And the Deep Blue Sea (10 page)

They went outside and down the ladder to the deck below. It was a brassy, stifling morning with no breeze at all except that set up by the forward progress of the ship itself. The bow wave spread outward and back in a long V toward the horizon, and far out a school of porpoises leaped and played in it, keeping pace with its steady march across the flat and unending prairie of the sea. Off to port, several miles away, was a piled dark mass of thunderheads shot through with the fitful play of lightning and trailing a purple veil of rain.

“Going to have some squalls today,” Lind said.

No sound issued from the padlocked door. Lind unsnapped the lock, and they went in. Krasicki, clad only in the wrinkled white linen trousers and no longer bound, lay on one of the lower bunks. His eyes were open, but he did not even turn his head as they entered, and gave no indication he was aware of them at all. Goddard watched carefully as Lind spoke to him in English, and then in German, but there was no expression of any kind in the eyes, simply blankness. Except for the faint rise and fall of the hairless and emaciated chest, and the motion of a hand as he brushed an imaginary fly from in front of his face, he might have been a corpse. University professor to vegetable, by easy stages, Goddard thought.
The wreckage,
Egerton had said; and then he’d been killed by it.

“The lines are all down,” he said.

Lind nodded. “Complete withdrawal. There may be a chance it’s only temporary; all we can do is wait.”

The Filipino boy entered with a bowl of fruit, some sandwiches, and water. Goddard noted that the bowl and pitcher were of soft plastic and the sandwiches were on a paper plate. Krasicki’s belt had been removed, and the garish tie was nowhere in the room. They were taking no chances of a suicide attempt. There was no head, but he had been given a sanitary pail; any attempt to lead him to a toilet might provoke another outburst.

They went out. As Lind was relocking the door, Goddard remarked, “It’s odd he’s so pale; I mean, with an outdoor job.”

“Heliophobe,” Lind said. “Can’t stand sunlight at all; his skin burns to a crisp, so he has to stay covered completely. And as a matter fact, in the jungle there’s practically no sunlight anyway. He had kind of a lame botanical joke about it; said if he were a plant he’d be classified as negatively heliotropic. It means turning away from the sun.” He broke off as they came to a companionway at the end of the passage. “Come on down. You can see how it’s done.”

“Egerton?” Goddard asked.

“Yeah. Bos’n’s working on him now.”

They went down to the next deck. There was a dimly lighted passageway here outside the engine room casing which contained a number of locked storerooms and the steward’s big freezer and chill box. One of the doors was unlocked. Lind opened it and stuck his head in. “How you doing, Boats?” He went in, followed by Goddard.

It was a bleak steel cubicle with a single overhead light, empty except for two wooden horses with a door lying across them. Egerton’s body was on the door, being sewn into the canvas burial sack by the bos’n and one of the sailors, a blond-bearded, heavily built man in his twenties whom Goddard had heard addressed as Otto. They looked up from their work and nodded, but said nothing. The sack was a single long strip of white canvas a yard wide, doubled under Egerton’s feet and stitched up the sides by the two men with sail needles and white twine. They were almost finished; only the head remained exposed. The gray hair was still neat, even in death, Goddard noted, and the slender face was pale as marble under the naked light.

“It’s weighted at the foot,” Lind said. “The engineers gave us the cap of an old bearing. Weighs about fifty pounds.”

Captain Steen came in, carrying a rolled flag. “Good morning, Mr. Goddard,” he said, and turned to the mate. “Here’s the Union Jack, Mr. Lind.”

Lind took the flag. “After well-deck, port side; that all right?”

“Yes. And I would appreciate it if everybody who can would change to shore clothes. That doesn’t include the black gang on watch, of course.”

Lind nodded. “I’ll pass the word. Incidentally, there are two British subjects in the crew; the eight-to-twelve fireman and the second cook. It might be a gesture of some kind if we asked them to bear a hand bringing the body out. And maybe Mr. Goddard would like to represent the passengers.”

“I’d be glad to,” Goddard said.

He watched moodily as the bos’n pulled the remaining canvas up over Egerton’s face and matched the corners. The two men went on stitching up the edges of the white anonymous sack.

