Secret sea; (15 page)

"Forty-six," Pete said.

"Forty-six," Mike repeated, writing it down.

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"Fifty-one—she's yawing all over the ocean."

"Fifty-one," Mike said.

"Forty-five."

"Forty-five."

"Forty-two."

"Forty-two."

"Forty-six."

"Forty-six."

"Forty-eight. She's getting dim, Mike."

"Forty-eight."

"Fifty-two."

"Fifty-two." . "Fifty. If we hold 225, I think it'll be good enough."

"Fifty."

Pete went on taking readings until, at last, he could no longer see the spark of the penlight. Quickly he added up the readings Mike had entered, divided them by the number of readings taken, and added 180 degrees to the result. "Put her right on 223 and hold her, Mike. Don't let her move an inch if you can help it." Pete then shoved the throttle all the way forward and came back to the wheel. Taking it over from Mike, he did not lift his eyes from the compass card as he steered, holding the lubber's line steady as a rock on 223.

After a few minutes Mike said in a low voice, "What do you think. Skipper?"

Pete didn't move his eyes. "I don't think any-

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thing, but here's what I hope. First, that the new-pip we made was big enough to cover up the pip the Indra was making—but not so big that it would make him suspicious. Second, that, when we let the dinghy go adrift, the speed was quickly reduced. Weber would not notice it at once and would keep coming at his same speed. This would m.ake the pip of the dinghy grow brighter and bigger. Third, when Weber noticed that the pip was growing, he slowed down to keep from overrunning us. Fourth, he wondered what we were up to but, as soon as the dinghy started yawing around, Weber relaxed, deciding that we had heaved the Indra to. Last—he's heaved to, also, watching the pip of the dinghy."

"But if it wanders all over the place, why can't he see the one we make?"

"I'm afraid of that," Pete said. "But there's hope. You see, the pip moving up and down the scale the way the dinghy's is leaves a sort of luminous trail behind it. I'm hoping that that trail will blot out the pip we make."

"Okay," Mike said. "I don't understand it. So all I want to know is—did we or didn't we?"

"Brother," Pete said in a whisper, "so do I."

"So when do we find out?"

"We find out, Mike, when the sun shines again, when there's not a cloud in the sky and you, astride the crosstree with the glasses, either—see a black sloop or don't see a black sloop."

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"You mean we've got to go on like this until tomorrow—or maybe even the next day?"

Pete nodded.

"Holy cow!" Mike said. "I'll be a nervous wreck."

"It isn't so bad," Pete said. "I've been a nervous wreck ever since Weber poked his black sloop out of those clouds this afternoon."

"Say, Mac," Mike said suddenly. "How far can that gimmick see, anyway? Suppose this storm clears up tonight—it's dying fast now—and the sun shines first thing in the morning. And right in front of Weber is that dinghy with all the Christmas tree decorations on it. What's to keep him from turning a knob or something and seeing us again?"

As Pete started to answer, the ship's clock in the companionway tinkled eight bells.

"It's midnight now," Pete said. "Sunrise in the morning is about five thirty-two. That gives us five hours of darkness, Mike. In that time, with the wind aft, we can make better than thirty miles. Without the sails up at thirty miles I don't think the little set Weber's got can see us. His antenna is down on his mast just above the jib stay, which is pretty low for surface search, and we don't stick out of the water more than ten feet, except for the masts. I think he'd bust a cathode trying to see us that far."

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"Suppose the engine conks out?" Mike suggested.

"I've got plenty of trouble without you thinking up any more," Pete said. "But you might drop down into the engine room and see if she's still ticking. Feel the intake water Hne on the starboard side—if it isn't fairly cool, holler. Can you short a plug?"

"That business with the screw driver?"

"Yep. Be sure the blade of the screw driver is on the engine before the shank touches the plug lead."

"I'll do it but it always bites me," Mike said.

"And check the gas and oil."

Mike got up. "If the engine comes up through the deck with me on top of it, you'll know I did something wrong," he said.

Soon Pete heard the engine skipping. He counted the times and relaxed when it skipped four times. Soon Mike came topside again. "Say, that works all right. Didn't bite me a single time."

"Everything all right?"

"Running like a nose," Mike said. "Couldn't be better. Cool, too."

"Good. Why don't you turn in?"

"Are you nuts? I want to be here when Weber draws up alongside with our dinghy and says, *Hey, you dropped something.' "

"That's what I like about you," Pete said. "You 163

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always look on the bright side of things. Go below and catch some sack time. We've got a long way to go yet and all of it running like a rabbit."

"I couldn't sleep," Mike declared. "Fd get to dreaming about those radio things flying back and forth and I'd have nightmares."

"Try it anyway," Pete insisted.

"All right. But I'll be screamin' in five minutes."

"Scream away. I'm used to it."

Pete felt lonely after Mike left. The night was pitch-black, the storm clouds blanking out the stars and the moon. The dying storm no longer tormented the sea, and it was now as black as the night except for the weird trail of faint green phosphorus which faded away behind the Indra and foamed around her long, sleek hull so that she seemed to be sailing in a trough of wavering green water.

