Dead Calm (16 page)

He hadn’t moved since he’d fallen. She reached down to touch him, a little fearfully, and then realized nothing was going to rouse him now. He was still behind the wheel, and there was no possibility at all of moving him. He must weigh 180 or 190 pounds, and, inert as he was, it would take a professional weight-lifter to get him out of there. But it didn’t matter. She could handle the wheel from the port seat of the cockpit, or standing up. The only thing that did matter was that she had to hurry.

She cut a piece about twelve feet long from the heaving line and bound his wrists together in front of him, going around them and then between them to form an unslippable pair of handcuffs. She stretched his arms out along the strip of deck and made the end of the line fast to a lifeline stanchion. Then she tied his ankles together and anchored them to the base of the binnacle. There was no way he could move at all. His face rested on his outstretched arms.

She stood up, wiped sweat from her face, and looked at her watch. It was 2:20 p.m. Her mind was instantly swamped with all the problems clamoring for attention, calculations of time and distance and the unknown factor of direction and the need to do everything at once, but she brushed them aside. One thing at a time, and the next was to start the engine. She couldn’t stand the silence. Normally she disliked the noise as much as John did, but now she needed the comfort of it to be able to think.
Saracen
had come to rest and was rolling forlornly on the groundswell, completely becalmed and helpless on a sea as unruffled as glass and achingly empty in all directions to the far rim of the visible world, where it met the converging bowl of the sky. With John there, it was privacy, but now it was a loneliness that screamed.

She knelt and reached in under the engine-control panel. There were wires coming up to the ammeter as well as to the ignition switch, but she could identify them by location. There were only two to the switch. She twisted and yanked until she had broken them loose. She pulled them down into view and peeled the insulation from them with the knife; then she twisted the ends together, pulled the lever back to neutral, and pressed the starter button. The engine rumbled into life and began to roar. She eased the throttle back to idle.

Now …

All she had was the sun, and she’d only have that for another four hours—unless it disappeared before then behind a cloudbank or in a squall. She’d been facing directly aft, and it had come diagonally over her left shoulder, so facing forward she’d want it in the same place. It wasn’t much, she thought fearfully. But wait—she could do better than that.

What about the shadow of the mizzenmast, and her mark? If she projected the mark to the opposite side of the boat along the same plane she should be very near the reciprocal of the course he’d been steering. She grabbed up what was left of the heaving line, whirled, and caught the wire lifeline on the port quarter beside the cockpit. Three inches forward of the second stanchion, counting from aft. Right here. She made the end of the line fast, passed it ahead of the mizzen, and went up the starboard side with it. She pulled it taut, and then moved her end aft until it just touched the forward side of the mast. It intersected the starboard lifeline nearly midway between the third and fourth stanchions, again counting from aft. She tied it there, winding the surplus line three or four times around the wire to make it easier to see from the wheel.

At best it was still only a prayer, a stab in the dark. The bearing of the sun was going to change as it moved down toward the horizon, and there was no guarantee at all that Warriner had even gone back to his original course when he’d returned to the deck after smashing her compass. But, she thought, trying to still the fear inside her, all she had to do was come within four miles of
Orpheus
and she’d be able to see her.

She jumped back into the cockpit, pushed the lever into gear, ran the throttle up to about where Warriner had had it, and put the wheel over. Sitting on the port seat of the cockpit beside it, she could see her marker all right. She brought
Saracen
on around until the shadow of the mizzenmast fell on it, swinging back and forth on either side of it as she rolled. As she steadied up, she looked at her watch. It was 2:35 p.m.

How far, how many hours? It was a few minutes past two when Warriner had stopped the engine and thrown the key overboard. From nine this morning, that would be five hours since they’d left
Orpheus
—less the time he’d been below while
Saracen
was running God knew where with no one at the wheel. Call it four and a half hours—twenty-five to twenty-seven miles. At the same speed going back, she should be in the area at seven p.m. That would be a little after sunset, perhaps not quite dark, but by then she would be running blind.

So
Orpheus
had to be in sight by then, because there would be no second chance. If she weren’t there, she’d already sunk, or the course had been wrong, and with no compass the latter was as irreversible as the first. Within a half-hour she’d be hopelessly lost herself, with no idea where she was going or where she’d been. She couldn’t think about it. She tried to force everything from her mind but the mechanics of steering by the shadow of the mizzenmast and the continuing prayer that the sun would go on shining.

At a little after three she began to see the dark cloud in the north. The squall was still far over the horizon, but she couldn’t take a chance of running into it with all sail set; they might be knocked down or dismasted. But she hated to stop, even for a few minutes. It appeared to be moving to the westward at the same time it was coming nearer; maybe it would be gone by the time she got there. But she should take in sail anyway; the main and the jib were going to interfere too much with her view ahead. At a little after four, while the sun was momentarily obscured by a passing cloud, she stopped and took in everything. She was under way again in less than twenty minutes, with the sun visible once more on the thinning edge of the cloud.

