Charles Williams - Aground

Rae Osborne straightened, and stood looking at him with tears streaming down her face. She brushed at them with her hand, and laughed, but her voice broke and she started to cry again. “Don’t mind me,” she said in a very small voice. “I’m just having the hysterics you promised me.” Then she was in his arms, and he was kissing her on the mouth and throat and all over the tear-streaked face. They both began to laugh, somewhat crazily, and collapsed on the cockpit seat.

“Ingram, you did it! You’re wonderful.”

“We did it,” he corrected.

“Was I any help?”

“You don’t think I could have done it alone, do you?”

“What do we do now?”

“Hold her here until the tide starts to ebb, and then let her drift down this channel until we’re at least out of range of Morrison and his rifle. Then we’ll have to wait for a breeze to sail her off the Rank. We’ve got no control over her at all this way, and we might go aground again.”

“Good Lord! I forgot all about Morrison. Why do you suppose he didn’t shoot at us when he saw we were getting away?”

“He may not know it yet,” Ingram said. “He must have gone to sleep. I just hope he doesn’t wake up until we get farther away.” He reached for the glasses and focused them on the sand spit, but the light was still too poor to see anything at that distance. He could be asleep behind the boxes, anyway.

“What’ll happen to him now?” she asked.

“He’s got water. He’ll be all right until the Coast Guard can send a boat or plane down to pick him up.”

They sat and rested, suddenly aware now with the release of tension just how near complete exhaustion they were. “Do you realize,” she asked, “that it was only two days ago, almost to the hour, that we landed out here?”

He shook his head. “It’s not possible.”

The schooner swung around. The tide was beginning to ebb. There was enough light now to judge the water’s depth with some degree of safety. He heaved up the anchor and let her drift slowly seaward, watching the water ahead. After about four hundred yards he let go the anchor again, gave her enough scope to hold, and took the warp forward so she would lie bow to the tide in the normal manner. He heaved the lead. “Fifteen feet,” he said. “And plenty of water on all sides. We’re at least a half mile from him now, so he won’t even bother to shoot. We’ll wait here till we get a breeze, and in the meantime I’ll start cleaning out the bilge so we can pump that gas overboard.”

The sun was just coming up. She looked around, and sighed, almost in wonder. “I just can’t seem to grasp the fact we’re off that sand bar at last.”

Something fell below in the cabin. It sounded as though books were sliding out of the rack because of the schooner’s extreme list to port. “I’ll take care of it,” Ingram said. “I want to open the rest of those portholes, anyway.”

He went down the ladder. The light below was quite good now, and he could see the lake of gasoline extending up out of the bilge along the port side for almost the full length of the cabin. He thought it was higher than it had seemed in the dark; the chances were that water had come in through some of Morrison’s bullet holes and the gas was floating on top of it. Well, no more could come in while she was over on her side, and he could take care of it as soon as he cleared the litter out of the bilge. The fumes were sickening. Two books had fallen out of a rack and were lying in the edge of the gasoline near the forward end of the cabin. He picked them up and tossed them onto a bunk.

“Youse is a good boy, Herman,” a voice said behind him. “I knew all the time you could do it.”

He whirled. Morrison was leaning against the ladder, naked except for a pair of shorts. He had a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, a pack of them in his left hand, and a large kitchen match in his right, its head poised under his thumbnail. He grinned, and tossed the pack. “Smoke?”

12

Ingram let them fall into the gasoline. It’s all been for nothing, he thought, in some detached and icy calm that was beyond terror. That’s exactly the spot he was standing in that other morning three hundred years ago, and nothing has changed at all except he’s wearing a little less and he’s got a match in his hand instead of a Browning Automatic Rifle. Maybe there is no way you can defeat him; he’s a natural force of some kind. He’s waiting for me to panic, to scream. Don’t strike that match . Well, maybe I will; I don’t know.

He had to say something, but he was afraid his voice would crack. If he ever knows how near the edge I am, he thought, we’ve had it. And if he really is insane, we’ve had it anyway, but the only thing to do is try to wait him out. He pushed the cigarettes out of the gasoline with his foot, reached down, and tossed them onto the bunk. Then he heard Rae Osborne cry out. She’s even in the same place, he thought. Morrison didn’t bother to look up the hatch; he merely took a step up the inclined deck to starboard so as to be out from under it. Then he chuckled. “The gun, Herman.”

Ingram shook his head. Maybe he could speak now. At least he had to try. “When did you get aboard?” he asked. It seemed to sound all right.

“When you both ran back here to pull on the rope,” Morrison replied. “I ducked into that front cabin. About that gun, Herman. I don’t know whether you ever made a study of ‘em, but when you shoot one, some of the grains of powder that’re still burning come out behind the slug—”

“Yes,” Ingram said. “I know about that. Excuse me—” He raised his voice just slightly, and addressed the top of the ladder. “Rae, there’s a life ring on either side of the cockpit. Take one and go forward, right to the bow. And remember to go upstream, against the tide.”

Morrison shook his head. “You’re a pretty hard boy, Herman, but not that hard. Pass the gun over, and let’s get started to Cuba. It’s only a hundred miles. You land me—”

“Sure,” Ingram said. “We land you, and then we sail the boat back to Key West, the same way we were going to sail it back from Bahia San Felipe. As far as you’re concerned, I’ve had it, Morrison. I’m up to here. Go ahead and strike your match.”

Morrison’s eyes were cold. “You think I won’t?”

“I don’t know,” Ingram replied. “But if you do, don’t forget I’ll be the lucky one. I’ve got the gun.”

He saw that penetrate. Silence tightened its grip on the scene. The Dragoon rocked gently on some remnant of surge running in from the Santaren Channel and a little wave of gasoline slapped against the bulkhead and ran back to spread itself up across the steep incline of the cabin sole. He has to go with the bluff, Ingram thought; we’ve probably got less than a minute left before the fumes get us, and he knows he can’t take the gun away from me and get out of here alive. It would take longer than that. One of us has to crack.

He saw movement then in the hatch. A hand had reached in and lifted the fire extinguisher from its bracket on the bulkhead near the ladder, and was pointing it—quite steadily, he thought—down into the cabin. Something came up in his throat, and he didn’t know whether he was going to laugh or cry. She might as well try to put out hell with a damp Kleenex, but she was ready to tackle it.

“I don’t think you read me, Herman,” Morrison said. “In a deal like this, you’ve got to consider who has the most to lose. Now, you take you and Mama-san—”

Ingram breathed softly. He’s not quite so sure now, he thought; when he has to drive home his point by explaining the obvious. “Who’d you kill in Florida?” he asked. “Was it Ives?”