ve got
some slacks here that might fit you. How big are you?’
‘Six feet one,’ Goddard said. ‘One-ninety.’
‘Should be just about right then.’ Lind handed him
two pairs of light flannel slacks. ‘Some Chileno drycleaner
shrunk ‘em. And here’s another sport shirt, a
drip-dry.’ He added socks, belt, a pair of slippers,
handkerchiefs, and a spare safety razor.
‘Thanks a million,’ Goddard said.

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(2)

And The Deep Blue Sea — 22
He stared blankly, startled by the suddenness of it,
but then turned and looked in the direction she was
pointing. She ran out onto the wing of the bridge, her
arm still extended. ‘Right out there! I heard him shout!
He was waving!’ But the raft was out of the moon path
now and lost in the darkness behind it. The captain
emerged from the wheelhouse. She whirled to him.
‘Captain! Stop! Back up!’ She realized she must
sound like an idiot; what was the nautical term?

And The Deep Blue Sea by Charles Williams 1971(1)

1
At sunset the next day after the Shoshone went down,
the wind dropped to a gentle breeze, and by midnight it
was calm. Now that the sea no longer broke, the raft
stopped capsizing and throwing him, and he slept for
the first time in forty hours. He awoke at dawn,
cramped, chilled through, shivering in his wet clothes
in spite of the fact he was only a few degrees south of
the Line. After the first gut-twisting impact of returning
consciousness of where he was and what was coming,
he was able to subdue the black animal and slam the
door of the cage, wondering at the same time why it
mattered. He had nothing to lose now. And he’d already
panicked once, or he wouldn’t be here. He could have
done it the easy way.