John D. MacDonald

The Curse of the “Star”

I

He sat in the high-ceilinged room at the Great Eastern Hotel in Calcutta, stripped down to his shorts, the typing table set squarely under the overhead fan. As he worked at the last article the sweat dripped from his nose and his chin, falling onto the keyboard and onto the backs of his hands. Overhead the big fan blades whispered softly through the air and the ancient, defective electric motor buzzed with each revolution.

His body was leaned down by the months in China. His body and spirit both. The contract called for six articles. This was the last. The first one in the series had been glib, fresh, slightly sardonic.

But China infects a man with its own special sort of weariness. The top level politicians are fair game for irony. But the people, the incredible people, the courteous, smiling, child-like people — withered old women of thirty trotting under two hundred pound loads, the swollen-bellied, stick-legged children of famine, the boy-soldiers of twelve in gray quilted uniforms — a man who can deal with them in words of irony has an ineradicable smallness of soul.

Malcolm Atkinson had been catapulted from obscurity into fame by reason of the articles he had written on the Western Zone of Germany under the occupation forces. He had brought to international reporting a wry humor that very effectively impaled the blunderers, the greed-blinded.

And so he had been sent to China, accredited to the dwindling Nationalist forces, to work his savage magic on little men who were on the spot.

There was no more irony in Mal Atkinson. Not after retreating through famine areas to Yunan, after being evacuated to Assam, India, in a shuddering, wavering DC-3 carrying forty-six passengers — an air-weary plane that had once been operated by the CNAC.

He sat in the room at the Great Eastern in the incredible September heat and tried to put it all down, oblivious of the swarming traffic sounds from the road below. He wrote, not of the battles, not of politics — but of the little people he had seen. A father stripping bark from the trees to boil in ditch water and feed his children. A mongrel dog cornered by a pack of hungry children, whining away its last seconds of life. The armed man with plump dead rats for sale at fantastic prices.

He tried to put it all down. He didn’t preach, or point out lessons, or draw moral conclusions. He just wrote down the facts, the look, taste and smell of them. He kept himself going with black coffee, and he worked with something like fury. He wrote for thirty-eight hours and when at last it was finished, he read it over and knew that he had never done anything like it. It was so close to him that he could not tell if it were very good — or very bad. The New York editors would know.

Malcolm Atkinson prepared the airmail envelope, inserted the manuscript, sealed it and placed it on top of the typewriter. He stood up, dazed with weariness. A moment ago the manuscript had seemed to be the most important thing in the world. Now he hardly cared whether he mailed it or destroyed it. He had written from the heart, from a desire to make everyone understand what he had seen and what he had felt while seeing. Now it was done, and he felt that a certain portion of his life was done — as though something of his spirit had died along with the nameless ones who lay in the ditches in the famine area. He felt drained and purposeless.

He walked over to the bureau and picked up the copy of the cable he had received in answer to the one he sent announcing his safe arrival in India. The paper was limp and damp from the humidity.

FIVE RECEIVED STOP EXCELLENT STOP AIRMAIL FINAL AND RETURN IMMEDIATELY STOP BIG ARGENTINE DEAL COOKING STOP

A T RHODEMAN

It was an enormous effort to return to the typewriter and make a copy of a reply.

AIRMAILED SIXTH TODAY STOP NEED REST STOP TAKING SLOWEST BOAT AVAILABLE STOP HOPE IT TAKES TWO MONTHS STOP

ATKINSON

He went into the bathroom, filled the sink with the undrinkable Calcutta water and sloshed it on his face and head. It was a temporary relief. He stood up with the cool water running down his bare chest and looked at himself in the mirror over the sink. China had made a difference. The scar tissue on his right shoulder was still pinkish red. That had been luck. The defective projectile had exploded in the mortar tube and he had been a scant fifteen feet away.

He was down to 160, a good twenty pounds lighter than the day he had arrived in Hongkong. His face had the yellowish tinge that atabrine gives and the whites of his eyes were muddy. New lines around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes were too deeply etched. His thirtieth birthday had passed, unnoticed, in China.

