evident relief. He smiled. It was a charming and affectionate smile, and there was something almost chiding about it. She tried to scream, or to move, but could do neither.
The song stopped. “See, you’re all right,” he said. “Now aren’t you sorry you made me do it?”
6
John wasn’t here. The paralysis of shock snapped then, and she screamed. “Where are we? Where are you going? We’ve got to go back!”
Warriner gave no indication he’d even heard her. She tried to sit up and was assailed by vertigo. The ocean tilted while nausea ballooned inside her, and she collapsed, fighting to keep from being sick. She closed her eyes for an instant to stop the whirling, and when she opened them Warriner had turned forward again to look into the compass. He was sitting in the helmsman’s seat in the back of the cockpit, just beyond her legs. He reached a hand around and caught her left ankle, not tightly or roughly, but merely as though to soothe her or to reassure himself she hadn’t disappeared.
She cringed and tried to scuttle backward, but there was nowhere to go; behind her was only the sea. She was cut off; she couldn’t reach the wheel or the ignition switch, or even the rest of the boat, without getting past him. There was nothing to hit him with, even if she had the strength.
The hand slid down her ankle and was caressing her bare foot. He turned around again. “You have such beautiful feet,” he said. “And women so seldom do. I mean, they do to start with, but they ruin them. Especially European women.”
She could only stare in horror.
“In fact, I’ve often wondered if Gauguin didn’t run away to Polynesia simply because he was revolted by the feet of European models.” His eyes sought hers in a glance that was amused and intimate, as though they shared some secret joke. “Of course it’s silly. It’s just something you say to clods at cocktail parties.”
Dear God, how did you get through to him? “Listen!” She made it to a sitting position this time, lurched once as
“No.” The smile disappeared. He gave a petulant little shrug, as though she had disappointed him, and faced forward to stare into the binnacle again.
She turned and looked wildly astern. How far had they come? At first she couldn’t even see the other boat and felt herself begin to give way to panic. Then she made it out, almost hull down on the horizon directly behind them. There was no chance at all of seeing the dinghy at that distance, and she didn’t know what had become of John. Except that he wasn’t here, and they were already nearly three miles away and going farther with every minute. She was the only chance he had. She turned back and caught Warriner’s shoulder. “Go back! We’ve got to go back!”
He brushed her hand off. “Please, Mrs. Ingram, do you have to shout? You’re being unreasonable again.”
“Un—un—Oh, God!” She tried to calm herself; if she went to pieces she’d never get through to him. “Unreasonable? Can’t you understand? My husband’s back there. We can’t go off and leave him. He’ll drown.”
Warriner dismissed the whole subject of Ingram with an abstracted wave of the hand. “He won’t drown.”
“But the boat’s sinking—”
“It probably won’t. Anyway, he wanted to go aboard there, didn’t he? It’s his own fault.” He turned and looked at her, as though puzzled by her refusal to grasp so obvious a fact. Then he went on, as if talking to himself. “My trouble has always been that I trust people too much. I don’t see their real motives until too late…”
It was hopeless, she realized then. Communication was impossible. Then what was left? Try to take the wheel away from him? Even in her desperation she realized the futility of that. And if she provoked him to violence again, this time he might kill her or throw her overboard. It wasn’t fear of being hurt or even killed that made her rule that out, or reserve it as a final gamble when everything else had failed, but merely the simple, monolithic fact that her staying on here and staying alive represented the only chance they had. She had to try every other possibility first. But what? Then the answer occurred to her: she couldn’t make him turn back, but at least she could stop his going any farther. It was still dead calm, and there was a good chance it would remain that way for hours, or even the rest of the day; if she could disable the engine, John might be able to reach them in the dinghy. But access to it was below; she had to get down into the cabin. Would he let her?
She pushed herself to her knees, grasping the lifeline, and made a tentative move to go past him along the deck on the starboard side of the cockpit. “I—I feel sick at my stomach,” she said. “I’ve got to go to the head.”
He gestured toward the rail. “Why not there?”
“I don’t like being sick in public.”
“No, of course not,” he said sympathetically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that.”
She wasn’t conscious of the utter madness of this conversation until she was halfway down the ladder, and wondered if she was losing contact with reality herself. All the landmarks and reference points of rational existence had been so suddenly jolted out of position, she couldn’t orient herself. It was as though they were threatened with destruction by the blind and impersonal trajectories of some hitherto placid machine that had run amok through a short circuit in its wiring. Warriner perhaps didn’t intend any harm to either of them; they just happened to be in his path. Nor was he threatening her with violence or placing her under any restraint; she was merely powerless to do anything about him.
He couldn’t see down into the cabin from where he was, in the aft end of the cockpit; once she was down the ladder she was out of sight. The engine was installed under the cockpit, and access to the compartment was through a removable panel in the after bulkhead of the cabin. She turned and was on the point of lifting the panel out when it occurred to her she had no idea at all what she was actually going to do. Disabling the engine had a fine sound to it—but just how did she disable it, and what was she going to do afterward?
The minute it stopped he would come hurrying down the ladder to find out what had happened. And even if she’d succeeded in sabotaging it beyond immediate repair it might be hours before John got here. It would be some time before he was sure
Just hurry, she thought. She lifted the panel out and was assailed by sudden fear as the noise level, already high, increased. Would he notice it? She looked fearfully up at the hatch, expecting to see it darken. Nothing happened. Where he was sitting was almost above it; probably the difference in noise level was too small to be apparent up there. The compartment was dark, but there was a light switch just inside the entrance. She flicked it on and leaned in.
The engine had been running at nearly full throttle for a half-hour, and in addition to its ear-shattering racket the compartment was filled with the fumes of hot paint and burning oil. She felt nausea push up into her throat again. The engine itself was in the center of the small space, with the starting and lighting batteries on her right and a metal locker containing spare parts and tools on her left.
She studied it, searching for a vulnerable spot to attack. Though she had once been a sports-car enthusiast and had for a short period in her life owned an agency for one of the European cars, she knew little more about gasoline engines than does the average woman. She was aware, however, that they could be stopped by shutting off either the gasoline supply or the spark that exploded it. There was a valve in the small copper line coming from the fuel tank to the connection on the engine, but closing that would solve nothing. She could take a hammer from the toolbox and smash the line itself, but that would let the fuel drain into the bilges and convert the boat into a
