Aground

3
It was a long time before he got to sleep. On the evidence, the theft of the Dragoon was no hare-brained, spur-of-the-moment stunt; it had been carefully thought out by men who knew what they were doing. Then by the same token they must have known they couldn’t enter any port in the western hemisphere without the necessary documentation—which they couldn’t possibly steal. So what had they planned to do? Stay at sea, or put her into orbit?
And how had they lost the dinghy? The police seemed to accept this as merely a routine incident—they’d been towing it, it came adrift, so what? But it wasn’t that simple. They wouldn’t have been towing it at sea; and certainly not with the motor and somebody’s clothes in it. It would have been aboard, lashed down on the deckhouse. So they had put it over the side for something. But for what? The watch and the clothes were easier to understand, at least up to a point. The man—whoever he was—had taken them off to go in the water for some reason. But what reason? You were stumped again.
And what about Mrs. Osborne—aside from the obvious things like the good looks and bad manners? Something didn’t quite ring true. The theft would have been reported to her as soon as the police learned of it themselves—last Friday, at the latest. That was four days ago. But she apparently hadn’t thought it necessary to come to Miami until this morning; and then presumably she’d grabbed the first available plane after the police called to tell her about the dinghy. Why? It wasn’t to identify the dinghy. She’d admitted over the phone she wasn’t familiar enough with the Dragoon’s gear to be sure. And it wasn’t necessary, anyway, because Tango identified it. So could it have been that watch that brought her flying in from Houston? Maybe she had an idea whose it was. But if so, why hadn’t she told the police?
Forget it, he thought. All you have to do is find the schooner. He closed his eyes, and in back of them was the deadly flower of explosion. He had seen it nearly every night for the past two months, the same unvarying and frozen scene like a nightmare captured intact and imbedded in plastic. It was too late to stop him. Barney leaned forward to strike the torch. . . .
* * *
She was waiting near the Pan American counters when he arrived at the airport the next morning, and had already picked up the tickets and checked her bag. He tried to pay for his, but she brushed the money aside impatiently. “Don’t be silly, I’ll pay the expenses.”
She was as attractive in the light of early morning as she had been under the softer illumination of the night, but her face showed signs of weariness, as though she hadn’t slept well. She wore a crisp white linen skirt and short-sleeved blouse, and carried a heavy binocular case slung over her shoulder. When their flight was announced they went out and boarded the plane, and she slept all the way across to Nassau. They landed at Windsor Field at nine a.m. and filed through Immigration and Customs. He was gathering up their suitcases at the Customs counter when they were approached by a tall and sun-reddened man in tropical whites. “Captain Ingram?” he asked.
He nodded. “You’re from McAllister?”
“Yes. I’m Robin Avery.”
They shook hands, and he introduced Mrs. Osborne. Avery had a spiky red mustache and very cool blue eyes and spoke with a clipped economy of words that was suggestively British, though with no discernible accent. He motioned for a porter to collect the bags. “Leave those in the office until we get back, if you like,” he said.
They followed him over to the office next to the McAllister hangar. Mrs. Osborne produced a sheaf of traveler’s checks and made a deposit on the charter. Avery unrolled a chart on the counter and brought out a pair of parallel rulers. “Any particular preference as to a starting point?”
“Yes,” Ingram said. “Why not hit the southern end of the area first?” He lined up the parallel rulers and walked them across the chart to the compass rose. “A course of two hundred True will put us over the hundred-fathom curve about forty miles south of where the dinghy was found. From there we could fly an east-west pattern out over the Channel and back in over the Bank with about ten-mile spacing.”
“Right,” Avery agreed. He rolled up the chart and they went out to where the big amphibian squatted on the apron in white sunlight. There were three seats on each side of the narrow aisle in the after compartment. “Who’d like the co-pilot’s seat?” Avery asked, with a hopeful glance at Mrs. Osborne. “Visibility’s much better up there.”
She nodded to Ingram. “Your eyesight’s probably better than mine at this sort of thing. I’d rather you took it.”
“Okay.” He followed Avery through the narrow doorway. They strapped themselves in. Avery started the engines, taxied out to the end of the runway, and called the tower for clearance. The engines roared, and they began to gather speed. Then they were airborne and climbing in a long turn toward Andros.