Mal had long since decided that his face was adequate, and nothing more. He would never be asked to pose for a whiskey ad. No distinction there. Just a look of lean, fine-drawn stubbornness and sensitivity. A fighter, not necessarily a winner. He rubbed a big hand through his cropped black hair and saw how much more gray had begun to show up at the temples.

He pulled on a pair of linen trousers, shouldered into a sports shirt, stuffed his bare feet into sandals and took the manuscript and cable down to the desk.

With those details attended to, he walked numbly back to his room, pulled the bed over under the fan, stripped and fell across it. It was like tumbling down a long, black-velvet staircase. He fell endlessly into the depths of sleep.

When he awakened he could not tell if it were dawn or dusk. By the volume of traffic sounds he guessed that it was dusk, but he did not know the day. Down at the desk they told him the day, and he realized that he had slept nearly twenty-eight hours. He was vastly hungry. He sat in the bar and had three gimlets, then took dinner out in the courtyard at a table where he could watch the dancers circling limply in the heat, as though condemned to some grotesque punishment.

Three tables away he noticed a party of five, two women and three men, obviously Americans. They were all a bit drunk — not obnoxiously so, but just enough so that their voices were the faintest bit louder than necessary.

The women were both attractive, and he found pleasure in looking at them, because it had been a long time since he had looked at a woman with the sure knowledge that she was freshly bathed and scented, clad in fresh clothes, with no insects in her hair or on her person.

All five were deeply tanned. One woman seemed to be about twenty-five. Her hair, piled high on her head, had the color and the gloss of the horse chestnuts he had gathered when he was a child. He could remember throwing the sticks up into the tree, then scrambling with the others for the nuts that fell, avoiding the sharp green spines as he split open the outer husk to disclose the nut inside, as burnished and perfect as the wood of the furniture which stood, solemn and silent, in the front room of his aunt’s home, the room into which he was forbidden to go.

The woman wore a pale aqua evening gown and he guessed that she had purchased it locally because the designer had borrowed from the Chinese to the extent of slashing the skirt at the right side from ankle to knee. Mal watched her as she danced with the oldest of the three men, a burly, bald-headed fellow whose rimless glasses sparkled in the subdued light. He wore a khaki bush jacket and trousers in strange contrast to the white mess jackets of the other two men and the evening gowns of the women.

The bald man perspired profusely as he danced, but the tall girl in the aqua dress seemed to remain fresh and cool. In mid set the orchestra broke into a rumba, and showed immediately that they could handle that type of music much more effectively than they could American jazz.

The couple came so close to Mal’s table, the stocky man holding the slightly taller woman at arm’s length, that Mal became aware of the musky perfume she wore. The dress was fitted closely around the slim waist and the hips. The man’s brown hand rested on the concavity of the waist just above the full swell of the left hip.

Mal watched them and then suddenly as they turned, he noticed their expressions. The girl wore a pronounced look of fear and distaste that came and went so quickly that he wondered if he imagined it. She held the upper part of her body rigid, but from the waist down her hips and thighs moved with the pronounced rumba rhythm.

The older man’s expression did not change. He had to look up a bit to look into her face. He wore a crisp gray line of mustache. He seemed to be laughing at her, and there was no mistaking the fact that it was a laugh of contempt.

He turned her so that she looked across his shoulder and, for a moment, into Mal’s eyes. She held his gaze for a second or two before she looked away. Soon the set ended and they went back to their table. His interest aroused, Mal looked more carefully at the others. The other woman was of an age, possibly a year younger than the taller girl. She had that disconcerting vividness that is so animal in content that the impact is like a blow. Black sleek hair, bold eyes, a slash of a red mouth, a face and body continually in motion, in flux. When she stood up to dance Mal saw that in spite of her look of plumpness, of a bit too much breadth of hip and depth of breast, her waist was extraordinarily slim. She was very light on her feet, very quick, and she laughed endlessly up into the face of one of the two younger men.

