Dead calm

hard as she thought she was. No doubt she was a better man than drat boar’s tit she was married to, but she was in for a shock when she found out what it’s really like out there when they take the cover off and let you look in. When that ocean started climbing up her leg she’d be screaming her tonsils loose. He didn’t like to think about it himself. Well, it couldn’t be any worse than jumping into France in the dark with those jugheads down there waiting for you. But that was a long time back. Sport, that was a long time back.

But, hell, you had to look on the bright side. Think about Hughie-boy. He wasn’t going to drown. It brought the lump right up there in your throat just thinking that Mama’s precious made it up the ladder before he chopped it loose. And he only had to kill four people to do it. But we don’t mind, do we, fellows?

He went up on deck…

It was 5:10 p.m. when the sun was blotted out and the squall burst around them. Ingram clung to the pump and looked along the deck in the fury of spray and horizontal, wind-hurled rain. Mrs. Warriner and Bellew crouched in the lee of the deckhouse, seeking the little protection they could find. Mrs. Warriner’s hair was plastered to her head and face, and Bellew’s Mexican hat was long since gone, blown overboard in the first onslaught of the wind. The deckhouse hatch was closed, as well as the two where they’d been bailing, and he and Bellew had lifted the dinghy aboard and lashed it. There was nothing else you could do. Except pray, and keep pumping.

Now that they were inside it, where all directions were the same and visibility was cut to a few yards, perspective was gone and there was no way of telling which way it was moving or how far they were from the edge, but he believed from having watched it as it made up that the worst of it was passing to the northward of them—for what that was worth. It wasn’t the wind itself he was afraid of; it was the sea, and that was the same all around them.

It was high, steep-sided, and confused, fighting the ground-swell running up from the south. Orpheus had too little freeboard now, and she was too heavy-bellied and sluggish to ride with the punch and escape any of the beating she was taking. She pitched, lurched over, and was swept from bow to stern by every breaking sea, wallowing helplessly like some huge but mortally wounded animal. She rolled down too far and hung, pinned there on her beam ends for long moments by the inertia of the water inside her, and Ingram winced, thinking of the stresses as the enormous weight of the keel pulled the other way to bring her back. He could hear the creak and groan of her timbers even above the shrieking of the wind and knew that all the while more of her fastenings were working loose and pulling out of rotten frames and planks below him. Swung around and crouched to protect his face from the stinging of the rain and spray, he continued to pump, wondering about the bed bolts of the engine. And the great keel bolts themselves …

But they continued to hold, and in another twenty minutes it began to subside. The sun broke through. The wind dropped and then died completely, and they were still afloat. At six p.m., with the sun low on the horizon, the sea had quit breaking aboard, and they were able to open the hatches to resume bailing. When Ingram looked down at the depth of water in the after cabin he knew there was very little chance she would live through the night.

* * *

It was 1:40 p.m., five minutes now since Warriner had suddenly sprung to his feet and run back on deck to take the wheel. Saracen was plowing steadily ahead, back on course—whatever it was. Rae Ingram stood beside the sink in the after cabin, crushing the last of the three codeine tablets between the spoons. The bottle containing the others was recapped and stowed in one of the drawers, ready in case she needed more. She dropped the powder into the glass, but it was the other problem she was thinking of. This idea of hers, she felt sure, would still work. Within a few minutes—with any luck at all-she might be in command of Saracen again. But what good was it if she couldn’t find her way back to the other boat?

The 226 degrees her compass had been reading meant nothing now that he’d smashed it and there was no way to compare it with the steering compass. It could have been as much as twenty or thirty degrees from the actual course. So as far as knowing what their course had been from the other boat, she was little better off than she’d been at the beginning, and now they were at least twenty-five miles away. Somehow she had to find out what he was steering. But how? Try to get a look into the binnacle when she went up? No, that wouldn’t work. It was covered, so you could see into it only from the helmsman’s seat, and he would be instantly suspicious if she tried to work her way around behind him. He wouldn’t let her, and it might even trigger him into another outburst, which would wreck her chances of success with this idea. She couldn’t risk it. Getting control of the boat came first. Wait, she thought, beginning to see the solution. The sun. It was shining, and far enough down from the meridian now to cast a good shadow. It wouldn’t be exact, but it would be a good approximation, probably near enough to bring her back within sight of the other boat.

Working rapidly now, she dropped sugar into the glass with the powder from the pulverized tablets, put in a few spoonfuls of water to start it dissolving, and squeezed in a whole lemon. Then she opened the door of the tiny electric refrigerator inset in the after bulkhead and took two ice cubes from the tray. She finished filling the glass with water and stirred until there was no trace of the powder left in the bottom and the glass itself was beaded with moisture from the cold. Warriner had been sitting there in the sun since nine this morning with nothing to drink; there wasn’t much chance he could resist it—especially if she didn’t offer it to him and was drinking from it herself. A little of it wouldn’t hurt her.

She carried it up the ladder into the hot glare of sunlight on deck. Warriner looked up from the compass with watchful appraisal but appeared to relax when she sat down on the after edge of the deckhouse beside the mizzenmast, rather than coming down into the cockpit. He said nothing. She ignored him, looking aft as if hoping to see the other boat following them. She took a sip of the lemonade.

The sun was diagonally behind her, falling over her left shoulder, which meant their course was somewhere in the vicinity of southwest. There was a good chance he was steering for the Marquesas or for Tahiti, but she couldn’t depend on that because there was no guarantee he even knew the correct course to either of them. She had to narrow it down. Moodily, as if lost in thought, she let her gaze run idly along the scupper on the port quarter, the extreme edge of the deck where it was crossed by the shadow of the mizzenmast.

Of course the shadow was by no means stationary. With Saracen’s corkscrew motion as she quartered across the swell, and his deviations on either side of the course he was steering, it moved forward and aft along the edge of the deck as much as two feet or more. But by catching it several times when the boat was on an even keel to cancel out the rolling, she was able to strike an average between the extremes of his steering. The after edge of the shadow would be about three inches forward of that lifeline stanchion, the second one counting from astern. All she had to do, if and when she got the wheel, would be to line the shadow up on that spot, note the heading on the compass, and figure out the reciprocal. But was he going to take the bait? It had already been several minutes.

She looked aft and, without appearing even to notice him, saw that his eyes had been on the glass. She raised it to her mouth, took another sip, and set it beside her on the deckhouse while she reached in her pocket for a cigarette. It was well beaded with moisture, and she knew he could see the ice. How much longer could he stand it?

“What’s that you’re drinking?” he asked then.

“Lemonade,” she said.

“Oh.”

She put the cigarette in her mouth, and returned the pack to her pocket. Let him wait. Make him ask for it. Then she saw him look at the glass again and knew she had won. Her only problem had been to make him want it.

There was no way she could lose now, whether he suspected anything or not. If he asked her to bring him a glass, she would merely make another with three of the tablets in it. And whether he did or did not demand to trade after she’d given it to him, it made no difference. But she had an idea he would take the simple way. He did.

“It looks good,” he said.

“Would you like me to make you one?” she asked.

There was a trace of slyness in his eyes now. Mother was all right when he was scared and needed her, but she wasn’t going to put anything over on him. He was too smart for that. “Why not just give me that one and make another for yourself?”

“But I’ve already drunk out of it,” she protested.

“That doesn’t matter.” He smiled, as if thinking of some secret joke, and held out his hand.

She shrugged and handed it to him and started down the ladder. Then she turned and asked, “Would you like