Warriner had never moved since he’d fallen. She began to be afraid the three tablets had been too much and she’d killed him. She reached over and touched his throat, and she could feel the pulse. It was slow but steady.

At four-thirty she reached inside the hatch for the binoculars and began to search the horizon to port and then to starboard between corrections to the helm. There was the chance
Orpheus
had got a breeze and John had tried to follow them.

Her eyes encountered nothing but the empty miles of water and the far rim of that circle in which they seemed to be forever centered. The noise of the engine went on, they rose and fell in a long pitching motion as the glassy billows of the swell rolled up under her quarter, but they never appeared to move at all.

It was five o’clock. Five-thirty. The squall ahead was moving into the west and breaking up. Scattered clouds began to obscure the sun at intervals, but she went on, looking over her shoulder and trying to judge its position. She continued to search the horizon to port and starboard with the glasses. The sea was empty all around her. By six the tightness in her chest was becoming almost unbearable.

Six-thirty. The sun came out from behind another cloud, and it was far down now, less than a diameter above the horizon and beginning to redden in the haze. The shadow of the mizzenmast was gone. She stood up, holding the wheel with her right hand and steering with the sun just behind her left shoulder while she held the binoculars to her eyes and scanned the sea ahead.

The colors began. Far overhead the fleecy edges of clouds were touched with gold and then pink, darkening to crimson. The sun slid downward into the low cloudbank on the horizon, and in a moment it was gone from sight and there were only the vertical rays of pale lemon extending upward against the sky. Just for an instant the defenses of her mind gave way and she remembered sunsets she had watched with John here in this cockpit in the Bahamas and Caribbean and the Gulf of Panama. She began to tremble. She dropped the engine out of gear, pulled the throttle back to idle, and leaped up on deck. She climbed atop the main boom with an arm about the mast and slowly swung the binoculars all the way around from the already darkening east to the great flame of the afterglow in the west, and there was no sign of
Orpheus
anywhere. It was 7:05 p.m.

Ingram’s eyes were bleak as he looked down into the fading light of the main cabin. If you had any talent for kidding yourself, he thought, now would be a good time to break it out. With the two of them bailing and Mrs. Warriner at the pump, the water had gained several inches in the past half-hour. They must have lost whole planks off her outer skin in that squall.

He turned and searched the emptiness of the sea down to the southwest and then glanced at his watch. It was 6:50. He dropped the bucket on the deck and went back to the others. “Knock off a minute.”

Bellew looked at him inquiringly. Mrs. Warriner straightened and pushed damp hair back from a face deeply lined with fatigue. “You mean we’re gaining on it?”

He shook his head. “No. We’re not even keeping up with it. But a quarter of an hour one way or the other’s not going to make any difference, and before it gets too dark to see I want to have one more look around from the masthead.”

He slung the glasses around his neck and shackled the sling to the main halyard again. He climbed atop the boom and stepped into the sling with his lifeline around the mast. “Haul away,” he ordered. In the confused sea left behind by the squall,
Orpheus
was wallowing even worse than before, but he managed the tricky business of getting past the spreaders without accident. When he was up just short of the masthead light, he called down, “That’ll do. Make fast.”

They were lying on a southerly heading at the moment. Legs locked against the dizzying swing of the mast, he looked around him. In the east the blue was already beginning to darken with the coming of night, while off to starboard the sun had dropped over the horizon and the western sky was aflame. It was impossible to escape entirely the beauty of it or to seal the mind against all of memory’s infiltration, and he was glad he was up here where they couldn’t see his face. Then he put the glasses to his eyes and began a cold and methodical search of the horizon to the southwest, fighting the lunging of the mast. He moved on into the south, and around to the east, where the light was beginning to fade. Nothing. Still nothing …

Where was she now? Was she still alive?
The glasses began to shake. He lowered them and closed his eyes. The feeling passed in a moment, and he had control of himself again. He raised the glasses and came back, very slowly, across the whole area he had searched before, and then on into the dying fire and the wine-red sea of the west. He stopped abruptly. Something came up into his throat, and he swallowed. He tried to swing the glasses back, but for an instant he couldn’t. He was afraid to look again.

All right, he thought savagely; maybe you should have sent one of the men. He brought them back.

It was a mast.

Or was it?
Orpheus
rolled, and in the sickening swing out to port and back he lost the spot again. He got the line of the horizon in the glasses once more and inched to the right. There! It was only a tiny pencil stroke seen for an instant against the red glow of sunset. He locked his arms more tightly around the mast in an effort to stop the tremor of the glasses. It came into view, and this time he was certain he saw the other one beside it, the two of them like the tips of two toothpicks held at arm’s length before a fire. The shorter one was to the left.

