Dead Calm (17 page)

“Set the compass between your feet,” Ingram said to Mrs. Warriner. “Line it up with the bow, and hold a flashlight on it so he can see it.”

She did. Bellew began to pull slowly ahead. Ingram held onto the transom very lightly with one hand and kicked with his feet. When they were a hundred yards away he turned and looked back. It was like a scene from hell, he thought, with the red glare reflected on the black and oily heaving of the sea. The first great pillar of flame had died now that the sails were gone, and they were already in the edge of the surrounding darkness, but she was burning fiercely from bow to stern. The glow in the sky would still be visible for miles.

“Will it last long enough for her to get here?” Mrs. Warriner asked above him.

“No,” he said. “It’ll burn to the waterline and sink in twenty minutes or so. It’ll take her an hour, or an hour and a half. But it doesn’t matter; she’ll take a bearing on it and have a compass course.”

She made no reply. They went on toward the darkness. He thought she might turn for one last look, but she didn’t. She remained quite still, her face lowered over the compass between her feet. It was possible she was crying, but if she was, he thought, nobody would ever know it except her.

The same question was in both their minds, he knew, the same dread of what they might find aboard
Saracen
. He thought of the shotgun and shivered.

She’d got under way again because she had to keep moving as long as she could. The silence was out there waiting for her, and once she stopped and killed the engine with the acceptance of final defeat she would be defenseless and she wasn’t sure she would survive it.

It was 7:20 p.m. There was still enough faint light and dying color along the rim of the horizon to show her where west was, and there would continue to be, probably, for another ten minutes. Everywhere else it was already night. Across from her, Warriner’s naked shoulders and golden head were only a faint gleam in the darkness. She was standing up, holding the wheel with one hand and staring ahead into the north, when something flickered on the extreme edge of her peripheral vision. She turned her head and saw the little tongue of reddish light lick upward over the edge of the world far off to the eastward.

For a second or two she could only stare at it in a sort of stunned disbelief. Then tears came up into her eyes and blinded her for an instant as this gave way to a great surge of joy, but by then she already had the wheel hard over and was coming around. She lined it up alongside the masts and reached for the throttle. The engine noise increased to a roar as it came up the final notch to full wide open.

How far? She’d seen nothing there before, even with the binoculars, which meant it was clear over the horizon—six, eight, or even ten miles away. But John must have seen her against the sunset and then deliberately set
Orpheus
afire because he had no other way to signal her. The only way he could have seen her would have been from the masthead, so there were probably others aboard. But that was unimportant at the moment. She had something to guide her now. That was all that mattered.

In another few minutes the little tip of flame was no longer showing over the horizon, but the glow was clearly visible against the sky. She felt a moment’s uneasiness. How long would it burn before it sank? If it were even eight miles away, it would take her nearly an hour and a half to get there. It was almost due east, but that was no help once the last of the light was gone from the west and all directions were the same. She had to have a star or some constellation she could recognize, one still low enough on the horizon to give her the direction. But ahead of her, above the glow, the sky was becoming overcast. Almost instinctively she glanced to the north before she remembered Polaris was below the horizon now. They were south of the equator.

She turned to look astern, and saw the answer, if the sky remained clear enough in the west. Venus had just emerged from behind a cloud. It was perhaps three hours behind the sun, well down toward the horizon directly behind her. She faced forward, less worried now. Twenty minutes passed. The faint reddish glow was still visible ahead, reflected from the underside of the clouds above it. She kept it lined up beside the masts. It began to fade. Then, thirty-five minutes after she had first sighted it, it disappeared with the abruptness of a snuffed-out candle.
Orpheus
had gone down.

Venus was still bright behind her. She went on. It was awkward and not very accurate, trying to steer looking over her shoulder, so she stood up, facing aft directly before the wheel, and tried to keep the planet poised over the end of the mizzen boom. She reached inside the hatch and switched on the running lights. Venus began to disappear in the edge of another cloud. She tried to guess its bearing, but when it reappeared fifteen minutes later it was far around to starboard. She’d been running almost south.

