Aground

7
By 12:30 p.m. the outgoing tide had slowed enough to permit resumption of the unloading operation. The work went on through the blistering heat of afternoon. The tide was at slack low shortly after two, with the Dragoon’s list at its most pronounced. Ingram’s shoulders ached, and he lost count of the number of trips he had made. On the sand spit, the pile of boxes grew larger hour by hour. The tide began to flood. By five p.m. the current was again becoming a problem, and at a little before six Morrison called a halt and rode the raft back to the Dragoon.
“That’s all the rifles,” he said, as they sat in the cockpit in their dripping clothes. “Let’s see—sixty times a hundred. . .”
Three tons off, Ingram thought. The schooner’s list was decreasing now by slow degrees as the tide rose, and it should be about two hours more until slack high. It would be interesting to see how far she might be from floating then, but he was almost too tired to care. Ruiz brought up a plate of sandwiches and they ate on deck while sunset died beyond the Santaren Channel in a thundering orchestration of color. Ingram watched it, remembering other tropical sunsets down the long roll of the years and wondering how many were left now in his own personal account. Probably not many, from the looks of things at the moment. He couldn’t see any way out, and all he could do was go on waiting for something to break.
But what? he wondered. Even if Morrison took off that prosthetic BAR when he went to sleep, which appeared unlikely, he was still no match for the man in a fight. Not now, at forty-three—and the chances were he never had been. And there was always Ruiz and his Colt. There was something a little mad, he thought, in this harping on those two guns when the Dragoon’s whole cargo consisted of a hundred-thousand-dollar assortment of deadly weapons, but they were all crated and out of reach, and the ammunition for them was crated separately.
He was roused from the quiet futility of his thoughts by a shrill laugh from Rae Osborne. She and Morrison were dipping into the rum again, and apparently Morrison had just said something very funny. He let his gaze slide past their oasis of alcoholic gaiety to where Ruiz sat cross-legged atop the deckhouse, and this time the grave imperturbability of the mask had slipped a little and he could see, in addition to the Spanish contempt for drunkenness, the growing shadow of concern. Ruiz knew him, so that probably meant he was inclined to get pretty goaty and unbuttoned among the grapes. You had to admit they had all the ingredients for a memorable cruise—a boisterous giant, an arsenal of weapons, plenty of rum, and a bored and stupid woman apparently bent on agitating the mixture to see what would happen.
“Maybe Herman’d like a drink,” Morrison said. Rae Osborne shrugged. “Herman’s not stapled to the deck. Let him go get one.”
Morrison lighted a cigarette and spoke to Ruiz. “We better figure out what we’re going to do with ‘em tonight, unless we want to take turns standing watch. Tie ‘em up, or lock ‘em in one of those staterooms?”
“It’s pretty stuffy down there till after midnight,” Ruiz said. “Why not put them on the island? They can’t get off as long as we’ve got the raft.”
“Sure, that’d do it. Lieutenant, you’re now a captain.” Rae Osborne rattled the ice in her glass and said sulkily, “You mean I’ve got to go over on that crummy sand bar and sleep on the ground like Daniel Boone? I want another drink first.” “Sure, Baby Doll. Have all you want.” “Besides, what could I do to that hunk of brute force, anyway? You afraid I might overpower you, or something?”
Morrison grinned. “On second thought, maybe we’ll reconsider the first thought. Our yacht is your yacht. Drink up.”
“Open another bottle, Commodore, and alert the riot squad. Can you get any mambo music on that radio?”
Ruiz stood up and spoke to Ingram. “You ready to go?”
“Yes,” Ingram said. He looked at Rae Osborne. “You’re sure you want to stay?”
She considered this thoughtfully. “If I have your permission, Herman. Tell you what—you go check the action on that sand bar, and if it’s real frantic, drop me a line.”
Morrison spread his hands. “Looks like you lose, Herman.”
“I guess so,” Ingram said. “Anyway, it’s one interpretation.”
Rae Osborne smiled. “Don’t mind Captain Ingram. He’s full of deep remarks like that. He’s a philosopher. With corners, that is.”
Ingram nodded curtly to Ruiz. “Let’s go.”
He took the oars while Ruiz sat in the stern holding the Colt. It was dusk now, and the flow of the tide was decreasing as it approached high slack. The sand spit was a low, dark shadow marked by the pale gleam of the boxes where Morrison had stacked them near the southern end. Neither of them said anything until the raft grounded in the shallows beyond the channel. Ingram got out. Ruiz moved over and took the oars. “Buenas noches.”
“Buenas noches,” Ingram said. The raft moved away in the thickening twilight, and he waded ashore to stand for a moment beside the piled boxes, savoring the unbroken quiet and the clean salt smell of solitude and night. Then some faint remnant of deep-water surge flattened by miles of shoals and bars curled forward and died with a gentle slap against the sand, and somewhere beyond him in the darkness a cruising barracuda slashed at bait. Everybody, he supposed, had something he hated above all else to leave, and this was his: the tropic sea. In a dozen lifetimes he’d never have grown tired of it.
