7
By 12:30 p.m. the outgoing tide had slowed enough to permit resumption of the unloading operation. The work went on through the blistering heat of afternoon. The tide was at slack low shortly after two, with the Dragoon’s list at its most pronounced. Ingram’s shoulders ached, and he lost count of the number of trips he had made. On the sand spit, the pile of boxes grew larger hour by hour. The tide began to flood. By five p.m. the current was again becoming a problem, and at a little before six Morrison called a halt and rode the raft back to the Dragoon.
“That’s all the rifles,” he said, as they sat in the cockpit in their dripping clothes. “Let’s see—sixty times a hundred. . .”
Three tons off, Ingram thought. The schooner’s list was decreasing now by slow degrees as the tide rose, and it should be about two hours more until slack high. It would be interesting to see how far she might be from floating then, but he was almost too tired to care. Ruiz brought up a plate of sandwiches and they ate on deck while sunset died beyond the Santaren Channel in a thundering orchestration of color. Ingram watched it, remembering other tropical sunsets down the long roll of the years and wondering how many were left now in his own personal account. Probably not many, from the looks of things at the moment. He couldn’t see any way out, and all he could do was go on waiting for something to break.
But what? he wondered. Even if Morrison took off that prosthetic BAR when he went to sleep, which appeared unlikely, he was still no match for the man in a fight. Not now, at forty-three—and the chances were he never had been. And there was always Ruiz and his Colt. There was something a little mad, he thought, in this harping on those two guns when the Dragoon’s whole cargo consisted of a hundred-thousand-dollar assortment of deadly weapons, but they were all crated and out of reach, and the ammunition for them was crated separately.
He was roused from the quiet futility of his thoughts by a shrill laugh from Rae Osborne. She and Morrison were dipping into the rum again, and apparently Morrison had just said something very funny. He let his gaze slide past their oasis of alcoholic gaiety to where Ruiz sat cross-legged atop the deckhouse, and this time the grave imperturbability of the mask had slipped a little and he could see, in addition to the Spanish contempt for drunkenness, the growing shadow of concern. Ruiz knew him, so that probably meant he was inclined to get pretty goaty and unbuttoned among the grapes. You had to admit they had all the ingredients for a memorable cruise—a boisterous giant, an arsenal of weapons, plenty of rum, and a bored and stupid woman apparently bent on agitating the mixture to see what would happen.
“Maybe Herman’d like a drink,” Morrison said. Rae Osborne shrugged. “Herman’s not stapled to the deck. Let him go get one.”
Morrison lighted a cigarette and spoke to Ruiz. “We better figure out what we’re going to do with ‘em tonight, unless we want to take turns standing watch. Tie ‘em up, or lock ‘em in one of those staterooms?”
“It’s pretty stuffy down there till after midnight,” Ruiz said. “Why not put them on the island? They can’t get off as long as we’ve got the raft.”
“Sure, that’d do it. Lieutenant, you’re now a captain.” Rae Osborne rattled the ice in her glass and said sulkily, “You mean I’ve got to go over on that crummy sand bar and sleep on the ground like Daniel Boone? I want another drink first.” “Sure, Baby Doll. Have all you want.” “Besides, what could I do to that hunk of brute force, anyway? You afraid I might overpower you, or something?”
Morrison grinned. “On second thought, maybe we’ll reconsider the first thought. Our yacht is your yacht. Drink up.”
“Open another bottle, Commodore, and alert the riot squad. Can you get any mambo music on that radio?”
Ruiz stood up and spoke to Ingram. “You ready to go?”
“Yes,” Ingram said. He looked at Rae Osborne. “You’re sure you want to stay?”
She considered this thoughtfully. “If I have your permission, Herman. Tell you what—you go check the action on that sand bar, and if it’s real frantic, drop me a line.”
Morrison spread his hands. “Looks like you lose, Herman.”
“I guess so,” Ingram said. “Anyway, it’s one interpretation.”
Rae Osborne smiled. “Don’t mind Captain Ingram. He’s full of deep remarks like that. He’s a philosopher. With corners, that is.”
Ingram nodded curtly to Ruiz. “Let’s go.”
He took the oars while Ruiz sat in the stern holding the Colt. It was dusk now, and the flow of the tide was decreasing as it approached high slack. The sand spit was a low, dark shadow marked by the pale gleam of the boxes where Morrison had stacked them near the southern end. Neither of them said anything until the raft grounded in the shallows beyond the channel. Ingram got out. Ruiz moved over and took the oars. “Buenas noches.”
“Buenas noches,” Ingram said. The raft moved away in the thickening twilight, and he waded ashore to stand for a moment beside the piled boxes, savoring the unbroken quiet and the clean salt smell of solitude and night. Then some faint remnant of deep-water surge flattened by miles of shoals and bars curled forward and died with a gentle slap against the sand, and somewhere beyond him in the darkness a cruising barracuda slashed at bait. Everybody, he supposed, had something he hated above all else to leave, and this was his: the tropic sea. In a dozen lifetimes he’d never have grown tired of it.
The bottle of water was near his feet. He picked it up, and judged it was still half full. He wondered how many cigars he had, wishing he’d thought to get more from his suitcase before leaving the schooner, but when he opened the case and probed with his fingers he discovered he had three. That was plenty. He lighted one and sat down on the sand with his back against the boxes.
Could he get aboard later on when they would be asleep? He could swim that far, but getting onto the schooner would be something else. They’d be too smart to leave the raft in the water so he could climb into it and reach the deck. How about the bobstay? He should be able to reach the lower end of that and work his way hand over hand up to the bowsprit. But the chances of doing it without waking either of them were admittedly dim; at any rate, he’d have to wait until after midnight.
A shriek of laughter reached his ears, and then the sound of music. They’d switched on the all-wave radio. He lay back on the sand and watched the slow wheel of the constellations while the sound of revelry came to him across the night. For a while he pictured the inevitable progress of the brawl, but gave it up with the accumulation of disgust and tried to shut it out. It was none of his business. His thoughts broke off then as he caught the sound of oars. He heard the raft scrape on sand, and stood up. The slender figure would be Ruiz. It waded ashore in the starlit darkness and pulled the raft onto the beach. He appeared to be carrying something in his arm.
“Over here,” Ingram said quietly.
“Don’t try to get behind me, amigo.”
“I’m not,” Ingram replied. He flicked on the cigar lighter. “Party get a little rough for you?”
Ruiz came into the circle of light, the fatal olive face as expressionless as ever. “I brought you some bedding,” he said, dropping a blanket and pillow on the sand. “Gets a little cool out here before morning.”
“Thanks a lot,” Ingram said. “Sit down and talk for a while. You smoke cigars?”
“I’ve got cigarettes, thanks.” He took one out and lighted it, squatting on his heels just precisely out of reach with the eternal vigilance of the professional. A shellburst of maracas and Cuban drums came to them across the water. “Están bailando,” he said with faint reluctance, as though he felt he should say something of the party but wished to make it as little as possible. Well, if they were dancing, Ingram thought, the brawl must be still on a more or less vertical plane. He wondered what difference it made.