She swung the wheel to bring it astern again and turned herself, to look forward, searching the horizon on both sides and ahead for any tiny pinpoint of light. She must be within two or three miles of them. On all sides the darkness was unbroken. Then Venus faded and disappeared again. The western sky was becoming overcast. Directly overhead stars were visible through holes in the clouds but there was nothing anywhere that was low enough on the horizon to guide her. In two more minutes she was hopelessly lost, with no more knowledge of direction than if she were at the bottom of a well.

She jerked the throttle back and threw the engine out of gear. It was absolutely imperative now that she stay exactly where she was; every turn of the propeller could be taking her away from them instead of nearer. She pulled the twisted wires apart to stop the engine’s noise so she could listen as she climbed atop the main boom to search the darkness all around. There was no light, no cry. She came down from the boom and ran below for a can of flares.

There was no fire behind them now;
Orpheus
had gone down nearly fifteen minutes ago. “Still nothing,” Mrs. Warriner said above him in the darkness. Each time they crested a swell she searched the sea ahead, while Bellew continued to pull at the oars.

“What time is it now?” he asked.

She held her watch under the beam of the flashlight. “Eight-ten.”

It had been fifty minutes. They should have picked up
Saracen’s
masthead light by now. “You’ve got too much light under you,” he said. “Hold the flashlight by the lens so it’s completely covered by your hand except one spot right over the compass. Bellew will still be able to see it. Then put that bundle of oilskins across your lap so no light seeps up at all. And when you locate the horizon, don’t look directly at it; look a little above. Night vision’s better out of the edges of your eyes.”

Down in the water and behind the dinghy, he could see nothing at all. Another fifteen minutes went by. The dark undulations of the swell rolled up under them and slid past in silence except for the creak of oarlocks. “Maybe if I stood up—” she said.

“No. You’ll capsize. We’re bound to pick her up in a minute. We’re still right on course? Bellew, I mean; don’t look down at the light yourself.”

“Due west all the time,” Bellew replied. Then he went on, an undertone of ugliness in his voice. “You know what, sport? Wouldn’t it be a real gas if you didn’t see any masts over there?”

“I saw masts,” Ingram said coldly. It was for Mrs. Warriner’s benefit. He had no interest at all in what Bellew thought.

There was a sudden cry from Mrs. Warriner. “I see her! I see her!”

“Where?”

“Way off to the left. My left.”

“All right,” he said calmly. “Don’t take your eyes off it. Bellew, pull your left oar till she tells you to steady up, and then check your compass.”

Bellew came around. “Steady. Right there,” Mrs. Warriner said.

“Almost due south,” Bellew reported. “One-eighty-five to one-ninety.”

Ingram swam out from behind the dinghy, and when they rose to the next swell peered into the darkness ahead. He could see nothing at all. He was too low. But why was she so far off course? At a distance of even eight miles she should have passed within a few hundred yards of them. “Can you see the port running light?” he asked.

“No. Only the masthead light,” Mrs. Warriner replied. “She must be a mile, or two miles away. Wait. I think I saw the red light then. Yes, there it is. She must have been going away from us, and then turned.”

“All right,” he said. “Forget the compass for a minute. You can keep Bellew headed straight. Take both your flashlights and hold ‘em as far over your head as you can—”

He was interrupted by a sudden cry from Mrs. Warriner, and at the same instant he saw it himself. A rocket arched into the sky ahead of them, hung poised for an instant, and began to float down like some great glowing flower.

“She’s lost herself,” Bellew said. “Hell, I thought you said she could take a bearing—”

Ingram cut him off savagely. “Save it!” Then he went on to Mrs. Warriner. “As soon as that goes out and she can see again, start waving your lights, pointed straight at her.”

She held them ready but made no reply, and he wondered if she were prey to the same chilling thoughts that were running through his own mind. Probably. Anybody but a stupid meathead like Bellew would know something must be wrong aboard
Saracen
. Was she hurt? Or had she killed Warriner and now was beginning to go to pieces? Then the flare went out ahead of them, and Mrs. Warriner was signaling. Several minutes went by while they rose and fell in silence.

Then Mrs. Warriner cried out. “She’s turned. I can see both running lights!”

Ingram sighed. She’d sighted them and was coming.