The bottle of water was near his feet. He picked it up, and judged it was still half full. He wondered how many cigars he had, wishing he’d thought to get more from his suitcase before leaving the schooner, but when he opened the case and probed with his fingers he discovered he had three. That was plenty. He lighted one and sat down on the sand with his back against the boxes.
Could he get aboard later on when they would be asleep? He could swim that far, but getting onto the schooner would be something else. They’d be too smart to leave the raft in the water so he could climb into it and reach the deck. How about the bobstay? He should be able to reach the lower end of that and work his way hand over hand up to the bowsprit. But the chances of doing it without waking either of them were admittedly dim; at any rate, he’d have to wait until after midnight.
A shriek of laughter reached his ears, and then the sound of music. They’d switched on the all-wave radio. He lay back on the sand and watched the slow wheel of the constellations while the sound of revelry came to him across the night. For a while he pictured the inevitable progress of the brawl, but gave it up with the accumulation of disgust and tried to shut it out. It was none of his business. His thoughts broke off then as he caught the sound of oars. He heard the raft scrape on sand, and stood up. The slender figure would be Ruiz. It waded ashore in the starlit darkness and pulled the raft onto the beach. He appeared to be carrying something in his arm.
“Over here,” Ingram said quietly.
“Don’t try to get behind me, amigo.”
“I’m not,” Ingram replied. He flicked on the cigar lighter. “Party get a little rough for you?”
Ruiz came into the circle of light, the fatal olive face as expressionless as ever. “I brought you some bedding,” he said, dropping a blanket and pillow on the sand. “Gets a little cool out here before morning.”
“Thanks a lot,” Ingram said. “Sit down and talk for a while. You smoke cigars?”
“I’ve got cigarettes, thanks.” He took one out and lighted it, squatting on his heels just precisely out of reach with the eternal vigilance of the professional. A shellburst of maracas and Cuban drums came to them across the water. “Están bailando,” he said with faint reluctance, as though he felt he should say something of the party but wished to make it as little as possible. Well, if they were dancing, Ingram thought, the brawl must be still on a more or less vertical plane. He wondered what difference it made.
“What kind of guy is Morrison?” he asked.
“Rugged. And very smart.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Off and on, since the war. We were in New Guinea together, and later sent in with a kind of shaggy and irregular outfit in the Philippines. On that guerrilla stuff, he could write the book.”
“That where he learned Spanish?”
“Yes, but not during the war. He was born in the Philippines; his father was in the mining business. But he has the knack—some people have it, some don’t. He also speaks Tagalog and German and a couple of very useless Central American Indian dialects. And Beatnik. Incidentally, where did you learn it?”
“Mexico, and Puerto Rico. But my accent’s not as good as his.”
“No,” Ruiz said.
“Where are you from?”
“Here and there. I went to school in the States.”
“U.S. citizen?”
“Yes. Since the war.”
He fell silent. Ingram waited. He hadn’t come out here merely to exchange biographical information. Maybe, with the Spaniard’s innate dislike for drunkenness, he was just escaping from the party, but he could have something else on his mind.
“How far are we from the coast of Cuba?” Ruiz asked then.
“Hundred miles,” Ingram said. “Maybe a little less. Why?”
“I just wondered. What would you say were the chances of making it in that raft?”
“How many people?”
“Call it one.”
“Still very dim, even with one. It’s too small.”
“That’s what I thought. But when we get started again, if we do, we pass pretty close, don’t we?”
“That’s right. The way into the Caribbean from here is through the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti. You’ll be within sight of Cape Maysi.”
“Maysi?”
“Punta Maisí. It’s the eastern tip of Cuba.”
“I get the picture.”
He’s going over the hill, Ingram thought. But why? They’ve got it all their way at the moment. Something nibbled at the edge of memory, and then was gone. “What’s the trouble?” he asked. He wouldn’t get the truth, but he might get one of the wrong answers he could eliminate.
“This is a sad operation,” Ruiz said. “And getting sadder. We’ll never make it.”
“There is that chance. And a very good one. But then I wouldn’t say that knife-and-run stuff in the Philippines was anything that’d make you popular with insurance companies.”
“Maybe I was younger then. When you’re nineteen, it’s always somebody else that’s going to get it.”
What is it? Ingram thought. “You worried about the booze?”
“Sure. Aren’t you?”
So that wasn’t it.
“How about a deal?” Ingram asked.
“No deal.” The voice was quiet, but there was finality in it.
“Stealing a boat’s not such a terrible charge. Especially if the owner doesn’t want to press it.”
“No,” Ruiz said. “I told you we’d been friends a long time.”
