Dead calm Page 7

  They’d made less than a mile. It was 12:10 p.m.

  * * *

  Her face hurt. It was lying on something hard that went up and down and wove back and forth the way the floor had the only time in her life she’d ever been drunk, and there was that same sick feeling in her stomach. Somewhere a long way off there was an engine sort of noise that seemed to have been going on forever, and just audible above it, or through it, a voice was singing. It was an old, very sentimental popular song, one she hadn’t heard for years, but it was still familiar. What was it? Oh. “Charmaine.” That was it. She rolled over. Some powerful light glared beyond her closed eyelids, and she grasped that it was sunlight. She opened them and squinted with pain. Just beyond her was a pair of wide and very sun-tanned shoulders surmounted by a gold-thatched head. At the same moment the head turned, still singing, and Hughie Warriner regarded her with concern, which gave way to evident relief. He smiled. It was a charming and affectionate smile, and there was something almost chiding about it. She tried to scream, or to move, but could do neither.

  The song stopped. “See, you’re all right,” he said. “Now aren’t you sorry you made me do it?”

  6

  John wasn’t here. The paralysis of shock snapped then, and she screamed. “Where are we? Where are you going? We’ve got to go back!”

  Warriner gave no indication he’d even heard her. She tried to sit up and was assailed by vertigo. The ocean tilted while nausea ballooned inside her, and she collapsed, fighting to keep from being sick. She closed her eyes for an instant to stop the whirling, and when she opened them Warriner had turned forward again to look into the compass. He was sitting in the helmsman’s seat in the back of the cockpit, just beyond her legs. He reached a hand around and caught her left ankle, not tightly or roughly, but merely as though to soothe her or to reassure himself she hadn’t disappeared.

  She cringed and tried to scuttle backward, but there was nowhere to go; behind her was only the sea. She was cut off; she couldn’t reach the wheel or the ignition switch, or even the rest of the boat, without getting past him. There was nothing to hit him with, even if she had the strength.

  The hand slid down her ankle and was caressing her bare foot. He turned around again. “You have such beautiful feet,” he said. “And women so seldom do. I mean, they do to start with, but they ruin them. Especially European women.”

  She could only stare in horror.

  “In fact, I’ve often wondered if Gauguin didn’t run away to Polynesia simply because he was revolted by the feet of European models.” His eyes sought hers in a glance that was amused and intimate, as though they shared some secret joke. “Of course it’s silly. It’s just something you say to clods at cocktail parties.”

  Dear God, how did you get through to him? “Listen!” She made it to a sitting position this time, lurched once as Saracen rolled, and caught herself with a hand on the lifeline. “Please! We’ve got to go back! Don’t you understand? Turn around. Turn. Like this.” She made a lateral motion with her free hand, as though trying to explain the mechanics of wheel-turning to an idiot or to someone who spoke another language. She realized immediately this was wrong, but was too frantic to know how to correct it. She went on, the words tumbling over each other in her haste. “Let me! Let me take it!”

  “No.” The smile disappeared. He gave a petulant little shrug, as though she had disappointed him, and faced forward to stare into the binnacle again.

  She turned and looked wildly astern. How far had they come? At first she couldn’t even see the other boat and felt herself begin to give way to panic. Then she made it out, almost hull down on the horizon directly behind them. There was no chance at all of seeing the dinghy at that distance, and she didn’t know what had become of John. Except that he wasn’t here, and they were already nearly three miles away and going farther with every minute. She was the only chance he had. She turned back and caught Warriner’s shoulder. “Go back! We’ve got to go back!”

  He brushed her hand off. “Please, Mrs. Ingram, do you have to shout? You’re being unreasonable again.”

  “Un—un—Oh, God!” She tried to calm herself; if she went to pieces she’d never get through to him. “Unreasonable? Can’t you understand? My husband’s back there. We can’t go off and leave him. He’ll drown.”

  Warriner dismissed the whole subject of Ingram with an abstracted wave of the hand. “He won’t drown.”

  “But the boat’s sinking—”

  “It probably won’t. Anyway, he wanted to go aboard there, didn’t he? It’s his own fault.” He turned and looked at her, as though puzzled by her refusal to grasp so obvious a fact. Then he went on, as if talking to himself. “My trouble has always been that I trust people too much. I don’t see their real motives until too late…”

  It was hopeless, she realized then. Communication was impossible. Then what was left? Try to take the wheel away from him? Even in her desperation she realized the futility of that. And if she provoked him to violence again, this time he might kill her or throw her overboard. It wasn’t fear of being hurt or even killed that made her rule that out, or reserve it as a final gamble when everything else had failed, but merely the simple, monolithic fact that her staying on here and staying alive represented the only chance they had. She had to try every other possibility first. But what? Then the answer occurred to her: she couldn’t make him turn back, but at least she could stop his going any farther. It was still dead calm, and there was a good chance it would remain that way for hours, or even the rest of the day; if she could disable the engine, John might be able to reach them in the dinghy. But access to it was below; she had to get down into the cabin. Would he let her?