* * *
The blue chasm of the Tongue of the Ocean passed beneath them, and then the coral-toothed white surf of the barrier reef along Andros’ eastern shore. The interior of the largest island of the Bahamas chain was a green mat of vegetation broken only by meandering creeks and great marshy lakes dotted with mangroves. The plane came out at last over the desolate west coast where the land shelved almost imperceptibly into the vast shallow seas of the Bahama Bank and the patterns of sand bars were like riffled dunes beneath the surface. Ahead and on both sides the horizon faded into illimitable distance, merging finally with the sky with no line of demarcation and seeming to move forward with their progress so that they remained always in the center. It was only by looking down at the varying terrain of the bottom and the shifting patterns of color that it was possible to tell the plane was moving at all. The colors themselves were indescribable, Ingram thought; you had to see them to realize they could be that way, and he didn’t believe that anybody ever entirely forgot them afterward. He wondered if Mrs. Osborne was enjoying them. He glanced aft, and she was leaning back in the seat with her eyes closed, smoking a cigarette. Well, maybe nobody’d ever told her it was an expensive ocean.
Andros faded away astern and they were alone above the immensity of the sea. Another thirty minutes went by. Then, a little over an hour after their take-off from Windsor Field, Avery said, “We should be coming up on the area now.”
Ingram nodded. Ahead, just emerging from the haze of distance, was the long line sweeping across the horizon where the delicate shades of turquoise and powder blue and aqua changed abruptly to indigo as the western edge of the Bank plunged into the depths of the Santaren Channel. He stepped into the after compartment. Mrs. Osborne opened her eyes, and he pointed out the small window next to her seat.
She nodded, removed the binoculars from their case, and slung them about her neck. He bent down so as not to have to shout above the noise of the engines, and said, “I wouldn’t try to use those too much. With this vibration, they’ll pull your eyes out.”
“All right,” she said. She turned back to the window. Ingram returned to the co-pilot’s seat. He unrolled the chart, penciled a mark on it where their course intersected the hundred-fathom curve, and set a clip-board in his lap.
As they came over the drop-off, Avery banked in a gentle right turn, steadied up on the new course, and checked the time. “Two-seven-oh,” he said. “Ten twenty-six.”
“Right.” Ingram wrote the figures on the pad attached to the clip-board without looking down as his eyes continued their search of the surrounding sea—ahead, starboard, out to the horizon, and below. The wind was out of the southeast with a light sea running, dotting the surface with random whitecaps that winked and were gone, but as far as the eye could see there was only emptiness. Fifteen minutes went by. They banked to the right and headed due north. Ingram noted the time and course. At the end of seven minutes they turned right again. “Ninety degrees,” Avery called out as they steadied up. They were now flying back parallel to their first course and approximately ten miles north of it. Between changes of course, no one spoke. Avery flew mechanically while he searched the sector to port along with Mrs. Osborne. They came in over the Bank, turned north again, and then west once more. There was no sign of life, no craft of any kind, anywhere in the emptiness below them.
An hour dragged by. An hour and a half. They came up to and passed the area where the dinghy had been found. His leg began to bother him, and his eyes ached from staring. Once they sighted a small dot far to the westward and changed course with sudden hope. It was a commercial fishing boat over the Cay Sal Bank on the opposite side of the Channel. They picked up the pattern again, and went on, twenty-five miles west, ten miles north, twenty-five east, and then north again, squinting against the sunlit water below them and straining to pierce the haze of distance far out on the horizon. At 12:15 p.m., Avery made a last check of the fuel gauges, and said, “That’s it for now.” They flew back to Nassau and re-fueled.
They took off again, made the long run down across Andros and the Bank once more, and were back in the search pattern shortly after three. It was almost hopeless now, Ingram thought. They were already north of where the dinghy had been picked up, and working farther away from the area all the time. They went on, not speaking, eyes glued to the emptiness below and on all sides of them.
At 4:35 p.m. they were on an eastward leg. As they came in over the edge of the Bank, Avery checked the time and the remaining fuel, and said, “Best make the next leg a short one. Only about thirty minutes before we have to start back.”
Ingram nodded. They started to turn to the left, while his eyes searched the blurred distance in over the Bank. “Hold it!” he called out suddenly. “I think I see something.”
It was only an indistinct speck, far ahead and below them. He pointed. Avery saw it, and nodded. They continued on course, heading straight toward it. In another ninety seconds he could make out that there were two separate objects. One was a narrow rock or sand spit showing just above the surface; the other, however, was a boat, and he felt a tingle of excitement along his nerves. He started to call out to Mrs. Osborne, and then was aware she had come forward and was crouched behind him, peering over his shoulder. Avery changed course slightly to put the boat on the starboard side, and nosed down to lose altitude. He could see the masts now. There were two of them, the taller aft. The boat was a schooner, and a large one. He saw the large cockpit aft, the long, low deckhouses, the rakish bowsprit.