Pete listened for Mike's nightmares, but no wild screams came up the companion ladder. The motor, its underwater exhaust throbbing, hummed steadily and its sound was so smooth, so constant, that after a while Pete no longer heard it. He sat in loneliness, his eyes always on the compass card, steering down the invisible line made by 223 degrees.

Once he took his left hand off the wheel spoke and looked at it under the dim yellow light from the binnacle. Then he stretched his arm out slow-

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ly. It would not go out straight. Then, in the darkness, he tried to touch his shoulder with his fingers but he could not. And he tried to touch his shoulder blades, and he could not. He thought of the Navy Cross thrown carelessly into a drawer in Mr. Williams's apartment. And the Purple Heart—a pretty purple-and-gold medal—beside the Navy Cross.

But as bitterness started to rise in him Pete remembered Ward Twenty at Oak Knoll. That was where the men with no hands, no legs, were. They were the real Purple Heart people. Pete put his left hand back on the wheel spoke.

Slowly the storm died but the clouds of storm, as though reluctant, as though they had not finished their brutal teasing of the sea, did not disappear from the sky for a long time. The night ebbed, the seas calmed, the wind settled in a new and gentle quarter.

And for the first time since he had left Miami —a time which seemed to Pete almost as remote as the time of war—the sun came up. Bright and clean and innocent, it lifted itself from the calm sea. Waves sparkled, the deep blue was back. Flying fish skittered ahead of the ship.

There were three clouds in the sky. One far to the south was grayish and low—the end of the storm. One to the west was a little white puff ball which seemed not to know what it was doing

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up there. And one to the north was just a thin hne of haze.

Pete pressed the buzzer. Almost immediately Mike appeared in a pair of his new skivvy pants. " *Oh, what a beautiful mah'nin'/ " he sang. "Where's old Pickle Puss?"

"Get the glasses," Pete said.

Before Mike opened the compartment, he

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looked slowly all around the empty horizon. **Can't see him from here," he said.

"Aloft is where it counts," Pete said.

Mike got the glasses and started climbing hand over hand up the main halyard. Halfway up to the crosstrees, he yelled down, 'Tete, suppose I see him?"

Pete felt cold in his stomach, almost sick. "J^st say so, I guess, Mike."

"Okay." Mike's voice sounded cheerful.

Pete glanced up once as Mike reached the cross-trees and slung a leg over one of them. Then, just looking straight ahead, Pete waited. Time seemed to flow like warm asphalt. The clock in the com-panionway tinkled sweetly four times.

Pete wanted to look up at the tiny figure high in the air swaying with the mast slowly from side to side, but he did not. He wanted to call out, "What's the word?" as he knew that Mike was moving the glasses inch by inch, covering all the sparkling sea enclosed by the circle of the horizon, but he did not.

Minutes—to Pete, hours—went by, and Mike made no sound. At last Pete could stand it no longer, and he looked aloft.

Mike wasn't there.

Pete froze for an instant, and then Mike jumped calmly down into the cockpit, put the binoculars in the case, and put it back into the

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compartment. To Pete he seemed to do everything as slowly as he could.

"Empty as a plate," Mike said. "Not a ship in sight."

Then, standing in front of Pete, he stuck out his hand. "You did it . . . Cap'n," Mike said. "Now, how about we eat a little snack?"

Book Three

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eaway

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he hidra was eleven days out of Miami and far into the Gulf. After the storm died, the weather was perfect, with a Beaufort 4 wind which never

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went forward of the beam. Two or three times each day, and always at sunrise, either Mike or Pete chmbed the sail hoops to the crosstrees and scanned the sea, but the black sloop never appeared again. Pete continued to worry, for he knew that the height of the crosstrees and the height of the mast of the sloop did not give a total visibility equal to the maximum range of the radar, but as the days went by he worried less. They had passed many ships and sailboats, and for one entire night they had followed close in the wake of a slow freighter and for a day they had changed course a good deal to sail side by side with a schooner loaded with lumber en route to Jamaica. As the eleventh day ended with a beautiful sunset, Pete became convinced that they had lost Weber. He reasoned that, even if Weber had picked them up again on the radar after finding the dinghy, he would not have been able to identify the Indra,

"He's probably chased every yacht and slow freight in the Gulf,'* Pete said.

"How do you know he's not just over the horizon?" Mike asked.

"They haven't got radar to the point where it can talk yet," Pete said. "Since we gave Weber a very fine dinghy, he must have had a dozen pips on the scope. To find out if we were making them, he would have to come within visible range,

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Mike. He's got a Marconi-rigged boat—getting a man up on the mast is quite a performance. I think, rather than go to all the trouble of lowering the sail and rigging a bosun's chair, Weber would close up on any pip he saw until he could identify it from the deck. After all, Mike, he knows that as soon as he spots us again he's got us licked."