Dead calm

Maybe nothing would happen. Maybe he actually had forgotten the people he’d locked in there to drown. Or if he’d really been asleep, maybe his reaction time would be off just enough to make the difference— The film jerked then, between the down-thrust oars and the stroke, and the projector began to run. Warriner’s head swung on around, and he saw the dinghy and the sinking Orpheus beyond. He leaped the rest of the way into the cockpit, and his figure merged with Rae’s.

Ingram heard the engine race, still out of gear. It slowed and came back up again almost in the same instant, with the load on it now. Which way would he turn? At the risk of a fraction of a second’s raggedness in the beat of the oars, he had to turn his head and look. Saracen loomed over him less than four lengths away, the gap closing faster now as she gathered speed, but she was already beginning to swing to starboard. He dug in his left oar and spun the dinghy around almost at right angles to cut across her course.

Saracen, in a hard-over right turn, was on his left now. He could see Rae fighting to reach the ignition switch. Warriner, holding the wheel with one hand, threw her back. She fell to her knees on the short section of deck aft of the cockpit, but sprang up and flung herself on him again. Ingram’s eyes stung with sweat, and the oars were bending as he threw the dinghy forward. The engine roared at full throttle; Saracen’s bow was swinging off faster now than he was gaining, but the stern was still coming down toward him. Twenty yards … fifteen … The locked and struggling figures in the cockpit suddenly burst apart. Warriner’s fist swung, and Ingram saw her fall. She lay in a crumpled heap on the afterdeck, unmoving, one arm dangling over the stern as if she were calling out for help. Ten yards … four … three … The turn was completed now, and the stern was beginning to draw away from him. He gave one more desperate heave on the oars, stood up, and flung himself at the rail. The dinghy kicked backward under him. His outstretched hands were two feet short, and then he was in the churning white water under the quarter.

He was already behind the propeller, or he might have lost an arm. He felt the solid kick of the water thrown back from it whirl him over, and then his head was above surface and Saracen’s stern was ten yards away. It dipped as her bow rose to an oncoming swell, and for an instant he could see Rae’s figure face down on the afterdeck, her hair very dark against the bleached and weathered teak. “Jump!” he yelled. “Jump! Get off!” She lay motionless.

For the first time in his life at sea he completely lost his head. It lasted for only a moment, and when he realized what he was doing, that he was threshing madly at the water, trying to swim after Saracen’s receding stern, he got control of the panic inside him and brought himself up. Lifting his face above water, he roared out once more with all his remaining breath, “Jump, Rae! Jump!” The limp and dangling arm was his only answer. She was either badly hurt or unconscious.

The dinghy was behind him. Both oars had slipped overboard. He found them, threw them back in, and lifted himself in over the transom. He was more scared than he had ever been in his life, and the whole scene came to him through the winy haze of a desire to get his hands on Warriner and kill him, but there was no time to give way to futile emotion. He whirled the dinghy about and sent it racing across the two hundred yards of open water toward Orpheus, trying not even to think except of what he had to do, as if it were an exercise. Saracen was going straight away, and he could still see Rae’s figure on the stern.

He turned his head. The man and woman had come on deck and were standing just aft of the doghouse, watching him. He shot the dinghy across the few remaining yards, slammed into Orpheus’s port side, and pulled in the oars. Neither of them had made a move to take the painter. He grabbed it himself, leaped on deck, and made it fast. “Have you got any glasses?” he asked.

The man grinned bleakly. “You didn’t seem to do any better than we did. Maybe you have to be crazy yourself to outguess him.”

Ingram caught himself just short of smashing him in the face—not because the man was already hurt or because he was probably in no way to blame, but merely because it would waste time. “Binoculars?” he asked again. “Where are they?”