“There she is,” he said. It was the Dragoon.
She was lying dead in the water, listing slightly to port, with her sails furled. They went over at a thousand feet, still losing altitude. Avery banked right to swing back. Ingram stared down to keep her in view, conscious of Mrs. Osborne’s face touching his and her hand digging into his shoulder. She was clutching the binoculars in her other hand, trying to bring them to bear on the schooner’s deck. He slid out of the seat, pushed her into it, and stood behind her. The schooner was momentarily lost to view then as Avery lengthened the radius of his turn. When they straightened out at last they were some four hundred feet above the water and about a mile astern. They flew up past her, less than a hundred yards off her port side, and he could see everything quite clearly.
Her hull was painted a light blue now, instead of white, and while he couldn’t make out the name lettered on her stern it was shorter than Dragoon. She lay roughly on a northerly heading about three hundred yards southwest of the dry sand bar, which was itself approximately that long, very narrow, and not over two or three feet above water at its highest point. The water was very shoal on all sides of the bar except for one twisting channel of slightly darker blue extending along its western side, past the Dragoon’s stern, and then on westward toward the outer edge of the Bank. The tide was flooding onto the Bank, flowing around her hull, but she lay broadside to it and unmoving. The deck was empty of any sign of life. Then they were past her, and Avery was climbing to gain altitude for another turn.
Mrs. Osborne had put down the binoculars and had her face pressed against the window, trying to see aft. “Are you sure it’s the Dragoon?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “There’s no doubt of it.”
“There’s something funny about the way she’s lying. What is it?”
“She’s aground.”
“I didn’t see anybody. Did you?”
“No. I think she’s been abandoned.”
“There must be somebody. . . . What could have happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
Avery completed the turn and they came back, still lower and off the schooner’s starboard side this time. She was in no immediate danger, Ingram thought, as long as the wind held out of the southeast. There was a short, choppy sea running across the Bank, but she was completely protected in the lee of the shoal surrounding the sand spit. A norther would break her up, but there was little chance of one in June. As they went past he swept the deserted deck with a cool professional eye. There appeared to be no damage. The sticks and rigging were all right as far as he could tell. The sails were sloppily furled, as though they had been stowed in the dark by farmers, but the booms were inboard, the main resting on its gallows. There was only one thing that appeared to be amiss, and that was hard to judge with the list she had. She could be a little low in the water. Maybe she had been holed on a reef somewhere and they’d deliberately beached her. But there was no anchor out, which would seem to indicate she’d been abandoned before she went aground. It was baffling.
Then they were past, and climbing. Ingram made an estimate of the position and marked it on the chart. Avery checked the time, and cautioned, “Can’t cut it too fine. We’d best start for home.”
“Could we go by just once more?” Mrs. Osborne asked.
Avery nodded. They made the turn and came back, higher this time. She stared down at the empty deck. Then the schooner was falling away behind them, looking helpless and forsaken in the lonely distances of the sea. When she disappeared at last, Mrs. Osborne turned away from the window. “How do we get aboard?”
“Charter a boat,” Ingram replied.
“How long will it take?”
“Two days, at least. Maybe three.”
“That’s too long. Why don’t we land out there with the plane?”
He glanced at Avery. The latter nodded. “Could be done, if there’s not too much sea running. Early in the morning would be the best time. But you’d have to take it up with McAllister.”
He started to point out that merely getting aboard wouldn’t solve anything; the chances were they were going to need the help of another boat, and one with plenty of power, to pull her off. Then he reconsidered; there were several things in favor of it. He could size up the situation at first hand, see just what it was going to take to get her afloat again, and find out if there was any damage below the water line. Also, she might not be fast aground at all; she might merely have lodged there on a change of tide and float off herself on the next flood. With no anchor out, there was no telling where she would wind up. An abandoned boat was always in danger.
“What about getting over to her?” he asked.
“We have some rubber life rafts,” Avery replied.
They landed in Nassau shortly before six. McAllister was still in the office. He was a portly Irishman with curly black hair, a cigar, and the affable charm of a successful politician. Ingram unrolled the chart on his desk and explained the situation.
“You’re sure that’s the position?” McAllister asked. “The chart doesn’t show a sand bar there.”
“I know,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything. A lot of the Bank’s pretty sketchy in the survey department, and those shoals and bars change with every storm. We checked the course on the way in, and wouldn’t have any trouble finding it again.”
“Any rocks or coral heads close to the surface?”
Avery shook his head. “No. There’s plenty of water to the westward of the sand spit. Early in the morning, before the breeze gets up, we could bring her in well off the shoal and taxi up in the lee of it while they go aboard.”