It is a lonely game in a public place to attempt to sort out the lives of strangers. The two younger men seemed to be of the same type. Tall, thick-shouldered, with the pale eyes, unreadable expressions and heavy mouths that tell unmistakably of a streak of brutality. Professional soldiers have that look.

The plump girl seemed to be spreading her attention equally between the two. When the bald-head spoke, the other four listened attentively. The five acted as though they were well accustomed to being with each other. They had found their pattern. The tall girl did not speak at all while at the table. The black-haired girl chattered on with no one paying any particular attention.

At eleven o’clock he felt his head grow heavy and his eyelids sag. He could no longer maintain his interest in the group at the other table. He went gratefully up to his room and slept until dawn.

The breeze that came in at the wide window with its deep sills was almost fresh. He put on a pair of clean shorts and sat on the sill, his back to the frame, and watched the grayness over the city slowly lighten. Two stories below beggars slept on the sidewalk wrapped in the grayish cotton which, during the day, would form their turbans. Sleepy hotel employees came out and screwed a section of fire hose to the polished brass outlet in the side of the hotel. The hose stiffened as the stream of water pulsed through it. They turned the hose on the sleeping beggars, who jumped to their feet, screamed curses and fled, wringing out the strips of cotton.

The long sleep had somehow made the flight from China seem like a dream. He remembered the old man who died on the plane, the way they had pulled the body back, stripped it, pushed it out to spin down to the green jungle floor of Burma far below. That, too, seemed like something he had read rather than seen.

He smoked and watched the city and wondered what he would do with his life. This was a time of taking inventory. He could not quite imagine going back to the glib, smart-aleck reporting that had been so satisfying before China.

After a leisurely breakfast he went to the river docks. It took him three hours in the heat and confusion, next to the stink of the river, to find what he wanted. It was Swedish registry, with an Irish first officer named Dolan. Dolan sported a long, wide, bristly beard the color of midnight flame.

“If it’s no hurry you’re in, lad, she may be your craft. How good a sailor are ye?”

Mal grinned. “Always sick the first day out. After that I’m okay.”

“The Bjornsan Star, lad, could work up a vicious pitch and roll in drydock, I do believe. But she’s a clean ship. You’ll find the grub good, but not fancy.”

“What did you say the ports of call will be?”

“After we get down this stinking river, we go to Colombo, then Perth, Melbourne, Wellington, Pago Pago, Honolulu and Port of Los Angeles. You’ll get a few days ashore each place, I should say.”

“I'm not after the sightseeing. I need a long rest.”

“And if ye’ll forgive me sayin’ it, you look as though you could use it, lad. There’s a good cabin empty. We’re running with a short crew this trip. No third officer, so I’ll have the second move into the third’s bunk and you can take the second’s cabin.”

“I don’t want to inconvenience anybody.”

Dolan leaned forward and there was a grin behind his beard. “Truth is, the Bjornsan Line is so hungry for a bit of passage money, you could have the old man’s cabin if he hadn’t already given it up. So go get your papers in order and I’ll have the passage agreement ready for you by the time you get back. Your hotel is probably cooler than this dutch oven, so say you come aboard at nine tonight. We go downriver on the tide change at ten-fifteen.”

At a few minutes before nine the Sikh taximan deposited Mal and his two heavy bags on the dock at the foot of the Bjornsan Star’s gangplank. Dolan was leaning on the rail overhead smoking a pipe. He waved at Mal, turned and roared a command in what could have been Swedish. Two blond sailors trotted down, grinned at Mal, shouldered the bags and went aboard, beckoning to him to follow them.

“Welcome aboard, lad,” Dolan said. “Follow the boys to your cabin and lock your stuff inside. Thieves have a nasty habit of sneaking aboard here. Then come on back topside and talk a while.”

