It could have been an hour, or two hours. I looked off to the right and saw the mast. It was at least a mile away and wouldn’t see me, but I gave a sob of relief that almost strangled me because it meant she was all right. She’d only been knocked out. She’d probably never find me, but she could make it.
But the time I’d spent showing Shannon navigational and boat-handling points paid off. She had no idea where I’d gone overboard, but she was cutting the whole area into a big grid, searching.
Each time the groundswell lifted me, I kicked myself as high as I could and waved. Those binoculars paid off. I could see the boat headed toward me, and I knew that Goddess had her ancestral Viking fates working for us at last.
We didn’t have to do much talking about the way we felt. About all I could say for the next few days was “You Swede, you big, lovely, magnificent Swede.” She seemed equally happy. I tried to brush aside the cloud that haunted her. Her last months with Macaulay; the strain of the chase had cut into her more deeply than I realized. I repeated the plans I had for changing the name of the boat and its port of registry; for cruising the small ports where we’d be safe from any pursuit for the eighty thousand dollars which would take care of us both for a long time. She smiled agreement each time, but her eyes gave her away. Several times she awoke at night shivering and I knew it wasn’t the tropical breezes. Something continued to haunt her, to keep her from the full paradise that should have been ours.
Time stood still for us. I spent the next few days painting the name, Freya, and San Juan as our port of registry on the stern. My living Freya – she liked that better than Swede – helped. She was a natural at anything you taught her. She learned to use the aqualung and we spent hours at it, diving down to look at the myriad wonders of marine life. She became fascinated with it as if it were another world.
And then it happened. We were far off the Northern Shelves working toward the Yucatan straits. The chart told me we were right on the hundred-fathom curve. It was a very hot sunny day and Shannon suggested we go in for a swim. She was beautiful as she adjusted her mask and dived over the side. I fixed my mask and went under the hull to see if we’d begun to collect any marine growth. It was cool and pleasant, and I paused to watch the silvery flow of hair about her head as she swam beneath me.
A few minutes later I noticed a small shovel-nosed shark off to one side and below. I swam down to watch him. It was quite small and not dangerous. When I looked for Shannon she was gone. I swam to the surface but she was nowhere in sight. I began to be uneasy. But maybe she had gone back aboard for some reason. I was turning to look behind me again when a flash of silver caught the corners of my eyes at the edge of the mask. I froze with horror. She was at least a hundred feet below me, going straight down.
Why had she done it? It had been an accident. It must have been. She was deliriously happy with me. She had no reason for throwing her life away. The pressure must have twisted her sense of direction. She’d been confused, and I’d been too far away to help.
No! She’d known exactly what she was doing. There had been hints. She’d known the violence and the terror of being hunted and had said there’s no escape. That’s why she’d looked at me as if I were an innocent child when I ranted about those little ports. She knew we’d never get away with it.
Alone, I found myself sighting again for 23.50 north, 88.45 west, the spot where she’d gone down. Macaulay could be right. It could be possible to find a pinpoint in the Gulf. There was the exact spot! See, where that seagull is on that driftwood. Looking down into the water I could see a silvery shape.
It was beckoning up at me. I heard her voice say, “Come with me, we’ll live in rapture.”
Something heavy was on my shoulders. I felt straps across my chest. I was wearing the aqualung.
I screamed.
I can still close my eyes and see the whole thing – the blue, and that last, haunting flash of silver, gesturing as it died. It was beckoning. Toward the rapture. The rapture . . .
It was after 2 a.m. when the master of the Joseph H. Hallock closed the journal. The poor devil, he thought. The poor, tortured devil. Four o’clock – and we raised the sloop a little after five.
Changing the name of the sloop didn’t alter the identity of any kind of seagoing craft. There were papers. And more papers. It was as futile as writing your own name on a borrowed passport. Manning should have known, too, that it took about ten pounds of paperwork and red tape to dock at any foreign port – including fishing villages. They all had port authorities, and they all demanded consular clearances and bills of health from the last port of call; registry certificate, Customs lists, crew lists, and so on, ad infinitum, and in the case of pleasure craft they probably required passports and visas for everybody aboard. Manning should have known they didn’t have a prayer of a chance.
He was in his bunk puzzling over it. Suddenly he sat upright. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “I’ll just be damned. It would be perfect.”
It was sunset again, two days later. The tanker was waddling, full-bellied, up the coast of Florida just south of Fowey Rocks. She was well inshore from the main axis of the Stream, since they had made arrangements by radio to have a Coast Guard boat meet them off Miami and take the Freya off their hands. Or at least that was the master’s excuse to Mr Davidson, the mate.
When you resolved the contradiction and acknowledged that Manning couldn’t possibly have believed any of that moonlit dream about escape to the tropics in a boat, he mused, what did you have left? You had left the twin facts that Manning was a writer, and that he was trying to save himself and that girl he was so much in love with.
They had nowhere to go, the girl had said. Nowhere to go, that is, as long as they were being sought by a gang of criminals and also by the police. But if they weren’t being actively sought by anyone, they could come back to their own country, where they would attract less attention than anywhere else on earth. And they would no longer be sought if everyone believed them dead.
But I don’t know any of this, he thought. I’m only theorizing. I don’t really want to know, absolutely and finally, because I’d be obligated to report it. They hadn’t committed any real crime, unless it was a crime to defend oneself, and he hoped they got away with it.
Then he saw what he had been watching for, astern and slightly inshore from the Freya. It could be driftwood, or it could be a head, or two heads. He peered aft in the gathering twilight, and almost raised the glasses.
No, he thought reluctantly; if I know I have to report it. But nobody is interested in the unverified vaporings of a sentimental old man.
They would make it ashore without any trouble, with the lifebelts. And they probably had enough money to buy some clothes to replace their bathing suits. Not that they would be likely to attract any attention in Florida, however, if they went around in their bathing attire for years.
But they were drifting back rapidly. Would he have to lift the glasses to satisfy himself? The objects separated momentarily for an instant before they merged again as one. And one of them had been definitely lighter in color than the other. The master sighed.
“Bon voyage,” he said softly. He turned and went into the chartroom with the glasses still swinging from his neck.