“Okay,” McAllister replied. “If it looks safe to you. What time do you want to take off?”
“The earlier the better. As soon as it’s light.”
“All right. We’ll put one of those surplus life rafts aboard and have her ready.”
Ingram retrieved their suitcases and they went around in front of the terminal and took a taxi downtown. As they pulled away from the loading zone, she asked, “What do you think happened? What became of them?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You don’t think there’s a chance anyone is still aboard?”
“No. They’d have made some attempt to get her off. There would have been a kedge anchor out astern, or some roily water downstream if they’d been turning the engine. She was apparently abandoned even before she drifted in there.”
“But how? And why?”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t even try to guess. There’s been no bad weather, and I didn’t see any sign of damage. Hollister couldn’t have taken her down there alone. There had to be others. And as far as we know, they didn’t even have another dinghy to get off with even if they’d wanted to. It makes no sense at all.”
“But what about Hollister?”
“There’s a good chance he’s dead.”
It was a moment before she answered. “Why?”
“He took off his clothes and that watch to go in the water after something. He didn’t come back into the dinghy. And if he’s not aboard the Dragoon, that doesn’t leave much.”
“I see,” she said. He turned and glanced at her, but she was staring out the window on the opposite side. She was silent during the rest of the ride into town; when he suggested the Pilot House Club as a good place to stay, she merely nodded. When they came into the central business district she asked the driver to stop, and got out.
“I want to do some shopping,” she said to Ingram. “Take my suitcase and the binoculars, and reserve a room for me. I’ll be along later.”
After he’d shaved and showered he ate a solitary dinner in the patio near the pool. He didn’t see her anywhere. He crossed the road to the Yacht Haven; none of the skippers he knew were around, so he walked downtown, driven by restlessness, and had several bottles of beer in the Carlton House bar. You’re getting old, he told himself; you’ve been too many places for too many forgotten reasons, and now you’re going around again. Remembering the same place offset in different layers of time makes it too easy to count the years in between and wonder where they went. You wake up in the morning and they’re speaking Spanish outside your window, so it could be Mexico again, and you remember lightering bananas down the Grijalva River in a wheezy gasoline-powered tug with a string of cranky barges and the goofy invincibility of youth, and the salvage job off the Panuco River bar below Tampico when the tanker piled up on the south jetty because the skipper wouldn’t wait for a pilot and didn’t know about the bad southerly set across the entrance during a norther, and then you realize the two memories are eleven years apart and somehow they’ve shoved a whole war, several other countries, and a good deal of the western Pacific in between. And Nassau . . .
That had been the good time. Seven years of it, with Frances and the Canción. He’d met Frances in 1948 when she’d been one of a party of five Miami schoolteachers who’d chartered the Canción for a week’s trip to Eleuthera. They were married that same year, and lived aboard the ketch as skipper and mate in a very special and private world of their own happiness while carrying charters along the New England coast in summer and around the Bahamas in winter—until 1955. She’d flown home to Seattle to visit her mother, and was going to drive back to Chicago with friends to take the plane down to Miami. Everything had seemed to run down and stop then, on that endless bright November afternoon in the Berry Islands with the wind blowing blue and clean from the north, when he got the word by radio. She’d been killed in an automobile accident at a place called Manhattan, Montana. While he stood there holding the handset of the radiotelephone in his hand waiting for the numbness to wear off and the thing to begin to get to him wherever it was going to start, it seemed the only thing he could think of was that if he could only isolate it and pin it down there must be a question in here somewhere for the boys who could always explain everything. After all the places he’d been in the world, the only thing he’d ever been handed that he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to handle had happened to him in a place he’d never even heard of.
You’ve had too much beer, he thought, or you think too much when you drink. He left the bar and walked back, and it was after eleven when he came into the lobby of the Pilot House. The girl at the desk said Mrs. Osborne had tried to call him several times in the past hour. “Thank you,” he said. He went on up to his room, looked at the telephone, and shrugged. The hell with Mrs. Osborne; he was going to bed. While he was unbuttoning his shirt, the telephone rang. He ignored it until the third ring, when it occurred to him the girl would have told her he was in now. He picked it up.
“I want to talk to you,” she said. Her voice sounded blurred, and the words tended to run together. “I was just going to bed.”
“At eleven o’clock? Do you get a merit badge or something?”
“Can’t it wait till morning?”
“No. Come over to my room. Or I’ll come over there.”
Stoned, he thought. He’d better humor her, or she’d be banging on the door. “All right.” He put the instrument back on the cradle and went down the hall.