Secret sea; (12 page)

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ship with a Hne, steered her with his feet braced against the wheelbox, his knees clamping it as he would clamp a bucking horse.

In the middle of all this, Mike came staggering up the companion ladder, falling from side to side, balancing on each step and bracing himself with knees and elbows. In each hand he had an enormous sandwich.

He lurched across the cockpit and fell, sitting, beside Pete.

He held up one of the sandwiches. "Here," he said.

Pete looked at the thing, the bread already damp with spray, the insides of the sandwich leaking and dripping and squeezing out.

"No, thanks," Pete said. Inside his mouth there was a sudden gush of cold liquid, and his stomach seemed to rise up and then fall slowly over backward and slither down again. When Mike withdrew the sandwich, Pete felt a little better. But when Mike took a huge bite of his own, a bite which caused the red and yellow and gray inside of the sandwich to ooze out, Pete had to look up at the topmast as his stomach did another slow roll.

"You'd better take those things below before Dagwood sees them," Pete decided.

Mike looked up at him, shreds of sandwich from ear to ear. "Thought you were a big strong Navy man."

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"Naval Reserve, son. Take 'em below."

Mike got up reluctantly and started below. Halfway across the cockpit he turned. "When I come back, Til tell you something funny," he said. "It's about a man who tied an oyster to a string and swallowed it and then pulled it up again."

''Go belowr Pete yelled.

Mike, laughing like an idiot, staggered back down the companion ladder.

Pete's stomach settled down again, and the wild gushing in his mouth stopped. At the end of the hour he pulled in the counter of the taff rail log and took the hourly reading. As he entered it in the log, he saw that, even under storm canvas, the Indra was making three knots. In two more hours, Pete figured, he would have enough sea room for three more days of the battering wind, and he knew that very few storms in that area lasted for more than four days. As he sat down again, he felt suddenly contented and happy.

He thought of the man and the black sloop. Weber had been completely eluded, Pete decided. He was now, probably, sailing all over the Gulf looking for the Indra, but his chances of just stumbling on her were very remote.

Pete thought of the squall which had saved them and smiled, salt water running into his mouth. He looked forward along his ship as she staggered up the back of a wave, and a warm

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feeling of pride rose in him. Maybe she was what Mike called her, *'an old tub/' but she had certainly outfought and outsailed the slick sloop. The old tub was a seagoing ship, Pete decided, and could take it. And he was glad that he had spent the extra money to put the heavy rigging on her. If he hadn't, he thought, when that squall banged them, the hrdra would have come up with her masts out—just slopping around helplessly and at the mercy of Weber and his gang of hoodlums.

With the ship moving violently but steadily and without too much strain, Pete had time to do a little sober thinking. What did Weber plan to do? he asked himself. Because he was sure that Weber had not given up and he was equally sure that Weber was an intelligent enemy. Pete had learned a bitter lesson in the Navy—don't underestimate your opponent—so he concentrated on Weber now.

Pete alone knew exactly where the Santa Ybel lay. He was sure of that. Narvez knew approximately but, if Pete interpreted the things Weber had done so far, Narvez had not told Weber, and Weber had not actually read the log of the Santa Ybel

Pete put himself in the foreigner's place. What would he do if he wanted to find the Santa Ybel?

The answer was simple: Follow the Indra.

Then what?

Weber had already searched the Indra and had

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not found the log of the Santa YbeL Pete was sure that, after he had knocked Mike out with the pistol barrel, Weber had continued his search until he had satisfied himself that the log was not aboard.

If that was right, Pete decided, then Weber would just be cutting his own throat to get tough. If, by a lucky fluke, Weber found the Indra again, the only thing he could do would be follow her. It would be useless for Weber to attack the Indra, Therefore, Pete figured, he and Mike were safe from any more physical violence until after they reached the Santa YheL

That "after" worried Pete. Once he gave away the position of the treasure ship, he and Mike could stand by for anything. Pete did not for a moment try to kid himself into thinking that Weber would hesitate to do anything to get that gold. The man had committed cold-blooded murder in the past.

