The Vanquished (10 page)

“Stay just a little longer.”

She was neither a whore nor a barmaid. He gave her a quiet stare and moved toward the door, sliding his arm into the coat. The girl, sitting on her bunk, threw her head back so that he could see the throbbing of her throat and the pale blue of her eyes. When he opened the door a frigid wind met him in the face. He said, “Maybe I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

“Thanks for listening.”

“I liked it.”

He went out, pulling the door shut behind him. Light beads of sweat were cold on his forehead. He stood just outside the door, hand on the latch, watching the dappled surface of the moon and the glistening reflections of the sea; the engines rumbled and the packet's deck swayed with the motion of the seas, and a man's figure came up from the saloon—Zimmerman. Obviously recognizing Charley, he advanced with a swelling rush and said angrily, “What were you doing in there?”

“Talking. Thawing out.”

“Hell,” Zimmerman said. His smooth round cheeks were dark. He moved in on Charley stiff-armed. The blow caught Charley under the heart and staggered him; he found himself falling across the deck into the rail. Instantly there was rage; he came back, swinging clumsy round blows toward Zimmerman and smelling the stink of whisky on the correspondent's breath—his fist hauled up from the waist and cracked Zimmerman's lips; and that was all.

It amazed him. Zimmerman fell back with a dull sound against the cabin wall, and stood there dazed, fingering his jaw. His free hand waggled and he said, “All right—all right. Enough.” He worked his jaw back and forth with his hand. The door opened and the girl was outlined there, talking quickly, asking questions which no one answered. Zimmerman said, “Sorry, Evans. I was drunk. No hard feelings?”

“No,” Charley said, “I guess not.” He looked into the girl's eyes and saw puzzlement there; he turned his collar up and went away, amazed by how easy it was to get the better of some men.

Restless and warmed by exertion, he made a tour around the deck and went below. He picked his way past card games and sleeping drunks to his hammock, and took some time getting used to the bent swaying position he had to assume; then he was asleep quickly.

Rough seas wakened him at four in the morning, and he spoke a number of
oaths while untangling himself from the swinging hammock. Several lurching men staggered toward the rear bulk-head, looking very sick in the weird lunging light thrown by the swinging lamps. Someone threw the bulkhead door open and the line of green-faced men plunged
through toward the ladder. Charley swore again and braced himself against a post. Nearby a loose-hanging lantern heaved back and forth, and had the effect of upsetting his balance by constantly shifting the shadows. Men were shouting and bodies rolled past him in what seemed to be aimless directions. Sea smell was strong. A little pool of water moved back and forth near his feet. Old John Edmonson came by with a sickly smile, said, “I don't believe I was cut out for this,” and made his way to the ladder. Across the room, Charley saw Norval Douglas and Jim Woods give up their attempt to continue a card game. Two or three men came back down from topside, very pale, and one of them said, “It's worse up there. The damned boat's upside down.” Over it all was the smash of water against the decks and the steady imperturbable thrum of the engines.

A man Charley knew from Tuolumne County, Sam Kimmel, rocked past him and bumped into the massive lurching body of Chuck Parker, and Sam Kimmel stopped abruptly,
wiping his lips. “Here you are, you son of a bitch.”

Parker wheeled ponderously. “What?”

“I've been looking for you.”

Men were cursing and wheeling about the cabin. Kimmel stood fast, a small one-eyed man with an embittered expression, stubbornly ignoring the ship's vast movements; Kimmel said in precisely enunciated words, “You Goddamned son of a bitch. I figured to catch up to you one day, you thieving bastard.”

Charley watched with mixed fascination and fear. Parker's hot round eyes sizzled against Kimmel. The lamps whirled and shadows danced. The boat's bottom struck a trough of water, jarring everyone loose, and Charley pitched down the steeply sloping floor until the bulkhead stopped him hard. When he looked back he saw an intertwined crawling mass that slowly took shape and became eyes and arms and legs. Out of that confusion stepped Norval Douglas. He braced himself against the wall by a porthole. The boat rolled over and the mass of bodies separated. Chuck Parker was still rooted by his hammock. His face was distorted with wrath; he bore down mightily upon the slight form of Samuel Kimmel, and then Kimmel pulled a pocket-pistol from somewhere and trained it uncertainly on Parker and shouted above the din of sea and storm: “You've got this coming to you, damn you!” Parker stopped in his tracks and Norval Douglas pushed forward, palming his own revolver. Once again the waves parted and the ship plunged downward, heeled over. Charley scratched for a grip. Dimly he heard the report of a gunshot, and when the boat slowly righted itself he saw Chuck Parker with one leg buckling under him, dropping to the deck. He lifted himself to one elbow and looked down and said, in a stupid voice, “You put a slug in my leg. What for?”

