Aground (11 page)

“Well, you couldn’t be blamed too much for believing him,” he said. “After all, he wasn’t a thief when you knew him before.”

“Don’t be so modest, Ingram. I was talking about how wrong I was about you.”

“Apparently there was an epidemic of it that night. I was wrong too. In fact, I was convinced I wasn’t going to like you, so I may have set a new record for being mistaken.”

Her face was a pale blur across from him in the thickening dusk. “Thanks, Skipper.”

He came alert then, suddenly aware it had been twenty minutes or more since they’d heard a shot from Morrison. Goofing off, he chided himself; they could get themselves killed. “We’d better get on the ball,” he said. “There are two ways Morrison can get aboard now—up the bobstay under the bowsprit, or up this anchor warp. Either way, though, he’ll make enough noise so we can hear him if we’re listening. I’ll be working back here, so you go forward. Lie down on the port side of the forward deckhouse and just listen. If you hear anything at all, sing out.”

“Right.” She disappeared into the darkness forward.

He sat still for a moment. The vast silence was unbroken except for another creak as the schooner lay over a little farther on the outgoing tide. He stood up and began taking down the awning. He rolled it up, deposited it on the deckhouse out of the way, and freed the main boom from its supporting gallows. The mainsail was jib-headed, so there was only one halyard; he unshackled it from the head of the sail, bent a piece of line to it, and hauled down on the fall at the base of the mast until he could reach the wire. He made the new nylon line fast at the thimble, hauled down on the other end again, carried it aft, and shackled it to the end of the boom. He also made two pieces of light line fast to the end of the boom for use as guys, since he was going to need the main sheet to hoist the ammunition boxes. He freed the lower end of the sheet.

After raising the boom with the topping lift until it was well clear of the gallows, he secured it, and hauled on the halyard until—as well as he could tell in the dark by feel—the strain was evenly divided between the two. This was important, because if either one had to take the load by itself it might part, in which case the other would carry away too. He swung the boom over a little to port to get it away from the gallows, and secured it with the guys. He stopped then to listen, and to put a hand on the tackle holding the anchor warp. There was only silence, and no vibration of any kind on the line. “You all right?” he called out softly in the darkness.

“Just fine, Skipper,” her answer came back.

The worst of it, he thought, was that there was no way to guess what Morrison would do, or what he might be planning out there in the dark. He was dangerous, and would be as long as he was alive and anywhere near. Even if there were no longer any hope of escape, he’d still kill them if he got the chance, just as pointlessly as he had killed Ruiz for trying to cross him. The shots at his head while he was taking out the kedge anchor proved that; if Morrison couldn’t escape, nobody was going to.

He muscled the five boxes of ammunition aft along the deck until they were under the outer end of the boom. Locating the rope slings he had cut, he put one about each box with a double wrap, crossing at right angles, and tied it off with a free end about eight feet long. He shackled the lower block of the main sheet to the sling where it crossed and hoisted away until the blocks were jammed and would go no farther, caught the free end of the sling, and made it fast about the boom and the furled sail several feet inboard from the end so as to have room to suspend all five of them. Then he slacked off with the tackle, and disengaged it. The second box went up, and the third. He stopped to listen for Morrison, and then cautiously hoisted the fourth. He was working right under the boom, and if anything carried away now he’d be crushed. Before he hoisted the fifth, he stood on it and reached up to push a hand against the twin wires of the topping lift and the halyard. It was all right; they appeared to be taking an equal strain. He hoisted the fifth box. Everything held. He sighed with relief and gently hauled the boom outboard just enough to suspend the boxes over the water a few feet off the port quarter. If it gave way now, at least they wouldn’t come crashing down on deck. He tied off the guy and secured the main sheet again to hold it in position. Ducking down into the cockpit, he flicked on the cigarette lighter and looked at his watch. It was 9:35. Low tide in about two hours, he thought; the deck was listing sharply to port now.

He slipped forward along the port side and knelt beside her. She sat up. “We’re all set,” he said. “Nothing to do now until high tide.”

“That’ll be about dawn, won’t it?”