“Lower away!” he shouted.

He knew what they had to do and made up his mind as he came down the mast. Below him, the others looked up silently, their faces almost red in the winy light. He landed on the boom, stepped out of the sling, and jumped down beside them.

“She’s over there,” he began. When they started to interrupt, he cut them off with a curt gesture. “Wait till I get through. She’s going to miss us. She’s hull down, even from up there; all I got was a glimpse of the masts against the sunset. She’s due west of us, headed north, and she won’t get any closer. From where she is, down on deck, we’re clear over the horizon, so there s no way in God’s world she can see us—”

“There’s no way we can signal her?” Mrs. Warriner asked.

“Just one. Set this one afire.”

“Oh.” She gave him a startled look, and then she was calm again. “Could she see it from over there?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?” Bellew interrupted. “That’s great.”

“Shut up.” He went on. “There’s a good chance. We’re to the east of her, so it’ll be dark behind us in another fifteen minutes. And there are enough clouds overhead to reflect the glow.”

“And if she doesn’t see us?” Bellew asked. “But don’t bother to tell me, let me guess. We take a taxi to the McAlpin Hotel—”

“We do the same thing we’re going to do anyway,” Ingram said coldly. “We drown. The water’s gained at least three inches on us in the past half-hour, with all three of us working. She won’t last till midnight.” They were wasting time with this idiotic argument. He swung around to Mrs. Warriner. “It’s your yacht, and you’re still aboard it—”

“Burn it, of course,” she said coolly.

Bellew shrugged. “Okay. What are we waiting for?”

“Will it burn?” she asked. “I mean, this low in the water, and with everything up here wet from the squall?”

“We’ll fire it in the chartroom,” Ingram replied. “There’s no gasoline left at all?”

“No.”

“What does your galley stove burn? Bottled gas, or kerosene?”

“Kerosene. There should be several cans of it in the locker forward.”

“Right. What about paint stores—turpentine, linseed oil, thinner?”

“There should be some of each.”

“Good.” He began to issue terse orders. “Get your passports, money, and the logbook; you can’t take anything else. Wrap them in something waterproof. Dump the water out of that dinghy and stow ‘em in there, along with a couple of flashlights. Put on lifebelts, and then you can give me a hand.”

Without even waiting for a reply, he whirled and ran down into the chartroom. He grabbed a flashlight from its bracket and went on down the steps and through the main and forward cabins, where the debris-laden water washed around his thighs. Opposite the sail bin was another locker. He unlatched the doors and yanked them open but could see nothing in the thickening gloom here below. He switched on the flashlight and wedged it between two of the sailbags. In an upper compartment were some tools and paint brushes. He spied a small hand ax and stuck the handle of it in his belt. The bottom of the locker was filled with buckets and rectangular one-gallon cans submerged and bumping together in the water that surged back and forth.

The buckets would be paint. He ignored them and began fishing out the cans. There were a dozen of them, mostly unidentifiable, the labels long since washed off, but it didn’t matter. An armful at a time, he carried them up the ladder going on deck from the forward cabin and dumped them beside the hatch. As he made the last trip he saw that Bellew and Mrs. Warriner had returned to the deck, wearing lifebelts, and Bellew had the dinghy up on its side, pouring the water out of it.

The great flame in the west was dying now, and the brief twilight of the tropics had already begun. He grabbed up two of the cans and ran aft.

“What now?” Bellew asked.

“Let’s get the dinghy over.” With a swing of the hand ax he knocked out one of the windows of the deckhouse and tossed the two cans in on the chartroom table. Mrs. Warriner was holding two flashlights and a package wrapped in oilskins. As she stowed them in the dinghy he noticed the compass had fallen out when Bellew had dumped out the water. It wasn’t broken. He put it back in.

“Grab the bow,” he said to Bellew. They lifted it over the lifeline and, when
Orpheus
rolled down, set it in the water. It rode lightly on the heavy swell passing beneath them. He handed the painter to Mrs. Warriner. “Take it aft and just wait. Keep it fended off so it doesn’t get caught under the counter.”

Whirling to Bellew, he said, “Bring up a couple of those spare sails from the locker. It doesn’t matter which ones. Dump ‘em there alongside the mainmast. And then bring all those cans aft, the ones around the forward hatch.”

“Where do you want ‘em?” Bellew asked.

“Just forward of the cockpit’s all right.” He turned and ran down the steps into the chartroom. Quick blows of the hand ax knocked out the rest of the windows. He began yanking drawers out of the chart table and smashing them with the ax after he had dumped out the charts. He tore charts into strips until he had a great armful of paper. He piled this on a corner of the table and threw the splintered drawers on top of it. With another blow of the ax he cut through one of the cans. As the liquid gushed out, he could tell by the smell of it that it was paint-thinner. He poured it over the paper and wood and cut open the other can. This one was kerosene. He swung it, splashing the bulkheads, the deck, and the table. Grabbing up another chart, he nicked his cigar lighter. The lighter was wet and required several attempts before it worked. He held it to the corner of the chart and, when it was burning, tossed it on the pile. With a great sucking sound it all burst into flame at once. He threw the rest of the charts on it and ran out.