  She pushed herself to her knees, grasping the lifeline, and made a tentative move to go past him along the deck on the starboard side of the cockpit. “I—I feel sick at my stomach,” she said. “I’ve got to go to the head.”

  He gestured toward the rail. “Why not there?”

  “I don’t like being sick in public.”

  “No, of course not,” he said sympathetically. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that.”

  She wasn’t conscious of the utter madness of this conversation until she was halfway down the ladder, and wondered if she was losing contact with reality herself. All the landmarks and reference points of rational existence had been so suddenly jolted out of position, she couldn’t orient herself. It was as though they were threatened with destruction by the blind and impersonal trajectories of some hitherto placid machine that had run amok through a short circuit in its wiring. Warriner perhaps didn’t intend any harm to either of them; they just happened to be in his path. Nor was he threatening her with violence or placing her under any restraint; she was merely powerless to do anything about him.

  He couldn’t see down into the cabin from where he was, in the aft end of the cockpit; once she was down the ladder she was out of sight. The engine was installed under the cockpit, and access to the compartment was through a removable panel in the after bulkhead of the cabin. She turned and was on the point of lifting the panel out when it occurred to her she had no idea at all what she was actually going to do. Disabling the engine had a fine sound to it—but just how did she disable it, and what was she going to do afterward?

  The minute it stopped he would come hurrying down the ladder to find out what had happened. And even if she’d succeeded in sabotaging it beyond immediate repair it might be hours before John got here. It would be some time before he was sure Saracen had stopped, and it would take at least an hour to row a dinghy this far. She had to have some line of retreat, a place to barricade herself where Warriner couldn’t reach her. The companion hatch itself couldn’t be fastened from inside. The head? No, the door was too light. Warriner could smash the panel out of it with one kick. The forward cabin, that was the answer. The door was heavier and had a bolt inside. Also there were the cases of stores and the heavy sailbags to barricade it with.

  Just hu
rry, she thought. She lifted the panel out and was assailed by sudden fear as the noise level, already high, increased. Would he notice it? She looked fearfully up at the hatch, expecting to see it darken. Nothing happened. Where he was sitting was almost above it; probably the difference in noise level was too small to be apparent up there. The compartment was dark, but there was a light switch just inside the entrance. She flicked it on and leaned in.

  The engine had been running at nearly full throttle for a half-hour, and in addition to its ear-shattering racket the compartment was filled with the fumes of hot paint and burning oil. She felt nausea push up into her throat again. The engine itself was in the center of the small space, with the starting and lighting batteries on her right and a metal locker containing spare parts and tools on her left.

  She studied it, searching for a vulnerable spot to attack. Though she had once been a sports-car enthusiast and had for a short period in her life owned an agency for one of the European cars, she knew little more about gasoline engines than does the average woman. She was aware, however, that they could be stopped by shutting off either the gasoline supply or the spark that exploded it. There was a valve in the small copper line coming from the fuel tank to the connection on the engine, but closing that would solve nothing. She could take a hammer from the toolbox and smash the line itself, but that would let the fuel drain into the bilges and convert the boat into a potential bomb. Then how about pulling loose a bunch of wires? That was better, but still not perfect. Warriner could replace them in less than an hour. Then her glance fell on the distributor. There was the answer. Smash that, and the power plant was permanently out of commission.

  Then she had a better idea. Why not just remove the cap, where the wires came out? She could take it into the cabin with her; the engine couldn’t run without it, and when John got aboard he could replace it and they’d still have the engine intact. She’d watched him take it off to clean the contacts and was certain she knew how to do it. All it required was pulling out those five wires and releasing the two spring clips on the sides, and then it lifted right off. But even that would take longer than the single hammer-blow it would require to smash it, and if he made it down here before she was locked in he would simply replace it after he’d taken it away from her. She paused, undecided, and was about to abandon the idea when another occurred to her.

  How many times had John cautioned her never—no matter how short of space she was around the galley—to set anything on the ladder? To the person descending, it was invisible until he’d stepped on it and fallen. She whirled and reached into the stowage racks above the sink and brought out three saucepans. She set them in a row on the next-to-bottom step; under way, Saracen wasn’t rolling heavily enough to throw them off within the next few minutes, which was all the time she needed.

  She bent over and crawled into the compartment. With the metal locker pushing against her back and the bottom of the cockpit crowding her above, it was difficult to balance herself against the corkscrew motion of the boat’s stern. Here right up against the engine the racket was deafening, and she could feel herself growing sick again from the fumes. She turned slightly, so as to be headed outward. Now—

  She yanked out the wire in the center of the cap. The roar of the engine cut off abruptly. She began furiously snatching out the other four, the ones to the spark plugs. She had three of them loose and was reaching for the fourth when Saracen rolled down to port and she lost her balance. She fell over on the engine, her left forearm against the hot exhaust manifold. The sudden pain was too much for her already nauseated stomach. All the strength drained out of her and she collapsed, vomiting onto the floorboards beside the engine. Light footsteps sounded in the cockpit pressing against the top of her head.