“Right around there.”

“Do you think we’ll make it then?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “We’ll get off this time. But why don’t you go back to the cockpit and get some sleep? I’ll watch for Morrison.”

“You can’t watch both places at once.”

“Yes. I can sit here where I can keep a hand on this tackle holding the anchor warp. If he tries to climb it, I’ll feel the vibration.”

“I’d rather stay up and talk,” she said. “We can talk, can’t we?”

“Sure. As long as we keep a lookout.”

They slid aft until they were beside the cleat holding the tackle, and sat down on the sloping deck with their backs against the deckhouse in the velvet night overlaid with the shining dust of stars. There was no breath of air stirring, and no sound anywhere, and they seemed to be caught up and suspended in some vast and cosmic hush outside of time and lost in space. They sat shoulder to shoulder, unspeaking, with Ingram’s left hand resting lightly on the taut and motionless nylon leading aft, and when he put the other hand down on deck it was on hers and she turned hers slightly so they met and clasped together. After a long time she stirred and said in a small voice, “This is a great conversation, isn’t it? I hope I didn’t promise anything brilliant.” He turned and looked at the soft gleam of tawny hair and the pale shape of her face in the starlight and then she was in his arms and he was holding her hungrily and almost roughly as he kissed her. There was a wild and wonderful sweetness about it with her arms tight around his neck and the strange, miraculous breaching of the walls of loneliness behind which he had lived so long, and then she was pushing back with her hands against his shoulders.

“I think maybe we
had
better talk,” she said shakily.

“I expect you’re right,” he agreed. “But you’d better get started.”

“Two platoons of Morrisons in full pack and dragging a jeep could walk right over us and we wouldn’t even notice it.” She took a hurried breath, and went on. “And as to whether Morrison is the only hazard, I admit nothing. I plead the Fifth Amendment. But what do they do to these damn stars down here, anyway? Polish them? Now it’s your turn to say something, Ingram. You can’t expect me to carry on a conversation all by myself.”

“I think you’re magnificent,” he said. “Does that help?”

“Not a bit, and you know it. As a matter of fact, it can’t be much of a secret that I think you’re pretty wonderful yourself, but at least I told you so under perfectly ordinary, everyday circumstances, in bright sunlight with a man shooting at me with a rifle. I didn’t pull a sneaky trick like silhouetting my big square head against a bunch of cheap, flashy stars that anybody can see are phony. . . .” Her voice trailed off in a helpless gurgle of laughter, and she said, “Oh, I’m not making any sense. Why don’t I just shut up?”

When he raised his lips from hers she drew a finger tip along the side of his face and said softly, “You never have to hit Ingram twice with a cue. Not ol’ Cap Ingram. Do you think I’m pretty horrible?”

“Hmmm. No-o. That’s not the
exact
word I’d use.”

“I am, though. I’m as brazen as a Chinese gong and about as subtle as a mine cave-in. I’ve been sitting here for twenty minutes wondering when in Heaven’s name you were going to accept the fact you had to kiss me. All escape was cut off, and there was no honorable way to retreat.” He touched his lips gently to the puffed and battered eye. “Shut up,” he said.

“The only thing I didn’t realize was how fast it might start to get out of control. I should have, though. I worked so hard at trying to loathe you I was worn out to begin with. Did anybody ever tell you you’re a hard man to detest, Ingram? I mean, at a party or something, where there was one of those pauses in the conversation when everybody’s trying to think of something to say—”

She gasped as a bullet struck something above their heads and screamed off into the night. On the heels of it came the whiplash sound of the gun from somewhere directly behind them. They slid down and lay flat on deck against the side of the house. The rifle cracked three more times in rapid succession, two of the bullets striking the hull on the other side. She lay pressed against him; he could feel her trembling.

“I’m scared,” she whispered. “It’s gone on too long.”

“We’ll be away from here in the morning. And we’re perfectly safe down here.”

“You don’t think we ought to go back to the cockpit?”

