“Yes,” Dolan said, and Mal sensed a grin behind the beard.
“Then I have to tell you this. Our expedition was set up as a smoke screen. A wealthy Hindu, enormously wealthy, was in danger of having his fortune taken over by the Pakistan government. During the fighting he converted everything into jewels and gold and hid them. We went in and located sediment containing skulls of entelodonts of the Miocene period. We cut blocks of the sediment and the standard procedure is to cover the exposed bones with shellac and wrap the blocks with burlap soaked in flour paste for shipment. There can be no question of import on such items. We cracked one such block, bored a hole in the middle for the treasure and recemented it with mud before wrapping it. I have to tell you all this so you won’t abandon ship unless it is suicide to stay with it.”
“Go on,” Dolan said.
“I would guess the total value at about... six million dollars. Dolan, if you can save this ship I’ll cut you in for a sixth share.”
“A quarter share,” Dolan said. “And besides, who are you to cut me in? Where’s the owner?”
Mal looked over just in time to see the look in Sara’s eyes as she lifted her glance to his. It answered Dolan’s question with cruel clarity.
“He did not survive the trip,” Temble said.
Branch startled them all with a loud laugh in which there was no trace of humor or amusement. It sounded more like the bray of an animal.
As Dolan gave orders to the crew, one of the mess boys broke open the locker containing the life jackets. They were of dingy gray canvas designed like a vest, with blocks of cork sewed in around the waist.
Once they had been donned a new flavor was in the air — of expectation and immediacy. Mr. Gopala made sharp clicking noises with his tongue, indicating extreme disappointment with the cut and fit of the garment.
“Stay in this room, all of you,” Dolan ordered, striding out. Torgeson had gone below to watch over his precious steel monsters. The crewmen huddled in a group. Sparks was reading again. Mal sat on the floor beside Sara, their backs against the wall, their legs braced. Between them, where the others could not see, she held his hand tightly. Her slim fingers were strong and icy. Temble and Branch had their heads together. Once Branch stared over at the two of them. It was a flat stare, without emotion. A carpenter might stare in that way at a board he was about to cut. A trap shooter might stand and wait, his eyes on the trap, with precisely that expression.
Once the Star heeled over so far that every mouth went taut, all eyes went wide. From Mal’s position, staring along the floor was like looking up a steep hill. She remained in that position for an impossible, interminable length of time before slowly creaking and sighing back to roll, not quite so far, in the opposite direction.
“I thought it was going all the way over,” Sara said, her lips close to his ear.
“It won’t, don’t worry.”
“I’m sick, Mal. Sick inside. I’ve been sick for a long time. It started when I found out what he is. What Roger is. They killed that man when he left the fire and went down to the stream to wash.”
He pressed her hand. “Don’t talk about it.”
“I don’t care any more, Mal. If I live I’m going to tell what he did.”
“Don’t say that!” he said sharply. “If he should hear you...”
“Gina’s his kind of woman. She has the same streak in her that he has. They found it out on this trip, Mal. The way she watches me... I know what she wants him to do.”
“Please, darling.”
She looked into his eyes and then her slow smile came. It was a faintly crooked smile, uptilted more on the right than on the left. Her eyes at that moment were as gray as the sea — as gray as the sky — and as warm as lips against his heart.
“Like that?” he asked.
Her fingers tightened on his hand, “just like that, Mal. And I didn’t know it before. What a time to find out!”
“Stay close to me. No matter what happens. Stay close to me.”
“I will. Oh, I will!”
Every moment the Bjornsan Star increased the spasmodic extent of her labors. The salon windows rolled under with each wave. So much water came in that Sara and Mal had to stand.
Dolan came to the doorway and bawled, “Lines are strung. Everybody up onto the boat deck. Watch yourself?”
The sailors, when he repeated the order in their language, made a frantic rush for the doorway, clogging it for a moment with their struggling bodies. Mal let the others go first. He and Sara and MacLane were the last to leave. Mal supported Sara with a strong arm around her waist.
At the exit to the weather deck he yelled into her ear, “Run out and grab that rope when I push you. Hold on with both hands all the time. Move by sliding your hands along it.”
Then she was ahead of him, clinging to the rope. They made ten feet before the water roared down at them. It swept her off her feet a fraction of a second before it knocked him down, burying them both in its turbulence. She slid back against him and he got his arm around her, locked his hand on the rope in front of her body. As soon as the deck was clear they scrambled up and made another eight to ten feet before the water smashed at them again.
The third time a body slammed against them with brutal force, almost tearing them from the life line. It tangled in Mal’s legs as the water drained away. He looked down and saw Gina there. Her eyes were open and she seemed to smile up at him. But then he saw that the water swirling away from her, was pink, saw the great wound where her throat had been slashed. The next wave spun her away into the screaming grayness astern. Sara had not seen. Her movements had grown feeble and he knew that she was but semi-conscious from the buffeting she had taken. The absurdly large slacks he had given her were pasted to her long legs. But there was no longer the danger of chill. The long night had carried them far enough north so that the sting was gone from the air and even from the water.
At last they reached the point where it was but a dozen feet around the corner to the amidships ladderway leading up to the boat deck. He forced her along, spending the last of his energy to get her to the foot of the ladderway. The next boiling wave caught them there, but he had both hands clamped to the steel railing, his arms around her.
She climbed slowly. When she paused to rest he looked back to see how MacLane was faring. MacLane had reached the foot of the ladder. He looked up with a face so strained that it resembled a skull. As Mal watched he saw the wave smash the weakened man against the steel treads of the steps. MacLane dropped and the wave carried him ten feet before it receded. There was no chance of reaching him. He lay with the book beside him and Mal wondered vacantly how he had managed to bring his reading along so far. Then the next gray wave swirled MacLane away, around the corner and out of sight.
Sara fell once she reached the boat deck. He picked her up, supported her, as they made their way by the empty davits and along the side of the captain’s cabin to the bridge where the others were gathered.
Temble ran to Mal, grasped him and shook him, yelling into his face, “Where’s Gina? Where’s Gina? She was right behind me!”
“Swept overboard,” Mal said crisply. “I couldn’t save her.”
Temble’s shoulders slumped. He staggered wearily and almost fell. Up on the boat deck the rolling motion of the ship was even more pronounced, but they were at least out of the reach of the waves. The superstructure looked as though a giant’s hand had swept casually along the ship, from stern to bow and back again.
Mal found Sara a relatively dry corner. Dolan and a husky seaman fought the wheel. Dolan’s mouth sagged open with strain, so that it formed a wet red orifice in the middle of the matted beard.