“The charade’s over,” Macklin announced. “Tony and I are taking over.”
“What’s that mean?” Frank said, his fists clenched at his sides.
“It means Tony and I are taking Vagabond, and you can join your friends on Scorpio.”
“You little bastard,” Frank growled, “you couldn’t handle Vagabond for a single second.”
“Get off the boat,” said Macklin.
“Jesus, you and Tony are clowns,” said Frank, sneering. With a suddenness that surprised everyone he grabbed Tony’s gun and tried to twist it free, using Tony’s body as a shield. Crouching in the corner ten feet away, Macklin trained his gun first on Frank and then on Neil, who had taken three quick steps toward him; then he swung it back around and fired a single shot at the tangle of Frank and Tony.
For a moment that tangle seemed to continue its wrestling unaffected, but then Frank slumped to the cockpit floor. Tony, breathing heavily, straightened up and stared down fearfully at his fallen adversary.
Macklin, sweating, turned his gun back on Neil. Jeanne appeared in Scorpio’s cockpit next to Janice, at the helm.
“What happened?” she asked into the silence aboard Vagabond.
Macklin wheeled toward her with a scowl.
“Get back below or I’ll kill you.”
“Get below!” Sheila shouted to her. “He’s shot Frank.” A look of shock appeared on Jeanne’s face, then she moved slowly past Janice to Scorpio’s starboard rail. She could now see Frank’s bleeding body in Vagabond’s rear cockpit.
“Oh, my God,” she said and climbed aboard.
Tony and Mirabai, still worried about infection, quickly left the cockpit area to avoid her. Mirabai returned to Scorpio, and Tony came into the wheelhouse. As Jeanne knelt beside Frank’s fallen body, Macklin held his gun on Neil.
“Oscar,” he said, “put the barrel of your gun in Loken’s back and escort him over onto Scorpio.”
As Neil felt Oscar’s gun press into his back he began walking toward Macklin, who was still crouched back against the far corner of the cockpit, his eyes darting nervously. The two boats were sailing serenely forward at six knots, still lashed side to side, rubbing and crashing but held off by their fenders.
Neil glanced at Sheila as he passed her at the helm and hoped she might try to help. Mirabai came up on deck again aboard Scorpio.
“That’s it,” she said to Macklin. “I’ve brought over everything you asked me to.”
Macklin glanced swiftly at her, then back at Neil, who was now only six feet away. Vagabond suddenly swung to port, her port bow crashing hard against Scorpio and throwing all of them off balance: Sheila had acted.
Neil wheeled and, grabbing Oscar’s gun arm, hurled him across the wheelhouse. He crashed into the mizzenmast, his gun was ripped from his hand, and he slumped to the floor. As Neil turned back toward Macklin he saw Jeanne wrestling for possession of Macklin’s gun. Neil leapt forward, throwing his weight against Macklin’s left side and sending all three of them crashing against the combing. Jeanne screamed as her left arm struck, then sank slowly to the deck. Neil grabbed Macklin’s gun arm and began banging it against the edge of the combing. Groaning, Macklin let go of the gun.
Grabbing Macklin by the belt and shirt front, Neil half-carried, half-dragged him past Frank and Jeanne to the rear of the cockpit, lifted him high up over his head, and hurled him into the sea. Macklin’s head struck the side of Vagabond’s deck. He fell between the two boats, bobbed up briefly in the boats’ wakes, then disappeared behind a swell.
Neil stood staring after him for a moment, then turned back to the cockpit. Jeanne had knelt down beside Frank again, rocking back and forth, almost as if she had forgotten the violence swirling around her. Neil crouched down beside them.
Frank’s eyes were open and clear, but a thin line of blood trickled from his mouth. He was laboring for each breath, his chest rising, shuddering, and collapsing. Neil knew a lung must have been punctured. Jeanne had placed a towel beneath his ribcage, and Neil took it away, pushed up his shirt, and revealed what looked like an exit wound from the bullet. The sight of the copious bleeding gave Neil a sinking feeling.
He groaned, reaching out to touch Frank and letting a hand fall helplessly on his shoulder. Frank managed a grin that was mostly a grimace.
“Christ,” he gasped out, “have I botched it.”
“Can’t we help him?” asked Jeanne.
“Yes,” said Neil. “We’ve got to drain the blood from his lung. Somehow get new blood into him.” He stood up. Tony was in a corner of the wheelhouse along with the still groggy Oscar. For Neil they had no more relevance than bothersome insects.
“We’re taking Vagabond,” he said to them, “and staying at sea for the time being. We’ll redivide the food after we’ve tried to save Frank.”
Tony stood with one arm holding the mizzenmast to steady himself, the other still clutching his pistol. He seemed to be groping for an appropriate course of action and not finding one.
“You’ll have to tell me when you changed course during the night,” Neil went on. “I’ll plot your course for Barbados.”
“You… you’re letting us go?” Tony asked, as if it had been Neil who was holding a gun on him.
“Yes,” said Neil, and went below to try to save what still could be saved.
Once again Vagabond sailed on alone. The two boats had parted. Tony, Oscar, and the four others had taken Scorpio, planning to sail it downwind back to Barbados. Neil had checked over the relative food supplies of the two ships, sent some back to Scorpio, and had given Tony one of the two automatic rifles and some ammunition. His last exchange with Tony was brief.
“Good luck,” Neil said to him as they prepared to cast off the rafting lines.
Tony, who had been unusually subdued in the two hours since Frank had been shot, simply nodded.
“You too,” he said, and as Neil released one line and was moving to untie the next, added quickly, “Sorry about…” but didn’t finish.
Neil merely released the second line, signaled Olly on the port bow to release his, and the two boats, free of each other at last, angled out and away from each other. Since Vagabond was now altering course from west back to southeast, the two boats had to cross paths once more, Vagabond luffing her sails and then sailing across Scorpio’s wake. For a moment everyone on both boats acted as if the other boat weren’t there, until Olly, still on Vagabond’s bow collecting the fenders, stood up and waved heartily.
“Go get ’em, Tony,” he shouted. Tony gave a subdued wave in return, and then the two vessels were speeding away from each other, one to the west, one to the southeast, each to its own fate.
“Always give people encouragement when they’re sailing off,” Olly said to Neil after he’d returned aft. “Otherwise they might come back.”
Philip and Sheila had remained with Vagabond. When Sheila had talked to her husband late that morning about joining Scorpio, Philip had shaken his head.
“I have to have something to live for,” Philip told her. “With those people I wouldn’t. Here… I do.”
But his fever was now over a hundred and three degrees; Neil started a third antibiotic.
Frank, berthed in the dinette where Philip had been, was still alive. They had sedated him, drained the blood from the lung, and managed, with great difficulty and uncertainty, to draw almost a pint of blood from Sheila’s arm and inject it into Frank. Neil knew that with the primitive syringe he was using there was danger of an embolism, but he had concluded that without a transfusion Frank wouldn’t survive the first night. Lisa and Jim were quarantined in Frank’s old cabin, Philip installed on a wheelhouse settee, with Sheila in the forepeak. Jeanne and Skippy remained in the port cabin, but Jeanne began to spend most of her time with Lisa and Jim, planning to sleep on their cabin floor. The disease would reach its climax in the first three or four days, so the battle might well be won or lost quickly. Knowing that the disease was not airborne and that cleanliness could have a decisive effect on whether it spread or not, Neil hoped that they could contain it.