“No. This is fine. We’ve got so much list now he couldn’t hit us if we were sitting up.” He was thinking of those boxes of ammunition suspended back there and wondering what would happen if they were hit. They probably wouldn’t explode, but some of the cartridges might fire. There were five evenly spaced shots then. Two of them struck the schooner’s hull.

“He’s nearer, isn’t he?” she asked.

“Yes. The tide’s gone out, so he’s waded out on the flat south of the sand spit.”

“How close can he get?”

“Not under a hundred and fifty yards. That channel is still over his head, even at dead low tide.” I wonder how he’s carrying the ammunition, he thought. Probably made a pack of some sort out of the blanket.

“How can he see to shoot in the dark?”

“He can’t, very well. You’ll notice he’s missing a lot. But he’s right down on the surface, firing at the silhouette, and he probably has something white on the muzzle of the rifle. Maybe a strip of his shirt.”

Another bullet struck the hull. Two apparently missed. Another hit. Subconsciously, he was counting. They would probably go through the planking from where he was firing now, and with the list the schooner had some of them would be below the water line, which was probably what Morrison had in mind. It wouldn’t matter, though, unless there were a great number of them; she had two bilge pumps, one power-driven, and could handle a lot of water.

“I’m tired of being shot at,” she said. “And sick to death of being so stinking brave about it. I want to have hysterics, like anybody else.”

He held her in his arms and spoke against her ear. “Go ahead.”

“It was mostly just blackmail. But keep talking there.”

“Do you know when it first dawned on me that I was probably crazy about you? It was when Ruiz came after you this morning, and I watched you wade out to the raft, torn pants, black eye—”

“Well, it figures, Ingram. Who could resist a vision like that?”

“No.” He groped for words to express what he had actually seen, the crazy honesty of her, the insouciance, the blithe and unquenchable spirit. “You were so—so damned
undefeated.”

“Let’s don’t talk about me. I want to hear about you.”

The firing went on. They talked. He told her about Frances, and about the
Canción,
and Mexico, and the boatyard in San Juan. He mentioned the fire only briefly but she sensed there was more to it, and drew the rest of the story from him.

“That’s why you limp sometimes, isn’t it?” she asked quietly. “And what you were dreaming about when you were beating at the sand.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Ingram, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right now.”

The schooner’s list increased as the tide approached dead low, and it was difficult clinging to the sloping deck. The shooting stopped for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then started again. He had to go back after more ammunition, Ingram thought. If he’s going to swim out here, he’ll do it on the flood so if he doesn’t get aboard he can make it back. He wouldn’t tackle it on the ebb because he might get carried out to sea. Flicking on the lighter for an instant, he looked at his watch. It was a few minutes past midnight. The tide should have turned already. There was another shot. I’d better go below and check now, he thought, while I’m still sure where he is. He told her.

“You think water’s coming in?” she asked.

“Maybe a little. If there is, we’ll pump it out.”

“You won’t be long?”

“No.”

“If anything happens to you—”

He kissed her. “What could happen?” He crawled aft and dropped into the cockpit just as Morrison shot again. Somewhere in the blackness below there was the sound of running water. That didn’t make sense. It couldn’t run in, not that way. He started down the crazily slanting ladder and even before his head came below the level of the hatch he smelled it, and the old nightmare of terror reached up to engulf him. He lost his grip on the handrail and fell, and wound up against the port bulkhead under the radiotelephone, on his hands and knees in the cold lake of gasoline that extended up out of the bilge as the boat lay over on her side. He could hear it still running out of the punctured tanks in the darkness behind him as he fought against the whisperings of panic. If he lost his head completely and ran into something the fumes might kill him before he could get out. He pushed off the bulkhead and reached upward, groping for the ladder. His fingers brushed it. Then he was up in the cockpit, stretched out on the cushions on the port side, shaking all over and trying to keep from being sick. His hands and his legs from the knees down were very cool from the evaporation of the gasoline.