Bellew had the two sailbags piled beside the mainmast now and was hurrying back and forth, carrying the cans aft. With his knife open, beginning at the end of the boom, Ingram went forward, slicing through the gaskets of the furled mainsail. When he reached the mast he unshackled the sling and made the halyard fast to the head of the sail again. Two more quick slashes split the sailbags. He hauled the sails out and stretched them along the deck, one atop the other. He grabbed up a line at random, cut off a length, made it fast around the two sails somewhere near the center, and hauled the whole cumbersome bundle over to the base of the mast. He made the line fast to the halyard above the shackle.

Bellew was passing then with the last of the cans. He grabbed two of them from his arms and swung the ax on them. The first was linseed oil. He poured it on the two sails. The other was kerosene. He dumped this on them also, and onto the mainsail, which was dangling in folds along the boom. He could hear the fire beginning to roar below him now, and smoke was pouring through the broken windows. “Give me a hand on this halyard,” he called out to Bellew.

They hoisted. The mainsail went up, and with it the great dangling mass of the two spare sails made fast to the head of it. Kerosene and linseed oil began to drip on them.

Bellew grunted. “For that real homey feeling, it ought to be gasoline.”

“If it breaks out of the chartroom,” Ingram said, “go right over the side;”

“Don’t give it a thought, sport. I just look stupid.”

It was up. Ingram threw the hitches on the pin, and they ran aft. Flame was beginning to lick through the broken windows. “Into the dinghy,” he ordered and nodded to Bellew. “You first. Take the oars.” Bellew stepped down into it and held it while he helped Mrs. Warriner in.

She protested. “Aren’t you going to get in?”

“It won’t take three; it’ll capsize.”

“But you haven’t even got a lifebelt—”

He cut her off. “I don’t need one. Pull clear and wait for me. I want this thing to go all at once, and go high—the higher the better. Get going.” He waved them off. Bellew shipped the oars and they began to draw away in the thickening dusk, heaving up and down on the swell.

There were eight of the rectangular cans on deck at the forward end of the cockpit. He set them up on end one at a time and began swinging the ax. The first was spar varnish. He picked it up and threw it forward. It landed just beyond the mainmast and slid, spilling its contents along the deck. The next was kerosene. It went up the other side of the deck. Turpentine. It followed the varnish. Paint-thinner. That was the trigger, the most volatile of them all. He set it aside, upright on the cockpit seat with his knee braced against it so it wouldn’t turn over and spill. Linseed oil. He threw it forward.

It bounced and slid, spraying along the deck. The whole interior of the chartroom was a roaring mass of flame now, and he could feel the heat on his face. The varnish on the underside of the main boom was beginning to bubble. He had to hurry. There were only seconds left before it broke out through the roof.

He swung the ax on another can, and another. Some of them had already slid overboard, but their contents had spilled, and the whole deck forward of him was crisscrossed with trails of varnish, linseed oil, turpentine, and kerosene, flowing across the planks and soaking into the seams. The final can was another of paint-thinner. He dropped the ax and picked it up, along with the other can, the one beside his knee.

He ran to the after end of the cockpit and jumped up onto the narrow strip of deck right on the stern. All right, honey, this is where we are. Wheeling, he threw the first can straight through a window into the inferno inside the chartroom, and while it was still in the air he threw the other and dived over the side.

Thirty yards away in the gathering night, Lillian Warriner turned and stared in wonder. My God, she thought, they shouldn’t match him against just one ocean at a time. Even while his body was still in the air, a great ball of flame burst out of the chartroom, taking the roof of the deckhouse with it and igniting the whole ketch forward of the cockpit in one mighty breath. Fire shot up the oil-soaked mainsail and ballooned in the two sails at the top of it to form—with the force of the explosion and the massive updraft from the heat below— a gigantic torch, a column of flame nearly a hundred feet high. It lit up the sea for a quarter-mile in every direction, and she could feel the heat of it on her skin.

Then he was alongside, with a hand on the gunwale. He dropped his sneakers into the dinghy. They rose as a swell passed under them. “You haven’t got much freeboard,” he said, “but I think it’ll ride if you don’t make any sudden moves. If it does swamp, the flashlights are more important than your passports and money. Try to keep at least one of them out of the water. There’s no use staying here; keep rowing west.”

Bellew turned his head, trying to see the dying band of color along the western horizon. “I’m blind,” he said, “with that glare in my face.”