The range was closing. ahead of her the flashing lights were less than a quarter-mile away. Then it occurred to her he might be in the water instead of the dinghy, and she left the wheel long enough to run forward and hang the ladder over the side. Her knees were suddenly too weak to support her, and she almost fell coming back to the cockpit. It was difficult to breathe, and she was conscious of the pounding of her heart. She stared ahead at the two flashlights as if trying to burn away the darkness surrounding them. Two hundred yards …

She brought the throttle back and reached inside the hatch to turn on the spreader lights. The sea was illuminated for twenty or thirty yards on all sides of her, but she could still see the signals dead ahead.

She came hard left, and then right. She pulled the lever into reverse and backed down, racing the engine.
Saracen
came to rest, and the lights were less than fifty yards away, directly abeam. She reached down and yanked the wires apart, and in the sudden silence she could hear the rattle of oarlocks. He was in the dinghy. She leaned across the cockpit seat, staring outward.

Now she could see it. It was coming into the outer limits of the spreader lights. There were two people in it. John was rowing, and there was somebody smaller in the stern. She thought it was a woman— It wasn’t John rowing. He was bigger than John. It was somebody she’d never seen before, and the other one was a woman, and there was nobody else. Then she saw the head come out from behind the dinghy, the man swimming, and the upraised arm waving to her. She slid down into the cockpit seat with one hand still feebly clutching the lifeline above her, unable even to raise her head, and her diaphragm began to kick so she couldn’t exhale. Every time she would try to breathe out, it would kick and she would inhale again.

Ingram saw her slide down and could see no sign of Warriner. “Ill go aboard first,” he said to Mrs. Warriner. She was staring straight ahead, and when
Saracen
rolled down she thought she saw something on the other side of the cockpit, beyond Mrs. Ingram. Something sprawled. “Yes,” she said in a controlled but very fragile voice. “Yes. Thank you.”

Ingram lunged ahead and went up the ladder while they were coming alongside. Rae was sitting up now, and was apparently unhurt except for that bruise on her face. Beyond her he could see Warriner’s body, but in the same glance he saw the bound wrists and the line going forward to the stanchion, and all the breath went out of him at once.

Rae was still looking up at him. “He smash—he smu—he smu—” She tried to point, but he had already seen the uncovered and empty binnacle, like an eyeless socket, and understood. Probably wrecked the other one too, he thought. So she came all the way back and found us with nothing at all. He wanted to say something, but his eyes had begun to sting, and he didn’t trust his voice. Without even looking around, he gestured for the others to come aboard and reached down for her arm. She made it to her feet. She went down the ladder, and when she was in the darkness at the bottom of it, she turned.

She still couldn’t say anything. She couldn’t even cry. She was wrung out, drained, emptied of everything. She could only manage to get her arms up around his neck and cling while his went on crushing her, moving up and down her back as if they couldn’t find any place they wanted to stay, while water dripped on her and whiskers ground into her face and the voice was saying, “Oh, Jesus Christ—oh, Jesus Christ—” against her throat.

The last handhold crumbled then, but instead of falling she was floating upward into some welcoming and completely sheltered oblivion, like a child’s going to sleep. She felt herself being lifted and placed on the bunk. The arms still bound her, and the voice went on with its profane and ragged whispering, this time into her hair. Then, just before she disappeared entirely into the mist, she heard her own voice say something at last.

“Did you have any lunch?” she asked.

“No,” he said. He swallowed and rubbed a hand across his eyes. “I guess I forgot.” He kissed her again but knew she was gone. He still knelt beside her, and now he brought a hand up and placed the finger tips very gently against her throat to feel the pulse. And even after he was reassured she was all right, that she had merely reached the limit of endurance and stopped for a moment, he left the hand there, feeling her life run steadily on beneath his fingers. He didn’t even know why he did it.

He got up for a cloth to bathe her face, and when he switched on the lights he saw the battered shotgun barrels on the deck beside the ladder. He took a long and shaky breath and shook his head.

She was just beginning to stir again when he heard the voices above him, the one a lashing impassioned whisper,
“Leave him alone!”
followed by the sharp slap of palm on flesh, and hoped she hadn’t heard too. After what she’d been through, she deserved at least a few minutes of thinking it was all over. He thought of what was ahead of them and suddenly felt very old and tired. But the only chance they had was to meet it now, and head-on. He ran up the ladder.

