“Harrowing!” Mr. North agreed. “That hand should have been ours!” He led his wife down the deck toward their cabin.
“Stay with me, darling,” she pleaded, scratching.
“Of course I will. I’m dummy now. I wouldn’t think of leaving you before the next rubber.” They turned the corner of the deck and vanished from sight.
The passengers on deck dispersed and went back to their staterooms. The off-duty crew members also returned to their quarters. The engines started up again, the Lascivia banked thirty degrees, and continued on its previous course.
But the damage had been done. The time the Captain had been trying to make up in the race against the Queen William had been lost in the search for and recovery of Mrs. North. Not only had we had to backtrack, not only had we lost the momentum we’d had, but also we’d missed out on the current helping us along on the last leg of our journey to Rio.
The result was that we reached Rio a full day behind schedule. Fortunately, the new fresh water converter was already on the dock awaiting our arrival. Even as the passengers were disembarking for their full day ashore in the most glamorous city in South America, cranes were lifting the giant machine aboard.
I, too, went ashore, but I returned early. Mister Jewish was the officer on watch when I came back on board. “Mr. Victor,” he greeted me, “I’ve been wanting to ask you something. You were there when Mrs. North went over the side. Could you tell me exactly what happened?”
“She hit the trampoline and took an unusually high bounce. It shot her off at an angle and she went into the drink. As far as I could tell, that’s all there was to it
“That’s not all,” Mister Jewish insisted. “That trampoline was very carefully designed and engineered. Every safety precaution was taken. The sort of bounce you’ve described is supposed to be impossible the way it’s built.”
“Accidents happen.” I shrugged.
Mister Jewish spotted Chief Engineer Gorilla walking up the gangplank, his albino features shining in the Rio moonlight. He called to the hairless officer to join us. “We’ll see if accidents happen,” Mister Jewish told me. He led the way to the trampoline. “Do you remember where she hit before she went overboard?” he asked me when we got there.
“Roughly about there.” I pointed.
The two officers eased themselves onto the trampoline. Gorilla leaned on his fingertips and moved in a widening circle, testing the resiliency of the area I’d indicated. Finally he zeroed in on one spot and struck it two or three times with his fist. “This must be where she hit,” he told Mister Jewish.
Number One took a quarter from his pocket and dropped it on the trampoline. It bounced. Then he dropped it where Gorilla indicated. The coin bounced three times as high and shot off at an angle, clearing the edge of the trampoline by about six feet. “A flaw in the rubber?” Mister Jewish asked Gorilla.
“Nope.” Gorilla had been studying the material. “There’s something underneath. I’ll have a look.” He got off the trampoline and crawled beneath it. A few moments later he emerged, dragging something behind him.
It was a coiled spring embedded in a block of concrete. It stood about two feet high with the spring at a twenty degree angle to the base. Gorilla showed us how it worked.
“See this hair trigger?” He pointed it out. “The way it’s balanced, the slightest weight —like that quarter you dropped before—will set off a response. And a heavy weight hitting it, like a human body, would make it spring back with the force of a cannon recoil. This is what did it all right.”
“Another deliberate act of sabotage!” Mister Jewish said. “What next?” He looked very worried.
But there were no further incidents during the next leg of the cruise. The epidemic of groin-itch continued, and Dr. Quotabusta still feared the venereal worst, but otherwise all was tranquil. Calm prevailed as we sailed down the coast from Rio, through the Strait of Magellan, and then up the Chilean peninsula to Valparaiso.
It wasn’t until we were halfway to our next port-of-call, Tahiti, that this serenity became threatened. Like the H.M.S. Bounty of old, we were asea in the doldrums, having just passed far to the north of Easter Island. We’d been at sea for twenty-four days. New York, our port of embarkation, had faded into memory. In every direction, the vista of the sea merged with the horizon. Land itself was seemingly becoming no more than a memory.
Evening. I’d just finished dinner and was strolling past the radio shack. Loud voices came from inside. I paused to eavesdrop. First I heard Mister Jewish, and then—Click-click.
The argument concerned a distress signal that had been received from a ship foundering in a hurricane. Mister Jewish, insisting that the endangered vessel was only about ten degrees off the Lascivia’s course, wanted to go to its rescue. Captain Maldemerde, pointing out that on her current heading the Lascivia would miss the storm by fifty miles, was firmly reluctant to endanger the lives of his passengers and the safety of his vessel by responding to the S.O.S. Ensign Mayday, the radio operator, was caught in the middle of the argument.
Click-click. “hat ship sent out that distress signal, Mister?” the Captain asked him.
“The Queen William, sir.”
“That settles it.” Captain Maldemerde lowered his voice and grinned an exceedingly nasty grin. “I’m sure as hell not going to risk this vessel to help Grabass!” Click-click.
“Sir! Regardless of personal feelings about Captain Grabass—” Mister Jewish protested.
“A hurricane, eh!” Click-click. The Captain chortled. “That should slow him down considerably!” Click-click. “Might even knock him out of the race altogether,” he mused to himself.
“ ‘Race,’ Captain?” Mister Jewish picked it up.
“What, Mister?” Click-click.
“You mentioned a race, sir.”
“You’re hearing things, Mister.” Click-click.
“But, sir, you said ‘race’! I distinctly-—-”
“We will not go to the aid of the Queen William! We will avoid the hurricane! We will not alter our course!” Click-click. “Those are my orders, Mister Jewish!” Click-click. The Captain left.
“Did you hear him say something about a race?” Mister Jewish asked Ensign Mayday.
Ensign Mayday didn’t reply.
Mister Jewish sighed to himself, picked up the intercom and called the wheelhouse. “No alteration in course,” he told the helmsman. “And tell Gorilla to maintain speed. We’ll pass safely about fifty miles to the northwest of the storm.”
Continuing up the deck, I couldn’t help thinking that it was a break. It was the Lascivia’s chance to catch up in the race, perhaps even to forge ahead. The Queen William might even sink in the hurricane. But I wasn’t quite callous enough to exult over that possibility.
“Hello there, you licorice louse!” The voice broke into my thoughts.
I peered into the shadows near one of the bulkheads and saw Blaze Buxbocks seated alone in a deck chair there. Her red hair flowed down over the top of the mini cocktail dress she was wearing. The top seemed to consist of only two white silk straps about an inch and a half wide. Her lusciously rounded breasts overflowed them on either side.
“You mean ‘lecherous,’ ” I returned her greeting.
“You’ve got it. I shouldn’t even be talking to you after the way you depraved with that woman at the dinner table.” Her cigarette glowed in the shadows.
I remembered then that I’d had virtually no contact with Blaze since that first night out when Sister Stella had assailed me during dinner. I’d changed my seat after that, but still Blaze had been avoiding me. She wasn’t avoiding me now, though. I wondered what had lowered her resistance. Then the wind shifted slightly and I sniffed the answer. “You’re smoking pot,” I realized.