There was still no wind. The water lay flat as oil, reflecting the metallic glare of the sun. The day was going to be like the inside of a furnace, Ingram thought; and in a little over an hour the tide would be running out across here at two or three knots. He wondered if Morrison had even thought of that. Probably not; he seemed to be in the grip of obsession and incapable of seeing obstacles at all. They crossed the channel, and the sandy bottom began to come up toward them. Morrison was peering down into the water. “Hold it,” he ordered. He slid his legs over and stood up; the water was only waist deep. They were still a little over a hundred yards from dry ground, and it was approximately twice that far back to the schooner. “All right,” he said. “Start bringing ‘em over.” Ingram turned and rowed back toward the Dragoon. The big man waded on ashore through progressively shallower water, put the BAR and his bottle of water on the sand, and stood watching. The pain in Ingram’s head had subsided to a dull throbbing, but the dried blood made his face feel stiff and caked. He dipped up water and washed it while he coldly sized up their chances of escape. You couldn’t give them much. How about trying for it in the raft? The BAR was a short-range weapon and not very accurate at this distance, so if they could give Ruiz the slip—No. The nearest land was the west coast of Andros, seventy-five miles away, and even if they made it before they choked to death on their tongues, they were still nowhere. There were no settlements on that side, nothing but swamp and mosquitoes and a maze of stagnant and forbidding waterways; they’d never get across the island. Forget the raft. They had to take the schooner. Play for Ruiz, he thought; they’d be working together loading the crates onto the raft. Watch for a chance to yank him overboard and make him lose the gun.
He came alongside. Ruiz had four cases out of the cabin now, stacked on deck beside the forward end of the cockpit with their ends projecting outward. The Latin himself was standing in the cockpit behind them with the .45 stuck in his trousers.
Ingram caught one of the lifeline stanchions. “Give me a hand.”
Ruiz shook his head. “You don’t need any help.”
“So. A general.”
“Go ahead. Slide them down.”
“El Libertador himself. It’s too bad we haven’t got a horse so you could pose for an equestrian statue.”
Ruiz looked bored. “Put away the needle, Ingram. You’re wasting your time.”
Apparently he’d guarded prisoners before. It didn’t look very promising.
“Cómo está la cabeza?” Ruiz asked.
So he couldn’t resist the temptation to do a little needling of his own, Ingram thought. “The head is nothing, my General,” he replied in Spanish. “In the great cause of freedom, I spit on all discomfort. Rut let us consider the General’s neck. How does it stretch?”
“Shut up and start moving those crates,” Ruiz said in English, “before you get another lump on your head.”
Ingram shrugged, and began easing one of the boxes down into the raft. It was an awkward maneuver, but he managed it without capsizing. He slid another down beside it. They lay between his outstretched feet and projected out over the stern.
“Will it carry another?” Ruiz asked. “See for yourself, cabrón.” The raft was down by the stern, and cranky. One more would make it unmanageable or capsize it. “Okay. Get going.”
He rowed up around the bow of the schooner and across the channel. Morrison had waded out again, without the gun, and was standing in waist-deep water waiting for him. The shirt stretched across his massive chest and shoulders was wet with sweat. “Shake it up, Herman. You’re taking too long.”
“This is not my idea,” Ingram replied coldly.
“Never mind your idea. Try dragging your feet, and you’ll get worked over with a gun barrel.” He heaved one of the crates over his left shoulder, took the other under his arm, and went plowing across the flat toward dry ground. As if they were empty, Ingram thought. He looked at his watch; it was seven minutes past eight. At the end of the next round trip he checked the time again and saw it had taken eleven minutes. Call it five trips an hour. Two hundred pounds each time—that would mean at least fourteen hours to move seven tons. And just one way. They’d still have to wait for the next tide, try to get her off, and bring it all back. And he was clocking it at slack water; wait’ll that tide started to run.
On the next trip, while Morrison was picking up the crates, he said, “This’ll take three days, at the minimum.”
The big man scarcely paused. “So?”
“She’ll never make it across the Caribbean, anyway. She’s overloaded.”
“This is June; she’ll make it. Hollister said so.”
“Sure. He said he could navigate, too. And look where you are.”
“Shut up and get going.”
An hour went by. The current was picking up now as the tide ebbed westward off the bank; with each trip it became worse. By ten o’clock perspiration was running from his body and his arms ached from the battle with the oars. It was the loaded trip that was the killer; he was quartering across the current with the raft low in the water, and he had to point farther and farther upstream in order to make it before he was swept away to the west of the sand spit. In another half hour he had to row straight upstream from the schooner until he was above Morrison, and then turn across. It took fifteen minutes of furiously paced rowing, during which a slow or missed beat meant losing ground already gained. When Morrison caught hold of the raft, water was running past his legs.
Ingram looked at him through the blur of sweat in his eyes. “That’s it until the tide slacks. Unless you want to do it.”
Morrison nodded. “I see what you mean. We’ll knock off and have a sandwich. Hold it here till I get back.”
Ingram stepped out and held the raft while the big man carried the two crates ashore; it was easier than doing it with the oars, and he couldn’t get any wetter than he was already. Morrison came back carrying the BAR, and got in. “That makes twenty-four,” he said.
A little over a ton, Ingram thought; they’d barely started. He rowed back to the Dragoon. When he stepped aboard, the cramped leg gave way under him, and he had to grab a lifeline to keep from falling. A light breeze had come up at mid-morning, but it had died away again, and the deck was blistering under the brutal weight of the sun. Rae Osborne’s face was flushed, and tendrils of hair were plastered to her forehead as she collapsed on the cushions in the cockpit. Not far from a case of heat prostration or sunstroke, he thought. And there was no escape from the sun; below decks would be unbearable.
“There’s an awning down in the sail locker,” he told Morrison. “If you thought you could take that gun out of my back for five minutes, I’d bring it up and rig it.”
“Go ahead,” Morrison said.
He went down the forward hatch with Ruiz watching him from above. There were three bunks in the narrow cabin just forward of the galley, with suitcases and scattered articles of clothing on two of them. He opened the small access door to the locker in the eyes of the ship and poked around in stifling semi-darkness among coils of line and bags of spare sails until he found the awning. He boosted it up the hatch to Ruiz, then carried it aft and rigged it above the cockpit. The air was still far from cool beneath it, but it did offer shelter from the pitiless glare of the sun. They sat down, with Morrison perched on the corner of the deckhouse holding the BAR. It’s an extension of his personality, Ingram thought; he probably never feels comfortable without it.