So the answer was again simple: Weber must never find the Indra anchored above the Santa YheL

That answer made Pete change his plans. Originally, before he had begun to realize how deadly a threat Weber was, he had planned simply to sail down to where the Santa Ybel was, anchor there, and dive for treasure whenever the weather was calm enough. And, when the weather was too rough for diving, just lie at anchor.

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Pete threw all that out. With Weber in the same ocean, every minute that he stayed anchored above the Santa Ybel was going to be dangerous. Instead he would have to pick his days with the greatest care, sail to the spot as fast as he could, dive for a little while, and then get well away from the Santa Ybel. That way, Pete figured, narrowed the time of danger, made less the interval when Weber could find him.

Then Pete grinned. He had lost Weber once already. Every minute, every mile the Indra sailed in the gray world, widened the area Weber had to search. From Miami, going south, it had been fairly easy for Weber to find him. It didn't take a mental giant to figure that a sailboat, making six knots, would have to be somewhere between Florida and the Bahamas and, as time passed, between the Keys and the Andros. But soon—in an hour—Pete would be turning west into the ninety-mile-wide Straits of Florida. If he could get through them without being discovered, Weber would have to search the entire Gulf of Mexico to find him.

As the Indra was carried up to the top of a huge wave, he looked around. He couldn't see a half mile in any direction. The wall of cloud was pressing in close and was lying right down on the wild sea. The wind was full of mist and spray, and the sunlight was shut out so well that, at high noon, it seemed to be twilight.

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"Boy," Pete said, ''you couldn't find the continent of North America in this soup."

And by nightfall he would be plunging into the immense emptiness of the Gulf of Mexico.

"Good-by, Weber," Pete said. 'It was nice knowing you."

Mike came topside and took the wheel when Pete at last turned her west. The motion of the ship eased a little as she began to run, and they took off everything but the storm jib, which they boomed out. The storm was so great that they continued to make three knots under the jib alone.

Pete, down in the cabin, continued cleaning up the mess Weber and his men had made of things. Mike had done a lot but had left the diving gear for Pete. He hung the stuff back on the bulkheads, lashed down the helmets and corselets more securely, flemished down the life line, and coiled the hoses. In his own cabin and Mike's he got things shipshape again and, by the time he was through, he began to feel hungry.

In the galley Pete made himself a sandwich and then, in some doubt, made one for Mike. Eating his as he went up the ladder, he held out the other one to Mike.

"Thanks," Mike said, and began gobbling.

"What was that you were going to tell me about the man with an oyster on a string, Mike?"

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Mike grinned, his mouth full. *Torget it, Mac. It didn't work."

"It almost did. Think I'll turn in for a little while." Pete looked at his watch. "Eight bells. How about staying with her until eleven or twelve, Mike?"

"I slept most of the morning. I'll keep her until later if you want."

"We'd better steady down on four," Pete said. "We've got a long time yet."

"Okay. Call you at eight bells."

"Don't forget that oyster if it gets any rougher," Pete said, going down the ladder.

It was pitch-black dark and the buzzer was going like an angry hive of hornets. Pete struggled up out of his bunk and as the buzzer continued to ring without stopping he began to get mad at Mike. "Okay. Okay!" he yelled above the noise of the laboring ship.

As Pete ran out through the main cabin, he saw light flickering from topside and for an instant thought that the ship was on fire. But then he remembered how wet everything was up there. As he went up the ladder three steps at a time, he wondered if Weber had, by some freak of chance, found them again.

The whole topside of the Indra was lit up with a cold, flickering, wavery light. In it he could see

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Mike almost cowering at the wheel, his eyes wide open with fear.

Pete stopped in the companionway and glanced up at the tops of the masts. Then he began to laugh.

Mike straightened up and looked at him.

Pete went on laughing, as he braced himself in the hatch to keep from being thrown back down the ladder.

"Thought you were a sailor," Pete taunted him.

Mike's eyes narrowed. Very deliberately he put a becket on the wheel, got down ofiF the wheel-box, and, with what dignity he could manage on the writhing ship, walked over to confront Pete.

