He grinned at her. “Jealous?”
“That might be a good word for it, now that you mention it, Mal.”
And there the incident ended.
When they docked in the narrow channel at Perth, he went to a book store in Freemantle and bought a heavy bundle of books. After one day and one night in harbor they pulled out, headed east for Melbourne. The winds became bitterly cold. There were frequent cold slanting rains that left the decks gray and glistening. Sara stayed out on deck during the rains whenever she could, with a borrowed coat on. He noticed that when she went back to her cabin after a rain, the red-brown hair pasted tight to the clean lines of her skull, there was more peace in her expression than at any other time.
They had been partners long enough so that their partnership play became far better than that of the Roger-Gina combine. Both Roger and Gina grew sulky about it, and there was not as much fun in the game as formerly. Mal suggested that they change the set match so that he and Gina would be partners. As he suggested it, he looked at Sara and found no flicker of disappointment in her eyes. Roger and Gina put up only a token argument. Once again the match was on an even keel.
As they docked at Melbourne, Gina came up to him and said, “I want an evening out, and you are the lucky boy. Thrilled?”
“Through and through.”
They went out together and he tried to give her enough liquor so that it would loosen her tongue. Her face slackened and her eyes grew dulled, but she gave him no information at all about what he wished to know. She clung to him all the way back to the Bjornsan Star, but once they reached the deck she passed out. He managed to get her up onto the boat deck to the door of the captain’s cabin and there he turned her over to an unstartled Sara who thanked him and asked him to please put her on that bed over there and good night. I’m enjoying the book you loaned me.
When Mal awakened the next morning they were heading south around Tasmania into a heavy blow. Gina was at breakfast, bright-eyed and apparently unabashed.
At Wellington the cargo winches were broken out again and the bulldozers were hoisted, one by one, and swung over onto the pier. A large tonnage of food was taken on for Pago Pago.
The sky was a dim unbroken gray when the doll-houses on the slopes or the hills encircling Wellington harbor faded back into the distance.
Gina stood beside Mal and said, “My tan is about gone. How long before we can start the sunbaths again?”
“Four days or so, I should judge.”
“Let’s round up the bridge experts and whup them again, man.”
It was near the end of the bridge game that the pitch and roll of the ship grew more pronounced. Doctor Temble began to look a bit gray around the mouth. It was Dr. Temble who broke up the game.
When Mal went out onto the boat deck he was startled by the hard force of the wind blowing out of the south. He had heard the whine of it in the rigging, but the actual personal violence of it was completely unexpected — as was the sudden feeling of awe. Huge swells, flattened by the wind, came driving steadily out of the south. Their large foamless crests were very far apart.
Mal had difficulty with his footing. At last he reached the ladderway at the after part of the boat deck. He looked down onto the main deck and saw Dolan supervising the stringing of life lines. The ship’s carpenter was working with timbers and spikes, strengthening the hatches.
Mal felt his way cautiously down the ladderway and went close to Dolan. “Storm coming?” he yelled over the sound of the wind.
Dolan put the red beard close to Mal’s ear. “The old fool wouldn’t lay over in Wellington the way I wanted him to. Don’t worry though. The old lady makes work of it, but she’ll ride it out. It’ll take us off course, though. Good thing you’ve got your sea legs, Mal. We’ll start taking water over the decks in another couple of hours. Then you’d better stay below. And eat hearty. It may be the last hot meal for a while.”
By the time of the evening meal it was almost as dark as night outside. Mister Gopala, for the first time, seemed to have lost his happy spirits. Even the mercurial Torgeson seemed subdued. He ate rapidly, seeming to flinch each time the pitch of the ship lifted the screw half out of water so that the entire vessel shuddered as the screw flailed the air astern.
Captain Paulus did not appear for the meal. The mess boy’s durable smile was a trifle strained. “Where’s Gina and Roger?” Mal asked, leaning forward to speak across the silent Tom Branch.
“Both ill,” Sara answered.
“So’s Welling,” Branch said. It was the second time Mal had ever heard the man speak.
Dolan came in and sat down. The mess boy brought a plate heaped with food to him. The pitch was slowly growing more pronounced. The Bjornsan Star seemed to coast down at a steep forward angle for an interminable time, before slowly lifting her bows, creaking and complaining as she did so.
Dolan grinned behind his beard. “Decks awash now, people. She’s riding hard, Stay off the weather decks.”
“But I have to go on deck,” Sara said, “to get up to our cabin.”
“Not tonight,” Dolan said firmly. “You stay below.”
“But Gina’s up there alone,” Sara said.
“She’ll be fine. I’ll look in on her on my way to the bridge,” Dolan answered.
After Sara finished her meal she left the room. She was back again in ten minutes. She sat down across from Mal in the chair Welling usually occupied. She smiled wanly at Mal. “Roger’s really ill. Mr. Gopala’s being very sweet. He insisted that he could take care of him and practically forced me out of the room... Oh, that was a big one!” The Bjornsan Star slowly came up and they heard the sound of tons of water roaring along the deck overhead. Water sloshed over the weather sill into the room and then began to wash back and forth with each movement of the laboring ship.
Only Sara, Tom Branch and Mal were left in the room. Mal glanced at Branch and was surprised to see that the husky man was pale, that he licked his lips continually.
“Not my racket,” Branch said solemnly. “Not my racket.”
He left the room. He was back within a few minutes, peeling the plastic from the top of a bottle of Irish whiskey. He sat down heavily and lifted the water glass out of its slot in the false top that had been fitted to the table.
“Want some?” he asked of Sara and Mal.
She shook her head. Mal held out a glass. “Two fingers,” he said.
The bottle neck chattered on the rim of the glass and Branch sloshed about three inches of liquor into it. He poured himself more than half the tumbler full. Keeping a firm grip on the bottle he tossed it down in about five thick swallows; then coughed and shook his head.
Mal took his time with his potion. It had a pleasant smokey flavor. Branch took his bottle and glass and moved cautiously over to a corner table. He sat with his wide back to them.
“How long will it last?” Sara asked.
Mal shrugged. “These things sometimes last for a full week. I don’t know. We’re running with it.”
There was a long convulsive shudder of the ship and the screw was lifted out of the water.
“I ought to get up to Gina.”
“She’ll live through it, that one,” he said.
They sat for a long time. He remembered the kiss on the boat deck and tried to capture her eyes. She would not look at him. She wore a thick tweed skirt, a white fuzzy turtle-neck sweater. She had fashioned the ripe hair into two braids which gave her a school-girl look. He wanted her to look at him. There was something about a storm and its flavor of catastrophe that broke down reserve and inhibitions, sent a heady excitement pounding along the pulses.