Kimmel stumbled forward and knelt by him. His single fevered eye peeredat the injured leg. “Jesus. I didn't really mean to pull the Goddamn trigger.”

Parker's sluggish features turned petulant. He glared at the black eyepatch. Kimmel said, “I'm sorry”—Charley saw his lips form the words. Norval Douglas was leaning down over Parker. Kimmel got up. “I'll find Dr. Oxley. Stay put, Parker.”

“I ain't going anywhere,” Parker said. “You son of a bitch. I don't even know you. What the hell did you do that for?”

“You cheated me in a card game,” Kimmel said, and the whole thing appeared silly to Charley.

Men were getting sick all over the big cabin and the stench became bad. Kimmel disappeared, on the hunt for Oxley, the surgeon. Parker lay regarding his wounded leg with undiminished surprise. His lips worked together. Norval Douglas knelt to press a handkerchief against the wound and stem the bleeding. The smell of vomit in the room drove Charley to his feet. He put his coat on and went stumbling to the ladder, and climbed out of the cabin.

Coming on deck, he stood aside to let the doctor rush past, and looked out upon a heavy ocean. The clumsy packet, bracing the wind, fell into a trough, and Charley fell across the deck against the railing. When he pulled himself up he saw a lantern break loose and fall flaming to the decks. The ship pitched over and the lamp rolled down the slanting deck to be lost in the sea. High spray extinguished the sparks left behind. A man, trying to tighten some ropes, rolled off balance and ran yelling down the ship. Doors slammed and cabins emptied their occupants into the night. The
Sea Bird
wheeled ponderously over onto a precarious keel, and a cargo hoist abruptly broke loose and dropped into the cabin wall. There was a high sound of crushing wood, and then while the captain and mates came out on deck to observe the damage, the ship went over once more and the hoist slid back, smashing through the starboard rail and rolling into the ocean, immediately disappearing in foam.

The captain scaled the rigging and bawled, “Helmsman—helmsman—keep her into the wind, God damn it!” Figures came and went on the slippery deck. A freak turn of wind brought an unseen crewman's voice to Charley's ears: “Raise her up, now. Heave!” The ship bumped rock-hard water and the captain slipped from the rigging and landed hard on the tilted deck; he slid down the deck to the shattered cabin wall and pulled himself back from that and reeled toward the Texas ladder. When he came by, Charley heard him talking to himself in loud and angry terms: “I'll keelhaul the man responsible for securing that hoist.” And went on up to the pilot house.

The saloon door batted open and two men—Crabb and Sus Ainsa—were outlined in the dizzy light; the door slammed shut. Helen Zimmerman came out of her cabin with a heavy coat over her dressing gown and screamed when the ship rolled. She fell to the deck, climbed to her feet and windmilled wildly to regain balance, trying to get back to her cabin. The ship went over still a few more degrees, and the girl slid across the deck against the rail, grabbing hold. Still heeling over, the ship maintained a precarious equilibrium against the port beam, and a wheeling spar spun along the mainmast to knock a heavy pole down. The pole skidded across the deck and Charley saw it lodge against the girl. On that sign Charley let go his hold and half-slid, half-fell down across the deck to the girl. He lifted the heavy wood off her and saw it drop into the hungry sea. For a moment he was staring horizontally into the whiteness of the ocean. The girl moaned and grasped him in a locked grip about the waist. Charley took her at the shoulders as the ship plunged into another trough. Slate-colored sheets of water swept the decks madly. The mate came into sight crazily lurching and bawling obscenities into the night, and lost his balance, falling against the rail and teetering on it for a long time; the boat lifted its side and the mate slowly tumbled over backwards, sliding across the slick deck and disappearing down an open hatch. He screamed as he went out of sight.

