He came back to the cockpit just as the breeze began to stir again. It was out of the south, to starboard on the heading they were on now, and the other yacht lay perhaps a mile and a half away on the port bow, with the dinghy somewhere in between. Saracen began to move ahead. He motioned for Rae to steady up where she was, and stepped forward to search out the dinghy. In a moment he saw it top a swell almost dead ahead. There was a long boathook lashed atop the deckhouse. He slid it free and looked down to windward, hoping the breeze would continue strong enough to give them steerage-way. As far as he could see the surface was riffled and dark. He stepped back to the break of the deckhouse and spoke quietly to Rae. “See it?”
She nodded. “Now and then. When it comes up.”
“Good. We’ll take it on the starboard side.”
Five minutes passed. The breeze faltered but came on again before they lost steerageway. It was less than fifty yards away now. Ingram motioned her a little to port and stood ready with the boathook. The dinghy began to slide past along the starboard side, less than ten feet off. He hooked it neatly at the bow, hauled it inward, and got hold of the painter. He led it aft and made it fast with a grin at Rae. “Nice going.”
It was a run almost downwind now to the other yacht. He started the main and mizzen sheets and studied her through the glasses. She was lying on a westerly heading, abeam to the breeze. “Right just a little,” he said to Rae. “Well come up astern and lay to about a hundred yards off.”
The gap began to close slowly, and then more slowly as the breeze faltered. It stopped altogether, and the sea became like heaving billows of silk, blinding off to starboard with the glare of the sun. Then, just before Saracen began to yaw on the swell, it came on again. The sails filled. The distance was less than a half-mile now.
“I don’t like that sluggish way she rolls,” Rae said.
“She’s got water in her, all right,” Ingram agreed.
“Are you sure it’s safe to go aboard?”
“Sure. She won’t capsize, with all that keel under her. And she won’t go under all at once.”
“But suppose you’re below? You might get trapped.”
“I won’t go below if she’s that close. I can tell when I get on her.”
They were still over two hundred yards away when the breeze died again. Saracen drifted forward a few yards and began to wallow as she slewed around. Ingram surveyed the remaining distance with exasperation, and searched the horizon on all sides. “Slick as a bald head,” he said and sheeted the booms in. “This’ll have to do. I’m going aboard.”
“Why not start the engine?” she asked.
“He might wake up.”
“I doubt it.” Then she caught his meaning. “Why? What difference does it make if he does?”
He hesitated; then he shrugged. “I don’t like the idea of leaving you on here alone with him. Unless he’s asleep, I mean.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“I don’t know. It’s stupid, I realize, but there’s just something about him I don’t quite buy. Not till I know more about him.”
“Well, of all the worriers.”
He grunted. “You’re probably right. But let him sleep, anyway.” He loosed the dinghy’s painter and hauled the boat up alongside. Before he stepped down into it he took a careful look around the horizon for squalls. It could be highly dangerous if one made up suddenly while Rae was alone, with all sail on her. There was nothing, however, that looked even remotely suspicious. “If you get another whisper of breeze,” he said, “work her on down and come about off the stern. I won’t be long.”
“Right. You will be careful, won’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Wait. Don’t you want to put on that life-jacket?” It was still lying where Warriner had taken it off.
He grinned. “What for?” Nobody could capsize a dinghy in a sea like this. At the same time, he wondered why Warriner had been wearing it. Timing himself with Saracen’s roll, he stepped lightly down into the dinghy and pushed away from the side.
It rode like a chip on the oily groundswell, and reflected sunlight glared in his face as he shipped the oars and began pulling toward the other yacht. As he drew nearer, he could see the sails were sloppily furled and that the deck was littered with an unseamanlike mess of uncoiled and unstowed lines. The main boom rested on its gallows frame, but the mizzen swung forlornly back and forth, banging against its slackened sheets. She was at least six inches below her normal waterline, he thought, and her movements were heavy and sluggish, like those of a dying animal, as she lurched over and back under the punishing rays of the sun. He felt sorry for her, as he always did for a boat in trouble. He changed course slightly to pass under her stern and come up on her starboard side. Her name and home port were spelled out in ornate black letters edged with gilt against the white paint of her transom.
Orpheus
SANTA BARBARA
He was still some twenty yards away, rounding her stern, when he heard a crash from somewhere inside the hull, followed in a moment by another. Apparently something had come adrift, a drawer or a locker, and was slamming back and forth on the water inside her. He pulled quickly up along the starboard side and, as she rolled down on the swell, caught one of the lifeline stanchions. After shipping the oars, he gathered up the painter and stepped on deck. He was near amidships, opposite the doghouse. As he made the painter fast he could hear the flow and splash of water inside her hull, sweeping from side to side as she rolled. He didn’t like the feel of her under his feet. Better make it short, he thought.
Aft of the doghouse was a slightly raised deck, enclosed by a low railing, which extended back almost to the mizzen-mast and the helmsman’s cockpit. There was a skylight in the center of this, apparently above the after cabin. It was closed and secured. He stepped aft, feeling her unsteady lurch as she rolled, ducked under the main boom, and looked into the doghouse hatch. There were only four steps leading down, since the top of it was quite high above the deck outside. There was no water here, but the deck was covered with a litter of charts and scratch pads and pencils from a drawer that had slid out of the chart table on the starboard side. He came on down the steps and looked quickly around. The port side and that part of the starboard side forward of the chart table were taken up with settees covered with some white plastic material. On racks above the chart table were a radiotelephone and radio direction-finder.
Aft, beside the steps leading up on deck, was a low doorway, and amidships at the forward end was another. The latter was open. He stepped over to it and peered through. Steps led downward to the main cabin, which was in ruin. At the after end, on the port side, were a sink, stove, refrigerator, and stowage cupboards, while to starboard was a table surrounded on two sides by a leather-covered settee. Everything was drowned, and the cabin was filled with the dank odor of wetness and decay. Water at least two feet deep swirled back and forth, crashing into the stove and refrigerator and settee and dripping from the bulkheads and ceiling, all intermingled with rolling cans from some burst locker, sodden articles of clothing, and books from an emptied bookshelf. It was sickening. At the forward end was a doorway which probably opened into a lavatory, and to the left of it a curtained passage to the forward cabin. He stepped down and splashed through the swirling debris to the passage and peered in. The two bunks were rumpled and dripping, and water rocked back and forth between them. It was just as Warriner had said. He wondered what he was looking for.
He turned and hurried back to the doghouse. Through the windows he caught a quick glimpse of Saracen gracefully riding the groundswell two hundred yards away, still becalmed. The mere sight of her was comforting after the ruin below. The door at the aft end of the doghouse was closed and secured with a hasp, through the staple of which a pair of dividers had been dropped. He pulled the dividers out, and as he turned to toss them on the chart table his eye fell on the ship’s log, behind a clip on the bulkhead above it. He frowned, puzzled. Warriner had apparently been telling the truth otherwise, so why had he lied about that? He’d said the logbook was pulp, sloshing around in the bilges. And that the radio and chronometer and sextant were all ruined. Nothing up here was wet at all. And as water rose in the cabins below, wouldn’t he have brought his passport and money and other valuables up here where they’d stay dry? It would be the natural thing to do. They might be in one of the other drawers of the chart table. Well, he’d look for them in a minute. He pushed open the door and peered down into the after cabin.