The man jerked a thumb toward the doghouse. “Rack, just inside the door.” But the woman had already taken a step down the ladder and reached for them. Ingram lifted them from her hand without thanks, without even seeing her, and whirled, bringing them to bear on Saracen. She was still going straight away on the same course. As he adjusted the knob, she leaped sharply into focus, every detail distinct. Rae still lay huddled on the afterdeck, as far as he could tell in the same position. Warriner was at the wheel, looking forward, apparently into the binnacle. Maybe he had forgotten she was there. Then Ingram realized the futility of any conjecture as to what went on in Warriner’s mind. “Have you got a spare compass?” he asked without lowering the binoculars. “Boat compass, or a telltale in one of the cabins—”

“There’s a little one in a box in the chartroom,” the man said.

“Get it,” Ingram ordered, “and set it in the dinghy. Then put your azimuth ring on the steering compass and keep calling out the bearing of that boat.”

“And what’s all that jazz for?” the man asked. He hadn’t moved.

Ingram lowered the glasses then and looked at him for the first time. “You do what I tell you to, you son of a bitch,” he said, “and do it now. My wife’s still on there. If he throws her overboard, I want to know where. And if I don’t get to her in time because I didn’t have a course, and a compass in that dinghy, you’ll go next.”

“Just a minute, friend—” the man began, but Ingram had already turned away and locked the glasses on Saracen again. She was at least a half-mile away; he could still see Rae lying on deck, but less clearly now. He heard the woman say, “Oh, stop it; just do as he says. You find the compass, and I’ll get the azimuth ring.” He paid no attention. He was trying to make a cold appraisal of the several possibilities while at the same time struggling in the back of his mind with the dark animal of fear. This might be the last time he would ever see her, this dwindling spot of color fading away toward the outer limit of binoculars, but that was something he couldn’t think about. If he lost his head, there was no chance at all.

She must be still unconscious, because as far as he could tell she hadn’t moved. If Warriner threw her over now, while she was still out, she’d drown. The longer he waited, the more chance there was she’d be conscious and able to swim, but on the other hand, the farther out she was, the more it increased the odds against finding her in time, even with a compass course to follow. In a dinghy you were too low in the water, with a groundswell that was running higher than your head. And he had to see when it happened.

It was already growing difficult to make out the deck. He was too low. He tore his eyes away from the glasses long enough to leap up on the doghouse and brace his legs against the doomed and melancholy rolling of the boat, and for an instant he was conscious again of the forlorn banging of her gear and the rushing sound of water inside the hull. If he got her back, they’d only drown together when this derelict finally gave up and died. Well, you could only take one thing at a time.

Somebody was calling him from the cockpit. It was the woman. “Bearing 240 degrees.”

“Thanks,” he said, without looking around. It was difficult to hold the glasses steady enough now to make out the figures on deck; Warriner must be still running the engine at nearly full throttle, to be that far away. Rae was still there, but in another few minutes he wouldn’t be able to see her at all. But if Warriner let go the wheel long enough to put her over, Saracen would swing around; that he’d be able to see.

“No change. Still 240,” the woman said.

“Right—” Minutes dragged by. He lost all track of time. His arms ached, trying to hold the glasses still. The sun beat down on his head, and he could feel sweat run in little rivulets across his face. He could no longer see Saracen’s deck at all, but her course continued straight on toward the southwest without a bobble. She must be still there…

“Still 240.”

It was hopeless now; he might as well admit it. Even if he knew exactly where it happened, the odds were astronomical against finding her in time at that distance. It would take the dinghy three-quarters of an hour to get there, and even the slightest deviation from the course would increase the area by square miles of rolling ocean, all of it exactly alike.

“That’ll do for the moment,” he called out to the woman. “Your auxiliary’s under water? I mean, it won’t run at all?”

“No,” she said. “It’s completely submerged. There’s no fuel, anyway; we used it all.”

He swung the glasses, searching for signs of wind. It would take a half-gale, he thought, to move this cistern through the water, even if they could keep it afloat. As far as he could see in every direction, the surface was as