As they talked away their third afternoon at sea Scorpio was visible two hundred yards off to starboard. Both boats were moving smoothly in the brisk tradewinds, sailing slightly to windward but not enough to cause heavy slamming. Neil was at the helm, Jeanne on the port seat of the newly open central cockpit. The sky was clear, the day already warm. Jeanne was dressed as she usually was in shorts and a bikini top, Neil in cutoff jeans. She noticed that the tendons in the backs of his legs were showing and realized that he had lost weight. His severe face was made even more severe by the deep lines that creased it. It saddened her to see him like this.
“We’re failing,” Jeanne said to him impulsively. “We’re divided and failing. We’re making all the same mistakes that led to the War in the first place.” Like everyone else aboard, she referred to it as the “War,” not the “Third World War” or anything else. To her, to them, it was the “War,” all previous wars being insignificant skirmishes in comparison. It could not have a number because it had had no predecessor and couldn’t conceivably have a sequel.
Neil turned to look at her but didn’t reply.
“We’re failing,” she repeated.
“We’re alive, Jeanne,” he finally said. “We’re not yet starving to death. We’re sixteen people sailing away from danger. We’ve made mistakes, but we’ve avoided worse ones.”
“But what’s the sense?” said Jeanne. “To get food for a week or two, Philip and I get shot. To escape, Katya dies. We must be doing something wrong.”
Neil winced. “I know it seems that way,” he said. “But illness, violence, and death are the new norm. They can’t be avoided.”
“And there’s Frank,” Jeanne said, as if the name itself summarized an entire problem. She searched Neil’s face to see if he had an answer for her, and nodding to her, he gestured with his free hand for her to come to him. She went to his side, and he took her hand.
“Frank hasn’t asked us to stop loving each other,” Neil went on, “although that’s the only thing that would change things for him. He’s only asked us not to make love. For the time being, with Frank as weak as he is, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for him.”
“I know,” said Jeanne. “But as you yourself said, it’s really no solution. It doesn’t stop him from resenting you… us.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“That’s what I can’t stand,” she said. “You and he were friends. He and I… now…”
When she looked up at him, he returned her gaze sternly and removed his hand from hers. He sighed.
“You expect too much of us, Jeanne,” he said. “Good people hurt each other. It’s built into the universe.”
“There were only ten of us,” Jeanne persisted. “Surely we’re capable of creating a happy life for ten people.”
“No, I don’t think we are,” Neil said. “Not when those ten are forced to live with each other whether they like it or not. Not when those ten are threatened with death every day. No, Jeanne, be thankful your children are with you, that I love you, that people like Olly and Philip and Sheila have come into our lives. For the rest, conflict and suffering and death will be in the air we breathe for a long time.”
But if there was peace in Neil’s heart, there was nothing but dissension in his fleet. In the late afternoon of the fifth day out from Anguilla Tony and Oscar, who had asked to come over to have a conference with Neil, arrived aboard Vagabond. Frank had visited Scorpio at midday while Neil was taking the noon sunshot, and he was to be in on the conference too. Although the main cabin would be hot and stuffy, Tony suggested they go below for privacy, forgetting that Philip was berthed there. Instead they sat in the back of the wheelhouse area. Actually the wheelhouse had ceased to exist; only the Plexiglas windows forward remained. Neil had ordered it torn down so that the six-by-ten plywood and Fiberglas roof could be sawed in two, glued together, and Fiberglassed over to make a new dagger board. The walls had come down too. Vagabond now had open cockpits running athwart the entire boat aft of the cabins in the three hulls. Two small sun awnings were rigged up over most of this area, but it was all open to wind and weather.
Oscar and Frank sat on the aft seat, Neil and Tony next to each other on the port seat. Gaunt, bearded, and unkempt, they reminded Neil of four derelicts gathering to share a bottle of cheap wine. Only there was no wine.
“Well, gentlemen,” said Neil gaily. “This is quite a formal occasion. You apparently have something you want to discuss.”
“That’s right,” said Tony, looking Neil firmly in the eye. “This beating to windward is going to break Scorpio apart. We’re pumping half the time. It’s time to change course.”
“We’ve already discussed this,” Neil replied quietly. “Jim, Olly, and I all agree our present course is best. Frank, Mac, and I have all been coming over to help with the pumping, and you won’t take Jim.”
“But everyone on my ship except the old guy is in favor of sailing to Barbados,” said Oscar. “And since Frank agrees, we outvote you.”
“Take Scorpio and go,” said Neil quietly.
“No,” said Oscar, “we don’t want to split up if we can help it. We want to reestablish the normal order of things.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” said Neil.
“Tell him, Frank,” said Tony. “First about the captain thing.”
Frank cleared his throat and slowly raised his eyes to Neil. Great gray half-moons made deep hollows under both his eyes, and the skin around his neck was loose. Sitting hunched over, staring downward had become his characteristic posture.
“When you announced you were the captain of Vagabond in the Chesapeake,” Frank began slowly, “I went along with it. I went along because back then there were twenty or so madmen aboard and your speech shaped them up.” He paused.
“Nineteen madmen,” Tony interjected. “Remember I was there then too.”
Frank blinked once, cleared his throat again, and went on.
“Now there aren’t,” he said. “Now me, Tony, Jim, Olly… even Sheila I guess… any one of us could be captain of Vagabond and run the ship. Maybe not as well as you, but competently…”
Neil held his gaze steadily on Frank but didn’t respond.
“In becoming your first mate I temporarily forfeited my ownership rights to Vagabond,” Frank continued. “In those days, with an untrained crew, it was probably a good way to do things. Now… I’m reasserting my rights as owner.”
“And I’m asserting my rights as owner of Scorpio, ” said Oscar.
“Oh?” said Neil, choosing to look at Oscar, whose long hair and bushy mustache were tangled and streaked with salt, making him look the least reputable of the derelicts. “And what does that mean?”
“It means I want Tony as captain and not the old man.”