"What are you laughing about, clown?" Mike asked, and his jaw began to stick out.

Pete just laughed.

"Do you want a swat in the teeth, clothhead?" Mike demanded.

"Take it easy, son," Pete said, still chuckling. "But you looked pretty funny squatting back there."

"Funny?" Mike spat the word out. "What's so funny?"

"You," Pete said.

Mike turned and stalked back to the wheel. As he got back on the box and took the becket off, he said, "Here I am sailing around with a clown."

Then the light blazed up bright again, stream-

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ing in cold fire up and down the steel shrouds and dancing along the masts and the wire rope edges of the sails.

"Cut the comedy," Mike said, and there was a faint tone of pleading in his voice. "What is that stutf, mate?"

Pete came over and sat down beside him. "St. Elmo's fire. It's good stuff, Mike. The old sailors used to think that it was St. Erasmus coming down to look out for them because you very rarely see it except in storms."

"Doesn't burn?"

"No. It streams down from those two bright spots like fans on the mastheads."

Mike laughed—a little. "Scared the pants off me. I was just sitting here, and all of a sudden those two spots jumped down on top of the masts and began to spit and fizzle like a cat fight. Then all that stuff began to run up and down. Listen to it crackling."

"I remember once when I was in a destroyer," Pete said. "We were sneaking up on one of the Jap-held islands—had a bunch of UDTs to put overside—and it was blowing about like this "

"Who are UDTs when they're home?" Mike asked.

"Underwater demolition teams—very tough people. Anyway, everything was going fine and we were getting in right on top of the beach

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when—whammy—all of a sudden St. Elmo's fire lit up the whole ship. We looked like a Christmas tree out there, and in about three seconds the Japoons opened up with everything they had. Felt like those clay ducks in a shooting gallery. And, since we didn't want the Japs to know a U.S. ship was even in that ocean, we couldn't fire a shot. All we could do was back gracefully out of there, still lit up like the Fourth of July."

"What'd you do?"

"Waited until the stuff went away and went back. But it was a nervous bunch of boys on the way back. All hands kept looking up at the masts expecting that stuff to break out again."

"What happened then?"

"Why, son," Pete said, getting up, "we won the war."

"Yeah?" Mike said. "Don't you know who won the war, Mac?"

"No, who did?"

"The United States Marine Band," Mike said.

"That's right, I'd forgotten. . . . Well, good night. Give me a buzz if anything happens—that is, anything important."

"Listen . . ." Mike said, half rising from his seat.

Pete laughed and went down the ladder.

Pete relieved Mike at the wheel at midnight. The storm was reaching its peak, and by three o'clock in the morning it was too rough to handle

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any longer. Regretfully Pete put enough canvas on the mainmast to heave her to nicely and then just sat there. He hated to lose ground, to have to let the ship be driven backward a mile or so every hour, but the wind and sea were too violent to keep on running. The danger of a jibe was too great even under the short canvas and, in the confused sea, the danger of a wave crashing down from astern and breaking the Indrah back grew with the storm.

The Indra was a good ship and hove to like a duck. While the storm screamed and roared around her, she seemed to ignore it as she rose and fell with the waves. Pete stayed in the cockpit in case a freak wave should threaten to broach her and listened to the voices you can hear in a real gale at sea. He listened to the voices singing like a great choir of people far away, a choir with each section of voices singing a different tune. To pass the time and keep himself awake, he also studied the waves which came rushing up out of the blackness to become gray-black walls towering all the way into the sky. Each one seemed to be trying desperately to crash down upon the Indra, but she ignored them as their white crests began to become visible and then, from the black sky, came roaring down. Every seventh wave, Pete thought, seemed to be bigger than the other six. Number one and number six waves were the smallest.

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Around seven in the morning Pete went forward and tightened up the lashings on the dinghy and the fourteen-foot tender, and at eight he buzzed for Mike and asked him to get up some chow.

By eleven the back of the storm was broken, and they got under way again. Pete took the wheel after lunch, and Mike turned in.