  Maybe even now there wasn’t time to get out. But she had to have the cap; she’d never get another chance. She groped blindly for the last wire and had it in her hand when she was seized by another spasm of sickness. She tore it loose, still vomiting, and clawed at the spring clips on the side. The cap came free. She propelled herself toward the opening, and as her head emerged she saw Warriner’s bare legs hurrying down the ladder, above her and to her right. She was cut off; she’d taken a second too long.

  Then his right foot came down on the outer rim of one of the saucepans. It flew from under him and he landed amid a metallic crashing at the foot of the ladder. She was out of the engine compartment now, and if she could get by him before he got to his feet she might make it. As she shot past he threw out an arm and caught her ankle. She pulled free but was spun off balance, and she fell over against the port bunk. He had rolled over and was scrambling to his feet. She bounced off the bunk, somehow still clutching the distributor cap, and flung herself toward the entrance to the forward cabin. She was in. She slammed the door, but before she could throw the bolt he hit it from the other side.

  It came inward. She had her shoulder against it, but her feet were slipping along the deck as she was forced back. Without something to brace herself against, the outcome was inevitable. She looked behind her and saw the piled sailbags on the port bunk just beyond her legs. Putting her right foot up against them, she managed to straighten the leg enough to lock her knee. It was impossible to force him back, but the door wasn’t open enough for him to squeeze through. She could hear his feet sliding on the deck outside as he tried to get enough traction to bring his full strength to bear. A minute went by. She could feel herself growing faint, and her knee was beginning to tremble.

  She still had the distributor cap in her hand and tried frantically to think of some way to dispose of it. Maybe she could toss it behind something. No. He knew she had had it when she ran in here; he’d find it, no matter what she did with it. But it was made of plastic; maybe if she slammed it down hard enough it would break. She shifted it to her free right hand and threw it with the last of her strength against the planking of the deck. It bounced upward at a slight angle, caromed off the sailbags, passed under her straining and almost horizontal body, and came down, spinning, near the bulkhead, less than a foot from the partially opened door, still intact. If he reached in he could pick it up.

  He had never uttered a word. She could hear only his labored breathing and the scuffing of his sneakers against the deck on the other side of the door, and the decreasing sounds of water going past the hull as Saracen slowed and came to rest. There was a quality of horror somehow in this very absence of speech that made her shiver. She couldn’t hold out much longer; her leg was going to buckle any second.

  She threw herself suddenly to the left, releasing the door. It flew inward, and he shot past her, losing his balance and falling to the deck between the bunks. She scooped up the distributor cap and ran through the after cabin toward the ladder. If she could only make it into the open before he caught her she could throw it overboard. Her head and shoulders were above the hatch, and she was drawing back her arm to throw it, when she was caught from below. It dribbled out of her hand and into the bottom of the cockpit. She managed to kick free, ran up the last two steps, and leaped into the cockpit after it. She had it in her hand when his weight landed on her from behind and she was slammed down on the port seat of the cockpit with the hand pinned beneath her body.

  But he made no effort to reach beneath her and pull it out; his hands were digging at the back and sides of her neck as he tried to close his fingers around her throat. She hunched her shoulders up and pulled her chin down, grinding her face against the cushion. Then his weight was suddenly gone from her shoulders and she was lifted and thrown onto her back. She kicked out with her legs and struck at his face, but his hands were around her throat now and tightening. The contorted face and wild eyes were just above hers, and she closed her own eyes to shut them out.

  The struggle was utterly silent except for a faint whining sound he made deep in his throat and the sibilant whisperings of their violence against the plastic cushion. She could no longer breathe, and the sunlight penetrating her closed eyelid
s began to fade downward through darkening shades of pink toward final blackness. But her hand was free now. Just as consciousness was slipping away she raised it and threw the distributor cap outward. There was no sound of its striking the deck, so it must have gone into the water. Or maybe she was already beyond hearing…

  Then, strangely, she was breathing again. The hands were gone from her throat. She opened her eyes. He had stood up and was leaning across her, with his hands on the port life-line, as though he’d forgotten her. She couldn’t see his face. She slid cautiously backward, toward the forward end of the cockpit. He paid no attention. She eased herself upright, poised to leap toward the hatch, and glanced fearfully once more in his direction to see if he had turned. This time she saw his face and understood. She looked outward in the same direction.

  It was the distributor cap. It had landed just off the port side, and with Saracen now lying at rest on the surface it was sinking almost straight below them through sunlit water as clear as gin. And as he had the other time at the bottle, he was staring down at it with horror and with some sick but inescapable compulsion as it slipped from side to side and then began a gentle spiral that would end in the ooze and the darkness two miles below. The agony of his face was indescribable. He screamed then and collapsed into the bottom of the cockpit with his face pressed into the seat cushion.