And of course it was all hush hush. Sneaking out was part of the fun. But she had told Clare. Why? Probably to impress her as a fellow woman of the world. And Clare had fallen in with the scheme at once and had said, “But, darling, it sounds like marvelous fun. You must go.” And Clare had maneuvered and schemed and made a deliciously wicked plot out of something that had started out to be so simple. She had carried notes back and forth and had arranged for Gwen to slip out through her bedroom window to meet the rowboat coming in with muffled oars. In addition, she had even sent a bottle of Scotch along in a brown paper bag.
Despite all the preparations the party had not been a great success. The boys had been self-conscious and awkward. They had all had a go at Clare’s whiskey but none of them had been able to stomach it and in the end they had thrown the almost full bottle away. When they had rowed her back across the lake it had been close to dawn and she had been tired and sleepy. Funny, though, how after all these years it should come back to her so clearly, the boys’ voices, ragged voices on the edge of manhood, singing “On Moonlight Bay.” And a fumbling kiss on the dew-wet dock. That was all there was to it. But he never came back again to play his sax for the loons because next morning Clare, who had been a co-conspirator throughout, had kicked the cat right out of the bag. She had done it casually enough but the end result had been the same as if she had taken an ad in the Times. It was just an offhand comment at the breakfast table about the circles under Gwen’s eyes and she must have been dreaming because she could have sworn that sometime in the night she heard rowboats pulling up to the dock and on top of that somebody had swiped a bottle of Scotch from her room. By mistake, of course, but still it was gone.
Clare’s treachery had borne fruit. Her father had laid it right on the line to her and she had denied nothing. She had never lied to her father and she would not start now. So the whole thing was magnified out of all proportion. Her father’s disappointment in her was clearly evident. And equally evident was the hint of triumph in her cousin’s brilliant blue eyes.
Afterward, crying on her bed, she had tried to understand. Why had Clare betrayed her? What could she have hoped to gain by it? The answer had eluded her then but now, now that she knew Clare was capable even of murder, it seemed clear enough. Clare had been attempting even then to ingratiate herself with Gwen’s father and to discredit Gwen in his eyes.
And that night she had wept in her bed and vowed never again to trust Clare in anything. But the years had dulled her anger and the whole thing had been long since forgotten by the time Clare brought Dino to Spanish Cay.
She had never really understood Clare’s connection with Dino. According to Dino he had met Clare in New York and she had expressed an appreciation of his work and had offered to introduce him to the people who might be useful to him. Clare always had somebody who could be useful. She collected and traded relationships the way stamp buffs traded stamps. I’ll give you a lovely duchess for a marquis. How about a second-drawer movie star for a rather nouveau riche millionaire?
Anyway, from what Dino said, Clare was getting nothing out of it herself but the satisfaction of helping a young artist. But anybody who really knew Clare would find that a little hard to swallow. Gwen had been only half joking when she had asked Dino if he had been having an affair with her cousin and he had flashed his beautiful white teeth and said, “No, she is hardly my type. I have never enjoyed older women. In Europe, of course, a relationship between a middle-aged woman and a young man is not uncommon but I myself have never developed a taste for it. I suspect that I am really quite bourgeois and American in my outlook. It seems a shame to spoil your wicked schoolgirl fancies but I am afraid there has never been anything like that between Clare and myself.”
She had taken him at his word then but now, with so much time to think it through, she was beginning to wonder if he had not been lying. She tried to visualize them in bed together or making love unashamedly on the beach but the image escaped her. Anyway, whatever their relationship had been, it was over now. Dino had told her that and she believed him.
She stood up and began walking along the beach. Yesterday the sand under her bare feet had seemed delightfully soft and powdery but today it had a harsh granular feel. And the air felt dank and cool. She could tell that the wind was rising too because surf was beginning to beat around the westerly point of the reef. She was suddenly lonely and the prospect of her second night on the reef was frightening. Gus had said that if things got too bad for her she should use the flare gun and now she was seriously considering it. Perhaps if she had seen a ship at that moment she might have fired one of the rockets, but there was no ship in sight. Only the white crested sea and the darkening sky. She was as much alone as if she had been fired to the moon. Only one other person in the world knew where she was at that moment, and suppose something happened to him?
The game, then, was not yet over. Clare still had a stack of chips on her side of the table and she might yet win.
Gwen shivered and walked back to her campsite and threw a fresh piece of wood on the fire. Gus had left a wire grill for her and she set it over the fire and filled her little aluminum pot with water from the jeep can and put it over the blaze. When the water was hot she threw in a few spoonfuls of instant coffee and watched the brown mixture bubble. The odor of the boiling coffee was reassuring. It spelled out familiar things instead of the dank windy night that was creeping up on her now and slowly devouring the sky.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Shortly before midnight the yawl, beating up against stiffening head seas, was in what is known to sailors as the Hump, midway in the Florida Straits. There the big purple seas of the Gulf Stream, driven north by a current circulating through hundreds of fathoms of water and traveling halfway around the world, can build up to brutal proportions. The stars, which had been sparkling brightly only an hour before, were now obscured by clouds, and looking back to the west Robinson could distinctly make out the darker shape of the squall line moving in on him.