Mrs. Warriner was trying to get up from where she was sprawled back on the cockpit seat. Beyond her, Bellew was standing on the narrow strip of deck, trying to turn Warriner’s face up with the toe of his shoe. “Wake up, old Hughie-boy, and see who’s here.”

“All right, Bellew,” he ordered, “leave him alone.”

The other turned, and in the glow of the spreader lights above and forward of them he could see the insolence in the eyes. “Easy does it, Hotspur. You got your boat back, so just simmer down. This is mine.”

“That’s right; I got it back. And I give the orders on it. You heard what I said.” There was no area for compromise here, not with Bellew. If it meant forcing the issue now, within the first five minutes, force it. But at that moment Mrs. Warriner sat up, the side of her face still red from the slap. Her voice was level and very cold as she spoke to Bellew. “I warn you. Don’t touch him.”

Bellew sat down on the opposite side of the cockpit. He leaned forward and tapped her on the knee with a forefinger. “Don’t crowd me. I’ve had it. With you and your gold-plated fag.”

Twelve hundred miles, Ingram thought, in a forty-foot yacht, with the third one crazy. He wondered what Lloyds would quote you on that. “That’ll do,” he snapped. He felt a little better now that Bellew had sat down. The situation wasn’t going to explode as long as Warriner was asleep, or knocked out, or whatever he was. If he could leave the three of them alone for as long as five seconds he might find out.

“It does seem to me,” Mrs. Warriner said then, “that one of us might make at least some casual inquiry as to how Mrs. Ingram is.” She turned to him. “Is she hurt?”

“No,” he said. “Not as far as I could tell. She’s had a little too much for one day, and she fainted, but she’s coming around now.” He turned to go back below. It should be safe enough now, and Mrs. Warriner would sing out if anything happened.

“How’d she get the creep tied up?” Bellew asked.

“How the hell do I know?” he said. “I had some stupid idea that after a whole day of it I might get a chance to talk to her for a minute and a half—” He broke off, realizing he had to keep his temper.

“Sure, sure.” Bellew grinned coldly. “I can understand you might have been a little worried. That’s where I was one up on you, chum. I didn’t have to worry about mine; I knew where she was.”

That was the question you always had to ask yourself, Ingram thought, before you jumped all the way down his throat. Suppose it had been Rae? But it didn’t change anything; it would be as stupid as hating the Pacific Ocean because she’d been swept overboard by a sea. “Bellew, for Christ’s sake, don’t you think I realize what it’s like? But it’s just something you can’t change; you’ll only make it worse—”

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Warriner interrupted.

She knows, he thought; she knows, all right, but she just won’t accept it. At that moment Rae’s head appeared above the hatch. So he wasn’t even going to get a moment to talk to her alone, to fill her in on who these people were and what had to be done. In fact, for at least the next twenty to twenty-five days—assuming they lived that long—he’d never have a minute completely alone with her. He was conscious of a dark and futile anger but choked it off. The situation was still far too dangerous to be crying over lost privacy and interrupted honeymoons.

He sprang to help her and seated her on the after edge of the deckhouse. “Are you all right now, honey?”

She managed a smile. “Yes. Just a little weak from the reaction.”

“Aren’t we all?” He turned, indicating the others. “This is Mrs. Warriner. And Mr. Bellew.”

“Hi,” Bellew said. Mrs. Warriner leaned forward and took her hand, and said simply, “Thank you. And I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Rae said. “It’s all over now—” She broke off and gasped. “John! The other compass! He smashed that too. We haven’t got anything.”

Ingram nodded. “I figured he had, or you’d have had it up here. But it’s all right. There’s one in the dinghy. I can make it do.”

He stepped forward and lifted it out. The others had already removed the flashlights and the oilskin package containing their passports. He cast off the painter and pushed the dinghy away from the side. Holding the compass very carefully, he went below and stowed it in a drawer. It was beyond price now, and nothing was going to happen to it until he could get it secured in or on the binnacle. He still didn’t know what was going to happen up there. He went back and sat down beside Rae. “All right, honey, if you’re up to it now, can you tell us what happened? How did you get him tied up?”

