Dead Calm Read Online Free Page B

water—radio, sextant, chronometer, everything—”
    “How about clothes?”
    “These will do. Anyway, I don’t think I could go back aboard. You understand, don’t you? It isn’t only their dying. Remember, they all died below deck . Can you imagine what it was like, what I had to do?”
    Ingram nodded.
    Warriner’s face twisted. “Talk about the dignity of death, and last respects to the dead—pallbearers and bronze caskets and music and flowers. I dragged my wife’s body up a companion ladder with a rope—”
    “Stop it!” Rae cried out. “You’ve got to quit thinking about it!”
    “I understand,” Ingram said. “But you don’t have to go aboard; I’ll take care of it, if you’ll just tell me where to find things—”
    “But there’s not anything, I tell you!”
    “We ought to get your passport,” Ingram pointed out. “And whatever money you have aboard. We’re bound for Papeete, and you’ll need it for your passage home from there. Also, there’s the log and ship’s papers—”
    Warriner gestured impatiently. “The log and ship’s papers and passport and money are all pulp and sloshing around in the bilges in three feet of water. If I haven’t already pumped them overboard.”
    “I see,” Ingram said, wondering if he did. “But there’s another thing. Is she insured?”
    “John.” Something in Rae’s voice made him turn. She went on sweetly, but with a glint in her eyes he’d never seen before. “I don’t think we’re being very hospitable, or very considerate. Mr. Warriner needs sleep more than anything at the moment, so I’m going to fix a bunk for him. If you’ll just come with me and move those sailbags, dear.”
    She went down the ladder. Ingram followed, conscious of the rigidity of her back as she traversed the rolling cabin and went through the passage at the forward end. The narrow compartment in the eyes of the boat held two bunks, slanted inward toward each other like the sides of a V, but was used only as a locker now. There were cases of food, unopened buckets of paint and varnish, and coils of line, all neatly stowed, and the bunks themselves were piled with bags of sails. There was no hatch above, only a ventilator, and the compartment was dimly lighted by the two small portholes above the bunks.
    She pulled the door shut and came close to him. “John Ingram!” It was a whisper, but forceful. “I’m ashamed of you; I never realized you could be this insensitive. Can’t you see that boy’s on the ragged edge of a nervous breakdown? For heaven’s sake, stop asking him questions and let’s try to get him to sleep.”
    “Well, sure, honey,” he protested. “I realize what he’s been through. But we ought to make some attempt to salvage what we can—”
    “He doesn’t want to go back on there. I’d think you could understand that.”
    “He doesn’t have to. I told him I’d go.”
    “But why? He said there wasn’t anything worth trying to save, didn’t he?”
    “I know. But obviously water wouldn’t ruin everything. Clothes, for instance. Also, he contradicts himself.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The radio, remember? He said it’d been ruined by the water. But he’d just got through telling us he called us on it.”
    She sighed. “Why do men always have to be so literal? Do you think he’s some kind of machine? John, dear, he lost his wife and his two friends all in one afternoon, and then spent the next ten days utterly alone on a sinking boat, and he probably hasn’t closed his eyes for a week. I’d be doing well to remember my own name, unless I had it written down somewhere.”
    “All right—” Ingram began.
    “Shhhhh! Not so loud.”
    “Okay. But you’d think he’d at least want to bring off some of her things, wouldn’t you? And there was another thing I was about to explain to him. If that boat’s insured, he’s going to have a hell of a time trying to collect, with no logbook and just his unsupported word she was