“Be patient, Tony,” Macklin said, looking up at him and smiling. “The thing you don’t understand is that sometimes retreat and lying low are the best strategy. Our Loken’s no fooclass="underline" he’s not afraid to do that.”
“Yeah?”
“Just like us, Tony,” said Macklin, still smiling. “Just like us.”
And so they sailed on, past the white-sand beaches and gleaming emerald water of the eastern Bahamian cays and out to sea to the east, having to make long tacks against the southeast wind while Neil wished it would shift, hoped he could guess which way it would shift, and sailing on, to either San Juan or the Virgin Islands, whichever the wind and the radio reports made a more feasible haven.
And a new intensity took hold of the voyage. After their first escape from the mainland a certain exhilaration and hopefulness had accompanied them southward. They had food and water, and though both were rationed, it was something of a game, merely “contingency planning.”
But now they had been turned away from a place they had seen as a source of supplies; now they had been sailing almost a week without a landfall, and the contingency was upon them. There was no way to buy additional food; no sure way to get water. For at least another week the ocean was the only store in business and the skies the only source of water. Now they would sail successfully to Puerto Rico or the Virgins within two weeks or perhaps die. Now the billowing white clouds that flowed lazily above them represented not beauty but potential rainfall; the color of a sunrise was watched for signs of an approaching low-pressure system that might mean rain or a shift from the tradewind pattern they were heading into.
Now fishing was as serious an undertaking as war, and when some huge fish snapped through the wire leader, took off with Jim’s best lure, and left them with only three, he was as pale and shaken as if he’d lost an important hill in battle. Now that they were out of the Gulf Stream, the fishing was much less dependable. In the first five days after picking up the Brumburgers they caught only two fish.
Now they began the monotonous, unpleasant, bone-jarring bashing to windward, straight into the seas that the tradewinds seemed to be building malevolently against them. Since it was his decision that they sail on past the Bahamas with insufficient food and water, Neil became obsessed with the struggle to sail Vagabond to windward as fast as possible. Although one of his basic sailing principles was never to criticize the wind, he found himself cursing quietly each time he awakened to find it still on their nose. He began to view the wind and waves as opponents he was fighting, an uncharacteristic attitude that he tried to check. When he observed Lisa’s thinness, Frank’s weakness, and recognized a certain lethargy in everyone’s movements—including his own—this filled him with a rage to drive Vagabond eastward to a safe landfall where they could rest and eat and replenish their depleted stores.
He searched out the boat for useless weight as he might have searched for spies. Overboard went the portable television set, overboard some rusted chain, overboard two dozen of the ship’s trashy novels, old magazines, half-finished cans of paint, some junk wood, and nine or ten heavy bolts that might have been useful for something, though Frank had no idea what that could have been.
They also discussed removing Vagabond’s diesel engine, both to lighten the boat and to create a private berth for Olly to ease the overcrowding. With Frank concurring, Neil decided that its future usefulness in a world mostly devoid of fuel didn’t match the burden of six hundred pounds extra weight. In a six-hour operation that involved all the men, Frank and Olly supervised the unbolting and winching up of the heavy engine. By the time they were done, they had had to use half a dozen jury-rigged pulleys hanging from the main boom, wheelhouse roof, and mizzenmast. When the engine, from which they had removed the alternator, finally rolled off the afterdeck into the sea, the men let loose a long cheer and, dirty and sweaty, appropriated a beer each as their reward. It was the first successful mutiny on Vagabond, and Neil, clutching his own bottle, accepted it with a smile. The trimaran gained an inch on her water-line aft, and her trim was now much better.
With the engine gone and no generator aboard, the batteries were unhooked from everything except the shortwave radio. Olly and Jim began trying to develop a man-powered generator out of the diesel alternator, but with three batteries aboard this project didn’t seem pressing.
However, after the camaraderie of removing the engine, the smashing to windward began to take its toll.
They all were being weakened by occasional seasickness and the scantiness of their diet. They were now primarily eating the fish steaks they had dried a week before. They opened one can of fruit a day— for ten people. They boiled or baked two potatoes a day. For liquids there was only occasional tea or powdered orange drink. Except for one six-pack they were saving for “an appropriate occasion,” the beer was gone. They drank water.
The tensions among them were building. Everyone needed more privacy than was available, and for some the small ship had become a claustrophobic trap. Tony exploded at Neil for assigning equal rations to everyone, arguing that a big man like him needed twice the food that Lisa and Skip needed. Neil replied that Tony still had twice the body fat and that until someone showed symptoms of malnutrition, the rations would remain the same. Both Tony and Macklin complained about sleeping in the forepeak, and Neil gave them permission to use his cabin or the dinette settee when either was free. Macklin complained continually of seasickness, but still somehow managed to eat his share of rations. Katya sometimes took his place as crew on Olly’s watch.
When Jeanne reported that a can of peaches was missing, Neil did nothing, but when she discovered that a small can of chicken spread had also disappeared, Neil laid down the law: if anyone was caught stealing food, he’d be put on half-rations and abandoned at the first landfall. Tony got angry again because Neil seemed to be directing his remarks primarily at him and Macklin. Neil said the rule applied to everyone.
Neil felt increasing irritation at such scenes, but he knew that if he could work things out with Frank and Jeanne, his other burdens would be more manageable. Although he and Frank treated each other with politeness, Frank’s jealousy remained fierce. By words and glances he showed his anger or disapproval of any intimacy between them while he himself showered Jeanne with attention—in the galley, helping with Skippy, inviting her to crew with him and Tony. Although Frank felt better than during the first ten days—he was now keeping food down and showing more energy—he still looked sick, and Neil couldn’t bring himself to do anything to hurt him.
But his relations with Jeanne, already sobered by the deaths of the Brumburgers and the bypassing of the Bahamas, and dampened by his obsession with getting Vagabond east to a safe landfall, were further restricted by Frank’s jealousy. Neil could feel a barrier going up between himself and Jeanne.
He wanted to be with her, touch her, speak gently to her, but somehow such opportunities never seemed to arise. The few times they’d managed to be alone had found Neil absorbed in some nautical problem and unprepared for intimacy: tongue-tied, abstracted.
The claustrophobic mood of the boat affected everyone. Jim and Lisa, depressed by the invasion of their privacy by Tony and the leers of Macklin, withdrew from the others on the boat, becoming an island unto themselves. Their love was obvious to everyone, and accepted, but they found it difficult to be alone. They resented the tensions between their parents and Neil, yet found themselves unable to break the knot of secrecy that they felt was oppressing them all.