They were quite alone on the endless, swelling, falling sea. The other boats had gone further north today, to the waters off Mullet Key, where mackerel had been reported running.
No friends around. No other eyes.
Just the three of us.
Carl throttled down the cruiser’s twin Continentals. The engines putted softly and the boat rose and fell with the gentle sighing of the Gulf.
“I guess this is it,” he said.
Lissa’s heart throbbed with fear and anticipation.
Jocelin had come aft and put on a face mask. “Sure I can get a giant snapper?”
“No guarantee,” Carl said. “But you’ve got a good chance. A lot of snapper and sheepshead around the old wreck down there. Really monstrous sheepshead.”
“I’ll leave them for Lissa,” Jocelin said, the veneer of a smile on her face as she glanced at Lissa.
Sheepshead, Lissa thought. I know what she means. Lissa can have the sheep.
Side by side they stood on the aft decking, over the baitwells. The baitwells were always empty. They’d never been filled since Carl had bought the boat. Carl had only contempt for tackle fishing.
Carl stayed at the helm, keeping the drift of the boat corrected.
“One shot only,” he said. “Then I’ll show you how to haul the granddaddy of all snappers out.” Lissa stood inhaling through her mouth, deeply and rapidly, charging her blood with oxygen. Jocelin went into the water like a sleek blade. Lissa counted four seconds and followed her dive.
As she shot down through the clean green world of water, Lissa saw Jocelin ahead of her.
Ten, fifteen, twenty feet down. Lissa felt the pressure on her eardrums and the little needles that reached out into her brain. A small fish backed off and stared at her.
Below were the shadowy outlines of the old wreck. She lay on her side, covered with moss, half buried in sand, one broken mast sticking out like a finger, yawning holes in her decks and planking. She’d been a proud one, sailing these waters when Florida was young.
The driving flippers on her feet drove Lissa closer to Jocelin. Jocelin was intent on the wreck below, as if determined to get in the first shot and bring the first snapper to surface.
A sheepshead, enormous for his breed, drifted up out of the old hull through a hole in the deck. He was big game, but Jocelin ignored him, and Lissa stayed close behind Jocelin.
The big snapper came drifting over the prow of the wreck. He floated gently, in curiosity. He backed away with slow movements of his fins as Jocelin glided to a standstill in the water.
Jocelin fired, missed, and the big fish wheeled with, great speed and was gone in the greenery of water and waving seaweed.
Now, Lissa thought.
She fired.
Straight into the old timbers. The missile struck and embedded its barbed steel head deeply. Lissa snapped the line tight around her left wrist.
Now that she was anchored to the bottom, she threw herself against Jocelin and clamped Jocelin’s slender neck tight in the crook of her right elbow.
We shall see who is stronger…
Jocelin froze, stunned by Lissa’s attack. Then she came to explosive life. She twisted her body. She clawed at Lissa’s arm. She was a thrashing fish. Much bigger game than a sheepshead.
Lissa felt the struggling body grow limp. Jocelin made a last feeble attempt to pull Lissa’s arm free of her throat. Then Jocelin was draped over her arm, arms, head, and legs dangling, her hair a black cloud floating about her face.
A ringing had begun in Lissa’s ears, but she couldn’t surface yet.
With the line, she pulled herself and Jocelin down to the rotting hole. Where timbers had broken jaggedly, she wedged Jocelin’s ankle until it was secure. Jocelin bobbed against the wreckage like a figurehead that had come to life only to go down with the ship she had adorned.
Lissa felt the blood boiling in her veins. Everything was growing dim and far away. Hard steel spikes were being driven through her chest.
For a moment, she was lost.
She almost opened her mouth to suck in a great gasp of air.
Panic hit her, and cleared her head.
She freed her wrist of the line and started up. She could see sunlight shafting down into the water. It seemed so very far away…
Her face broke water, and air burned into her lungs. She closed her eyes, gulping greedily.
If I’d been five feet further down, I never would have made it. I haven’t the strength left to swim a single stroke. Now Carl will help me into the boat and I shall tell him about the accident.
She opened her eyes and looked around. Then she screamed. Her wild gaze followed the wake of the boat. She saw Carl look back and give her a tired, bored wave. Then Carl and the boat were gone.
SALESMANSHIP
Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 1958.
Howard Alden’s day started on a miserable note. At breakfast he had to tell Clara, his wife, that they couldn’t afford a new coat for her, much as he admitted she needed one.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if she had burst out with something mean. Instead, she just sat there and looked at him as if he were a nonentity, an absolute zero.
Clara was a brunette, slender and beautiful. Howard was very much in love with her. It gave him a hard inner pain to have her look at him like that. He writhed inwardly when the villagers looked at him that way, but for Clara to give him such an appraisal was an unendurable torment.
She pecked at her oatmeal and sipped at the chickory she had brewed for breakfast.
Howard tried to think of something to say. She hadn’t always looked at
