Dead calm

by Charles Williams

  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 slick as oil. Saracen was hull down, fading over the rim of the horizon. Swept by fear for Rae and black rage at his own helplessness, he wanted to curse and slam the binoculars through the doghouse roof. Instead, he leaped down on deck and turned to the man, who was in the cockpit beside the woman. “How long have you been pumping?”

  “It’s been getting a little worse every day for the past two weeks,” the other replied.

  “And you haven’t been able to hold it at all, or locate the leaks?”

  “I think all her seams are opening up. We could keep up with it at first by pumping two or three hours a day. After a while it took six. And for the past thirty-six hours there’s been somebody on the pump every minute—that is, till around sunup this morning, when he slugged me and locked us in there. No warning at all—the crazy bastard just blew his gasket and tried to kill us—”

  Ingram cut him off. “We haven’t got time for the story of your life. How bad’s that cut on your head?”

  The other shrugged. “I’ll live. Long enough to drown, anyway.”

  “Better have it looked after.” Ingram addressed the woman. “Take him below and clean it and put Mercurochrome or something on it. If it needs stitches, cut the hair away, and call me—I mean, if you’ve got sutures and a needle. When you come back, bring up two buckets and a couple of pieces of line eight or ten feet long.”

  “What for?” the man asked.

  Ingram turned toward him. “That’s twice you’ve asked me that when I told you to do something. Don’t do it again.”

  The other’s grin hardened. “So don’t throw your weight so hard, sport; you might throw it overboard. You may be Captain Bligh on your own boat—”

  Ingram walked back to the break of the raised deck and stood looking down at him. “You finished?”

  “For the moment. Why?”

  “I’m going to tell you, if you’re sure you’ve said all you’ve got to say. You mentioned my boat.” He gestured bleakly toward the southwest. “There it goes. My wife’s on it, with a maniac, unless he’s already killed her. I don’t know what he is to you, and I don’t care, but he came off this boat, if you follow me. So let’s understand each other, once and for all; we’re going after him in this tub if we have to walk and carry it on our backs, and it’s going to stay afloat if you have to drink the water out of it with a straw. I haven’t got time to kiss you or draw you a diagram every time I tell you to do something, so don’t ask me any questions. And I’m pretty close to the edge, so don’t bump me. That clear now?”

  There was no fear in the other’s eyes and no bluster, only that hard-bitten humor. “Sounds fair enough, sport, if you know what you’re doing. But be sure you do; I’m allergic to stupid orders.”

  “Right,” Ingram said. “How about the radio?”

  “Kaput.”

  “The receiver too?”

  “Yeah. Whole thing was powered by the main batteries.”

  “Why didn’t you bring the batteries up here somewhere before the water covered them? That occur to you?”

  “They were already discharged. No more gas for the generator.”

  No power, no radio, no lights, Ingram thought bitterly. “All right. Go fix your head. And don’t be gone all day.”

  They went below. He turned to the pump, which was located against the after side of the doghouse. It had a stirrup handle which was normally covered by a plate flush with the surface of the deck when stowed, but the plate was off now, the handle extending upward. Warriner was up here alone, pumping, when he sighted us, he thought. But instead of calling the others, he slugged the man and locked them in the cabin. Why? He muttered savagely and grabbed the handle; there was no time to waste wondering about the motivations of a psychopath. It was a good pump that could lift a lot of water, and there was no indication of its being clogged. He could hear the water going overboard in a solid-sounding stream as his back bent and straightened.

  He started to think of Rae and then tried furiously to make his mind go blank. He’d go crazy. He stepped up the tempo of his pumping. Where the hell were those two? Were they going to take the rest of the summer? Then he realized they hadn’t been gone five minutes. They came back up, carrying two ten-quart buckets, one of them apparently the gurry-bucket from the galley. The man was carrying a length of small line. The blood was washed from his face, and he was wearing a Mexican straw hat with an untrimmed and unbound brim, to protect his head from the sun. “No hemstitching necessary,” he said.

  “Okay. Take the pump a minute,” Ingram directed.

  “Jawohl, mein Führer.” He grabbed the handle as Ingram let go, and began throwing a hard, steady stream of water over the side. Ingram glanced at him as he stepped back to the cockpit. Clown? Hard case? Idiot? What difference did it make? The azimuth ring was still on the compass. When Orpheus rose to a swell he got a snap bearing of the tiny feather-tip of white that was all that remained now of Saracen’s mainsail. It was 242 degrees. Apparently Warriner was still holding the same course. What did that mean? Anything, or nothing, he thought. Dealing with a deranged mind—what was the use even trying to guess?

