“I see,” she said. She was silent for a moment, and then she asked, “You’re absolutely certain there was another man?”
“There has to be.” He scooped up the black plastic box and showed her the contents, and told her about the compass.
“That’s the reason they got in here over the Bank and ran aground. They’ve been lost. Remember, they stole the Dragoon on Monday night, so it couldn’t have been any later than Wednesday night when they loaded the guns down in the Keys, and sailed. This isn’t over a day’s run from anywhere in the Keys, because even if it’d been calm they would have used the engine, but they didn’t go aground here until Saturday night. So for at least two days they’ve been wandering around like blind men because the compass is completely butched up by all that steel—those gun barrels. Even if one of them knew how to use the radio direction finder well enough to get a fix by cross-bearings, it’s no good unless you’ve got a compass. Here’s what happens—say they get a fix from the RDF, figure out the compass course to where they want to go, and then after a while they check their position again, and find out they’ve gone at maybe right angles to where they thought they were heading. So obviously the first position must have been wrong. Or was it the second position? Do that about three times, and you’re so hopelessly lost you wouldn’t bet you’re in the right ocean.”
“But,” she said, “didn’t Ruiz say they knew about the steel’s effect? And that Ives had checked the error before they left?”
“Sure,” Ingram replied. “On one heading. That’s what gave it away—I mean, that he’d already disappeared even before they sailed. It couldn’t have been Ives who did that. He’d have known better. Admittedly, he could have got pretty rusty in fifteen years, and the compasses on those planes were probably gyros, but nobody who’d ever studied navigation could know that little about magnetic compasses. They’re basic, like the circulation of the blood to the study of medicine. And you don’t adjust one by finding out what the error is on one heading and then applying that same correction all the way around. It’s different in every quadrant, so you have to check it in every quadrant. Actually, on some headings, what they were doing was multiplying the error instead of correcting it.”
“Then I guess there’s no doubt,” she said. “But if somebody’s been killed, why do you suppose the police didn’t say anything about it?”
“They don’t always tell you everything they know. And maybe they don’t know, or don’t have any reason yet to connect it with the theft of the Dragoon.”
“Yes, that’s possible.” She flipped her cigarette away in the darkness. “If we could surprise Ruiz and get that gun away from him while Morrison’s over here, could we make it ashore in the raft?”
“Not to Florida. With luck we might get back across the Bank to Andros, but I don’t know whether we’d make it across the island. However, with Ruiz off our backs and Morrison stuck over here, I think I could refloat the schooner. At least, we could get on the phone and call for help.”
“Morrison might get back aboard, if it took very long.”
“No. He couldn’t swim it with a gun.”
“Would that thing he carries around with him shoot from here to the boat?”
“I think it’ll probably carry that far, but it wouldn’t be very accurate. However, there’s another angle on that. Once we start bringing those cases of ammunition over, he could use these rifles. We wouldn’t be able to move on deck except at night. But there’s something I wanted to ask you. You say Ruiz was sleeping on deck—that wouldn’t be way up forward, would it?”
“Yes. Right in the bow. Why?”
He nodded grimly. “I thought so. Before we spin any more gossamer dreams about what we’re going to do after we fool Ruiz, we’d better take up the question of how.”
“What do you mean?”
He told her about the idea of swimming out and trying to get up the bobstay. “He saw that was the only place I could possibly get aboard. So I’d have to step right over him. Dripping wet.”
“I know it won’t be easy,” she agreed. “As I said, I watched him all day, and he never once let me get behind him while you were alongside with the raft. But maybe he will now that I’m just a stupid drunk, and obviously harmless.”
“I can’t let you do it,” Ingram protested. “Ruiz is no punk hoodlum. He’s tough all the way through, and he’s got reflexes like a cat.”
“Let’s don’t waste time worrying about me. I’ll be behind him, and I don’t think he’d shoot me, anyway. It’s you we’ve got to think about. If he breaks loose and gets that gun before you reach him, he’ll kill you, so unless you’re sure you can make it, don’t try. But we’ve got to have a signal. How about this? I’ll be calling you Herman, and referring to him as Pancho—you know, endearing myself to everybody—but when you hear the name Oliver, get ready to come aboard.”
“All right.” They had to try for it sometime, and the sooner the better. It had to be when Morrison was out of the way. He looked at the blur of her face just before him in the soft tropic night. “I owe you an apology,” he said.
“Why?”
“For what I thought.”
“Oh, really?” she said indifferently. It was clear she didn’t care what he thought. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll wander off to the other end of our little sandpile and see if I can get some sleep.”
“No,” he said, getting up abruptly. “You stay here and use the blanket and pillow.” Ignoring her protests, he strode off in the night. Fifty yards away he stretched out on the sand with his head pillowed on an arm and stared up at the black infinity of space while he finished his cigar. He felt like a pompous and overweening fool who’d just been thoroughly deflated, and he was certain she’d done it deliberately. Well, there was no law said you had to stick your neck out and get it stepped on. He threw away the cigar and surrendered himself to the weariness that assailed him. When he awoke, her face was just above him in the gray beginning of dawn, and she was shaking his shoulder. The blanket was spread over him. He threw it aside and sat up, grinding a hand across his face.
“I think you had a nightmare,” she said. “I heard you cry out, and you were trembling as if you were cold, so I put the blanket over you. Then you began to beat at the ground with your hands.”
“It was just a bad dream,” he said.
“Oh-oh. Somebody’s coming from the boat.”
He turned his head and saw the raft approaching across the flat, dark mirror of the sea. “Remember the signal,” she said softly.
“Oliver. But be sure you’re behind him.”
“I will be. Good luck.” She turned away and went over to pick up her purse by the stack of crated rifles, and was combing her hair when Ruiz grounded the raft in the shallows and motioned to her. Ingram watched her wade out, a bedraggled but indomitable blonde girl with a black eye and torn calypso pants, and heard the brassy idiocy of her greeting. “Hi, Pancho. I feel like hell, I theeeenk. And if I ever catch the lousy parrot that slept in my mouth . . .” They moved off toward the Dragoon.
Ingram stood up, pushing his leg straight against the stiffened tendons and aware of the soreness in every muscle of his body. You’re too old and beat-up for this kind of duty, he told himself. He wondered why she had put the blanket over him, but dismissed the speculation as futile; he’d never figure her out. Walking out into the water, he scooped up some and scrubbed his face, and noted professionally that the tide appeared to be at a standstill. It was slack high water. Ruiz came back with the raft. He got in and pulled out toward the Dragoon, and as they came alongside he studied her critically. She was still hard and fast aground, not even completely upright yet. Solid-looking wooden boxes with metal straps were lined up along the port rail and stacked in the cockpit. She was gray and ghostlike in the dim light of early morning, and everything was saturated with dew. Morrison stood on the crates in the cockpit, the inevitable BAR slung in his arm and an expression of driving impatience on his face. It was clear he was in an ugly mood. “How about it?” he asked, as Ingram stepped aboard.