“By ten o’clock Lillian was beginning to have the same symptoms, the fuzzy vision and difficulty in swallowing or talking. The breeze had died out, and it was like an oven below deck with the sun beating down. Russ and Estelle were having trouble breathing. I gave up pawing through the medicines long enough to rig an awning over the cockpit, intending to move them up there, but by now they were too sick to make it up the ladder. I couldn’t carry them, not with the boat rolling the way she was, lying becalmed. I rigged wind-chutes, which was stupid, because there wasn’t a breath of air moving, but by this time I was so panicky I didn’t know what I was doing. I gave them the turista pills, and aspirin, and paregoric, and I don’t remember what else, but by noon neither Russ nor Estelle could swallow anything any more. They couldn’t even talk. All they could do was he there and fight for breath.
“Russ died a little after three in the afternoon. I hadn’t thought there could be anything more horrible in the world than standing there listening to the two of them fighting for breath in that stifling cabin and not being able to do anything to help them, but there was. It was when I realized that only one of them was making that noise now; Russ had stopped. Which meant there was no hope for the others either. Estelle was unconscious by that time, so she didn’t know he was dead. Lillian was still conscious and just beginning to fight for breath, but she was in our cabin, aft of the doghouse, so she didn’t know either.
“Then Estelle died, less than an hour after Russ. The rest of the day is kind of mixed up and run together; I can only remember crazy pieces of it—Lillian asking me how the others were, and I’d say I’d go see, and I’d go into the forward cabin where they were both dead and then come back and say they were getting much better now and that she’d be over the worst of it in a little while. Then I’d go out of the cabin to pray, so she wouldn’t see me. I remember going up on deck once; maybe it would work better up there in the open. I hadn’t prayed for anything since I was a kid, and I guess I didn’t know how; it struck me once that it seemed like I was trying to negotiate with God, or strike a bargain, or something. I kept saying two of them were gone, couldn’t He leave one?
“Lillian died a little after six. When the sound of her breathing stopped, the silence was like something screaming in my ears, and I let go of her and ran up on deck and the sun was just going down. The sky was red in the west, and the sea was like blood, and everywhere there was that terrible silence that went on and on and on as if it was pressing in on me from all around the horizon…” Warriner dropped his face in his hands.
Tears were overflowing Rae’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” Ingram said, conscious at the same time of something that disturbed him. It was the word theatrical intruding on the perimeter of his mind, and he was angry with himself at this apparent callousness. Try it on your own stiff upper lip, he thought, before you throw any rocks; try ten days of it without hearing another voice and you might get a little purple about it too. He wished uncomfortably that he could think of something to add to the simple “I’m sorry,” but nothing was going to help the boy except the passage of time. He reached toward the ignition key to start the engine. “But we’d better shag over there and see if we can salvage some of your gear before she goes under.”
Warriner shook his head. “There’s nothing worth going after. It’s all ruined by the water—radio, sextant, chronometer, everything—”
“How about clothes?”
“These will do. Anyway, I don’t think I could go back aboard. You understand, don’t you? It isn’t only their dying. Remember, they all died below deck. Can you imagine what it was like, what I had to do?”
Ingram nodded.
Warriner’s face twisted. “Talk about the dignity of death, and last respects to the dead—pallbearers and bronze caskets and music and flowers. I dragged my wife’s body up a companion ladder with a rope—”
“Stop it!” Rae cried out. “You’ve got to quit thinking about it!”
“I understand,” Ingram said. “But you don’t have to go aboard; I’ll take care of it, if you’ll just tell me where to find things—”
“But there’s not anything, I tell you!”
“We ought to get your passport,” Ingram pointed out. “And whatever money you have aboard. We’re bound for Papeete, and you’ll need it for your passage home from there. Also, there’s the log and ship’s papers—”
Warriner gestured impatiently. “The log and ship’s papers and passport and money are all pulp and sloshing around in the bilges in three feet of water. If I haven’t already pumped them overboard.”
“I see,” Ingram said, wondering if he did. “But there’s another thing. Is she insured?”
“John.” Something in Rae’s voice made him turn. She went on sweetly, but with a glint in her eyes he’d never seen before. “I don’t think we’re being very hospitable, or very considerate. Mr. Warriner needs sleep more than anything at the moment, so I’m going to fix a bunk for him. If you’ll just come with me and move those sailbags, dear.”
She went down the ladder. Ingram followed, conscious of the rigidity of her back as she traversed the rolling cabin and went through the passage at the forward end. The narrow compartment in the eyes of the boat held two bunks, slanted inward toward each other like the sides of a V, but was used only as a locker now. There were cases of food, unopened buckets of paint and varnish, and coils of line, all neatly stowed, and the bunks themselves were piled with bags of sails. There was no hatch above, only a ventilator, and the compartment was dimly lighted by the two small portholes above the bunks.
She pulled the door shut and came close to him. “John Ingram!” It was a whisper, but forceful. “I’m ashamed of you; I never realized you could be this insensitive. Can’t you see that boy’s on the ragged edge of a nervous breakdown? For heaven’s sake, stop asking him questions and let’s try to get him to sleep.”
“Well, sure, honey,” he protested. “I realize what he’s been through. But we ought to make some attempt to salvage what we can—”
“He doesn’t want to go back on there. I’d think you could understand that.”
“He doesn’t have to. I told him I’d go.”
“But why? He said there wasn’t anything worth trying to save, didn’t he?”
“I know. But obviously water wouldn’t ruin everything. Clothes, for instance. Also, he contradicts himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“The radio, remember? He said it’d been ruined by the water. But he’d just got through telling us he called us on it.”
She sighed. “Why do men always have to be so literal? Do you think he’s some kind of machine? John, dear, he lost his wife and his two friends all in one afternoon, and then spent the next ten days utterly alone on a sinking boat, and he probably hasn’t closed his eyes for a week. I’d be doing well to remember my own name, unless I had it written down somewhere.”
“All right—” Ingram began.
“Shhhhh! Not so loud.”
“Okay. But you’d think he’d at least want to bring off some of her things, wouldn’t you? And there was another thing I was about to explain to him. If that boat’s insured, he’s going to have a hell of a time trying to collect, with no logbook and just his unsupported word she was in sinking condition when he left her—in a dead calm, with no weather making up. The underwriters are going to ask for a statement from me, and I can’t corroborate it. How can I? I’ll just have to tell ‘em she was afloat when I saw her. And that I hadn’t even been aboard and didn’t know how much water she was taking.”