  The ventilating hatch above the after cabin was closed and secured with a steel pin. He slid the pin out and threw the cover all the way back on deck. The opening was on the centerline, directly above the space between the two bunks below. The
other two watched, the man continuing to pump, while he grabbed up the line, cut off a piece about eight feet long, and made one end fast to one of the buckets. He dropped it through the opening, gave a flip of the line to upend it as it landed in the water swirling back and forth across the cabin sole, and hauled it up again hand over hand. He pivoted and threw the water over the side. It was going to work, but it was awkward because of the main boom, which was directly over the opening. He freed the end of it from its notch in the center of the gallows frame, shoved it out to the end, and lashed it. It was all right now. He could stand right over the hatch with his legs on opposite sides. He dropped the bucket again, filled it, and flung the water overboard.

  “Okay, let your wife take the pump,” he said to the man. “That’s a little easier. You bail here.”

  The man made a burlesque bow to the woman, with a flourish toward the pump. “Pamela, little helpmeet—”

  “Shut up,” she said. She began pumping. There was something puzzling about the exchange. Ingram didn’t know what it was—or care.

  He handed the man the bucket. “You know how to dip water at the end of a fine?”

  “Well, I once poured some out of a boot. Not that I like to brag—”

  “Have at it,” Ingram said.

  The bucket landed on its side, shipped a pint of water, came upright, and floated. After yanking the line back and forth a half-dozen times, the man succeeded finally in sinking it. He hauled the water up.

  “I meant without taking all day,” Ingram said. “Look.” He demonstrated, flipping the bucket so it landed in a dipping position and came up full all in one motion. “I want five or six buckets a minute out of there.”

  “Think it’ll do any good?”

  “I don’t know,” Ingram replied curtly. “But you haven’t been able to keep up with it with the pump alone. If we don’t gain on it this way, put on your swim trunks. The nearest land’s over that way, twelve hundred miles.”

  “Geez, don’t scare me like that. For a minute I thought you said twelve thousand.”

  Ingram turned away without reply and gathered up the other bucket and the rest of the line. Between the forward side of the doghouse and the foot of the mainmast was another hatch, secured with dogs. He kicked the dogs loose with his feet and opened it. It was over the centerline of the main cabin, and in the dim light below he could see the debris-laden water pouring mournfully back and forth as Orpheus rolled. He made the line fast to the bucket and dropped it. He hauled it up, full, and threw the water overboard. This near the mainmast, the boom was in his way, and he had to crouch to avoid it. It was uncomfortable, and after a while it would be back-breaking.

  Drop … haul … turn … throw … He counted. It was nine seconds. Call it a conservative six buckets a minute—ten a minute between them. They were ten-quart buckets, twenty pounds of water. Six tons of water an hour, with maybe half that much more from the pump. They’d soon know how fast it was coming in; if they didn’t lower it this way, and damned fast, they were done for. They couldn’t keep up this pace for very long, all three of them working at once. Somebody had to sleep, and if they ever got a breeze one had to be at the wheel.

  There was something else that had to be done, too, within the next few minutes. He straightened, looking down toward the southwest. There was no trace now of Saracen; she was gone over the horizon. He reached up and unshackled the halyard from the head of the mainsail and made a sling from what was left of the line they’d brought up, leaving a free end about four feet long. He shackled the sling to the end of the halyard, retrieved the binoculars, and slung them about his neck.

  I’ll need both of you for a few minutes,” he called out to the man. They came forward. “Think you can hoist me to the top of the mast?”

  “Sure.” The other looked up at the spar swinging its dizzy arc across the sky. “Better you than me.”

  “Why not me?” the woman asked. “I’m the lightest.”

  Ingram shook his head. “It’s not easy. If you lost the mast it’d beat you to jelly before we could get you down.”

  He didn’t like the prospect himself, with Orpheus rolling her rails under and two people he didn’t know on the other end of the line, but there was no help for it. He loosed the halyard fall from the pin on the forward side of the mast. “Keep a turn around the pin,” he said. “And take it slow. When I get up to the spreaders I’ll tell you when to stop and when to heave.”