T
HERE WERE POISONOUS-LOOKING SQUALLS ON
the horizon on both sides of them, but here the sun bore down with leaden weight and there was a dead stillness to the air like the feeling of vacuum before a tornado. It was oppressive, and Goddard found himself wishing nervously that Captain Steen would advance the service a few minutes so they could complete it before one of the squalls came screaming down on them and wrecked Egerton’s chances of departing from the visible world with a little grace and dignity. But he’d said four
P.M.
, and apparently four it would be.

A single wooden horse had been set five feet in from the bulwark on the port side of the after well-deck, and all the crew not on watch on the bridge or in the engine room were gathered in a semicircle about it, most of them in shore-going trousers and white shirts that were already limp with perspiration by the time they’d got them on. Lind was wearing tropical whites, the first time Goddard had seen him in uniform. In the background were two or three of the black gang, just come up from below and still in singlets and sweat rags. Goddard was standing by the horse with Lind, the bos’n, and the two English members of the crew, the only ones of the whole assemblage wearing ties.

There was a growl of thunder from one of the squalls. Then Goddard saw Karen Brooke and Madeleine Lennox coming down the ladder from the deck above, followed by Captain Steen in full uniform with jacket, carrying his Bible. The two women were in simple white summer dresses. Four bells struck, followed immediately by the jingle of the engine room telegraph. The engine stopped, and in a moment the ship began to go astern as the second mate backed her down to take the way off her.

Lind nodded to the bos’n. “All right, Boats.”

The dogs had been knocked loose and the steel door opening onto the well-deck pulled back and latched. Goddard followed the bos’n and the two Englishmen into the passageway. The door to the small cubicle was open, and the white burial sack still lay upon the door supported by the two horses, now with the Union Jack draped across it. The vibration of the reversed engine ceased and there was silence as they picked up the door by its four corners and carried it down the passageway into the sullen glare of afternoon. They put it down with one end on the wooden horse and the other extending out over the bulwark about a foot, the weighted end of the sack toward the sea. They stepped back, Goddard positioning himself next to the bulwark. He looked over the side. The
Leander
was still ghosting through the water, but slowing as she gradually came to rest.

“Let us bow our heads,” Captain Steen said. The sun beat down, and there was another roll of thunder as he intoned the prayer. When he said, “Amen,” at last, they straightened and there was a general shuffling of feet. Lind stepped to the bulwark and looked down. He turned and nodded to the captain. The
Leander
was stopped.

Lind and the bos’n positioned themselves at opposite corners of the door where it rested on the horse. Captain Steen stood before it, opened the Bible, and began to read the sea burial service.

“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery; he cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as if he were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. For as much as it hath pleased the Almighty God in His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed: we therefore commit his body to the deep.”

With the last words, Lind and the bos’n raised the end of the door, holding the upper edge of the Union Jack clamped against it. The weighted burial sack slid from under the flag and dropped over the bulwark into the sea. It splashed below them. Goddard looked down. The top of the sack was ballooned with the air trapped inside it, and it sank slowly at first, trailing bubbles, as it began its long slide into the abyss. He followed it moodily, being very careful not to think of Gerry’s funeral five months ago, and considered that Egerton would have liked it. “Good show; didn’t drag on with a lot of silly eulogies and bore the chaps, what?”

It began to fade from view. There was another growling reverberation of thunder along the horizon, and Lind turned and signed to the captain. It was well below the propeller now. Captain Steen spoke to one of the crew. “Tell Mr. VanDoorn he can get under way.” Goddard looked around at Karen Brooke and Madeleine Lennox. They both had tears in their eyes.

Dinner began quietly. Goddard had had three martinis but could get no lift from them at all. Depression weighed on everybody except possibly Lind, and even he was less than his usual vital self. The weather did little to improve their mood, Goddard thought. They still hadn’t run into a squall, but the stillness and the muggy, oppressive heat continued. The typewritten menu was as limp as a piece of cheesecloth, and cigarettes, ten minutes after a pack was opened, were almost too damp to burn. Both fans whirred at full speed in the dining room, circulating air that was already too saturated with moisture to have any cooling effect at all.

“One more day and we should be out of this,” Lind said. “When we pick up the trades we’ll be all right.” He turned to Goddard. “Must drive you crazy, trying to get across it under sail.”

Goddard grinned. “The secret of it is don’t eat grapefruit.”

Even Lind looked mystified. Then Karen Brooke said, “All right, I’ll be the goat. Why?”