He considered reefing the main but decided that there was not enough time to try to tuck in reefs in the dark before the squall hit and that he would do better to simply drop the main altogether and go on under jib and mizzen.
With the big sail down and securely lashed, the motion of the yacht became easier. Sheets of spray were no longer whipping against his face. Senegal now rode high and comparatively dry. The wind, which had been steadily freshening all evening, was now veering a little west of south and the yawl was on a broad reach. Even with the shortened sail she tore along at what seemed a terrific speed. A splatter of rain, colder than the ocean spray, slapped his cheek. In another five minutes the squall would be upon him.
He had already double-checked his hatches and lashed down any loose gear. He was not seriously concerned about the squall but it would certainly be better to take all precautions. As an afterthought he ducked below and made another quick check of all water inlet clamps. There would be no repetition of the sinking of Charee.
When he came back on deck he saw that the squall line was almost upon him. From his experience of northwesters in this part of the world he knew that the front of heavy winds and rain would not last much more than an hour. After that would come clear skies and strongly steady winds and a sharp drop in temperature. By the next day the Stream, building up steadily under the battering of the wind, would be wild. Great seas ten to twenty feet high would come crashing over the Hump.
As a concession to the rain and cold wind he had put on a suit of oilskins. The parka had a pouch pocket over the chest and while he kept one hand on the wheel he rummaged in the pocket for his pipe and matches. He filled the blackened briar and cupped his hands for the match. When he finally had the pipe drawing well he settled back on his seat and brought the yawl back on course.
As he had anticipated, the wind was followed almost immediately by hard driving sheets of rain. Robinson grinned. Despite his knowledge of the fearsome effects of storms at sea he could
not help but enjoy it. There was an elemental challenge in a storm at sea that brought out the best or worst in a man and a ship. He turned the pipe upside down to protect the tobacco from the rain and clamped the stem tighter between his teeth. The driving rain now obscured everything and he could barely make out the dim red light of the compass binnacle, but he managed to hold her pretty much on course by the feel of the wind.
The mountainous following seas came hissing up behind him now like muted express trains but the yawl showed no desire to broach. She had been well and honestly built and he was proud of her. The great seas foamed under her counter and the wind bit off the tops of the waves and spewed them away. The little ship rushed over the cliffs and down the valleys. She was going a little too fast now, once or twice he had the uneasy feeling that he was about to lose control, and he decided to drop the mizzen. He had taken the precaution of fastening a lifeline around his waist and clipping it to a backstay, and now he unclipped it and moved it around to the other stay and fought the wet fabric down onto the boom and lashed it fast.
It had occurred to him that while he was at it he might take in the jib too and run under bare poles, but going forward in the dark and leaving the helm untended seemed a risky proposition and he decided against it. Instead, he played an old sailor’s trick on the sea. He held the two ends of the heavy anchor line and let the body of it trail out astern in a great loop. That would work the same as a sea anchor and it would be easier to handle.
With the drag of the heavy line slowing her down the yawl was now under control. She rode the great seas lightly and showed virtually no tendency to broach. It had long been a theory of his, contrary to accepted practice, that in a major storm it was safer to run a small boat before the seas than it was to head up into them. The main thing was to keep her from going too fast and he had achieved that by trailing the anchor line astern. Senegal was behaving beautifully in her first test and he was more than pleased with her. He settled back in the cockpit with his eyes on the ruby red spot of light that marked the binnacle and let the ship ride forward into the heaving dark.
The knife edge of panic sliced through Gwen’s sleep and brought her awake and trembling. Wind and rain were shaking her meager shelter and a spray of sand whipped her face. For a moment she could not remember where she was nor how she had gotten there. The earth beneath her vibrated to the hammer blows of the surf. The world was sliding out from under her. In another moment the reef would be overwhelmed and she would be adrift in the wild sea. She wanted to scream for Gus but she might as well have been on the polar ice for all the good it would do. She slid back down under the poncho and pulled the hood over her head. The sand still vibrated under her but at least this way when death came with the rising water, she would not see it.
The minutes dragged by. The wind keened like a lost soul under the tarp. The great seas pounded the western point where she and Gus had made love in the shallows. Suddenly she remembered the flare gun he had left with her. She found it tucked away in the box of food and, holding the poncho tightly around her, she knelt on the wet sand. Had something red flickered in the dark or had she imagined it? Surely that was the running light of a ship. She raised the gun and pressed the trigger and watched the small orange-colored moon split the dark. It was extinguished all too soon by the wind and rain. She reloaded it and fired again. The light hung briefly suspended and was gone. Had they seen it? She strained for another view of the ship’s light but that was gone now too. Perhaps she had only imagined it. If there had been a ship out there they would have a man on watch and he must surely have seen the flare. Anyway, whatever had been there was gone now.
