Dead calm

Warriner made no reply. Ingram picked up the glasses, braced himself against the mizzen boom, and searched out the other yacht. She was near enough now to make out details on deck, but he couldn’t tell whether she was any lower in the water than she had been. She wasn’t down by the head or stern, but there was no doubt she had water in her, and plenty of it, from the drunken way she lurched on the swell, taking too long to come back each time she rolled. She had a short, rather high deckhouse with windows rather than portholes located near amidships, and in silhouette was vaguely reminiscent of a motor-sailer rather than a conventional sailing yacht. Dumpy-looking, he decided, and probably cranky as hell and slow. Big auxiliary, no doubt, lots of greenhouse for cocktail parties, and probably built for somebody who never used the sails except when he ran out of gas. Still, Warriner probably had upwards of $30,000 invested in her, and it was a sad way for a boat to end. “She’s still on an even keel,” he said, without lowering the glasses. “You sure we couldn’t gain on it, by pumping and bailing together—at least enough to start locating the leaks and calking ‘em?”

Warriner shook his head. “It’s hopeless. It’s been pouring in since around midnight. Nearly six inches in seven hours.”

Ingram glanced down at him and then returned to his scrutiny of the other boat without comment, still aware of that nagging sense of dissatisfaction. Something about the whole thing disturbed him, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. Just what was it? Warriner was certainly in a position to know how much water was coming into her. And when you stopped to take a good look at it, saving her was only a pipe dream. Even if they could pump her out enough to plug a few of the leaks, the kid would never make land in her alone. She was too big for one man to handle, even without the necessity of being at the pump twelve to fifteen hours a day.

3

The sun was hotter now. He turned, searching the horizon for any darkening of the surface of the sea that would indicate the beginnings of a breeze. Rae came up the ladder. “Your bunk’s all ready, Mr. Warriner. Try to sleep until this time tomorrow.”

Warriner smiled. “Please call me Hughie. And I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You don’t have to. Just get some rest.”

“In a little while. For some reason, I don’t feel sleepy at all.”

She nodded. “You’ve been wound too tight for too long. But I know how to fix that.” She disappeared down the ladder and came back in a minute with a bottle containing a little over an ounce of whisky. She poured it into the cup that was still beside him. “There’s just about enough here to do it.” He drained it and accepted the cigarette she held out. “By the time you finish that,” she said, “you’re going to collapse all over. Just try to make it to the bunk when you feel yourself start to go.”

“Thank you,” Warriner said. “You’re very nice.”

She tossed the bottle overboard and perched on the edge of the deckhouse to light a cigarette for herself. The bottle landed with a faint splash just off the port quarter, rolled over as a swell passed under it, and started to fill. It righted itself, its neck out of water. Ingram glanced at it indifferently, and then forward, conscious that Warriner’s dinghy was bumping as Saracen rose and fell. They’d have to cast it adrift; there was no room to stow it on deck, and of course they couldn’t tow it. He looked around and was about to mention this when he stopped, arrested by something in the other’s face.

Warriner was staring past him with an almost frozen intensity, apparently at something in the water. Ingram turned, but could see nothing except the bottle, which was about to sink. It had rolled onto its side again as another swell upset it, and water was flowing into its mouth. A few bubbles came up, and it went under. Puzzled, Ingram glanced back at Warriner. The other had risen from his seat and leaned forward, clutching the port lifeline with a white-knuckled grip as he stared down at the bottle falling slowly through sun-lighted water as clear as air. Drops of sweat stood out on his forehead, and his mouth was locked shut as though he were stifling, with an effort of will, some anguished outcry welling up inside him. The bottle was six feet down now, ten, fifteen, but still clearly visible as it continued its unhurried slide into the deepening blue and fading light beyond. Warriner’s eyes closed, and Ingram sensed the effort he was making to tear himself away from whatever hell he saw in an innocent and commonplace bottle falling into the depths of the sea, but they came open again almost immediately, still full of the same hypnotic compulsion and horror, like those of a bird impaled on the freezing stare of a snake.

Ingram opened his mouth to ask what the matter was, but caught Rae’s eyes on him. She shook her head. They both looked seaward and in a moment heard Warriner sit down again. The whole thing hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds. Probably doesn’t know we even saw it, Ingram reflected. But what was it? Terror? Terror of what? For some reason he was thinking of the way Warriner had come aboard, the trancelike stare, the convulsive lunge onto the deck, and the way his fingers had flattened themselves around the handrail.

“Breeze coming!” Rae called out suddenly. “Anybody for Papeete?”

Off to the south the surface of the sea was beginning to darken under the riffles of an advancing cat’s-paw of wind. Ingram sprang on deck and began casting the gaskets off the mainsail. Rae had run forward and was breaking out the jib. Long months of practice had made them a smoothly functioning team, and by the time they could feel the faint movement of air against their faces a cloud of billowing white Orion was mounting against the sky. Rae came aft to take the wheel. The mainsail filled. Saracen began to move, almost imperceptibly at first, and when she had gathered enough way to come about Ingram looked around and nodded. Rae brought the wheel hard over; she came up into the wind, hung for an instant, and fell off on the port tack, toward the southwest and Tahiti.

For a moment he had forgotten Warriner, but when he turned from setting up the mainsheet to trim the jib, he found the other already hauling on it. Warriner threw it on the cleat and straightened. “How about the mizzen?”

Ingram nodded and began taking off the gaskets. “Might as well get everything on her; the breeze might last for a while. But you go ahead and turn in.”

* * *

Warriner smiled. “I think I will, as soon as we get this up.” He seemed to have recovered completely from the horror of a few minutes ago. They hoisted the mizzen and trimmed the sheet. Ingram leaned over to look in the binnacle. “Can we make 235?” he asked Rae.

“Easy,” she replied. “We’re to windward of that now.” She came right a little. “Here we are—230 … 233 … 235.”

Ingram glanced aloft at the strands of ribbon on the shrouds and started the mainsheet a little. Saracen heeled slightly under a puff and began to gather way. He turned to Warriner. “We’re going to have to cast your dinghy adrift. No room to stow it.”

Warriner nodded. “Yes. Of course.”

Ingram loosed the painter from the lifeline stanchion, coiled it, dropped it into the dinghy, and gave the boat a push away from the side. It drifted back and began to fall behind in the wake, riding like a cork over the broad undulations of the swell. Warriner had turned and was staring toward the other yacht, which was off the starboard quarter now that they had come about. The dinghy was a hundred yards astern, growing smaller and looking lost and forlorn in the immensity of the sea.

“Well, if it’s all right with you, I guess I’ll turn in,” he said at last. “If the breeze holds, I can take over tonight.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rae said. “You’d better rest for a couple of days. There’ll be something for you to eat when you wake up.”

“It’ll be pretty hot down there,” Ingram added, “but if you leave the door open you’ll get a little circulation of air from the ventilator.”

Warriner nodded and went down the ladder. He paused once to turn for a last look at the other boat before his head disappeared below the level of the hatch. When Ingram looked around at Rae, her eyes were misted with tears. He leaned forward and peered down the hatch. Warriner was going through the passage into the forward compartment. He couldn’t hear them if they spoke in normal tones.