VI.
THERE WAS a sudden waterfall roar as the Alice broke the surface. Joe released a tremendous breath. He forced the hatch and clambered topside. In spite of everything the Alice"s close reefed sails were intact. Everything
was there except the bloodstains on deck-and the dinghy.
Joe peered hopelessly into the dark, overcast night.
No sign of the small boat. They"d have to swim ash.o.r.e if they ever got to the Azores.
"Secure the still," he told Gorson. "There won"t be any more lightning tonight."
Guilbeau took the wheel and they shook out a couple of reefs to speed the yawl southwest. The wind was veering now and she ran more freely. "Steady as she goes," Joe told the Cajun and went below.
Freedy was still thumping and G.o.d d.a.m.ning the fathometer. "No matter what I do, it reads sixteen," he grumbled.
"We"re probably over the steeple of the First Baptist Church of Atlantis," Joe said. "Wake me if it shoals out to eight." Hoping he inspired more confidence than he felt, Joe shut himself in his cubicle and again studied the d.a.m.nably insufficient pilot chart.
He must be close to Gibraltar-but was he north or south of it? Either way, he consoled himself, the Alice"s southwest course would carry her clear of any land. He stretched out carefully on his bunk and tried to find some position where the back of his head wouldn"t throb quite so badly. He had almost found it when someone knocked and opened the door. "Eight fathoms," Freedy reported.
Joe pushed past him and scrambled topside. Nudging a startled Guilbeau away from the wheel he spun it and spilled wind. "I"ve had enough thrills for one day,"
he said. "Drop anchor."
While they took in sail and unlashed the anchor the Alice drifted another quarter mile. Just as the anchor chain started rattling she ran gently aground.
The next few minutes were somewhat chaotic. Joe went into a frenzy of sounding, looking for a sh.o.r.e with his feeble batteried flashlight, asking Rose for the
thirtieth time when he was going to get that anomalous engine started. Eventually it did and the Alice chugged sedately away for a couple of miles while Freedy tossed a lead and chanted soundings. When Joe thought they were in deep enough water he finally allowed the an- chor to be dropped again.
So much more fuel gone,
Dawn was rosy fingered as a Homeric couplet. Joe glanced at his wrist. Should"ve bought a new watch long ago but sentiment attached him to this venerable relic. Get it cleaned again if he ever got back. He looked around the Alice. Two miles west of her an- chorage, a small island jutted from the sea. Goats grazed on its spa.r.s.e vegetation and the almost vertical sh.o.r.e- line was crisscrossed with their tracks. All hands stared at this unexpected miracle.
"We could use some meat," Cookie suggested.
"Yes," Joe said absently. "But can we spare the bul- lets?"
"Another thought occurs," Dr. Krom"s pedantic voice injected.
"I know," Joe said. "Where there are goats there"s water."
"How do we get ash.o.r.e without a dinghy-or even if we had one?" Gorson asked after studying the sheer cliff face.
They weighed anchor and the Alice ghosted along in the light morning air, tacking around a headland.
Freedy stood in the bow tossing the leadline since he no longer trusted the fathometer. "Six fathoms," he chanted. "Five and a half . . . seven . . . nine ... no bot- tom at ten."
They had pa.s.sed over some ridges. Joe studied the island"s contours and tried to guess which way they would continue under water. "There it is!" Gorson shouted.
The yawl ghosted on to the southeast side where the crater opened, offering a perfect horseshoe inlet. A tiny rock pinnacle extended from its center, like a lopsided pencil point. The harbor was perhaps two hundred yards across and here on the island"s inner surface goats had not wrought as much havoc with the vegetation.
Tiny patches of green showed between rocks. One rift in the crater wall had eroded into a canyon lined with scrub oak.
"No bottom at ten," Freedy called again.
"How we gonna anchor?" Gorson asked. "Wind shifts south and we"ve had it."
"Perhaps," Joe said. He took the wheel and headed the Alice toward the pinnacle. Throwing it hard left, he spilled wind and lost speed so that the yawl"s bow drifted by within jumping distance. Grooves in the rock hinted that other mariners had tied up here.
Joe stripped to his skivvie drawers and jumped over- board with the stern line. To his surprise, the water was warm. Now that he noticed it, the weather this morning was definitely not what it had been for the last couple of weeks. He swam ash.o.r.e but once there could barely pull himself up the steep bank.
Gorson jumped in and helped him. They struggled a hundred yards to a gentler slope at the bottom of the minuscule canyon, then heaved until the Alice came drifting ponderously after them. Eventually her stern was made fast to one of the tiny oaks.
"If there"s a spring it"ll be up there," Gorson said.
They hadn"t gone more than a hundred feet through the scrub oaks before Joe wished he"d had his shoes thrown ash.o.r.e. But the ridge couldn"t be more than a quarter mile. To h.e.l.l with it, he decided; if Gorson could make it barefoot he could. The wind flapped his wet skivvies over his thighs and gave him a slight chill.
Within another hundred yards he was sweating.
The canyon was narrow and steep but fortunately for
their bare feet it was covered with soil instead of rock.
Close-cropped gra.s.s grew under the umbrella-like cov- ering of oak whose lower leaves had been browsed clean by goats. "Odd," Joe muttered.
"What?" Gorson panted.
"We"ve had seagulls with us during the wildest weath- er, yet here"s a perfect roosting place and not a single bird."
They plodded upward until they found the spring.
It was so small that its overflow did not form a visible stream but seeped downward through the canyon"s small triangular cross-section of soil. It was a clear, semicir- cular pool in the rocks, about the size of the Alice"s gal- ley sink, and with a clear, sandy bottom. Joe flopped down and lowered his face for a cautious sip. "Tastes clean," he said. "With the island uninhabited, chances are it is."
"Uninhabited?" Gorson repeated.
Joe looked up. Facing them across the tiny clearing stood a girl. She was tanned but of an obviously blonde race. She wore her hair in a braid which had been twisted into a high crown held in place with thorns.
She wore a necklace and bracelets of some blue stone.
She wore nothing else. Joe stared awestruck, waiting for her to shriek or run. She watched them with an expectant, hopeful expression.
Joe glanced down. "Caught in my drawers again,"
he muttered.
"What?" Gorson asked.
"Nothing," Joe said.
The girl beckoned. When they still stared she ap- parently tired of standing. She lay down in the short cropped gra.s.s and waited.
Gorson exploded into laughter. "What a place for a wh.o.r.ehouse!" he roared. "I wonder how business is?"
Something, Joe kept telling himself, is wrong. In the first place, there shouldn"t be any island here. And now
this! He wasn"t dreaming. He was sweating and out of breath and his feet hurt. Gorson couldn"t possibly laugh that loud in a dream. They went around the spring to where the girl still reclined in the gra.s.s.
"Do you speak English?" Joe asked.
A pleading smile.