“Codeine,” she said. “I gave him three of those codeine tablets from the medicine chest, in a glass of lemonade. I think he’s still all right, and it’s been over six hours.”

The others watched silently while he stepped over and reached down to check Warriner’s pulse. He knew Mrs. Warriner would have already, but he wanted to be sure himself. It was steady. “He’s okay,” he said. He came back.

Rae told them the rest of the story. When she had finished, she looked at Mrs. Warriner. “I still don’t know. I mean, if the codeine idea hadn’t worked, and he hadn’t smashed the shotgun.”

Mrs. Warriner touched her on the arm. “I understand, dear. And you’ll forget it eventually. We all just thank God it ended the way it did.”

“Well, don’t break up, girls,” Bellew said. “Mama’s precious is a-l-l right; he’s not hurt. Tomorrow you can draw straws to see who’s the lucky girl he’ll kill next.”

Rae shot a startled and puzzled glance at Ingram. “What happened to him? I couldn’t make any sense of what he was saying. Something about a shark.”

Before Ingram could reply, Mrs. Warriner and Bellew both spoke at once. Bellew overrode her. “Well, nothing much.” He spread his hands in a deprecating gesture. “He killed my wife, and then this morning he slugged me and locked us in the cabin on there to drown when he abandoned ship. But, I mean, hell, nobody minds these little jokes as long as they keep Hughie happy—”

“He didn’t kill your wife!” Mrs. Warriner lashed out. “And why don’t you go ahead and tell the Ingrams why he locked us in there?”

“Wait a minute! Hold it!” Ingram cut them both off. “Rae’s entitled to know what this is all about.” As briefly as he could, he told her something of it.

Then he went on, to Mrs. Warriner and Bellew. “I want both of you to listen to me a minute. After your experience on
Orpheus
I shouldn’t think you’d have too much trouble understanding what we’re up against. We’re twelve hundred miles from land, we still don’t know when we’ll pick up the Trades, and with the very best of luck it could be twenty days or more we’re going to be jammed in here. There are five of us on a yacht with cruising accommodations for two, and one’s unbalanced and dangerous and is going to have to be tied up and watched every minute to keep him from killing himself or somebody else—”

“Unh-unh,” Bellew interrupted. “No sweat at all, pal. All he’s going to need is a basket.”

“So you’re going to kill him? In front of three witnesses. Just what do you do then? Kill us too?”

“I’m not going to kill him. You think I’m stupid, or something? You might say I’m going to immobilize him—”

“Maybe you’d better wait till I get through,” Ingram said. “You might change your mind. If you don’t, there’s a good chance none of us will ever reach land. We’ve got enough food, and the water will stretch, with rationing. But that’s not it. I’m the only one on here that can take this boat down there—the only one who can navigate well enough, in the first place, and the only one who can compensate that compass so we won’t be wandering all over hell and halfway back, trying to make a landfall. And I’m not going to stand here and just look on—any more than Mrs. Warriner is—while you make a cripple or a permanent imbecile out of a boy who’s not responsible for his actions—”

“Jesus Christ, you too?”

“I said wait till I get through. To beat up a man in his mental condition, you’d have to be sicker than he is. And as I told you, none of us is going to stand here and watch it, so if you lay a hand on him this thing is going to blow wide open. I’d say there’s a good chance you can whip me, but if I get beaten up so badly I can’t sail this boat or navigate, you’re not doing yourself any favor, unless you think you’d like drifting around out here while your tongue swells up and you go crazy.

“And there’s another thing I don’t think you’ve thought of. He’s scared to death of you, and if you touch him he’ll go completely berserk. You may be stupid enough to want to see what’ll happen when a man runs amok on a forty-foot yacht with four other people on it, but the rest of us are not. Also, this is no hospital, so what do you do if he dies? So far, everything that’s happened has been the result of an accident or bad luck or his crackup, and nobody’s committed a deliberately criminal act—”

“You call what he did to my wife an accident?”

“For Christ’s sake, Bellew, he panicked! You want to beat him to death because he got scared and lost his head?”

“Captain Ingram!” It was Mrs. Warriner this time. Well, he’d been expecting it.