Charles Williams - Aground

There eyes met. He nodded. “Here we go. We hope.”

He put the engine in reverse and advanced the throttle. Bracing his feet against the end of the cockpit, he caught the tackle and hauled. Rae Osborne slid over beside him and threw her weight on the line. There was vibration from the engine, and water rushed forward along the sides of the schooner from the churning propeller, but the Dragoon remained hard and fast against the bottom with the unmoving solidity of a rock.

Thirty minutes later he cut the ignition and slumped down in the cockpit, exhausted. As the sound of the engine died, a bullet slammed into the furled mainsail above them. There was something mocking about it, he thought; maybe it was Morrison’s way of laughing at them.

10

Rae Osborne tried to look cheerful. “Well, there’s always tomorrow. Do you think the tide might be higher then?”

“It’s possible,” Ingram said. “But not necessary. We’ll get her off then. I’m going to haul her down on her side.”

“How?” she asked. “And what does that do?”

“It tilts the keel out of a vertical plane, so she doesn’t need so much water to float. That’s why I saved those boxes of ammunition. We’ll sling them on the end of the main boom and swing it out over the side for leverage. We’ll have to wait till after dark to rig it, though, so he can’t pick us off with that rifle.”

“Then there’s nothing that has to be done right now?”

He shook his head. “Why?”

She smiled. “At the moment, the thing that’d do more for my morale than anything else in the world is a bath. I think Morrison said they filled the fresh-water tanks—”

“Go ahead,” he said. “Use all you want. We may have to pump some of it overboard, anyway.”

“Wonderful.” She started to scuttle toward the ladder, but paused, her face suddenly thoughtful. “You don’t suppose any of those bullets are going through the hull? I don’t know why, but there seems to be something indecent about being shot at in the shower.”

He grinned. “Not at three hundred yards, and from the angle he’s shooting. They’re just gouging splinters out of the planking.”

She went below. He picked up the glasses and peered cautiously over the top of the deckhouse. Morrison was still lying behind his rest, smoking a cigarette while he casually reloaded the rifle. He’s got no food, Ingram thought, but he does have water; he could last for several days. But obviously he had to get back aboard; he might be able to swim that far, but not carrying a rifle or the BAR. However, if he managed to empty enough of those cases and could nail them together, he might make a raft of sorts on which to carry the gun. At any rate, he wouldn’t try it until dark, knowing they had Ruiz’ automatic. They’d have to stand watch all night.

He located the rod and sounded the two fuel tanks. As nearly as he could tell, the starboard one was still full and the port a little less than half. They had about two hundred gallons aboard. The fresh-water tanks were forward where he couldn’t reach them, but if they were even half full, they had at least that much water. Getting rid of some of it would help. The water could be pumped overboard, but there was no way to ditch the gasoline unless he could find a hose and siphon it out. He could, of course, start the engine and let it run, but the amount it would use up wouldn’t justify the noise. He disliked engines, anyway, and having to listen to them always irritated him. He went below and ransacked all the lockers, but could find no hose except a few short pieces that had been split for use as chafing gear. He heard the shower stop, and knocked on the door.

“Yes?” she called out.

“Just let it run and empty the gravity tank,” he said. That would help, and he could pump some more overboard later. He found a coil of new nylon line, gathered up an armload of the rope lashings, and went back to the cockpit to size up the job before it grew dark.

The topping lift probably wouldn’t hold it alone, not a half ton out there on the end of the boom; but if he backed it up with the main halyard and reinforced the halyard fall with this heavier line it should be safe enough. The awning would have to come down. He’d have to memorize the location of everything; it wasn’t going to be easy, having to do it all in the dark, by feel. He looked at his watch; it was a little after six now, and the tide was beginning to ebb off the Bank. A timber creaked as the Dragoon settled a little and began her slow, inevitable list to port. He began cutting the rope lashings to make slings for the ammunition boxes. A cat’s-paw of breeze blew out of the south, ruffling the awning and making it cooler for a few minutes. The sun was low in the west.

Rae Osborne came up the ladder. She looked cooler and much refreshed in spite of the fact that she had no other clothes to change into; her hair was neatly combed now, and her mouth made up. He looked at the handsome face with its spectacular shiner, and grinned. “You look wonderful.”

She touched the puffed eye with her finger tips, and smiled ruefully. “It’s a mess, isn’t it?”

“Well, as shiners go, there’s certainly nothing second-rate about it. It seems to match your personality, somehow.”

“You mean beat-up?”

“No. Colorful. Flamboyant. And undefeated.”

She laughed. “I’d better think about that. I’m not sure but what it sounds like some biddy in a barroom brawl.”

She went below again and returned after a while with a plate of tuna sandwiches and a pitcher of water. They ate facing each other across the bottom of the cockpit while daylight died in a drunken orgy of color and the intermittent sound of Morrison’s gunfire. She gazed westward to the towering and flame-tipped escarpments of cloud beyond the Santaren Channel, and mused, “I know it sounds stupid under the circumstances, but I’m beginning to see what makes people crazy about the sea. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“You’ve never been around boats before?” Ingram asked.

“No. My husband just took the Dragoon in on a business deal; neither of us had ever owned a boat of any kind, or even wanted to. He planned to sell it to get his money out of it, but he died just a few weeks afterward—almost a year ago now. He was killed in the crash of a light plane he and another man were flying out to Lubbock to look at a cattle ranch.”

“What business was he in?” Ingram asked.

“Real estate.” She smiled softly. “Or that’s one way of putting it. Actually he was a speculator. A plunger. It’s a funny thing—he was the gentlest person I’ve ever known and he looked like an absent-minded math teacher in some terribly proper school for young girls, but he was one of the coldest-nerved and most fantastic gamblers you ever saw in your life. He was forty-eight when he was killed, and he’d already made and lost two or three fortunes. Actually, it never made a great deal of difference to me. Beyond a point, piling up money you don’t need seems like a waste of time, especially if you have no children to spend it on or leave it to, and most of the time I wasn’t even sure whether we were rich or in debt. He was away from home so much I had a business of my own, just to have something to do. I never was any good at that social routine. I’d worked most of my life, and women from better backgrounds and expensive schools always made me feel inferior, and I’d get defensive and arrogant and make a fool of myself. I’ve always been crazy about sports cars, so I had a Porsche agency, a little showroom in a shopping center near where we lived. I still have it.”

“Why were you so long trying to sell the Dragoon?” he asked.

“I couldn’t sell it. There was a tax lien on it. When Chris was killed, several deals he had pending fell through, and it developed he was overextended again and pretty shaky financially. On top of that, he’d just got an adverse ruling on an income-tax thing, so the government froze everything until it was paid. I didn’t want it sold at auction at a big loss, so I held on and the lawyers finally got it straightened out after about eight months. There wasn’t a great deal left other than the schooner and the house. Anyway, as soon as it was cleared up—I think it was in March—I came over to Miami to see some yacht brokers about selling her, and that’s when I ran into Patrick Ives. For the first time in thirteen years.” Her voice trailed off, and she stared moodily out across the water.