The Bjornsan Star was a nondescript freighter of unknown breed. She sighed gently against the dock like a troubled old lady who dreaded the weary miles ahead. Below decks she smelled of fresh paint and oil. The companionway was spotlessly clean, freshly painted, but as hot as an oven.

By the time Mal got back out into the open air with the cabin key in his pocket, his clothes were sticking to him.

He went up to Dolan. “That’s a nice cabin.”

“You’ll find it comfortable, Mr. Atkinson. Ye have another name, I suppose. Call me Bob.”

“My name’s Mal, Bob.” They shook hands.

“What’s your trade, Mal?”

“Reporter. I’ve just come out of China.”

“A bloody horrible mess that must be. When I get some time I want you to tell me about it.”

A cargo floodlight affixed to the skeleton of what had been the wartime radar setup clicked on with blinding whiteness. Dolan sighed. “Now the old man’s getting anxious. Here he comes. Doesn’t speak a word of English.”

The captain walked around a hatch cover and came over to Dolan. He gave Atkinson an incurious glance. He was a wispy, dry-looking man with a hollow chest, blond hair gone gray, faded blue eyes and a suit of rumpled, food-spotted whites.

Dolan said something in which Mal heard the sound of his own name. The captain gave a curt, continental bow in Mal's direction. Dolan said, “This is Captain Paulus.”

Paulus pulled out a large old gold watch, said something in an irritable tone to Dolan, waved the watch face in front of Dolan’s eyes and stalked away. Dolan turned and spat down onto the dock, then in an oddly husky tone said, “An old fool who can’t pilot a rowboat in a mill pond. But his record’s spotless. Never lost a ship in forty-three years. Some have the luck and some don’t.”

Mal gave Dolan a quick look. In the glare of the floodlight the odd green eyes of the first officer were like the shadowy side of one of the big bergs from the Arctic ice pack. Standing next to him, Atkinson was once again startled at the size of the man. His breadth made him look stocky in spite of his better than six feet of height. The big hands, their backs covered with freckles and coarse red hair, were like one-gallon gourds.

“He’s worried about something?” Mal asked.

“The other passengers. They’ll make it all right. All their stuff’s aboard. I think that’s their car now. Yes. There they are.”

Mal stood beside Bob Dolan at the rail and looked down at the five people who clambered out of the touring-car taxi. They were foreshortened by the height, but he had no difficulty recognizing the three men and two women from the Great Eastern.

As the bald-headed man started to look up, Mal, with an instinctive reaction which surprised him, straightened up so that his face was not visible from below.

He heard the familiar babble of the plump black-haired girl, the quiet answer by one of the two husky young men. Dolan went to the head of the gangplank to welcome them aboard, and Mal walked out of the light down toward the fantail. Once in the deep shadows he leaned against the rail and watched the preparations for departure.

The pilot came aboard. Soon the lines were cast off. The soft guttural vibrations of the engines and drive shaft quickened as black water widened between the hull and the dock. The Bjornsan Star moved slowly out into the channel and headed down toward the sea. Sailors coiled and stacked the mooring lines and the floodlight clicked off so that the pilot could see the channel markers more clearly. The wind freshened on the side of Mal’s face as the teeming stench of Calcutta began to diminish astern of them.

Dolan was nowhere to be seen. As his eyes grew more accustomed to the faint glow of the stars, Mal picked his way toward the bow. Muddy water, frothed by the knifing of the bow, swept back along the hull. Forward, four large bulldozers, like big sleeping animals, were lashed to the deck, fore and aft of the forward hatch.

Once he reached the bow, he turned and looked up and back. He saw the compass light on the bridge shining faintly against the dark face of the native pilot, saw Paulus, frail beside Dolan. The bull-throated voice of the ship startled Mal with a long blast. Flames flickered from the low decks of the native craft moored to the river banks and he heard a snatch of plaintive Hindu song.

Now the voyage had started and he thought that in many ways a voyage, for a passenger, is like a serious illness. It is a freedom from all responsibility, and after a time, if the voyage lasts long enough, it is easy to forget all that went before it, easy to forget that it will ever end.

