And the deep blue sea

'I said back on your course!’ Lind turned to the helmsman. ‘Hard right.’

The helmsman, a Greek ordinary seaman, glanced with momentary helplessness toward the third mate at this conflict of orders, and then began spinning the wheel back to the right. There was no arguing with that tone of voice, not from Lind.

‘Mr. Lind! I tell you there’s a man in the water back there!’ the third mate said angrily. Lind might be the acting master, but this was his watch and he’d give the orders on it. He strode to the door of the wheelhouse. ‘I saw him myself.’

The third mate’s protest cut off then. He started. Hugo Mayr, now minus the eye patch, the beard-stubbled face wearing a chill smile, had just entered the opposite door of the wheelhouse carrying a machine pistol. Behind him was Karl with a Luger in his hand. The helmsman looked around at them, and his eyes grew wide with fear. The ship was swinging hard to starboard now and the squall was bearing down on them from dead ahead.

Antonio Gutierrez, still frozen into immobility out on the wing of the bridge, saw the big sailor called Otto come up across the port side of the boat deck, also carrying a black slab of a pistol. He stepped onto the bridge behind the third mate, looked beyond him to Lind standing in back of the helmsman, and nodded. He raised the pistol and slashed it down on the third mate’s head. Svedberg’s knees buckled. He fell forward against the door facing and slid to the deck just as the advancing curtain of rain swept down on them. Otto caught him by the arm and started to drag his body to the wing of the bridge where Gutierrez was still cowering.

‘Ease your helm!’ Lind snapped to the young Greek. The latter, still petrified, gave no indication he had ever heard. Lind yanked him away from the wheel and flung him toward the door. He fell to his hands and knees on the bridge in the gusts of windswept rain, scrambled to his feet, and fled. ‘Otto, take the wheel,’ Lind ordered. Otto left the unconscious third mate lying in the rain and hurried in. Lind gave him the course. He spun the wheel left to steady up.

Lind turned to Mayr and started to say something in German just as the bos’n hurried in. Water streamed down his face, and he had a Luger shoved into the waistband of his dungarees.

He spoke rapidly to Lind. ‘Those carboys are breaking in number three. Before the squall hit, you could smell alcohol all over the well-deck.’

Lind nodded. ‘Nothing we can do about it. If it blows, maybe we can keep it under control. Where’s Sparks?’

‘He’s coming.’

‘Good. Cover the ladders. Shoot anybody who tries to get up here.’

The bos’n went out into the gray confusion of wind and rain. Sparks came up the inside companion way through the chart room. ‘Call the Phoenix,’ Lind ordered. ‘Tell them to get under way on our reciprocal course at full speed. Give him a signal once an hour to home on with his RDF.’

Sparks looked questioning. ‘Won’t we rendezvous before dark?’

‘What difference does it make now?’ Mayr asked. ‘We all board her,’ Lind said.

‘And what about—?’ Sparks’ gesture was inclusive—the ship and the rest of the crew. Lind drew a finger across his throat. Sparks nodded and went out.

The third mate still lay face down where Otto had left him, almost at Gutierrez’ feet. His sodden cap was nearby, blown against the canvas dodger by the buffeting gusts of wind, and a pink stain ran out of his hair across the deck that streamed with water. The messman looked down at this man he assumed was dead, and then through the flung sheets of rain at the others inside the wheelhouse. Maybe they wouldn’t notice him now if he moved. He had taken one step when there was a sound like a gigantic exhalation of breath that made his ears pop. He turned.

Numb by now and beyond any emotion, he watched in a sort of bemused wonder as a great ball of fire and smoke shot skyward from the after well-deck, carrying with it the cartwheeling planks and flaming sections of tarpaulin from number three hatch cover, shattered and burning cases, baled cowhides, splintered dunnage, and an eruption of sparks like the climax of a fireworks display.

This fiery debris began to rain down on the poop and into the sea alongside to die a hissing death in the water above and below, but the column of flame continued to mount, shooting up from the hatch to the height of the stack and giving off boiling clouds of smoke and a rushing and crackling sound that could be heard above the lashing of rain and the shouts of men on the decks below. Lind ran out onto the starboard wing of the bridge, looked aft, and strode back to grab up the telephone on the bulkhead behind the helmsman.

‘Give us pressure on the fire line,’ he barked. He threw the phone back on the hook, rang the engine room telegraph to STOP, and ran back across the boat deck, followed by the others. With no one on the bridge except an unconscious third officer and a Filipino messman, the Leander continued blindly ahead into the squall.

Gutierrez stepped to the wheelhouse door and looked in, his face still suffused with wonder. The pretty blonde one was back there somewhere, and if they returned there was no doubt she would simply come aboard again. Perhaps not even wet. How was it the steering man had started to perform the return? This way? Yes, a la izquierda, without doubt. He grasped the spokes of the wheel and began turning it to the left. When it would go no farther, he left it, dragged the third mate inside out of the rain where he might await resurrection in more comfort, and went out onto the boat deck to watch the fire. On any other ship, a thing like that would be very unusual and frightening.

The Leander, her engine stopped but with full way on her and still plowing ahead at nearly twelve knots, began a hard-over turn to port through the opaque and wind-lashed sheets of rain where one direction was like another.

* * *

In a violent gray world less than a hundred yards across, they floated face to face with the rim of the life ring between them, eyes half closed against the beating of the rain. Thunder exploded on the heels of a jagged flash of lightning.

‘Why do you suppose she was going that way?’ Karen asked. ‘They couldn’t be looking for us?’

‘No,’ Goddard said. It was brutal, but raising false hopes was even more so. Lind would still be in command, even now that she was afire; there were at least six of them, and they’d all be armed. ‘She could be out of control, or they changed course to keep the fire off the midships house.’

‘Well, they couldn’t find us, anyway. You can’t see fifty yards.’

‘Did you ever see anything of Rafferty?’ he asked.

‘No.’ She wiped water from her face, and shivered. ‘Why do you suppose he did it? One of his own men?’

‘Rafferty was stupid. Lind would probably have killed him later, anyway. I mean, if the thing had worked. They’d never trust a secret like that to some two-bit punk who’d spill it in the first bar he hit.’

There was also a good chance Lind had done it with the knowledge her reaction would be just what it had been, to get her to the rail, but he saw no point in saying so.

‘Do you suppose he was a Nazi too? An American?’

‘Probably,’ Goddard said.

The squall was kicking up a sharp and confused sea atop the swell. Spray blew off it to mingle with the rain. There was so much water in the air that breathing was difficult.

‘It’s strange,’ she said, ‘but I don’t even know if you have any family or not.’

‘A brother in Texas,’ he replied. ‘And an ex-Mrs. Goddard, somewhere in Europe. We communicate through a power of attorney and a bank account; if the dollar holds firm, it’ll be years before she hears about this.’

‘You didn’t have any children?’

‘A daughter,’ he said, ‘by a previous marriage. She was killed in a car crash.’ Then he was surprised. Had he really said that?

‘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.

People had asked occasionally, and he’d said he had no children. Once or twice during that marathon drunk some more convivial and inquisitive type had forgotten and asked the question twice, to receive a brief smile that