By this time Rae Osborne had been through everything in the galley. “No tubes,” she said. “But here’s a diving mask I found in a locker up forward.” They went aft. Ingram looked at his watch; it was 2:20 p.m.
“Scratch the radiotelephone,” he said. “So we either refloat the schooner or stay here.”
“Can we do it?” she asked.
“I think so—” He broke off suddenly and listened. She had heard it too, and looked at him with some alarm. It was a rifle shot, coming to them faintly across the water. There was another. She waited tensely, and then shook her head with a rueful smile. “Makes me nervous, waiting for it to hit.”
“Don’t give it a thought,” he said. “If it’s going to hit anything, it already has before you hear the shot. The bullet travels about twice as fast as the sound. I think he’s sighting in one of those rifles. Keep listening.”
He had hardly finished speaking when something struck the hull just forward of them with a sharp thaaack, followed a fraction of a second later by the sound of the shot. She nodded.
There were four or five more shots, and then the firing ceased. “He’s warning us to stay off the deck, so we can’t do anything about getting her afloat,” Ingram explained.
She looked worried. “What do we have to do? And can we do it?”
“I think so. The first thing is to finish lightening ship. I’ll need the mattresses off all those bunks.”
She gave him a burlesque salute, and a lopsided smile that was inhibited on one side by the grandfather of all shiners. “One order of mattresses coming up. I wouldn’t know what for, but you seem to know what you’re doing.”
He grinned briefly. “Let’s just hope you still think so twenty-four hours from now.”
While she was bringing the mattresses, he picked out three of the long wooden boxes that apparently contained disassembled machine guns, and shoved them up the ladder. After going into the cockpit himself but staying down to keep out of sight, he laboriously worked them up onto the deck and lined them up end-to-end along the starboard side of the cockpit. When he was putting the second one in place, Morrison began shooting again. Two bullets struck the hull, one directly below him. She was pushing the mattresses up the ladder now. There were ten altogether. He propped six up along the outside of the machine-gun boxes and laid four in a pile atop the deckhouse just forward of the hatch. They should shield the cockpit against direct gunfire and the danger of flying splinters. They knelt for a moment behind them, resting in the shade of the awning. “Cozy,” she said appreciatively. Just then Morrison opened fire again with a string of three shots. All three of them struck the same spot, the outer mattress propped against the forward machine-gun box.
Ingram frowned. “With iron sights, at three hundred yards? He’s bragging.” Two more slapped against the same mattress; they could see the upper edge kick as they hit. He grabbed the glasses and peered cautiously over the ones atop the deckhouse. Morrison was firing from a prone position, using a rest made up of one of the cases and what appeared to be a rolled blanket, the one they’d left over there. But it was the rifle that caught his eye and caused him to whistle softly; it had a telescopic sight.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Scope-sighted deal,” he explained. “Apparently some of those were either sniper’s rifles or sporting guns.”
“That’s bad, I take it?”
“Not particularly, but I’d have been just as happy with something a little less specialized.” He was thinking of having to take that kedge anchor out; it was beginning to look considerably less simple. Morrison could shoot, and he had something to shoot with.
She looked at him curiously. “You sound like another gun expert. Were you one of those jungle commandos too?”
He shook his head. “I was in the Navy. I never shot a rifle during the whole war, except in boot camp. But I used to do a lot of hunting.”
“Where?”
“Texas, and Sonora, when I was a boy.”
“Where are you from?”
“Corpus Christi. My father was a bar pilot there.”
She looked around musingly. “You don’t suppose this might set a new record of some sort for the places Texans run into each other?”
“I doubt it. But I’d better get to work.”
“What can I do?” she asked.
“Nothing at the moment. Just stay back and keep down.” He went below and began shoving the heavy wooden cases up the ladder. When he had several in the cockpit, he came up, lifted them onto the deck on the port side, and shoved them overboard. There was something very satisfying in the splash they made; he was sick to death of Morrison and his damned guns. It was a long, hard job, and he was winded and drenched with sweat as he took a last look around the cabin where nothing remained now of its late cargo but the confused litter of rope. He went above and shoved the last ones overboard, and looked at his watch. It was 3:40. Glancing out across the water, he noted the incoming tide had slowed now; it should be slack high in a little over an hour. He wiped sweat from his face. “So much for that.”
Rae Osborne indicated the five cases of ammunition still lined up along the port rail near the break of the deckhouse. “How about those?”
Ingram shook his head. “We keep them for the time being. They’re our hole card, in case this other stuff doesn’t work.”
“I feel useless, letting you do everything.”
“I’ll have something for you in a minute. In the meantime, whenever Morrison gets quiet over there, check him with the glasses.”
“You think he might try to swim out?”
“I don’t think he will in daylight, but we can’t take any chances. Keep your head low.”
Ducking down the ladder again, he went forward to the locker beyond the crew’s quarters and dug out an anchor. It was a standard type, with a ten-foot section of heavy chain shackled to the ring; it would do nicely. He carried it aft and came back for a heavy coil of nylon anchor warp. While he was getting this out, he came across a pair of four-sheave blocks and a coil of smaller line he could use for a tackle. He grunted with satisfaction; it would be better than the main sheet to haul with. Trying to use the Dragoon’s anchor windlass up there on the exposed fore-deck would be sheer suicide. Morrison would have a clear shot at him with that scope-sighted rifle. He carried it all aft and dumped it in the cockpit. At the same time Morrison cut loose with a string of four shots as if he were practicing rapid fire. One of them struck the side of the mainmast and ricocheted with the whine of an angry and lethal insect.
Rae Osborne watched with rapt interest as he wedged the anchor’s stock and bent the nylon warp to the ring at the end of the chain. “Where does it go?” she asked.
He nodded astern. “Straight aft as far as I can get it.”
“But how do you take it out there?”
“Walk and carry it.”
She grinned. “So you ask a silly question—”
“No, that’s right. I’ll admit it’s not quite the standard procedure, but it’s about all we’ve got left. That’s what I wanted the diving mask for.”
“But how about breathing?”
“That’s easy. The water’s not over seven or eight feet deep until I hit the channel, and then it’s not over twelve.”
“What about Morrison and that rifle?”
“No problem,” he said, wishing he felt as confident about it as he was trying to sound. He lowered the anchor over the side and arranged the coil of line in the bottom of the cockpit. “You pay it out. And when you get within twenty or thirty feet of the end, hang on.”