“Don’t be silly, Hughie,” she said. “You know I wouldn’t hurt you.” She wasn’t sure herself how she accomplished it, but the tone was squarely on pitch, the voice of all the mothers in the world, firm but still gentle, compassionate, and forgiving. She touched her knees again and said, “Come here, dear.”
He came with a rush then. He fell to his knees before her with his face pressed against her legs, and he was crying uncontrollably.
The strength drained out of her, but she managed to remain erect while she gently stroked his head. The clatter of the engine went on. Saracen pitched, and the bow swung off onto another tangent in her blind flight across the surface of the sea. Part of it had been luck, she thought, in that the first, compulsive outburst had been directed against the shotgun, but she knew she could control him now. She had nothing more to fear from him. Except that she still couldn’t make him go back. But the codeine would take care of that.
Then she remembered the compass and looked across to the opposite side of the cabin, where spilled alcohol still dripped down the planking of the hull. Well, she thought wearily, there must be some answer to that too; she’d think of it in a minute. Apparently after four hours of improvising and feeling your way along the rim of disaster you began to develop a belief there was always another handhold just beyond.
14
Russell Bellew had been dreaming he was packing into the Bitterroot country again for elk when he awoke and he was back on that sinking abortion of a boat and the Duchess of California was poking his shoulder with a pair of rulers. She was looking down at him with that usual expression of hers, as if he were something that had just crawled out of the drain in a bus-station washroom. What the good Duchess needed, besides being knocked on her can a few times, was exactly what she’d have had this morning in about five more minutes if Goldilocks hadn’t sighted that other boat and come charging down there with his club just as he got her pinned down on the bunk. Rub it on him for practice, would she?
“Madam called?” he asked.
“Ingram said to wake you.”
He loved that bit with the rulers. He slid a hand up the back of her thigh and squeezed. “You should have used a longer stick.”
“Obviously.” There was no attempt to draw back, or hit him, and she didn’t even bother to change expression. “Then you are awake?”
He sat up. “What does Hotspur want now?”
“There’s a squall coming up.”
“So?”
“So the bird of time has but a little way to fly—”
“Shove it.”
She tore him off about three-sixteenths of an inch of another supercilious smile, dropped it in his eye, and said, “Yes, of course.” She went back on deck.
Cuddly type, the good Duchess. But somebody should have warned her before this that nobody was quite as hard as she thought she was. No doubt she was a better man than drat boar’s tit she was married to, but she was in for a shock when she found out what it’s really like out there when they take the cover off and let you look in. When that ocean started climbing up her leg she’d be screaming her tonsils loose. He didn’t like to think about it himself. Well, it couldn’t be any worse than jumping into France in the dark with those jugheads down there waiting for you. But that was a long time back. Sport, that was a long time back.
But, hell, you had to look on the bright side. Think about Hughie-boy. He wasn’t going to drown. It brought the lump right up there in your throat just thinking that Mama’s precious made it up the ladder before he chopped it loose. And he only had to kill four people to do it. But we don’t mind, do we, fellows?
He went up on deck…
It was 5:10 p.m. when the sun was blotted out and the squall burst around them. Ingram clung to the pump and looked along the deck in the fury of spray and horizontal, wind-hurled rain. Mrs. Warriner and Bellew crouched in the lee of the deckhouse, seeking the little protection they could find. Mrs. Warriner’s hair was plastered to her head and face, and Bellew’s Mexican hat was long since gone, blown overboard in the first onslaught of the wind. The deckhouse hatch was closed, as well as the two where they’d been bailing, and he and Bellew had lifted the dinghy aboard and lashed it. There was nothing else you could do. Except pray, and keep pumping.
Now that they were inside it, where all directions were the same and visibility was cut to a few yards, perspective was gone and there was no way of telling which way it was moving or how far they were from the edge, but he believed from having watched it as it made up that the worst of it was passing to the northward of them—for what that was worth. It wasn’t the wind itself he was afraid of; it was the sea, and that was the same all around them.
It was high, steep-sided, and confused, fighting the ground-swell running up from the south. Orpheus had too little freeboard now, and she was too heavy-bellied and sluggish to ride with the punch and escape any of the beating she was taking. She pitched, lurched over, and was swept from bow to stern by every breaking sea, wallowing helplessly like some huge but mortally wounded animal. She rolled down too far and hung, pinned there on her beam ends for long moments by the inertia of the water inside her, and Ingram winced, thinking of the stresses as the enormous weight of the keel pulled the other way to bring her back. He could hear the creak and groan of her timbers even above the shrieking of the wind and knew that all the while more of her fastenings were working loose and pulling out of rotten frames and planks below him. Swung around and crouched to protect his face from the stinging of the rain and spray, he continued to pump, wondering about the bed bolts of the engine. And the great keel bolts themselves …
But they continued to hold, and in another twenty minutes it began to subside. The sun broke through. The wind dropped and then died completely, and they were still afloat. At six p.m., with the sun low on the horizon, the sea had quit breaking aboard, and they were able to open the hatches to resume bailing. When Ingram looked down at the depth of water in the after cabin he knew there was very little chance she would live through the night.
* * *
It was 1:40 p.m., five minutes now since Warriner had suddenly sprung to his feet and run back on deck to take the wheel. Saracen was plowing steadily ahead, back on course—whatever it was. Rae Ingram stood beside the sink in the after cabin, crushing the last of the three codeine tablets between the spoons. The bottle containing the others was recapped and stowed in one of the drawers, ready in case she needed more. She dropped the powder into the glass, but it was the other problem she was thinking of. This idea of hers, she felt sure, would still work. Within a few minutes—with any luck at all-she might be in command of Saracen again. But what good was it if she couldn’t find her way back to the other boat?
The 226 degrees her compass had been reading meant nothing now that he’d smashed it and there was no way to compare it with the steering compass. It could have been as much as twenty or thirty degrees from the actual course. So as far as knowing what their course had been from the other boat, she was little better off than she’d been at the beginning, and now they were at least twenty-five miles away. Somehow she had to find out what he was steering. But how? Try to get a look into the binnacle when she went up? No, that wouldn’t work. It was covered, so you could see into it only from the helmsman’s seat, and he would be instantly suspicious if she tried to work her way around behind him. He wouldn’t let her, and it might even trigger him into another outburst, which would wreck her chances of success with this idea. She couldn’t risk it. Getting control of the boat came first. Wait, she thought, beginning to see the solution. The sun. It was shining, and far enough down from the meridian now to cast a good shadow. It wouldn’t be exact, but it would be a good approximation, probably near enough to bring her back within sight of the other boat.