“But you’re looking for a way out.”
“That’s different. If you don’t like the action, you can always walk out. You don’t have to sell out.”
“Okay, have it your way,” Ingram said. He leaned back against the boxes. “This Ives—what kind of guy was he?”
“He wasn’t a bad sort of Joe if you didn’t believe too much of what he said. He talked a good game.”
“So I gather,” Ingram said.
There was a moment’s silence, and then he asked, “By the way, where’s the deviation card for the compass? Do you know?”
“The what?” Ruiz asked.
“It’s a correction card you make out for compass error. You did make a new one, didn’t you, when you swung ship?”
“Swung ship? What for? I think you’ve lost me, friend.”
“To adjust compass,” Ingram explained. “Look—you did swing it, didn’t you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“You mean you loaded three or four tons of steel down in that cabin and it didn’t occur to you it might have some effect on the compass?”
“Oh, that. Sure, we knew about it. You wouldn’t have to be a sailor. Any Boy Scout would know it. Anyway, Ives took care of it.”
“How?” Ingram asked.
“He took a bearing on something ashore before we loaded the guns, and then another one afterward. Whatever the difference was, he wrote it down somewhere. Al probably knows where it is.”
“I see,” Ingram said quietly. “Well, I’ll ask him about it.”
Ruiz slid the glowing end of his cigarette into the sand and stood up. “Guess I’ll go back and see if I can get some sleep. I hope.”
“Hasta mana?a,” Ingram said. He started to get up.
“No,” Ruiz said in his cool, ironic voice. “Don’t bother following me to the door.”
“Okay. About Ives—did he ever actually tell you that was his name?”
“No. I figured Hollister was phony, of course, but that’s the only way I knew him. That and Fred.”
“What did Morrison call him?”
“Herman. What else?”
“Excuse a stupid question,” Ingram said. “Thanks for the bedding.”
“De nada,” Ruiz said. He melted into the darkness.
* * *
Ingram leaned back against the boxes and relighted his cigar. Somebody was lying, that was for certain. But who? The thing was so mixed up and the possibilities so endless you couldn’t put your finger on where it had to be. Why did Ruiz want out? That stuff about being afraid of the trip was almost certainly a smoke screen. That is, unless he knew of some other danger Ingram himself hadn’t learned of yet—something that made death or capture an absolute certainty instead of merely another chance you took. He was a professional soldier of fortune who’d lived along the edge of violence since his teens; he didn’t scare that easily, at nineteen or thirty-nine.
But there was another possibility. Could there be something unnatural in the Morrison-Ruiz relationship, in which case it was Rae Osborne who’d thrown the dungarees in the chowder? No, he decided; that was ridiculous. Deviation wasn’t necessarily accompanied by the limp wrist and effeminate mannerisms, but you nearly always sensed it, and there was none of it here. He was glad somehow; in spite of the circumstances, Ruiz was a man you could like. He’d been opposed to this thing from the beginning, and if he hadn’t been overruled by Morrison—Ingram sat up abruptly. There it was.
Would you like to go back?
That was the thing he’d almost remembered a while ago. It was what Morrison had said in Spanish before they realized he understood the language, the thing that had stopped Ruiz’ protests.
So they couldn’t go back.
But why? Because of the charge of theft? It had to be more than that. Were they afraid of the men from whom they’d stolen the guns? That might be it, of course, but he had a feeling it was still something more. Then it occurred to him that this didn’t really answer the question, anyway. Ruiz’ problem wasn’t simply that he couldn’t go back; for some reason he couldn’t go back, or ahead. You’ll go crazy, he thought; there couldn’t be any one answer to that.
He smoked the cigar down to the end and tossed it away. It described a fiery parabola and fell hissing into the water at the edge of the sand. Cuban music and the sound of off-key singing came from the Dragoon, and he saw now that they’d turned on the spreader lights. With that radio and the lights and refrigerator they would run the batteries down. Then he was conscious of annoyance with himself. You’ve lived alone too long, he thought; you’re beginning to sound like Granny Grunt. You form a mule-headed prejudice against a woman merely because nobody’s ever told her you don’t set highball glasses on charts, and now while you’re living one hour at a time on the wrong end of a burning fuse you’re stewing about the drain on a set of batteries. You ought to be playing checkers in the park.
The pillow and the folded blanket were beside him. He picked up the blanket and gave it a flipping motion to spread it, and heard something drop lightly on the sand. Apparently whatever it was had been rolled up inside; he leaned forward and felt around with his hands, wondering idly what it could be. He failed to find it, however, and after another futile sweep of his arms he flicked on the cigar lighter and saw it, just beyond the end of the blanket. It was a black plastic container of some kind, apparently a soap dish from a toilet kit or travel case. Well, at least he’d be able to wash up in the morning. He retrieved it, and was about to set it on the crates behind him when he heard a faint metallic click inside. He pulled the lid off, and flicked on the fighter again. There were several things in it—none of them soap.
