But without answering the girl ducked back down into the cabin. Michael Shayne jerked out the carefully packed rubber raft and punctured the inflator cartridge. The raft uncoiled like something living as it filled out, and he tossed it over the side, holding it with a rope. Sandra came back, wearing her light coat and carrying an overnight bag.
“Here, hold this rope!” Shayne said. She took it. He scooped up Captain Tolliver’s light body and ducked down into the cabin. The water was knee deep. He put Tolliver into a bunk and left him. Only when he was back on deck did he remember that he’d left his jacket, with his gun and wallet, back in the cabin. It was too late now to get them.
In the galley he found a loaf of bread and some bacon. He snatched up a jug of water, tumbled the supplies into a dish towel, and dropped them onto the raft.
“Now climb down,” he said. “Here, give me that bag.” Shayne took the small overnight bag Sandra was clutching and held it while she lowered herself down onto the rubber raft. Then he passed it down to her. It was heavy, and she grabbed it swiftly.
He stayed only long enough to grab the paddles from the chest, and the canvas sack into which he had put the money Tolliver had brought up from the sunken K-341. The deck of the Golden Girl was now almost awash. He simply stepped on the rubber raft, sat down and pushed them away. Behind them the old cruiser went down with hardly a ripple.
Mike picked up the paddles and handed one to Sandra. “We’ll paddle due west,” he said. “That should bring us to land eventually, though I don’t know where. Maybe a fishing boat will see us before that.”
“But we can’t go without marking this spot!” Sandra protested. “We have to, so we can find it again! We can’t lose everything, just when we’ve found it!”
“I’m open to suggestions. But right at the moment, I don’t see how we can do it.”
“That box!” She pointed to the emergency kit which came attached to the raft. “What’s in it? Maybe there’s something we can use.”
“We’ll see.” He got the lid off the small box after a struggle, and they both peered in. The contents were some packages of a special silver salt that precipitated salt water to make it drinkable, a couple of nylon fish lines with lures, and a small handbook, How To Survive at Sea.
“The fish lines!” Sandra exclaimed. “We can mark this spot with a float attached to a fish line. Look — over there. A life preserver from the Golden Girl. We can tie it to the fish line.”
“Better than nothing,” the redhead agreed. Unwinding one fish line, a hundred and fifty feet long, he attached all the sinkers in the kit, and all the hooks to one end of the nylon. “The hooks may catch in the coral,” he said. “Otherwise, the life preserver will just drag the sinkers away if any wind comes up.”
Then they paddled over to the life belt, floating in the oily stain that marked the Golden Girl’s sinking. Shayne fastened the free end of the fish line to the cork preserver, and dropped the sinkers into the water. They rushed down to a depth of a hundred feet and the improvised marker floated there, tugging gently at its anchorage.
“It’s a big ocean,” he said. “And if we ever can find this thing again it’ll be just luck.”
“We’ll find it,” Sandra Ames assured him confidently. “Hugo will be able to. I know he will.”
Shayne let it go at that. There was no use telling her that if an offshore wind came up, they might never see Hugo Mollison again to tell him about the marker.
They began paddling the clumsy rubber raft as nearly straight west as they could. An hour went by, and Sandra’s hands were painfully blistered. Grimly she kept on paddling, but after two hours had to give up, tears of frustration in her eyes. Shayne continued to paddle, and a light breeze, setting shoreward came up. But even with the breeze he estimated they were making no more than two miles an hour, and by noon, there was still no sign of the Florida coast on the horizon.
He shipped his paddle and rested. His own hands were blistered now, and he examined them tenderly. The salt water that dripped down the paddle made each paddle stroke a torture.
“We seem to be making progress no place fast,” he said. “But don’t worry. Men have survived for weeks on a raft like this. And a fishing boat is bound to come past sooner or later.”
“I’m not worrying about that,” Sandra said, her voice strained. She sat huddled close to him in her light coat — not for warmth, because with the sun overhead the day had become sweltering, but to avoid sunburn. “I’ve been thinking — those men in the helicopter who tried to kill us. They must be part of a gang who knows about the submarine too. That man last night — the one who rescued Captain Tolliver — he must be part of the gang. The two men in the helicopter couldn’t be the only ones. There must be others. They’ll be wondering what happened to the helicopter. Maybe they’ll come looking for it. And if they find us while they’re searching—”
She shivered slightly, and her eyes were big as she stared at Michael Shayne. He had been thinking along the same lines, but saw no point in mentioning the possibilities.
“The chances are a hundred to one we’ll be picked up by a fishing boat,” he said with false heartiness. “No need to worry. Let’s have a bit of lunch.”
He sliced the loaf of bread they had brought along, and put strips of raw bacon between the slices. They each ate a raw bacon sandwich, and washed it down with a careful swallow of water. Then Sandra Ames stretched and yawned.
“I’m sleepy,” she said. “I think I’ll take a nap.”
She curled up, her head cushioned on the side of the life raft, and fell asleep. Shayne estimated the situation. The breeze was still moving them shoreward slowly. The sea was calm and empty. His hands were too sore for more paddling. Between one thing and another, he hadn’t had much sleep the night before. Presently he curled up in the remaining space, put his arm over his eyes, and fell asleep too.
How long he slept he didn’t know, but when he abruptly opened his eyes, the sun had descended in the sky quite a distance. The voice that had awakened him yelled again.
“Ahoy, the raft!”
Shayne turned, even as Sandra Ames stirred and sat up. A very fancy cabin cruiser was easing up to them. In the bow stood a short, plump figure holding a coiled rope.
“Get ready to catch a line!” the plump man called.
The redhead stared, and behind him the girl gave an excited gasp.
“It’s Hugo!” she cried. “Hugo and Pete! They’ve found us!”
Michael Shayne rubbed his jaw absentmindedly. “Well, by God!” he said. “Damned if they haven’t!”
10
The sleek cruiser knifed its way northward toward Biscayne Bay. It was full dark now and the wind had freshened. They rolled a bit as they cut through the long swells.
Shayne, wearing a sweater borrowed from Pete Ruggles, stood and smoked and watched Pete at the helm. The young man handled the helm as easily as if he hadn’t spent half the afternoon in the water, skin-diving down to the sunken K-341 again and again to bring up more packages of bills in watertight aluminum casings.
Up forward, Sandra was sound asleep in one of the two tiny cabins. She too had spent more hours in the water, diving down to the submerged submarine after they had been rescued. For after picking them up and hearing their story, Hugo Mollison had swung the cruiser eastward, made a quick estimate of tide and wind, and then, either by superhuman good luck or uncanny navigation, found the life belt they had left to mark the spot where the Golden Girl had gone down and the K-341 lay. He himself did not put it all down to luck.