He unlaced her sodden shoes and took them off, stripped the soaked wool ankle socks from her feet. Then he tried to strip the white sweater, heavy with water, up over her head. She fought him.
“Sara! Listen to me. You’ve got to get dry and warm. Please.”
She did not fight any longer, and he threw the sodden sweater over under the wash stand. She lay with her eyes shut. “Can you hear me?” he asked loudly.
She nodded. “Okay, Sara. Here’s two towels. I’m going to turn my back and count slowly to a hundred. Then I’m going to turn around. You’d better have everything off, be dry and be under those covers. Understand?” She nodded again as a great shiver possessed her.
He went over and stared out the closed porthole at the wildly tossing sea. Once the porthole rolled underwater, startling him.
“All right?” he called, without turning.
“Y-y-yes,” she answered. He turned. Her clothes were in a damp heap beside the bunk. The covers were pulled up to her chin and she was trying weakly to dry her hair. He made her hang her head over the edge of the bunk, where he knelt beside her and rubbed the gloss back into the glowing strands. They came alive as they dried, springy under the towel.
He took the flask from his flight bag and made her drink several swallows of straight brandy. She coughed and her eyes streamed, but she had stopped shaking.
“Thanks, Mal. Thank you very much.”
“That was a damn fool stunt, Sara. You could have died.”
“Would that have been important?”
“To me? Yes.” She flushed and looked away. “Turn over and face the wall, Sara. See if you can sleep. I’ve got to get out of these clothes.”
He stood and toweled himself dry, looking over at the autumn flame of her hair spread on the pillow. He put on dry clothes, wrung out their wet things in the wash stand — her heavy sweater and skirt, the diaphanous undergarments. He lurched over and stood beside the bunk, braced against the deep swing of the ship. She seemed to be breathing heavily, regularly, in spite of the movement that rolled her back and forth. He was drugged with weariness. He made a bed of the damp clothes by spreading a blanket over them. He stretched out on the floor against the wall after turning out the light. The Bjornsan Star labored her weary way through the endless night.
Heavy banging on the door awakened him. He was stiff and sore from the pummeling of the wall and floor. He stood up. The movement of the ship was oddly different.
“Who is it?” he called. Sara was sitting up in the bunk, her eyes wide with fright, the covers clasped to her breast.
“Dolan. Is the Temble woman with you?”
He glanced over at Sara. She made no sign. “Yes,” he called back.
“Both of you get down to the ward room as fast as you can make it. Hear?”
“Right.” Dolan was gone.
“What is it?” Sara asked. Her voice trembled.
“He’s worried. Something about the ship.” He looked at the port. It was rolling under with every third wave. “She’s lower in the water, Sara. Logier.” He went to the flight bag, pulled out a white shirt, flannel slacks and a heavy cardigan sweater. He threw them over onto the bunk. “Get dressed fast. Your stuff isn’t dry yet. Roll up the sleeves and cuffs.”
He turned his back to her. Dressed in his clothes she looked amazingly frail. He unlocked the door and they went down to the ward room. Everyone stared at them with varying expressions as they came in, fighting the pitch of the ship. Gina looked into Mal’s eyes with amused insolence. Sparks stood braced in a corner, a book in his hands. He glanced up absently and then began reading again.
Roger Temble’s complexion was green, but his eyes were alert, his smile sour. “I’m happy to see you’re alive and... unharmed, my dear,” he said. “We were worried about you.”
“Listen,” said Mal, “your wife couldn’t get back up to...”
“Please shut up, sir,” Dr. Temble said. “I think there are things of importance to be discussed.” Sara stared woodenly down at the floor.
Tom Branch, his mouth puffed, his eyes disclosing the extent of a brutal hangover, sat numbly in one of the chairs. Anger flickered in his eyes and disappeared almost immediately as he glanced at Mal. Torgeson, looking like the small gray ghost of a once cheery squirrel, sat near Branch. The cook, both mess boys and six other seamen were crowded into the room.
Dolan stood, his feet spread, his eyes bleak. Behind him Mal saw the figure of Mister Gopala clad in a huge fuzzy blue sweater, with a pink scarf over his head and tied under his chin.
“This meeting,” said Dolan in a voice that filled the room, “is to bring you up on the state of affairs. At three this morning she hit a bad one and some starboard plates amidships buckled. The water’s coming in faster than the pumps can handle it. One of the boats was swept away yesterday. At dawn Captain Paulus stole the other one and left with the second officer and six seamen. I don’t think the boat lived in that water.” He turned and repeated what he had said in Swedish this time. The men took the information stoically.
“Now for an accounting. After yesterday’s two accidents there were twenty-nine of us left. Eight took the remaining boat. So there’s twenty-one of us. You six passengers, the two men up at the wheel, nine seamen in this room, Sparks, Torgeson, myself and Torgeson’s second in the engine room. The radio shack is gone.”
MacLane folded his book, keeping a finger between the pages. “And now, Dolan, I can tell you what I’ve been trying to say. Last night I ducked out to eat, and when I got back to my board I found that some clever devil had been at work in there. Tubes cracked and connections torn loose. In the best of weather it would have taken me three days to get back on the air.”
Dolan gave him a look of heavy contempt. “The blue monkeys did it, I suppose.” At that second the Star rolled so badly that MacLane was forced to take a step away from his corner. He fell back against the wall heavily.
“I am not saying, Dolan, that they couldn’t have done it. I just doubt they had the technical ability. At least all the little creatures are gone now.”
Dolan shrugged as if it were no longer a matter of importance. He turned to Torgeson. “How do things stand below?”
The chipmunk mouth quivered, but the voice still had its truculent rasp. “Water ten inches over the floor plates when I left. An hour, maybe, before it douses the engines. They’ll suck in water vapor and in diesels that’s a more explosive mixture than the oil and they’ll run away with...”
“Skip the technical information, Torgeson. Damn a man with my luck. Now get this. We haven’t been able to take a shot for twenty hours. We’re headed northeast. There’s one hell of a lot of open sea around here. I want to stay with the ship until the last minute. Then we’ll spread oil and take to the rafts. Everybody has to be ready to go at thirty seconds’ notice. Guessing our speed and drift, we’ve got one chance in a thousand of hitting a little French pimple of an island. The oil will give us a chance to get everybody lashed to the rafts and...”
“I’ve got to get into the hold,” Dr. Temble said in a loud hoarse tone.
Dolan stared at him. “What the hell for?”
“My... my specimens! The expedition specimens!”
“Even if you could get into the hold, which you can’t,” Dolan said, “I wouldn't load any rocks and bones onto our rafts.” He stared at Temble and seemed to be waiting.
Temble’s eyes had a glassy shine behind the dewed lenses. “You don’t understand, Dolan. It’s more than...”
“Shut up!” Gina screamed, her face contorted.
Temble stared at her and his mouth hardened. He advanced a step toward Dolan, and he clung to the table to steady himself. “You intend to abandon ship?”