Like a frightened child with the covers drawn over its head, she huddled under the poncho. To ward off the growing sense of panic, she tried to think of something comforting. A childhood memory came back to her. Madeline, her French nurse. A vaporous, weedy woman who lived on herb teas and was always looking for a remedy for a sickness of the head or the sickness of the sea or the sickness of the automobile. It was someone—Clare perhaps—who once said that all Madeline really needed was twenty minutes in bed with a husky French peasant. Gwen had not understood it at the time but now she understood it all too well. If Gus were here, if his arms were around her, the reef could go under for all she would care.
The thought was vaguely comforting. She began to feel a little better. There was a rhythm to the sea that was like the pounding of a train pulling out of a station. Madeline used to say the train sang:
Frère Jacques,
Frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous?
Dormez-vous?
It was true. All slow-speed piston engines sang that song. Anyway there was some comfort in remembering it. Her heart was no longer trying to jump out of her breast. She was even able to manage a little wry amusement at her own expense. Gwen Leacock—world traveler, darling of international society and old hand on the Via Veneto—now a target for assassins and marooned in the middle of the ocean, singing her old nursery song, “Frère Jacques.” What a twist. If Madeline could see her now, the poor old soul would faint dead away.
Now that the first surge of panic had been driven back she was able to remind herself that the reef had withstood far greater storms than this. If there had been any real danger Gus would never have left her there. And tomorrow he would be with her. All she had to do was to get through this one last night.
She dozed off. The earth no longer shook. The storm passed and the moon shone clear from a sky that looked as frosty as ice. This time when she sat up she did see the running lights of a ship. No doubt about it. All lit up like a blooming Christmas tree. And, of course, it couldn’t have been there when she had really needed it. Well now they could go to the devil. There would be no more screaming for help or firing flares like some panicky virgin. The night had passed and she had survived and she was a real woman now, waiting for her man. In the end the reef had been stronger than the storm and she herself had been stronger than the damned reef.
Robinson saw the sun rise on a smoky, windswept sea. Very far off he could barely make out the spidery trace of a ship’s mast but the vessel itself was hull down below the horizon. Apart from that there was no sign of life. Steadying himself with his back against the mizzen mast he was able to catch a morning sun sight and work out his position. With the wind behind him all night he had made excellent time so far as distance was concerned, but the storm had set him almost twenty-five miles south of his course. He corrected his position on the chart and put the yawl on her new course. She was balanced nicely under mizzen and jib and he was able to leave the wheel long enough to go below and put on a pot of coffee.
While he was below he examined his face in the mirror. He was tired from the long night at the wheel and his face looked drawn but there was nothing wrong with him that a shave and a few hours rest would not cure. His skin felt raw from the spray that had been whipping against his face all night and he decided not to shave until later in the day.
The wind seemed to ease slightly as the sun rose and he hauled up the main. He kept the boom sheeted home until the sail was secured but then, when he was no longer in danger of a jibe, he let the boom swing out so that Senegal was now running before the wind with all the sail she could carry. The yawl was almost flying. Several times she planed right off the tops of the big crests. Charee, at her best, had never been capable of such a turn of speed. Senegal was all the boat any man could want. Why, then, couldn’t he just relax and enjoy the trip? Why did he have this nagging sense of uneasiness, even of loss? For years he had traveled light without any excess emotional baggage. But now, because of Gwen, there was an anchor holding him to the shore. Well, cut the bloody line, he told himself angrily, and drop the damned hook. Despite everything that happened on that reef the cold-blooded bitch never hesitated for a second in choosing Dino. It must run in the family. To hell with her. The world is full of tail. The last thing a rover needs is a wife.
Something moved in his f
ield of vision. A stick that seemed to jut briefly above the horizon and then as quickly disappear. When it came again he almost missed it but there it was, rising and falling with the big crests. It was curiously canted and looked almost like a spar buoy, but what the devil would a marker be doing out here?
He drew the binoculars out of their case and focused on whatever it was he had seen. The 7x50 lenses brought it up sharply. It was briefly white against the blue sea and then plunged down into the trough and was gone. When it rose again he was ready for it and this time he was able to see that it was a small boat that had been dismasted. What had looked like a spar buoy was the mast broken off halfway. He was still too far off to see if there was anyone on board. With a sigh he changed course and headed for the fleck of white.
As he approached he saw that it was a small lapstreak sloop not more than sixteen feet long. The gunwales were almost down to the water and it appeared to be sinking. An arm waved at him and then another. He dropped the sails and started the auxiliary engine and maneuvered closer under power.
Senegal reared up onto the top of a crest while the little boat was in the trough. There were two women in the boat and a young boy. The boy shouted something at him in Spanish. One of the women appeared to be sick, or dead. She was lying in the bilge and greasy water rolled over her with each heave of the boat. They had made an attempt to cover her with the remnants of the sail but it did no good. The other woman was gray-haired and dressed in black. She sat huddled on the stem thwart, shoulders hunched, face expressionless. Only the boy appeared to have any real life in him. He continued to wave and shout as Robinson maneuvered the yawl closer.
Virgin Cay Page 13