11

He thought of her, and hoped she hadn’t heard him come up. He needed a few minutes alone to pull himself together; he couldn’t face her this way. But still he was going to have to tell her; there was no way to avoid it. Their chances of escape were almost gone now, and until he got the last of that gasoline out of there they were living on a potential bomb. A pint of gasoline in the bilge could form an explosive mixture in the air inside a boat, and they had two hundred gallons of it. Just one spark from anything—static electricity, a light switch, even a short circuit in the electrical system from one of Morrison’s bullets—and the
Dragoon
would go up like a Roman candle.

Using the engine was out of the question. Even if any fuel remained in the tanks when the schooner righted herself, trying to start it would be an act of madness when the slightest spark at the starter brushes or the generator could blow them out of the water. And even after he pumped the bilges dry, it wouldn’t be safe; not for days.

They had to be washed out, and ventilated. But the mere consideration of these technical matters was beginning to have its calming effect; potentially ghastly as they might be, they were still technical, and fear receded as the professional mind took over. They didn’t need the damned engine to get back to Florida, if they could only get her afloat. And there was still a chance of that—a slight one, but a chance. Pumping the gasoline out would lighten her by another thousand to fifteen hundred pounds, and they might be able to pull her off with the kedge alone now that he had the gear rigged to haul her down on her side. At that moment another bullet slapped into the hull up forward and the sound of Morrison’s rifle came to him across the water. That completed the job. He had hated few people in his life, but right now he hated Morrison, and he thought of him with a cold and implacable anger. They wouldn’t be defeated by him. If it’s the last thing I ever do on earth, he thought, I’m going to beat him.

He slipped forward along the deck. When he knelt beside her, she said, “I smell gasoline.”

“It’s on me, a little on my trousers.” He told her about it. She took it well, as he should have known she would. “I don’t think it’s going to change things too much. We may still get off on this tide. Just remember, don’t smoke. Don’t turn on a light. Don’t even go below. And that means even after I get it pumped overboard.”

“I understand. What shall I do?”

The schooner creaked as she came up a little in the darkness. “Just listen for Morrison,” he said. “As long as he’s shooting, it’s all right, but the tide’s flooding now and it’ll drive him off that flat pretty soon. If he’s going to try to get aboard it’ll be within the next few hours. Go right up to the corner of the forward deckhouse so you’ll be sure to hear him. The gasoline going overboard will make some noise.”

“Right, Skipper.”

“You’re magnificent. Or did I tell you that?”

“You can be as repetitious as you want. I don’t mind at all. Actually, I’m scared green. You just can’t see it.”

He took her face between his hands. “I’m going to get us out of here.”

“Have I ever doubted it?” she asked. “You might call me a fan. I’ve been watching you in operation for the past—good Lord, has it only been two days?”

“All I’ve done so far is lose.”

“That could be a matter of opinion, Ingram. But, listen—if you expect me to keep my mind on Morrison, we’re going to have to spread out.”

She disappeared into the darkness forward. He went back to the cockpit. There was no way now to tell what time it was, but it must be after one. High tide would be between 4:30 and 5:30; call it four hours from now. Using the power-driven bilge pump was out of the question now, of course, since they couldn’t start the engine, but the hand pump would empty it easily in less than an hour and still take care of any water that might seep in through Morrison’s bullet holes. It was on the narrow bridge deck between the cockpit and the break of the deckhouse. He groped around until he found the plate that covered it, grabbed the handle, and began pumping. He could hear the gasoline going over the side in a satisfying stream. Off in the darkness to starboard Morrison’s rifle cracked, but there was no sound of the bullet’s striking the boat. Five minutes went by. The gasoline continued to flow; he’d have it out in a half hour, he thought, the way it was going. Then the handle became harder to raise, and the sound of the stream died to a trickle. It stopped. He cursed, wearily and bitterly, sunk for a moment in utter despair. Damn Tango and his filthy housekeeping. There was no telling what kind of mare’s nest of litter there was in the bilges.