  He climbed atop the boom, stepped into the sling, took a turn around the mast with the free end of the line, and made it fast to the shackle. “Okay. Hoist away.” The halyard came taut, with his weight suspended in the sling, and he began to move upward in short jerks, two or three feet at a time, with his legs locked around it while he pulled upward with his arms. The first twenty feet were not too bad, but as he continued to mount his arc increased, both in distance and in velocity, with the resultant snap at the end more abrupt and punishing. He reached the spreaders, the horizontal members extending out at right angles to the mast. This was the dangerous part. He had to cast off his safety belt momentarily in order to pass it around the mast above them.

  “Hold it a minute,” he called out. With both legs and one arm locked around the mast, he worked at the knot with his free hand. It came loose. If he lost his grip now he’d swing out and then back against the mast with enough force to break his skull. The mast swung down to starboard, snapped abruptly at the end, and came back. His arms and legs were slick with sweat, almost frictionless against the varnished surface. He changed arms, caught the dangling piece of line with his right hand, passed it up over the spreader and around the mast. Gripping the mast with his right arm again, he made the end of the line fast once more to the shackle with his left hand, working solely by feel.

  “Up easy,” he called out. “Slow. About two feet.”

  He came up, got one leg across the spreader, and then the other. “Okay, hoist away.” He went on up. Three feet from the masthead light and the blocks at the top of the mast, he called out, “That’ll do. Make it fast.” He hoped they knew how.

  This was no place for a queasy stomach, he thought. It was like riding a bucking horse making forty feet at a bound. While he was groping for the binoculars he looked down at the deck sixty feet below. Most of the time he was out over the water; he crossed the deck only through the vertical sector of his swing from one side to the other. The centrifugal force at the end of the roll when the mast stopped abruptly and started back felt as if it were going to tear him loose and hurl him outward like a projectile from a catapult.

  He brought the binoculars up with both arms wrapped about the mast, and swept them along the line of the horizon off to port. At first he was afraid he’d waited too long. Then his pulse leaped. There she was, a minute sliver of white poised just over the rim of the world.

  “If you’re made fast down there,” he called out, “one of you give me the heading.”

  “We can’t see her from down here,” the man yelled back.

  “No. I mean our heading. How are we lying?”

  The woman went aft and peered into the binnacle. “Two-nine-oh,” she shouted up at him.

  He looked down at the deck, estimating the angle on the bow. Call it four points, he thought. Forty-five from two-ninety left two-forty-five. Saracen’s bearing had remained practically unchanged from the first. Warriner was apparently headed for the Marquesas.

  If he had thought to fool them by changing course after he was over the horizon, the chances were he would have already done it. Orpheus, with her bare masts, had long since dropped from sight from over there, and he’d probably assume he was equally invisible. Or would he? Just because he was unbalanced or mentally sick didn’t mean he had to be stupid. Witness that story he’d made up about the deaths from botulism.

  He put the glasses back to his eyes. The little point of white thinned and disappeared, then came up again. Was she still on there? What was happening now, or had happened already? He clo
sed his eyes for an instant and prayed. When he opened them and looked through the glasses again, Saracen was gone over the curvature of the earth. He looked around at the slickly heaving, empty miles of the equatorial Pacific shimmering under the sun without even the suspicion of a breeze and felt sick. Automatically he glanced at his watch to note the time. It was 9:50.

  5

  Far to the northward a squall flickered and rumbled along the horizon, but here they appeared to hang suspended in a vacuum while the sun beat down and the oily groundswell rolled endlessly up from the south. The air was like warm damp cotton pressing in on them, muggy, saturated, unmoving.

  Perspiration didn’t evaporate. It collected in a film over the body, a film that became rivulets, now running, now stopping momentarily, now moving again with the irritating feel of insects crawling across the skin. It ran down into his already sodden and clinging shorts and dripped into his sneakers. His back ached from crouching under the boom.

  Dip, lift, throw—it went on without stop. The man was working silently above the after cabin, throwing water with a machine-like regularity now that matched his own, and he could hear the steady stream from the pump. It had been an hour and ten minutes since he’d come down from the mast. They’d thrown out nine to ten tons of water, at least, and still the buckets came up full. He’d made no attempt to get a sounding before they started; it was unnecessary. The problem was too elementary to need any measurements—either they got the water out of those cabins this way within a few hours or they were done. If it continued to rise, or even if it remained at the same level, they had no chance, because they obviously couldn’t keep this up indefinitely. And whenever they stopped to sleep or collapsed from exhaustion, she’d go down.