“But we can still hold it by bailing too, can’t we?”
“Yes,” he replied. “We can now.”
“But not for long?”
“Just how long, I don’t know. The only thing that’s certain is that it’s not going to get any better, but it is going to get progressively worse, with this rolling. And in a bad squall, as I told you, she could come apart like a bale of shingles. But forgetting the squall, which we can’t do anything about anyway, she might last for a week yet…” His voice trailed off.
She glanced up questioningly. “There’s something else?”
There was no reason to try to hide it from her, he thought. “Only this—even if we do keep her afloat for another week, after tonight, or tomorrow morning at the latest, it’s not going to do any good anyway. There’s not a chance in a million we’ll be sighted by a ship, not where we are. And even if one happened to pick us up on radar, there’s nothing to indicate we’re in distress.
“So, as you said, the only thing that could change it is if Rae is still on there and is able to cope with your husband. She might even be able to talk him into coming back. If she does, we’ll probably be all right. The second possibility is that she may be able to get control of the boat some way. He’ll have to sleep sometime, or …” He stopped, floundering.
She nodded, her face devoid of expression. “Or she may kill him. Go on.”
If she could manage it, he could too. “Right,” he said just as calmly. “But even if she does get control of the boat, it’s nowhere near as simple as it sounds. She may never find us again. They’re over the horizon now, and unless she knows the course he was steering when he left here, she can’t come back because she won’t know which way back is. Also, at the speed they were going, somewhere around midnight tonight and about a hundred miles from here they’re going to run out of gas, and she can’t make it back unless she gets some wind. In these conditions, it could take days. Also, at that distance, the accumulated errors of trying to make good a course while she’s fighting fluky breezes and calms become so great that after a while she won’t know within twenty miles where she is herself.
“She can’t call for help, to get a search organized, even if there was anybody out here to look. We’ve got a radiotelephone, but it won’t reach land from here, and you can’t call a ship with it because they stand their radio watches on five hundred kilocycles and not the phone bands.
“So if she ever finds us again it’ll be within the next twelve hours or so, because if they get any farther away there’s practically no chance. Have you got any distress flares aboard?”
“No,” she said. “We thought we had a can of them but we’ve never been able to find them.”
“How about oil lamps? We’ve got to have something she can see if she comes back tonight.”
“We have some flashlights. The big long ones.”
“Good. They’ll do. Well leave the mainsail hoisted, and lash two of them to the shrouds so they’ll shine on it. You can see an arrangement like that for miles.”
“That’s clever. I wouldn’t have thought of it.”
“It’s an old trick in heavy traffic or poor visibility. Steamship captains trying to figure out what it is may call you things that’d raise blisters on a gun turret, but at least they won’t run you down.”
“I’m glad—” She stopped.
“What?”
“I was about to commit the incredible gaucherie of saying I was glad you’d come along. Let’s just say that under other circumstances— May I relieve you at the pump now?”
“Are you sure you’re not sleepy?”
“Yes.”
“All right. You take over here, and I’ll start bailing again.”
He moved over to the hatch. Before he dropped the bucket in, he paused to look at an ugly mass of cloud along the horizon to the northeast. It looked like a nasty one, all right, but it was a long way off. He’d just have to keep an eye on it.
* * *
Saracen shuddered, protesting the engine vibration, and pitched with a long corkscrew motion as she continued to plow ahead. Here in the tiny compartment the air was stifling. Rae Ingram was conscious of thirst, and of the sour taste of vomit in her mouth. She sat on the bunk and stared unbelievingly at the barricaded door. She must be mad herself; Paradise couldn’t have become this nightmare in the few short hours since sunrise, since this morning’s dawn when she’d been alone with John on the immensity of the sea, when she’d swum nude beside the boat with that faint but shivery sensation of wickedness—and amusement, because it was a ridiculous way to act at thirty-five—when he’d used a whole quart of priceless fresh water to wash the salt out of her hair because, as he said, he loved her. Could you go from that to this in three hours? Numbly she looked down at her watch. It was 9:50. It had been a quarter of an hour since Warriner had restarted the engine and they’d got under way again.
She tried to force her mind to operate. She was apparently safe enough for the moment from any further assaults upon the door; as long as Saracen was under way, he had to be at the wheel. Also, he was apparently dangerous only when opposed. But that was unimportant. She still had to stop him. There was no way she could disable the engine now; she’d already grasped what that hammering was she’d heard in the after end of the main cabin. He’d nailed up the access to the engine compartment so she couldn’t get in—at least without making enough noise to warn him. Mad or not, he would have taken some precaution, and that was simpler than trying to lock her in here. The door opened inward, and there was no bolt or hasp on the outside.
Then what? The only other place the engine could be stopped was at the control panel right in front of him in the cockpit. But wait, she thought suddenly. It had already been fifteen minutes since they’d started up again, and the other boat—what was it Warriner had called it, Orpheus?—had been almost hull down then. And from the sound of the engine it was still running at nearly full throttle. So merely stopping Saracen would do no good now, anyway. By this time they were out of sight over the horizon, and John would never know it. Then the whole problem was changed, and now it was even worse. Somehow she had to get control of the boat so she could take it back— Her thoughts broke off, and she sat up abruptly, feeling a chill along her spine.
Take it back? Back where?
She’d forgotten she had no idea at all which direction they’d been traveling since they’d left the other yacht. And with it lost somewhere over the horizon now, where all directions looked the same, trying to go back to it could be just as hopeless at ten miles as at a thousand. First of all and above everything else, she had to find out and keep track of their course. But how?
The answer occurred to her almost immediately. In one of the drawers under the bunks in the main cabin was a spare compass, a small one mounted on gimbals in a wooden box. She sprang up and began furiously hauling the sailbags from in front of the barricaded door. She dragged the cases of stores to one side, slid back the bolt, and peered out. The main cabin was empty.
It took only a minute. She hurried to the sink, softly pumped a cup of water, washed out her mouth, and drank, noting at the same time she’d been right about the access to the engine compartment. The panel was nailed shut. The compass was under the port bunk. Keeping an apprehensive eye on the hatch, she grabbed it out, snatched up a pencil and a pad of scratch paper from in back of the folding chart table, and slipped back inside the forward compartment.
She was about to close the door when another thought occurred to her. While she was able to get out into the other cabin, why not try the radio? If she did it carefully, there was a good chance Warriner wouldn’t hear her. Of course! It was worth the risk.