The answer, of course, was simple enough; go down there, locate the suction, and clear it. He thought of it, and shuddered—thought of the dead blackness so impenetrable that directions ceased to have any meaning, of kneeling in gasoline and running his arms down in it while the flaming torch that was Barney Gifford did its frenzied and spasmodic dance along the perimeter of his mind. He mopped sweat from his face. Well, she thinks you’re a grown man; either go down and do it, or go up there and tell her that she’s wrong. It’s all mental, anyway; as long as there’s nothing to set it off, it’s harmless, provided you come up for air before you breathe too much of it. He began taking off his clothes. He put the gun and his watch and sneakers on the seat beside them so he could find them in the darkness, and went down the ladder clad only in his shorts.

At the bottom, he turned and faced aft, visualizing the location of the pump. The cabin sole was dry here, near amidships; the gasoline that had come out of the bilge was out near the bulkhead as she lay over on her side. He could hear it still running out of the tanks, but not as strongly now. Kneeling, he groped around until he found the access hatch, and lifted it out. He started to think of Barney, and the nightmare began to crowd in around the edge of his mind. He pushed it back and concentrated coldly on the job. The fumes were choking him; it was time to go up for air. He went up the ladder until his head and shoulders were out of the hatch, breathed deeply for two or three minutes, and returned. Locating the opening, he groped around in the gasoline beneath it, but couldn’t find the bilge pump suction. He stepped down into it, in gasoline up to his knees, knelt down, and felt further aft. There it was. He could feel the soggy mass of papers around it. The fumes were beginning to make him sick now. He pulled the papers out and threw them toward the starboard side of the cabin. Then he became aware that there were more, both on the bottom under his feet and floating free where he had stirred them up with his splashing around. He felt one brush against his hand, caught it, and lifted it out, and from its size and shape he was pretty sure what it was. Somebody had stored cans of food in the bilges without removing the labels.

He swore softly in the darkness, and managed to fish out three more. A bullet tore through the planking with a splintering sound and slapped into the bulkhead somewhere just forward of him. He shuddered, thinking of the electrical circuits, but went on groping. Then it occurred to him that he was doing more harm than good. As long as they were lying on the bottom they probably wouldn’t get into the suction, but he was stirring up more than he was getting out. He climbed back to the cockpit, wiped the gasoline off his legs and arms with the towel, and began pumping. In five minutes the suction was clogged again.

He went down into the blackness and the fumes and the border country of nightmare once more, and was crouched knee-deep in gasoline with his face just above its surface when he froze suddenly and the skin along his back drew tight with the stabbing of a thousand needles. It was a sound, the familiar, homelike throbbing of an electrical appliance nobody ever really listened to—the refrigerator motor. He’d forgotten all about it until now; the thermostat had tripped, and it had come on. He waited for the white and blinding flash of the explosion. Nothing happened. Seconds ticked away. His legs were trembling, but he breathed again, softly, almost tentatively, as though even daring to hope might tip the scales the other way.

There was nothing he could do. He could go forward to the galley and disconnect it, but breaking the circuit while there was a load on it would cause a spark. None of the switches or electrical fittings aboard were vapor-proof. He went on waiting. A full minute must have gone by now. Maybe the fumes weren’t as dense up there, since the bulk of the gasoline was aft. Strength began to return to his legs and arms, and his mind cleared sufficiently to warn him of the other and ever-present danger—asphyxiation. He hurriedly cleared the pump suction and went back up the ladder. The motor was still humming its industrious way along the edge of eternity.

He caught the pump handle, and for a second he was conscious of a crazy impulse to laugh and wondered if he’d begun to crack. Even this simple act of pumping the stuff overboard could blow it up; the friction of the gasoline against the walls of the pipe and against the air and the water as it fell over the side into the sea generated enough static electricity to set it off. Except for the saving grace of the almost saturated humidity around them, they’d probably be dead already. He went on pumping. After a while you get numb, he thought; you can’t absorb any more, so it rolls off. This time it was nearly ten minutes before the pump clogged. As the trickle died and silence closed over the boat once more, he became aware that the refrigerator motor had cut out. He went below, groped his way forward, and pulled out the plug. He cleared the suction, and returned to the pump. In less than two minutes it choked off again. He went below and cleared it. When he came back he vomited over the side and his skin was inflamed and itching from immersion in the gasoline. He pumped. It was scarcely twenty strokes before the stream died to a trickle and quit. He sat down on the cockpit seat.

