“Hand me up the gun!” Ned shouted back.
Neil had stopped three feet from Jeanne. What a beautiful woman, he was still thinking irrelevantly.
“Can you swim?” he asked her softly.
“What?” she said back. “Who are you?”
As Neil started forward again she raised the knife, but he picked her up in his arms. She brought the knife down and held its point against his chest and stared at him. With her eyes only inches from his and the knifepoint pricking his skin, Neil felt a strong sexual surge pass through him.
“Can you swim?” he asked her softly.
“Yes,” she answered, still holding the knife tight against his chest, her eyes searching his.
Neil swung around and began to leave just as Carl handed a gun up to Ned in the cockpit. Neil again brushed past Carl, climbed the stairs, went out into the cockpit, walked up to and past the man with the gun, and in one unbroken motion threw Jeanne out into the water. She landed with an undignified splash, but began immediately swimming for shore.
“What the hell?” the older man said, rushing up beside Neil and looking down at Jeanne.
Neil hit him a crushing blow to the side of the head that sent him sprawling against the cockpit seat, the gun clattering to the deck. Neil picked it up and glanced back. The big bearded man had been about to spring forward but stood frozen now in a crouch. Neil stuffed the gun firmly into his belt and dove overboard.
He swam the first thirty feet underwater, and when he surfaced, he looked back to see if the men on the yawl had any other weapons, but they had already resumed their preparations to put to sea. Neil began swimming after Jeanne.
He came up to her where she was resting with her two slender hands grasping the edge of a small boat dock at Kelly’s, her head bowed, her wet black hair clinging in strands down her back. When she turned to him, she looked puzzled.
“Are you Neil Loken?” she asked.
“Yes, I—”
“Are you really Neil?” she persisted, suddenly smiling and crying all at once. “Thank God. Is Frank here? The boat? I couldn’t find it. We waited and waited. I was trying to get—”
“It’s okay,” he interrupted, reaching out with his free hand and touching her shoulder. “Lit me help you up onto the dock.”
“At first I thought you were another member of their crew,” she went on, still crying and laughing at the same time. “When you asked, ‘Can you swim?’ I thought…” She shook her head. “How did you find me?” she asked next, pulling her head back and smiling up at him, tears mingling with the salt water on her face.
“Lisa found me,” Neil answered.
“Oh, my God, where are Lisa and Skip?”
When Neil pointed to Lisa, who was standing on the dock watching them, she began trying to pull herself up onto the edge of the dock. Neil spread his right hand across her buttocks and lifted her up; she sprawled forward onto the dock. With a quick surge he pulled himself up beside her.
“Let’s get to Vagabond,” he said, helping her up. They ran up the gangway to the main dock, where Lisa and her mother hugged each other.
“Where’s Skippy?” Jeanne asked as they all rushed on.
“Still on the grass,” Lisa said happily, pointing.
While Neil picked Skippy up into his arms, Lisa and Jeanne grabbed their bags. Together they hurried back along the street to the town dock, Neil already beginning to worry about Vagabond.
As he surveyed the end of the dock Neil was surprised to see that the crowd had evaporated, but just as he was feeling reassured he saw trouble: seven or eight people had gotten aboard Vagabond, which had somehow drifted back to the dock. The stern of its starboard hull was banging periodically against a piling.
Neil felt a flush of anger at Jim. When he went to board Vagabond, he saw a man in a bright pink shirt and green pants standing on the hull and brandishing a pistol.
“No more on board,” the young man said to Neil.
Feeling an incongruous rush of bitter mirth, Neil laughed. The man frowned, made uneasy both by the laughter and by the gun in Neil’s belt.
“If you plan to try to sail this boat,” Neil said, “you’d better let me aboard.”
“Neil!” he heard Jim shout and saw him standing in the side cockpit behind the man with the pistol.
“Okay,” the man said. “You can come aboard. But you’ll have to give me that gun.”
“Like hell I will,” Neil replied.
“He’s the captain,” Jim said. “No one can sail us out of here except him.”
The man stared at Neil and then shrugged.
Neil stepped down and then helped Jeanne, Lisa, and Skip down after him. He could feel his. body tense at the invasion of his boat and remained on deck for the moment to steady himself. Lisa had rushed up to Jim and buried her head against his chest, clinging to him. Neil noticed a woman breast-feeding her child in the side cockpit, three suitcases scattered around her feet. As he went past Jim and Lisa into the wheelhouse he saw two men and a woman standing on one side looking nervously at a thickset man sitting opposite them. In the farther cockpit someone was sprawled on the deck with a woman bent over him weeping. Neil turned to Jim, who had followed him into the wheelhouse.
“How many people have guns?” he asked.
“Just that young guy guarding the starboard hull and him,” Jim replied, nodding toward the man who was sitting on the settee at the rear of the wheelhouse, one leg crossed over the other, dressed in a brown business suit, a large .45 and Jim’s .22 cradled in his lap. The man met Neil’s gaze with alert coldness.
“What happened?” Neil asked.
“The wind shifted a little,” said Jim earnestly. “And Vagabond swung around closer to the docks. When I went forward to shorten up the anchor, a whole mass of people got aboard. The two guys with guns herded half the crowd back up onto the docks and… shot the man in the side cockpit when he refused to get off.”
Jeanne had passed them and was kneeling now beside the weeping woman. Lisa stayed with Skippy, listening. Neil turned to the man with the .45. In his mid-thirties, thickset, with dark, receding hair, he stared back at Neil with quiet confidence.
“We’re sailing over to Crisfield to pick up a friend,” he announced. The man simply nodded. “I don’t appreciate people forcing themselves onto my boat at gunpoint,” Neil added coldly.
“These are tough times, buddy,” the man said softly. “And I didn’t notice you or your friend selling tickets.”
“You had to shoot someone?” Neil asked.
“There were thirty people on board,” the man replied quietly. “Your young friend said this boat couldn’t sail out of here with that much weight. Jerry and I kicked twenty of them off. A guy pulled a knife on Jerry, and Jerry shot him. It’s only a shoulder wound, and I already patched it up. Nothing serious.”
“I’d like our .22 back,” Neil said quietly.
The man looked down at his lap, as if surprised to find Jim’s rifle lying there.
“Sure,” he said after a pause. “Just borrowed it for a minute.” He handed it to Neil.
“Lisa,” said Neil, turning to the young girl, “get Skippy and your mother down into the port cabin. Jim, get the sails back up.”
He turned back to the man with the .45.
“Do you know much about sailing?” he asked him.
“Not much,” he said.
“How about your friend, Jerry?”
“He thinks he’s standing on the front of the boat.”
Neil glanced at the pink-shirted Jerry, who stood nervously at the stern of the port hull, watching the dock.
“All right,” said Neil. “The motor’s out, so I’ll trust you’re not stupid enough to get rid of Jim and me, since we’re the only ones who can sail it. I’d appreciate it, however, if you’d both put your guns away.”