“The rinds float,” Goddard said. “It does something to you when you can throw today’s overboard and hit yesterday’s with it.”

The wireless operator came in. He handed Captain Steen a message. “I just got this from KPH in California. Manila’s calling us too, but I think it may be the same message.”

“Thanks, Sparks.” Captain Steen tore it open, read it, and stood up abruptly. “If you’ll excuse us. Mr. Lind, will you come up to my office?”

They hurried out, followed by the wireless operator. Goddard and the two women looked at each other, puzzled and vaguely uneasy, and Madeleine Lennox asked, “What on earth could that be?”

“Nothing serious,” Goddard said. “My check bounced, and they’re going to bill Mrs. Brooke for my passage.”

“That’s the code of the sea?”

“It’s invariable. Harsh, I’ll admit, but the sea demands it. Well, I always wanted to be the pampered plaything of a beautiful woman.”

“I should warn you then,” Karen said, “that my standard contract with pampered playthings has a clause they have to address me by my first name.”

It was no use; the banter fell flat. It was too hot to eat, the place weighed on their spirits, and they were all thinking of the radiogram. There was something very urgent about it for Captain Steen to depart that way. As if on cue, they got up and went out. Karen apologized to the dining room steward.

“It’s no reflection on the food, Karl. It’s just too hot.”

They went on deck on the port side and walked forward. The sun had disappeared behind another ominous mass of clouds in the west and there was a faintly sulfurous cast to the light. It was twenty minutes later when Goddard saw Lind come around the corner of the deckhouse aft and disappear into the passageway. Something was happening, all right, if he hadn’t gone back to his watch; the third mate relieved him only long enough for dinner. They walked back, and as they came abreast of the porthole of Egerton’s cabin they saw the mate inside.

“What is it?” Goddard asked.

“All hell’s breaking loose. Tell you about it in a minute.” Lind closed the porthole, and they could see him tightening down the dogs. They went around into the passageway. He was just emerging from the cabin. He locked the door and dropped the key in his pocket. “Come on into the lounge.”

They followed him, completely mystified and conscious of a vague foreboding. When the women were seated, he said, “You’re already involved, so the skipper decided there’s no point in any cloak-and-dagger secrecy about it. We’re all going to be hit by a wave of police and newspaper reporters when we dock in Manila, and you might as well be prepared.”

“Egerton,” Goddard said.

Lind nodded. He took two folded radiograms from his shirt pocket, and handed one to Goddard. “Read ’em aloud. This one first. They were filed about two hours apart, in Buenos Aires, and Sparks is having trouble keeping up now.”

Goddard unfolded it and started to read.

MASTER S/S
LEANDER

SAN FRANCISCO RADIO URGENTLY REQUEST IMMEDIATE VERIFICATION FOLLOWING PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF PASSENGER ABOARD YOUR VESSEL USING NAME WALTER EGERTON CARRYING BRITISH PASSPORT AND CLAIMING BE EX-COLONEL ENGLISH ARMY STOP WEARS EYE PATCH LEFT EYE FIVE FEET ELEVEN ONE HUNDRED SIXTY POUNDS GRAY HAIR GRAY MOUSTACHE UPPER-CLASS ENGLISH ACCENT STOP IF DESCRIPTION TALLIES IMPERATIVE DO NOT AROUSE SUSPICIONS THIS MAN OR REVEAL CONTENTS THIS MESSAGE AND IF RADIO NEWS DISSEMINATED ABOARD VESSEL PLEASE CENSOR ACCORDINGLY STOP DELIVER NO MESSAGES TO HIM STOP POLICE WILL BOARD VESSEL WITH PILOT BOAT YOUR ARRIVAL MANILA STOP PASSPORT IS FORGERY AND THERE IS STRONG EVIDENCE MAN IS HUGO MAYR—

Goddard broke off and looked at Lind, suddenly remembering Krasicki’s scream:
Mire! You go mire!
There were simultaneous exclamations from the two women. “That’s what he was saying!”

Lind nodded. Goddard continued reading.

—HUGO MAYR STOP REPLY LT. HANS RICHTER CARE BUENOS AIRES POLICE.

It was Karen who broke the silence. “But he couldn’t have been!” she cried out incredulously. “That sweet, charming man!”