Dead calm

but she couldn’t take a chance of running into it with all sail set; they might be knocked down or dismasted. But she hated to stop, even for a few minutes. It appeared to be moving to the westward at the same time it was coming nearer; maybe it would be gone by the time she got there. But she should take in sail anyway; the main and the jib were going to interfere too much with her view ahead. At a little after four, while the sun was momentarily obscured by a passing cloud, she stopped and took in everything. She was under way again in less than twenty minutes, with the sun visible once more on the thinning edge of the cloud.

Warriner had never moved since he’d fallen. She began to be afraid the three tablets had been too much and she’d killed him. She reached over and touched his throat, and she could feel the pulse. It was slow but steady.

At four-thirty she reached inside the hatch for the binoculars and began to search the horizon to port and then to starboard between corrections to the helm. There was the chance Orpheus had got a breeze and John had tried to follow them.

Her eyes encountered nothing but the empty miles of water and the far rim of that circle in which they seemed to be forever centered. The noise of the engine went on, they rose and fell in a long pitching motion as the glassy billows of the swell rolled up under her quarter, but they never appeared to move at all.

It was five o’clock. Five-thirty. The squall ahead was moving into the west and breaking up. Scattered clouds began to obscure the sun at intervals, but she went on, looking over her shoulder and trying to judge its position. She continued to search the horizon to port and starboard with the glasses. The sea was empty all around her. By six the tightness in her chest was becoming almost unbearable.

Six-thirty. The sun came out from behind another cloud, and it was far down now, less than a diameter above the horizon and beginning to redden in the haze. The shadow of the mizzenmast was gone. She stood up, holding the wheel with her right hand and steering with the sun just behind her left shoulder while she held the binoculars to her eyes and scanned the sea ahead.

The colors began. Far overhead the fleecy edges of clouds were touched with gold and then pink, darkening to crimson. The sun slid downward into the low cloudbank on the horizon, and in a moment it was gone from sight and there were only the vertical rays of pale lemon extending upward against the sky. Just for an instant the defenses of her mind gave way and she remembered sunsets she had watched with John here in this cockpit in the Bahamas and Caribbean and the Gulf of Panama. She began to tremble. She dropped the engine out of gear, pulled the throttle back to idle, and leaped up on deck. She climbed atop the main boom with an arm about the mast and slowly swung the binoculars all the way around from the already darkening east to the great flame of the afterglow in the west, and there was no sign of Orpheus anywhere. It was 7:05 p.m.

15

Ingram’s eyes were bleak as he looked down into the fading light of the main cabin. If you had any talent for kidding yourself, he thought, now would be a good time to break it out. With the two of them bailing and Mrs. Warriner at the pump, the water had gained several inches in the past half-hour. They must have lost whole planks off her outer skin in that squall.

He turned and searched the emptiness of the sea down to the southwest and then glanced at his watch. It was 6:50. He dropped the bucket on the deck and went back to the others. “Knock off a minute.”

Bellew looked at him inquiringly. Mrs. Warriner straightened and pushed damp hair back from a face deeply lined with fatigue. “You mean we’re gaining on it?”

He shook his head. “No. We’re not even keeping up with it. But a quarter of an hour one way or the other’s not going to make any difference, and before it gets too dark to see I want to have one more look around from the masthead.”

He slung the glasses around his neck and shackled the sling to the main halyard again. He climbed atop the boom and stepped into the sling with his lifeline around the mast. “Haul away,” he ordered. In the confused sea left behind by the squall, Orpheus was wallowing even worse than before, but he managed the tricky business of getting past the spreaders without accident. When he was up just short of the masthead light, he called down, “That’ll do. Make fast.”

They were lying on a southerly heading at the moment. Legs locked against the dizzying swing of the mast, he looked around him. In the east the blue was already beginning to darken with the coming of night, while off to starboard the sun had dropped over the horizon and the western sky was aflame. It was impossible to escape entirely the beauty of it or to seal the mind against all of memory’s infiltration, and he was glad he was up here where they couldn’t see his face. Then he put the glasses to his eyes and began a cold and methodical search of the horizon to the southwest, fighting the lunging of the mast. He moved on into the south, and around to the east, where the light was beginning to fade. Nothing. Still nothing …

Where was she now? Was she still alive? The glasses began to shake. He lowered them and closed his eyes. The feeling passed in a moment, and he had control of himself again. He raised the glasses and came back, very slowly, across the whole area he had searched before, and then on into the dying fire and the wine-red sea of the west. He stopped abruptly. Something came up into his throat, and he swallowed. He tried to swing the glasses back, but for an instant he couldn’t. He was afraid to look again.

All right, he thought savagely; maybe you should have sent one of the men. He brought them back.

It was a mast.

Or was it? Orpheus rolled, and in the sickening swing out to port and back he lost the spot again. He got the line of the horizon in the glasses once more and inched to the right. There! It was only a tiny pencil stroke seen for an instant against the red glow of sunset. He locked his arms more tightly around the mast in an effort to stop the tremor of the glasses. It came into view, and this time he was certain he saw the other one beside it, the two of them like the tips of two toothpicks held at arm’s length before a fire. The shorter one was to the left.

“Lower away!” he shouted.

He knew what they had to do and made up his mind as he came down the mast. Below him, the others looked up silently, their faces almost red in the winy light. He landed on the boom, stepped out of the sling, and jumped down beside them.

“She’s over there,” he began. When they started to interrupt, he cut them off with a curt gesture. “Wait till I get through. She’s going to miss us. She’s hull down, even from up there; all I got was a glimpse of the masts against the sunset. She’s due west of us, headed north, and she won’t get any closer. From where she is, down on deck, we’re clear over the horizon, so there s no way in God’s world she can see us—”

“There’s no way we can signal her?” Mrs. Warriner asked.

“Just one. Set this one afire.”

“Oh.” She gave him a startled look, and then she was calm again. “Could she see it from over there?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?” Bellew interrupted. “That’s great.”

“Shut up.” He went on. “There’s a good chance. We’re to the east of her, so it’ll be dark behind us in another fifteen minutes. And there are enough clouds overhead to reflect the glow.”

“And if she doesn’t see us?” Bellew asked. “But don’t bother to tell me, let me guess. We take a taxi to the McAlpin Hotel—”

“We do the same thing we’re going to do anyway,” Ingram said coldly. “We drown. The water’s gained at least three inches on us in the past half-hour, with all three of us working. She won’t last till midnight.” They were wasting time with this idiotic argument. He swung around to Mrs. Warriner. “It’s your yacht, and you’re still aboard it—”

“Burn it, of course,” she said coolly.

Bellew shrugged. “Okay. What are we waiting for?”

“Will it burn?” she asked. “I mean, this low in the water, and with everything up here wet from the squall?”