A whirling mass of men surrounded the braces of the starboard lifeboat, and when Charley noticed them they were trying to lower the boat. Some fool cut the cables, and the water lifted massively and came down all confusion over the freed lifeboat, capsizing it. The crowd backed up in horror, moaning loudly, and the captain shouted hoarsely from the Texas deck: “Get inside, you idiots!”

The girl spoke against his chest; Charley could not make out her words. He saw the bodies of struggling people battered about on the storm-tossed deck, and then a great plunging mass of water shattered over his head.

Breaking over him, the force of the sea tore loose his hold on the rail. He heard a scream. The water carried him away from the deck and he had the awful sensation that he was going to drown. He felt the girl's hands hooked into his belt. The sea slammed them down onto the deck, whirled them about, pulled greedily at them; they bobbed and flattened against the ship. The foam rippled away leaving the deck high-sloping in the air. Head hanging down, Charley gasped in gulps of air and spray. He saw the girl lying across the deck and, beyond her, the eerie whiteness of a man's face, the correspondent, her brother. Zimmerman grinned widely at him and shouted, “Hang on!” And just as Charley sought a handhold the water swept over them.

He lurched about and when the water receded again he could not lift hishead to see the sky, but he knew by the gray light reflected from the deck that the dawn was coming up somewhere; he could see only the ocean and the glistening deck. The boat dropped stem-first. His hands were locked on a hatch wheel. Charley pulled in his breath. His legs were numb. The sea flashed over them again, impetuously angry but now in retreat, and when its fingers slid away he looked at the corpse-hue of Zimmerman's face and the dead-stubborn way Zimmerman was hanging on to his sister, and Charley wondered how it was that a man could give up a fist fight so easily and yet brave a storm at sea with level courage.

The
Sea Bird
plunged up and down. Charley's nose hit the deck. He felt the warmth of blood in his nostrils and heard the muffled run of his own oaths. Zimmerman's voice shouted faintly across the few feet between them:

“Let's try and get inside.”

“Go ahead,” Charley said, forcing his tongue to form the words.

“Can you make it?”

“I don't know if my legs will work. Go on—go on.”

“Jesus,” Zimmerman shouted, “I hate, heroes. Come on, Evans.”

He felt the correspondent's hand tight on his arm and saw Zimmerman's other hand supporting the girl; he threw all his concentration into climbing onto the precarious stilts of his legs and hobbling on them across the swinging deck. Graysleet pummeled his cheeks; the world rocked underfoot and water dashed the boat with massed energy.

CHAPTER 9

The
Sea Bird
swayed deliberately. He found himself drifting fitfully into aimless dreams. There was a vast bright desert and a single staggering form, and he was thirsty; there was a high forest and the bounding white haunches of an antelope. Then it was dark, and the spray came over him, and water lapped at his feet on a beach somewhere.

A hand touched his arm and he sat bolt upright.

“Bad dreams?” Zimmerman said.

“Not so bad.” Charley blinked, finding himself on Zimmerman's bunk, naked and wrapped in a blanket. Zimmerman stood by the stove holding Charley's coat toward the heat, standing with feet braced wide against the ship's heavy rolling. The storm, apparently, had dissipated. “Your sister all right?” Charley said.

“Yes, she's fine. In her cabin. We owe you a lot of thanks for getting that spar off her—she might have been knocked over-board.”

Sunlight came in through the open port. Zimmerman swayed slowly back and forth with the motion of the floor. “How do your legs feel?”

Charley moved his legs. “All right. What time is it?”

“Noon. I guess you're hungry.”

“I guess I am,” Charley said. “Thanks for putting me up.”

“Your clothes are dry. Let's go down and get something to eat—if the food wasn't washed overboard.”

“Did we lose anybody in the weather?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Lucky,” Charley said, and climbed out of bed.

“One of the sailors got a bump on the head from falling through a hatch. And one of your men—Parker—was shot accidentally in the leg last night.”

“I know.” Charley felt no particular pity for Chuck Parker. As Kimmel, who had shot him, had said, Parker had it coming.

His expression was dour when he followed Zimmerman into the mess hall. The room was crowded with a noon-meal crowd. At the captain's table sat General Crabb and Sus Ainsa and the officers. Charley recognized Oxley, the surgeon, and Captains McDowell, Holliday, and McKinney. There were half a dozen other officers whose names he did not know. Charley had seen most of them only at a distance.