He leaned his back against the rail and hooked his elbows over it. The breeze had begun to dry his damp clothes. Then he saw a vague lightness moving toward him, moving carefully along the narrow spaces of the open deck. He could not make it out for a time and watched carefully until she was silhouetted against a patch of the lights on shore. He then saw that it was a tall woman, and he guessed that it was the one from the hotel.

When she was but five feet away he said, “Good evening.”

She gave a small startled cry and put her hand to her throat. She was close enough so that he could see that it was the girl from the hotel.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She laughed nervously. “I just didn’t know anyone was up here. I wanted to cool off after that ghastly heat in the city. Are you one of the officers?”

“No. I’m a passenger, too. Malcolm Atkinson.”

She moved closer and leaned over the rail beside him. He turned so that they stood there, elbow to elbow.

“My name is Temble. Mrs. Roger Temble, Mr. Atkinson.”

“How do you do,” he said gravely. She put her hand for a moment in his. Her fingers were long and cool.

“Are you going to Australia?” she said.

“No. All the way to California.”

“Why, so are we! We had to take a little ship like this one because of all our equipment, you know.”

“Equipment?”

“I guess there’s no reason why you would know. My husband’s work is only well-known among his fellow scientists. He's a geologist and paleontologist. We’ve been on a small expedition to the Northwest frontier. It's never been adequately covered before, you know. It’s lasted seventeen months now.” She had begun to talk rapidly with an odd nervousness that made him uncomfortable. “Dr. Temble didn’t want me to come with him because of the unsettled conditions here in the East. He was just going to bring Dave Welling and Tom Branch with him this time, but I guess I made a nuisance of myself. The way wives will. So the doctor said I could come and bring along a girl friend. I asked Gina Farrow, and... would you have a light, please?”

Mal turned his back to the wind and cupped his hand around the flame of his lighter. She leaned forward, the cigarette trembling though she held it with both her lips and her fingers. As she did so she looked up into his face.

Her eyes widened with what he could only call terror and recognition. She turned and fled along the dark deck. He heard her bump painfully into a stanchion and go on without a sound. He was too surprised to call after her. He saw the glow of her cigarette on the deck at his feet. He picked it up and flipped it overboard.

Much later he went down to his cabin, adjusted the ventilator so that the breeze was directed into his bunk and went to sleep, still wondering about the odd behavior of Mrs. Temble. But sleep took him out of here and now — back into there and then — back into fear that awoke him, time and time again, with the taste of it on his lips.

II

It was eight when he went topside. The Bjornsan Star was still heading down the river toward the sea, but the banks had faded away until they were but misty lines on the horizon. He found Dolan amidships. The Irishman’s eyes were red-rimmed, but he had a heartiness about him.

“Mal, lad, did we wake you thumping the craft on the bottom?”

“How do you mean?”

“ ’Tis the only way you can get down this censored son of a river. At low tide we rested her on the bottom for nearly an hour.”

“I didn’t even notice. How many passengers are there?”

“Yourself, a party of five — explorers or something — and a dusky gentleman from Kashmir. Seven passengers all told. Have you breakfasted. No? Come along, I’ll guide you to the food department.”

After devious below-decks turnings, Dolan stepped aside and ushered Mal on with a bow. He stepped over the weather sill into a room roughly twenty by ten. A table that would set eight was bolted in the center of the room. Four tables which would seat two were bolted in the corners. There was a smell of strong coffee in the air. At the far end of the room a door swung back and forth with the gentle pitch of the ship in the mild river swells.

Captain Paulus and a stranger, a young man about twenty-one, his face strong and oddly vacant, sat at the far left corner. Paulus nodded distantly at Mal and leaned over his plate again. At the large central table for eight sat one of the two young men of the expedition and the dark-haired plump girl — Gina Farrow.

Mal smiled at the captain, turned right and took the first table directly to the right of the door from the passageway. As he sat down he could feel the eyes of the two at the big table on him. A few moments later a husky young blond lad, not more than seventeen years old, came out of the galley and came directly to him.

