A long time passed in silence. The motion of the ship grew choppier, more abrupt, harder to anticipate. One violent heave slid her half out of the chair. She smiled at him apologetically.
The bottle smashed on the floor. They both turned and looked at Branch. It was obvious that the bottle had been emptied before it fell. Branch turned and focused his eyes on them, grinning, and his underlip sagged away from strong yellow teeth.
“Come talk to me, baby,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Sara asked coldly.
He gave here an exaggerated leer. “Don’t tell me it’s over your head, baby. Right along you’ve known how it’s been with me. But the old man is laid up now. C’mere, kid. Sit over here where I can sweet-talk you.”
Sara started to get up. Mai tried to restrain her. She shook off his hand. “It’s all right, really. He’s just drunk. There won’t be any trouble.”
She had to hold onto the table for a moment until the ship steadied. Then she went toward Branch in a half run, urged on by a new tilt of the ship. He laughed loudly, caught her by one wrist and swung her into his lap. The chairs had been bolted to the floor. Sara gave a shrill cry of fright as Branch wrapped his big arms around her, saying huskily, “You know how it’s been with me right from the beginning, baby. With a little luck we can keep the whole works for just you and me.”
As Mai jumped toward them, the first roll of the Bjornsan Star flung him in the other direction. He fell against one of the fixed chairs, but on the next surge he went uphill toward Branch, moving like a man breasting waist-deep water. Throughout the ship unfastened doors banged and equipment thudded.
Branch looked up as Mal was upon him. He pushed Sara off his lap and she fell, rolled hard against the wall. Branch came up out of the chair and clubbed at Mal with a fist like an oak knot, but the movement of the ship destroyed his aim and they fell against each other. Mal brought his knee up hard and tried to rush Branch against the bulkhead, but the bigger man twisted easily and it was Mal who hit the steel, his head snapping back hard against a row of rivet heads, the shock and pain dazing him.
Branch set his feet and, grunting with each swing, he drove his big fists into Mai’s middle. Then the roll of the ship carried him backward out of range. He went back, off balance, until the backs of his thighs struck a chair back. He toppled over with a surprised look frozen on his face. He was on his feet immediately, blood flowing from a cut across his left cheek. Sara, off to Mal’s left, had pulled herself to her feet.
“He’ll kill you!” she screamed.
The tip of the floor brought Branch on in a blundering rush. Mal barely had time to get his foot up. He kicked Branch in the pit of the stomach but the big hands clamped on his ankle as Branch’s mouth sagged open. Branch twisted hard and Mal fell heavily. A hard fist thudded against his head just over the ear and the room spun.
Then suddenly Branch was gone. Mal rolled onto his hands and knees and, peering up, he saw Dolan standing there, feet planted, red beard matted, braced against the sway of the ship, holding Branch by the nape of the neck with, effortless strength.
As branch tried to kick him Dolan laughed, a laugh which merged with the roar of the storm. Dolan was like a creature out of the sea. He held Branch with his left hand and drove his right fist against the man’s jaw with such a cat’s quickness that there seemed almost to be no interval between blows. Branch fell. He lay on his back and his head lolled back and forth on his limp neck with each movement of the ship.
Dolan reached over and fingered the jaw. “Didn’t break it,” he said with satisfaction. He straightened up. His eyes suddenly held a weary look. “We’ve lost a man. Swept overboard. We saw him go and we couldn’t do a damn thing. And we’ve lost a passenger.”
“Who?” said Sara in a tone barely audible.
“Welling. Broken neck. The way I see it, he must have started out of his cabin and lost his balance and got thrown against the rail that protects the ladderway down to the engine room. He toppled over. Torgeson found him down there. I tied the body back in the bunk.”
“Can I get to my cabin?” Sara asked.
“No. I can’t let you take the risk and I can’t spare the men to take you on a rope. You stay below.”
He turned and went out, cat-footed, steady as a rock against the wild pitch of the floor. Mal looked at the unconscious Tom Branch and then over at Sara.
“Sooner or later,” he said, “He’s going to come out of it and make trouble. I think we’d better go to my cabin. I won’t bother you.”
She nodded. Once they reached the companionway leading from the mess room the going was easier as the swing of the ship merely knocked them from side to side of the narrow corridor.
Water was ankle-deep in the corridor, sloshing back and forth, wetting them midway to the knees. At the turning where his cabin was off to the left, Sara stopped, clung to a wall brace and stared off to the right where the door to the deck was open, the pin in the wall slot holding it open.
The noise was louder here. “Can we look?” Sara called.
He shrugged. “No harm in looking.”
They went cautiously down to the open doorway. The weather sill was a foot high. With each swell the Bjornsan Star was burying her nose as she came up out of the trough and the water, waist high, was roaring down the weather decks. There was a fascination in the sight of the wild sea. The wind was still strong, stronger than before, but each mountainous wave was crested with white froth that streamed away in the wind. The sea and the sky were the color of gray metal.
As a massive angry roar of water went by the door, seething and bubbling, Sara stepped quickly out over the weather sill and ran for the amidships ladderway leading up to the boat deck.
Mal was frozen for a moment, and then he gave a great cry and plunged after her. He saw that she could not possibly make it. Nor could he reach her. He got as close as he could and then clamped his right hand on a round metal rail support. As the wave brought her tumbling back to him he reached out and managed to catch her by the arm. He took a deep breath and shut his eyes. The hard weight of the water closed over him, roaring in his ears. He felt the popping and crackling of his shoulder muscles, felt the slow slip of his fingers down her wrist to her hand. Then, as he thought he would lose her, the pressure eased. When the water dropped away, he let go of the rail support, grabbed her other wrist and ran backward away from the next wave already breaking over the bow. She was unconscious. He tumbled her in over the weather sill and, barely in time, with the water pulling at his legs, he fell in on top of her.
He dragged her back toward the brandling of the corridor, rolled her onto her face, kneeled straddling one slim leg and pushed down with his hands against her small waist for a slow count of three, then took the pressure off, counted to three again before reapplying it. After he had done it twenty times she coughed and retched up a gout of sea water. She moaned just loud enough for him to hear her.
He picked her up and stumbled heavily toward his cabin.
IV
As the open door banged violently, he carried her in and put her on the bunk. Then he returned to the door, took the key from the outside and locked it on the inside. His locked door banged with an irritating clatter. He latched it.
Both of them were drenched. She lay, rigid and white-faced. Long shudders shook her body. She opened her eyes and looked up at him and tried to say something, but her teeth were chattering so badly that he could not make out the words. The blueness of her lips and fingernails frightened him and he tried to remember what he had read about shock.