Dead calm

Saracen rolled desolately in the trough of the swell. There was no sound from beyond the door except the normal creakings, slidings, and minute collisions of shifting objects always present on a small boat at sea, and Rae might even have been alone. She tried to make some sense of this thing that had happened to them, but ran immediately into the opaque and impenetrable wall of the fact that Warriner was the only clue to any of it, and Warriner was mad. Where did you go from a starting point like that?

John had suspected there was something wrong with him. If only she’d paid more attention and hadn’t waked him up by starting the engine … Well, there was no use crying about that now. But what had John found on the other yacht that had made him burst out of the cabin that way and leap down into the dinghy? Somebody hurt or sick? But in that case why was he coming back alone? Wait, she thought, you’re close. What he found must have been some proof Warriner was lying, unstable, or dangerous, or all three, and he was rushing back because you were alone here with him. But what proof?

Warriner had tried to kill her; maybe he’d already killed somebody else. It was abundantly obvious now he hadn’t been chasing her to recover the distributor cap; the chances were he hadn’t even known she had it. He’d been intent simply on strangling her because she’d somehow stopped the engine. And his horror at watching it sink had nothing to do with its being a part of the engine; he probably hadn’t even recognized what it was. It was the same as with the bottle: he was seeing something else, or somebody.

I didn’t do it! … I didn’t mean it! …

Guilt? Terror? Who knew, or could even guess? But the whole story of the deaths from botulism must have been a lie, so it was possible something else and equally terrible had happened. Maybe he was responsible for it— She tensed. He was coming through the after cabin. She sat up and drew back on the bunk, waiting for the impact as he slammed into the door. Would it hold?

Then she grabbed her temples and fought a collapse into hysteria. He’d knocked—a tentative and discreet rap of the knuckles—and said forlornly, “Mrs. Ingram?”

You’re not mad, are you, Mama? I didn’t know it would hurt the cat. Stop it! she thought. You’re beginning to crack up yourself.

He knocked again. “Mrs. Ingram? Please, I didn’t mean it! You’ve got to believe me! I—I just lost my head for a minute because I thought you were against me too. But you’re not, are you? You couldn’t be. You’re like Estelle. The first minute I saw you, I could feel you talking to me, the way she did. Mrs. Ingram, what’s your first name?”

She could only feel of her throat and go on staring at the door.

“Mrs. Ingram?”

She couldn’t be sure, but she thought he was crying. Then in a minute he said petulantly, “Well, you were being unreasonable, you know. It was your own fault.”

He turned the handle of the door and pushed, and when it failed to open he began to lunge at it in rage, like a child in a tantrum. She watched the bolt in horror, expecting to see it torn off, but it continued to hold. “You want to kill me too, don’t you?” he shouted.

Then, as suddenly as it had commenced, the fury subsided. His footsteps went away.

She heard him moving around in the after cabin, and after a while the sound of hammering. It was impossible to guess what he was doing, but at least he wasn’t trying to smash down the door. Would John have decided by now that Saracen was stopped? Maybe he was already heading for them in the dinghy. She looked at her watch. It was 9:35. He could probably row it in an hour, or maybe even a little less.

But suppose something had happened to him back there when he’d tried to get back aboard? The last she’d seen of him, just before Warriner hit her, he’d been coming toward them as hard as he could row, directly in their path. No, you had to have something to hang onto or you’d go as mad as Warriner, and faith in John Ingram’s ability to cope with anything that could happen at sea was the one solid thing in sight. Even if he’d been run down, he would have got back aboard the other yacht, and he’d have the dinghy with him.

And if the other yacht were sinking, he’d keep it afloat somehow—

Her thoughts broke off and she looked around in wonder. It was the growl of the starter she’d heard. Hadn’t he even looked at the engine? Didn’t he know the distributor head was gone? The engine fired then and settled down to a steady rumble. She heard the clutch engage, and they began to move ahead.

She slumped forward with her face in her hands and wanted to give up and cry. She’d never thought to look in the spare-parts box to see if there was another one. She should have known. John detested engines, but he always said that if you were going to carry the stinking things around they might as well be in working condition when you needed them.

7

He’d acquired his first catboat at the age of twelve, and, except for two years at the University of Texas on the GI Bill just after World War II, he’d been around salt water and around boats ever since, most of his adult life as a professional. He’d captained a towboat in Mexico, worked on salvage jobs in half a dozen countries and three oceans, owned and skippered a charter yacht in the Bahamas, and up until eighteen months ago operated a shipyard in Puerto Rico. He’d been in an explosion and fire, and inevitably he’d seen bad weather and some that was worse, but at the moment he didn’t believe he’d ever been in a position quite as hopeless as this.

It was 2:45 p.m. Wearing a diving mask, he was some ten feet below the surface on Orpheus’s port side, just in under the turn of her bilge, looking at her from below, and the view was a chilling one. She’d never make port. And their pumping and bailing would accomplish nothing except to postpone from one hour to the next the moment she’d finally give up and go to the bottom.

When the breeze had stopped, they’d all three returned to throwing water out of her. Twenty minutes ago, after over an hour’s furious and unceasing effort, they had lowered the water level in the main cabin to a depth of around six inches. Their bailing buckets were coming up less than half full each time. He’d knocked the others off for a brief rest and questioned them. Had they hit anything? Driftwood, or a submerged object of any kind? In mid- Pacific, this was admittedly farfetched, but there had to be some reason for all that water.

It was Mrs. Warriner who supplied most of the answers. “No,” she said. “If she did, we didn’t feel it.”

“When you were running on power, was there any unusual vibration?” If they had a damaged propeller or bent shaft she might have opened up around the stern gland.

Mrs. Warriner shook her head. “No, it was perfectly normal. Anyway, we haven’t used the engine in over two weeks.”

“We used up all the gas trying to find Clipperton Island,” Bellew said. “Prince Hughie the Navigator knew where it was, but somebody kept moving it.”

She gave him an icy stare but was too exhausted to reply. “How about bad weather?” Ingram asked.

There hadn’t been much, at least nothing to bother a sound boat. Two days out of La Paz they’d run into a freak condition of fresh to strong winds which had kept them reefed down for the better part of twenty-four hours. They’d had a couple of days of bad squalls, the worst of which was around two weeks ago when they were trying to beat their way back to Clipperton Island after they’d decided they’d overshot it. The squalls had left a rough, confused sea, and she’d pounded heavily.

“And it was just after that you noticed it was taking more pumping to keep her dry?”

Mrs. Warriner nodded. “I think so. But it wasn’t all of a sudden. Just a little more each day. And it must have been about three days ago it began to get really bad and come above the cabin floor when she rolled.”

“How was the weather then?”

She thought. “Nothing stronger than light breezes, as I recall. But the day before was squally and rough, and she pitched quite a bit.”

Ingram nodded and spoke to Bellew. “When you get your breath, turn to on the pump. I’m going below to see what I can find, and I’ll relieve you in half an hour.”

He was going through the doghouse when the thought of Rae poured suddenly through the defenses of his mind again, leaving him shaken and limp. No matter how you barricaded yourself against the fear, it lurked always