Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

“But wasn’t the Muñeca diesel powered?” the dentist asked.

“Yes sir. But the auxiliary generator was gasoline powered, and my guess is that gas leaked into the bilge from its fuel tank or one of the tins stowed down there to fuel it with. The spark, when I tried to start it, blew the boat up, and the heat of the explosion was greater than the flash-point of the diesel fuel. Maybe I goofed. My God, sir, I’d never start gasoline marine engines without running the blowers first. But with an auxiliary, you don’t think of that so easy. And maybe Bix — Mr. Kayd — goofed too, not having a sniffer installed when he had the gas auxiliary put below decks. Using a blower is something you think of when you’re tied up, not running along at cruising speed.”

“No other survivors, Captain.”

“No sir. When I knew I was alone out there, I remembered the Muñequita. That means little doll in Spanish. It was the boat Bix picked up in Miami because the Muñeca was too big for fishing, with too much draft for some of the places they wanted to explore. She towed just fine on a long line. Snub her closer and she’d wallow and swing, but way back she rode like a church. I thought I spotted her quite a way off. I kept paddling until my arms ached, but if it was the Muñequita, she was moving as fast as I was. It’s possible. With those twin out-drive Volvo units tilted up, she draws fifteen inches, and she has about an average three feet of freeboard for the wind to catch.” He closed his eyes.

“Isn’t this tiring him too much, Bill?” the woman asked softly.

“I’m okay,” Staniker said.

“There’s been a big search,” Barth said. “Air and sea. I guess it started when Kayd didn’t radio Nassau Marine last Saturday morning for traffic, and there were some calls in for him, and the marine operator couldn’t raise him. The search has been tapering off. The focus was up around the Berry Islands.”

“That was where we were headed when we left Nassau. We got into nice dolphin a few miles out. Spent a lot of time. Everybody had fun. Mrs. Kayd had been reading the Guide. She wanted to see the Joulters, and kept teasing Bix until he had me lay out a new course. He said we’d cruise from there to the Berrys Saturday afternoon.”

“And on that float board you made it to South Joulter, eh?”

“I knew about where we were when — it happened. I got a rough estimate of my direction of drift from the stars, and it was too northerly and I was afraid it would make me miss the Joulters and take me on out northwest onto the Bahama Banks. I paddled due south to compensate. Paddled and rested. Maybe I passed out once or twice. At dawn I came to the bar. I let the board drift away. I walked until it got deep again, then swam ashore. Every day — I waited for somebody to come — felt worse — kept thinking about the Muñeca...”

“Now there,” a gentle, crooning, comforting woman-voice said. “It’s all right. You’ll be all right.” He felt her dabbing gently at his face with some cool, scented, astringent lotion on a cloth.

He opened his eyes and saw her leaning over him in the lights of the cabin, saw it was the tall brunette, the better looking of the two, but at this closeness she was older than he had estimated.

“Do you know where you are and who I am, Captain?”

“Is it — Mrs. Barth?”

“Then you do know. But I’m Mrs. Hilger. A while ago you thought I was someone else. Somebody named Crissy. Or Christy. You scared me a little, you were holding my arm so tightly.”

He lay very still. He breathed slowly. “What did I say?”

“I don’t know, actually. You seemed to be trying to make Crissy or Christy understand something. You said something about it not being your fault. Pleading with her, or him.” Her laugh was nervous. “You got quite wild this time.”

“This time?”

“You just moaned and mumbled the other times. This time you rose right up and shouted. We should be tied up in another twenty minutes, Captain. Bert got through to Nassau Marine a little while ago. There’ll be an ambulance waiting.”

He closed his eyes. It was unfair that fever should make you talk and not know you were talking. Somebody might hear enough of the fever words to make their guesses about all of it.

You could not will yourself to be silent when the fever carried you off. But if you could make certain all they would hear would be a thickened mumbling...

He shoved his tongue into his right cheek, between the strong molars. He bit tentatively at first, measuring the pain. Then, body rigid, snuffling and grunting with agony and effort, he began chewing his tongue, mashing the sensitive flesh, tasting the coppery flavor of his blood.

From far away he could hear the woman shouting at him, and then she ran out and called the others. When he felt them leaning over him he pretended to be asleep. God help us, Crissy. God help us. It went wrong. I tried, but it went wrong.

The thirty-eight hundred pounds of the Muñequita dipped and danced on into the Atlantic dusk. Little Doll. Under considerably more power this same T-Craft hull design had won some savage ocean races. Fiberglass, teak, aluminum, stainless steel, plastic, perhaps ten thousand dollars for such a special plaything. With the twin Chrysler-Volvo inboard, outboards, 120 horsepower each, she could scat at forty-seven miles an hour, the deep Vee hull slicing through the chop, the wake flat .

With her fuel capacity increased by the two saddle tanks to over eighty gallons, at her cruising speed of thirty-two miles an hour, the engines turning at 4500 rpm, her maximum range was almost three hundred miles, without safety factor .

From the forward lift-ring a hundred feet of half-inch nylon line trailed upwind. She had been bought on whim and loaded with extras — convertible top, now folded and snapped into the boot, searchlight, rod holders, windshield wipers, bow rails, anchor chocks, electric horn, screens, a transistorized Pearce-Simpson ship-to-shore radio tucked under the Teleflex instrument panel, pedestal helmsman’s seats, two bunks and a head fitted into the small area forward .

Salt had crusted on her, and had then been rinsed away when she had drifted through the rain squalls. At times when the wind and the chop were at odds and the waves broke, she would falter in a moment of awkwardness, take water, then shake herself free with almost an air of apology for such flawed grace. The automatic bilge pump had been turned on when she was rigged for towing, and when the rain and the chop brought enough water aboard, the pump would drone, working off the batteries, until the bilge was again empty .

The graceful hull was a medium Nassau blue, her topsides white with just enough trace of smoke blue to cut the sunglare .

She had lifted and dipped and danced her way with an agile grace which matched her name. Muñequita. Little Doll. The out-drive stern units were uptilted and locked in place. The long line trailing from the bow steadied her, keeping her bow facing into the wind. Yet now movement was less graceful because the northeast wind was freshening, lifting the Gulf Stream into a chop. In that balance of forces the Muñequita moved due west, stern first, into nighttime .

Even in that posture, she seemed to anticipate and avoid the uglier motions, almost as if she were aware of the look of death aboard, aware of the naked body of the girl, face down on the cockpit decking, responding, slack as a pudding, to each variation of that long and lonely dance across an empty sea .

The boat drifted into the path of a brief hard shower that moved swiftly, dimpling the swells, then spattering against the topsides and against the sun-raw, blistered back of the girl. It soaked her hair and when it ran across her parted lips she made the smallest of sounds, licked with a slow tongue, moved one hand slightly .