“I gotta take a piss,” he concluded and disappeared into the small head located opposite the stove.
Frank stared at his drink another ten seconds, then, grimacing, tossed the rest of it off. The grimace continued until, looking sick and swearing irritably under his breath, he went hurriedly up the hatchway steps for fresh air.
When Tony came out of the head, Conrad Macklin was seated at the dinette and had poured himself a shot of whiskey. Tony sat down opposite him.
“I thought you were too sick to drink,” Tony said.
“I’m only too sick to stand watch,” Macklin answered indifferently, looking coolly at Tony and pouring the other man a drink.
“You hear what I said to Frank?” Tony asked, holding his plastic cup of whiskey.
Macklin nodded and took a short swig from his cup.
“But you know, Tony,” he said after a short silence, “Frank will never be captain of this ship.”
“No?” said Tony, steadying the bottle when it slid a few inches after Vagabond surfed along the face of a wave.
“He’ll be dead in a month,” said Macklin. “And, besides, he hasn’t got the guts to be captain.”
“Well, all I know is that Loken makes like a dictator.”
Macklin nodded and sipped gingerly again at his drink, his round eyes examining Tony without expression.
“Sooner or later, Tony,” he went on softly, “he’s going to kick you and me off the boat.”
Tony looked up quickly.
“You, maybe,” he countered. “But why me? I’m as good a sailor as he is, maybe better.”
Macklin smiled and nodded meaningfully.
“That’s exactly why he has to get rid of you,” he said to Tony. “He knows you’re the only other man aboard with captain potential.”
Tony looked at Macklin uncertainly, the sway of the kerosene lantern creating shadows that made it difficult to decipher Macklin’s expression.
“Sooner or later,” Macklin went on softly, “either you’ll get kicked off… or you and I will have to take over the boat.”
“No one’s kicking me off anything,” Tony snapped back.
“That’s right, Tony,” Macklin replied, nodding. “That’s right.”
Macklin held his half-filled cup toward Tony, and after a pause Tony understood. The two men clicked their cups together and drank.
When the rain began falling that afternoon, Neil called out all hands that had the strength to come up on deck to catch and store as much water as they could. Because the winds were gusting by then to over forty knots and the double-reefed mainsail couldn’t be used as it normally could to channel rainwater into buckets, Neil had his crew use a small jib and two nylon Bimini covers instead. They caught as much as they could in these, then channeled the water into buckets and at last into the main storage tanks and their large plastic containers. With the winds making their nylon collectors difficult to control and his crew never having tried this maneuver before, there was much swearing and quite a bit of spilled rainwater. However, Neil had also stopped up the drainage holes in the cockpits so the water could be scooped up later. By late afternoon they had gathered almost fifteen gallons, more than half of it quite clear, and even the water that was rescued from the cockpits was potable. Because they were at last headed back toward land and many were seasick, Tony and Elaine and a few others complained it was all an unnecessary game, but Neil kept them at it for two hours. By dusk there were quite a few grumblers.
For Jeanne the day seemed endless. The smell of vomit permeated her cabin, and though the horrifying blasts of the sea against her cabin wall had ended, Vagabond still seemed to be thrown around like a tiny dinghy. Elaine, although thoroughly frightened most of the morning, had been reassured by a solicitous Tony for over an hour in the early afternoon and emerged from their tete-a-tete quite cheerful and as oblivious of the rolling and plunging of Vagabond as a globecircling sailor. Her daughter, Rhoda, was sick, but nothing seemed to disturb the bland Elaine, who, unable to concentrate on anything for more than a minute or two, was another source of misery for Jeanne.
A delicate wide-eyed blonde, Elaine let her child take up most of her time and was helpless at any job assigned to her. Jeanne had become so exasperated with her when she was sent to help in the galley that she and Lisa had decided to ask her to stay topside. Jeanne had offered Elaine and Rhoda the use of her berth and usually slept on the floor herself, but at night Elaine sometimes would wake her up to ask her to get Rhoda a cup of water since Jeanne “was already up,” namely on the floor. The child was cranky and slept poorly. Her toys and Elaine’s clothes and toiletries could never be confined to the cubicles Jeanne asked her to use but ended up sprayed all around the cabin as if by a particularly violent explosion.
Elaine was off somewhere with Tony now, and while Skippy, somewhat recovered from his seasickness, played on the cabin floor a few feet away Jeanne lay on her back staring at the ceiling and wishing she could express her fears to Neil and be reassured and comforted. She hated feeling so helpless, hated being unable to focus her thoughts on the war or on her feelings for Neil or on anything except the dizzying, nauseating motion of the ship.
Frank came down three or four times to comfort her and see if there was anything he could do, but when he tried to clean up some of the vomit, he himself became sick again and had to hasten topside.
Neil appeared only twice, once to ask her opinion on their course—an opinion she was reluctant to give since her mind felt like mashed potatoes still being beaten in the blender—and a second time in the afternoon. He suggested she try to come up and assist with the rain catching.
That time she had struggled out of her berth, stood weakly for about thirty seconds, and then fallen woozily into his arms. He had to pick her up and lift her back up into her berth.
“I hope you’re not blaming the captain for this,” he said.
“I’m beyond blaming,” she replied wearily, realizing sadly that she wished he would go away so he wouldn’t see her looking like a drowned cat, and smelling worse.
“You’ll be over it by tomorrow,” he suggested. “Get some sleep.”
“I’ll never be over it,” she moaned. “I’ll remember this moment as long as I live.”
“Since it’s so special, I plan to try to see to it that you live a very long time,” Neil said.
She looked over at him, tried to smile, and feebly squeezed his hand.
“I’m sorry I’m letting you down,” she said.
“Never,” he said. “I just hoped the fresh air might help.” Neil released her hand and wiped the perspiration from her face with the edge of the sheet. Frank came twice more, but she didn’t see Neil again until the next day.
The final indignity for Jeanne came that evening as the storm seemed to be getting even worse. Elaine came cheerfully down into the cabin and told her that Jeanne could sleep in Elaine’s berth that night, with little Rhoda. Elaine was going to be with Tony. So Jeanne, miserable, was left to babysit while Elaine spent the night being “comforted” by Tony.
She was too sick to be angry. She barely had the strength to wonder where the two lovers had had a chance to become lovers in the crowded boat. Someday she’d have to ask.
They picked up the light at Cape Lookout on the North Carolina coast at midnight. By two thirty a.m. they had left it on their starboard beam while making for the Morehead City inlet. The storm, Neil had concluded, must be coming directly at them. The winds, instead of becoming more northerly as he had expected if the storm was passing out to sea, were in fact becoming more southerly. The storm center must be moving right up the coastline. In any case, the winds were still blowing at about forty-five knots, with stronger gusts, and the seas remained between eight and ten feet. To turn south now would be impossible.