The first item was a money clip shaped like a dollar sign and containing several folded bills, the outer one of which appeared to be a twenty. The next was a small hypodermic syringe, its needle wrapped in cotton, and finally there was a tablespoon with its handle bent downward at right angles near the end, apparently so it would fit into the box. The rest of the space was taken up with eight or ten tightly folded pieces of paper. The lighter went out then. He spun the wheel again and set it upright on the sand beside him while he unfolded one of the papers. It contained just what he’d expected to find, a small amount of white powder, like confectioner’s sugar. The lighter went out, and he sat frowning thoughtfully at the darkness.
He’d never seen any of the paraphernalia before, but had read enough about it to know what it was. There was a drug addict aboard. But which one? Didn’t the police always examine the arms of suspected junkies, looking for punctures? He’d seen both of them with their shirts off, and would have noticed if they’d had any; they didn’t. But wait. . . . Obviously, the blanket must have come from one of the unused bunks. So it must belong either to Ives or to old Tango. And the odds were against its being Tango’s. He probably couldn’t afford a vice as expensive as heroin; all he had was a small disability pension from the First World War and whatever Mrs. Osborne paid him for living aboard the Dragoon. So it must be Ives’. She’d never said he was an addict, but then she’d never said much of anything about him. Well, it was a relief to know it wasn’t either of the two still aboard; that’s all they needed now, a wild-eyed and unpredictable hop-head to contend with.
He put the lid back on the box, scooped out a hole in the sand, and buried it. He’d better get some sleep so he could wake up around two or three a.m. By that time they should be sleeping soundly; he didn’t have much hope he could get aboard the schooner without waking one of them, but he had to try. And if he got out there and found he couldn’t get up the bobstay, he wanted to be sure of having an incoming tide so he could make it back.
Just as he was dropping off, he was struck by a curious thought. Why would Ives have a money clip? There at the Eden Roc Hotel, he’d taken his business card from a wallet when he introduced himself. Well, maybe he carried both. . . .
* * *
He opened his eyes. It was still night, and for a few seconds he was uncertain what the sound was that had roused him. Then he heard it again, and grunted with disgust; it was a feminine voice raised in maudlin song. God, were they still at it? He flicked on the lighter and looked at his watch. It was a quarter of two. Then he became aware the voice wasn’t coming from the schooner; it was much nearer. He knuckled sleep from his eyes and sat up.
The night was still dead calm and velvety dark except for the gleam of uncounted tropical stars, and the blanket and his clothes were wet with dew. “Come to me, my melan-choly ba-a-a-a-a-by,” the voice wailed, not over fifty yards away now, and he heard the splash of oars. How in the name of God had she got hold of the raft? He walked down to the edge of the water just as it took form in the darkness, and could make out two people in it. When it grounded in the shallows, the man who was rowing got out. The figure was too slender to be that of Morrison. Ruiz ought to take out a card in the Inland Boatmen’s Union, he thought.
“—for you know, dear, that I’m in love with youuuuuu!” Rae Osborne lurched as she stepped out, and Ruiz had to catch her arm to prevent her falling. He marched her ashore, pulling the raft behind him, and halted just in front of Ingram.
“I have brought you this one,” he said in Spanish.
“Thank you a thousand times,” Ingram replied, thinking sourly of The Ransom of Red Chief.
“Let us hope you have already had sufficient sleep, and that you are not a great lover of music.”
Rae Osborne pulled away from him and weaved drunkenly toward Ingram. “Well, whaya know? M’rooned on desert island. With ol’ Cap Ingram, the Ricky Nelson of the Garden Club. Hi, Cap!”
Ruiz turned away in unspoken contempt and disappeared into the darkness, towing the raft. Ingram took her arm and led her to the blanket and set her down with her back against the crates. In the moment before she started singing again, he heard oars going away in the night.
He noticed she still had her purse, and was pawing through it for something. Then the caterwauling trailed off, and she hiccupped. “Got light, Cap?”
He knelt and fired up the lighter. She looked as if she’d had a large evening. The tawny hair was rumpled, she had a black eye that was swollen almost shut, and there was a purplish bruise on her left forearm. The bottoms of the white calypso pants were wet, of course, from wading ashore, and one leg of them had been ripped up the seam for several inches above the knee.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He ignited the cigarette she had in the corner of her mouth, and put the lighter back in his pocket. But not too sorry; you asked for it, sister.
“Talk about survival training,” she said with wry amusement. “I think that’s about the nearest I ever came to being checked out on actual rape.”
He muttered a startled exclamation and clicked on the lighter again. This time he had sense enough to look at the other eye, and he saw the cool, green glint of humor in it just before she winked. She was no drunker than he was.