Charles Williams - Aground

He came alongside. Ruiz had four cases out of the cabin now, stacked on deck beside the forward end of the cockpit with their ends projecting outward. The Latin himself was standing in the cockpit behind them with the .45 stuck in his trousers.

Ingram caught one of the lifeline stanchions. “Give me a hand.”

Ruiz shook his head. “You don’t need any help.”

“So. A general.”

“Go ahead. Slide them down.”

“El Libertador himself. It’s too bad we haven’t got a horse so you could pose for an equestrian statue.”

Ruiz looked bored. “Put away the needle, Ingram. You’re wasting your time.”

Apparently he’d guarded prisoners before. It didn’t look very promising.

“Cómo está la cabeza?” Ruiz asked.

So he couldn’t resist the temptation to do a little needling of his own, Ingram thought. “The head is nothing, my General,” he replied in Spanish. “In the great cause of freedom, I spit on all discomfort. Rut let us consider the General’s neck. How does it stretch?”

“Shut up and start moving those crates,” Ruiz said in English, “before you get another lump on your head.”

Ingram shrugged, and began easing one of the boxes down into the raft. It was an awkward maneuver, but he managed it without capsizing. He slid another down beside it. They lay between his outstretched feet and projected out over the stern.

“Will it carry another?” Ruiz asked. “See for yourself, cabrón.” The raft was down by the stern, and cranky. One more would make it unmanageable or capsize it. “Okay. Get going.”

He rowed up around the bow of the schooner and across the channel. Morrison had waded out again, without the gun, and was standing in waist-deep water waiting for him. The shirt stretched across his massive chest and shoulders was wet with sweat. “Shake it up, Herman. You’re taking too long.”

“This is not my idea,” Ingram replied coldly.

“Never mind your idea. Try dragging your feet, and you’ll get worked over with a gun barrel.” He heaved one of the crates over his left shoulder, took the other under his arm, and went plowing across the flat toward dry ground. As if they were empty, Ingram thought. He looked at his watch; it was seven minutes past eight. At the end of the next round trip he checked the time again and saw it had taken eleven minutes. Call it five trips an hour. Two hundred pounds each time—that would mean at least fourteen hours to move seven tons. And just one way. They’d still have to wait for the next tide, try to get her off, and bring it all back. And he was clocking it at slack water; wait’ll that tide started to run.

On the next trip, while Morrison was picking up the crates, he said, “This’ll take three days, at the minimum.”

The big man scarcely paused. “So?”

“She’ll never make it across the Caribbean, anyway. She’s overloaded.”

“This is June; she’ll make it. Hollister said so.”

“Sure. He said he could navigate, too. And look where you are.”

“Shut up and get going.”

An hour went by. The current was picking up now as the tide ebbed westward off the bank; with each trip it became worse. By ten o’clock perspiration was running from his body and his arms ached from the battle with the oars. It was the loaded trip that was the killer; he was quartering across the current with the raft low in the water, and he had to point farther and farther upstream in order to make it before he was swept away to the west of the sand spit. In another half hour he had to row straight upstream from the schooner until he was above Morrison, and then turn across. It took fifteen minutes of furiously paced rowing, during which a slow or missed beat meant losing ground already gained. When Morrison caught hold of the raft, water was running past his legs.

Ingram looked at him through the blur of sweat in his eyes. “That’s it until the tide slacks. Unless you want to do it.”

Morrison nodded. “I see what you mean. We’ll knock off and have a sandwich. Hold it here till I get back.”

Ingram stepped out and held the raft while the big man carried the two crates ashore; it was easier than doing it with the oars, and he couldn’t get any wetter than he was already. Morrison came back carrying the BAR, and got in. “That makes twenty-four,” he said.

A little over a ton, Ingram thought; they’d barely started. He rowed back to the Dragoon . When he stepped aboard, the cramped leg gave way under him, and he had to grab a lifeline to keep from falling. A light breeze had come up at mid-morning, but it had died away again, and the deck was blistering under the brutal weight of the sun. Rae Osborne’s face was flushed, and tendrils of hair were plastered to her forehead as she collapsed on the cushions in the cockpit. Not far from a case of heat prostration or sunstroke, he thought. And there was no escape from the sun; below decks would be unbearable.

“There’s an awning down in the sail locker,” he told Morrison. “If you thought you could take that gun out of my back for five minutes, I’d bring it up and rig it.”

“Go ahead,” Morrison said.

He went down the forward hatch with Ruiz watching him from above. There were three bunks in the narrow cabin just forward of the galley, with suitcases and scattered articles of clothing on two of them. He opened the small access door to the locker in the eyes of the ship and poked around in stifling semi-darkness among coils of line and bags of spare sails until he found the awning. He boosted it up the hatch to Ruiz, then carried it aft and rigged it above the cockpit. The air was still far from cool beneath it, but it did offer shelter from the pitiless glare of the sun. They sat down, with Morrison perched on the corner of the deckhouse holding the BAR. It’s an extension of his personality, Ingram thought; he probably never feels comfortable without it.

“Who wants a sandwich?” Morrison asked.

Ingram shook his head; it was too hot to eat anything.

“Makes me sick at my stomach to think about it,” Rae Osborne said. She sat up and dug listlessly in her purse for a cigarette.

Ruiz went below and returned a few minutes later with two sandwiches. He and Morrison ate in silence. Morrison threw the remainder of his overboard, watched it float away on the tide, and set the gun behind him on the deckhouse. “Mind the store,” he said to Ruiz, and went below. Ingram looked at the gun. Ruiz intercepted the glance, and shook his head, the slim Latin face devoid of any expression whatever. It was useless, Ingram knew. They were a team, and a good one, in the skilled profession of violence—whatever their particular branch of it was.

When Morrison returned he was carrying a tall glass containing some colorless fluid and three ice cubes. Rae Osborne looked at it with interest. “What’s that?”

“Rum,” he said.

“Is there any more?”

“Whole case of it, Toots. You’ll have to use water, though. We’re out of Cokes.”

She brightened visibly. “You’ve convinced me. Which way’s the bar?”

“Straight ahead till you come to a room full of dirty dishes. Bottle’s on the sink, reefer’s under it. Bring Herman one while you’re at it.”

“I don’t want any,” Ingram said.

She disappeared below. Well, maybe that was the practical attitude; if you couldn’t whip ‘em, join ‘em, especially if they had anything to drink. He removed the soggy leather case from his shirt, found a cigar that might be dry enough to burn, and lighted it. He stepped back to the binnacle, removed the hood, and looked at the compass again. The heading had changed to 012. He nodded thoughtfully. Rae Osborne came up the ladder, carrying her drink, and sat down with her feet stretched out across the cockpit.