Charles Williams - Aground

“I wouldn’t know about that. I’m no navigator. It looks like we could have used one. I tried to get Hollister to proposition you—”

“Wait a minute. You mean you know me?”

“Sure. I thought I recognized you when you came aboard, and when the pilot called you Ingram I had you made.”

“Where did you see me before?”

“In the lobby of the Eden Roc when you went to see Hollister the first time.”

Rae Osborne broke in. “Why did this man Hollister want somebody else to inspect the Dragoon instead of going himself?”

Morrison shrugged. “He said the watchman might remember him. He was an old boy friend of the owner, and he’d been aboard before.”

She said nothing, and turned to stare out across the water to the northward. Well, at least her question was answered, Ingram thought. “Whose idea was it, stealing the boat?” he asked.

“Hollister’s. Or whatever you said his name was.”

“Patrick Ives,” she said.

“Anyway, he was supposed to furnish the transportation and the know-how to get us down there. Said he’d been around boats a lot, and used to be a navigator in the Eighth Air Force during the war. From the looks of it, he wasn’t so hot. We could have used you.”

“You did,” Ingram said. “That’s why I’m here. Where did you get the guns?”

“We stole ‘em.”

“All right, I’ll make you a proposition,” Ingram said. “I think I can get this schooner afloat when those guns are off. So we throw them over the side and take the schooner back to Key West. They’re contraband. Nobody can claim them legally, so there’ll be no charge against you except for stealing the boat. I think Mrs. Osborne’ll agree not to press that, if she gets the boat back undamaged, so probably the worst you’d get would be a suspended sentence.”

“Nothing doing. We’re going to deliver the guns.”

The throbbing in his head was agony, and he had to close his eyes against the glare of the sun. What was the matter with the stupid muscle-head; wasn’t there any way you could make him understand? He fought down an impulse to shout. “Listen, Morrison,” he said wearily, “try to use your head, will you? You’re not in a serious jam yet, but if you go through with this you haven’t got a chance. You’ll be facing a federal charge of kidnapping. They’ll run you down and put you away for life.”

“Not me. I’ll be long gone.”

“You think you’re going to hide out in Latin America? Did you ever take a look at yourself?”

“It’s easy when you speak the language and you’ve got money and connections.”

“Not when they want you for something big back here. The U.S. State Department’s got connections too.”

Morrison’s eyes began to grow ugly. “I’m not asking you about this, pal. I’m telling you. We’re going to put those guns on that island. When we get the boat loose, we bring ‘em back.”

Ingram looked out toward the narrow strip of sand. “The raft won’t carry over a couple of hundred pounds at a time. It’ll take the rest of the week.”

“No, I’ve already got it figured out. We won’t have to ferry ‘em all the way. The water looks shallow over there. You haul ‘em to where I can wade out and meet you, and I take ‘em from there while you come back for another load. Like a bucket brigade. Now let’s get going.” He stood up and called down the hatchway. “You all set, Carlos?”

“The ropes are off the left side,” Ruiz replied from below. “I’m starting on the right.”

Ingram looked out at the surface of the water and could see the faint beginnings of movement. The tide had passed high slack and was starting to ebb slowly past the imprisoned hull. Well, let him go ahead and kill himself, he thought; it’d be one less to contend with. Then he shrugged uncomfortably, and knew he couldn’t do it; this wasn’t Ruiz’ fault.

“You’d better tell your boy not to take the lashings off the starboard side,” he said to Morrison. “Not till he’s got room to unpile those cases.”

“Why?” Morrison asked.

“The tide’s started to drop. About two more degrees of port list and you’ll have to bring him out of there in a basket.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right at that. Youse is a good boy, Herman. Maybe we’ll put you on permanent.”

“Go to hell,” he said. “If it’d been you, I wouldn’t have said anything.”

He walked aft to the helmsman’s station while Morrison was talking to Ruiz. Something still didn’t quite ring true; they shouldn’t have been in here over the Bank. He stood frowning at the binnacle. He stepped down into the cockpit, removed the hood, and checked the heading on the compass. The lubber line lay at 008 degrees. There was no compass-deviation card posted anywhere that he could see.

Rae Osborne came aft and stood beside him. “What are we going to do?”

“Just what he says, from the looks of it.”

“Maybe there’ll be a search for us.”

Probably not until it was too late to do any good, Ingram thought, but he said nothing. There was no point in scaring her. She probably didn’t realize how sad this situation was, anyway. Even if they managed to refloat the schooner, their troubles were only beginning. The Dragoon was dangerously overloaded, her trim and buoyancy destroyed; in anything except perfect weather, she could founder and go down like a dropped brick. And as for landing a cargo of guns on a hostile coast—His thoughts broke off. She was staring out at the empty horizon to the northward. Well, the chances were a million to one nobody would ever see Ives again, now that the tide had turned and the body was floating seaward.

“All right, Herman, let’s go,” Morrison called out. They went forward to the break of the deckhouse. Ruiz was pushing one of the wooden crates up the companion ladder into the cockpit. Morrison had put on a shirt and a soft straw hat and carried a gallon jug of water in his other hand. “You take me across first,” he said, “and then start bringing the rifles. They’re packed ten to a crate, so each crate’ll go a little over a hundred pounds. The raft ought to carry two at a trip. Dreamboat, you stay here in the cockpit and guide ‘em up the ladder for Ruiz. And don’t bother trying to get to that radio when he’s not looking. We took some of the tubes out of it.”

He gestured with the gun. Any further argument was useless. Ingram stepped down into the raft and passed up his suitcase and Rae Osborne’s purse. Morrison got in and seated himself aft with the BAR across his legs while Ingram cast off the painter. They rowed up the side of the schooner and around the bow. The narrow sand spit ran north and south, its nearest point some three hundred yards off the starboard bow. The channel of slightly deeper water which ran astern of the schooner and westward toward the edge of the Bank continued on around and up the starboard side approximately a hundred yards away, passing between the schooner and the western edge of the spit. Beyond the channel the water appeared to shoal abruptly, judging from its color, extending in a wide and barely submerged flat on all sides of the dry ridge.

There was still no wind. The water lay flat as oil, reflecting the metallic glare of the sun. The day was going to be like the inside of a furnace, Ingram thought; and in a little over an hour the tide would be running out across here at two or three knots. He wondered if Morrison had even thought of that. Probably not; he seemed to be in the grip of obsession and incapable of seeing obstacles at all. They crossed the channel, and the sandy bottom began to come up toward them. Morrison was peering down into the water. “Hold it,” he ordered. He slid his legs over and stood up; the water was only waist deep. They were still a little over a hundred yards from dry ground, and it was approximately twice that far back to the schooner. “All right,” he said. “Start bringing ‘em over.” Ingram turned and rowed back toward the Dragoon . The big man waded on ashore through progressively shallower water, put the BAR and his bottle of water on the sand, and stood watching. The pain in Ingram’s head had subsided to a dull throbbing, but the dried blood made his face feel stiff and caked. He dipped up water and washed it while he coldly sized up their chances of escape. You couldn’t give them much. How about trying for it in the raft? The BAR was a short-range weapon and not very accurate at this distance, so if they could give Ruiz the slip—No. The nearest land was the west coast of Andros, seventy-five miles away, and even if they made it before they choked to death on their tongues, they were still nowhere. There were no settlements on that side, nothing but swamp and mosquitoes and a maze of stagnant and forbidding waterways; they’d never get across the island. Forget the raft. They had to take the schooner. Play for Ruiz, he thought; they’d be working together loading the crates onto the raft. Watch for a chance to yank him overboard and make him lose the gun.