It was hopeless. He was never going to pump it overboard until it was light down there and he could see those papers and get them all out at once. Dipping the towel over the side to wet it, he scrubbed at his legs and arms in an attempt to get some of the gasoline off them, and put his clothes back on. The taste of defeat was bitter in his mouth and he wanted to smash his fists against the deck. Maybe they would never get the
Dragoon
off. They were doomed to stay here forever—or until some random spark blew them into flaming wreckage.

No! He stood up. They weren’t whipped yet; there was still the fresh water. He slipped forward and knelt beside Rae Osborne. “I may have got a third of it out,” he added, after he had told her about it. “Pumping some of the fresh water overboard will help too. We’ve still got a chance.”

“Of course we have. She’s coming up all the time.”

He’d been oblivious to the passage of time, and wondered how long they had now until high tide. “How long has it been since there was a shot from Morrison? I forgot about him.”

“Nearly a half hour.”

That was ominous. He hated leaving her up here alone, trying to watch both ends of the boat at once, but he had to get that water out. Every pound was important. Then he had an idea. “Did you ever do any fishing?”

“Once or twice.” She sounded puzzled. “Why?”

“That’s what you’re going to do right now.” He went aft to the cockpit and groped around for a piece of line that was long enough. Making one end fast around the anchor warp, he came forward, paying it out, and put it in her hand. “Pull it taut, and just hold it. If he gets on back there, you’ll feel him.”

“Fine. Where will you be?”

“In the galley. Just yell, and I’ll be here in five seconds.”

He slipped down the forward hatch and felt his way back to the galley. The pump was over the sink. He groped around until he found several pots, filled them with water, and set them aside for insurance. There was no telling how much was in the tanks, and if he pumped them dry before he realized it, they would be in trouble. He began pumping into the sink and letting it run overboard. The gasoline fumes weren’t as bad here as in the after cabin, but they were still too strong to breathe for very long. He opened the porthole above the sink and leaned forward to get his face in front of it. He was all right then. A timber creaked as the schooner righted herself a little more on the rising tide. He wondered how much longer they had, and increased the tempo of his pumping. Sweat dripped from his face. If he could get even a hundred gallons overboard it would lighten the schooner by at least another eight hundred pounds. Then it occurred to him that if many of Morrison’s bullet holes were below the water line as the tide came up and she righted herself, salt water might be running into the bilges faster than he was pumping out the fresh. Well, there was nothing he could do about it. Maybe it was hopeless, and had been from the first. It was beginning to seem now that he had been aboard this grounded boat forever, and he wondered if he would even recognize the feel of one that was afloat and free beneath his feet.

He heard her footsteps on deck, and then she spoke softly near the porthole. “Skipper?”

Morrison, he thought, and felt for the gun against his stomach. “Yes?”

“Everything’s all right. I just wanted to tell you it’s getting pink in the east. I can see the water a little now, and it seems to be hardly moving.”

He hurried on deck. She was right. It was still too dark to see the sand spit, but there was definitely a touch of color in the east. He strained his eyes outward toward the surface of the water, and could make out that the tide was flooding very slowly now. They’d be at the peak in less than half an hour.

“Here we go,” he said. “Keep your fingers crossed.”

“Right. But is there anything I can do of a more practical nature?”

“There will be, very shortly. Just wait here. It’ll be almost an hour before he has light enough to use that scope-sighted rifle, so I’m going to haul with the anchor windlass this time. We’ll get this schooner off or pull her in two.”

He hurried aft and gathered up the free end of the warp. Then he returned to the bow, threw five or six turns on the windlass drum, set the ratchet, and handed her the end. “Just hang on,” he said. He inserted the bar in one of the slots at the edge of the drum, and winched it upward. The warp came taut. Going aft again, he slacked the tackle and cast it off. The warp was clear the full length of the deck except at the corner of the forward deckhouse. It wasn’t much of a fairlead, but it would have to do.