“Vee haff,” he said, “broon juice from tins, bread toasted, aiks how you vish those, blanty coffee, sar.”

“Juice, scrambled eggs and coffee. Your English is very good,” Mal said.

The boy flushed. “Thanking you, sar. Quick, I get them.”

Mal had just received the abundant plate of eggs and the boy had taken away the empty juice glass when the bald-headed man entered. He gave Mal an absent glance and went directly to the big table. Seconds later the second of the two husky young men came in. He did not glance in Mal’s direction. Their party was complete, except for Mrs. Temble. The four of them talked together in low tones. There seemed to be a hectic gaiety about them.

Mal was on his second cup of excellent coffee when the “dusky gentleman” came in. He looked somewhat as Gandhi might have looked if he were clad in the most extreme of Hollywood sports togs. His shirt was cerise, his slacks powder blue. He gave his order and while waiting for it to be brought in, he inserted an American cigarette into a filter holder and lit it with a wide-ribbed gold Dunhill. He smiled at nothing and at nobody with all the good will in the world.

Mal glanced up quickly as the dark-haired girl approached his table, smiling. She carried her own cup of coffee with her. Since she had been sitting when he entered the room he had been unable to see her costume. Below the frilly pink blouse she wore a pair of crisp, white, abbreviated shorts, straw shoes with high heels. Her legs were tanned to a honey-brown shade, ripe in contour.

She put her cup and saucer opposite him and said, “You are just going to think that I’m the most terribly, terribly brazen soul in the world at large, but I was just over there saying to Tommy that if we have to share all the space on this tiny little old boat for just weeks and weeks, the best old thing to do is just bust right out and give our first names. Don’t you think so?” She sank gracefully into the chair opposite Mal. “My silly name is Gina. Gina Farrow. What’s yours?”

The approach was a bit overwhelming, and so was her vividness at first hand. “Mal,” he said weakly. “Mal Atkinson.”

“Now you know that name just rings the teensiest little ole bell in my mind, Mal. I just know you’re about the famousest person I ever did meet. Me, I’m a little old widow nobody ever since Charlie got himself leukemia, that’s cancer of the blood, you know, and he just up and died on me and we were probably the happiest little couple you ever saw — and I will say we certainly were the happiest couple on the campus back there at Northeastern. But I’ve got to say we were nobodies because Charlie never did really get himself a chance to do all those wonderful things he used to tell me about at night after the lights were out. Not that I ever gave the old devil much chance for talking.” She giggled with a surprising loudness and ran the pointed tip of a pink tongue across her lower lip.

“I write for magazines,” he said while Gina was taking another breath.

“I just knew you were some sort of man like that, Mal. I would never have been here at all except Sara came to me and said ole Roger just wouldn’t have one woman all by herself going along on an expedition like this — and you know how lonesome a widow gets, all those black clothes and nothing to do, and so I just up and said yes, because I knew I’d run into all kinds of important people like you, but we haven’t met any — not any — because there we were back up in those old hills without even a movie within a couple thousand miles, near as I can find out. So this is what I really came for, Mr. Atkinson, Mal, I mean, and I just want you to talk and talk and talk, and if you can play a little bridge it will sure be a bonus for free, like with the soap wrappers.”

She ran out of breath, picked up her cup, and sipped coffee, looking at him over the rim with dark eyes that crackled and danced with secret fire.

Mal took a deep breath. “First, I am not a famous person. Second, I play bridge. Third, thanks for taking the initiative.”

“Why, we might be days and days and days before anybody made a move to get acquainted with anybody else, and think of all that time wasted. Now we’re just the best old friends, aren’t we?”

“Of course.”

She finished the cup and pushed it aside, standing up as she did so. “I promised Dr. Temble that I’d walk around the deck with him a few times. Believe me, that will do me good. All my friends, they say, 'Gina, you could be a real pretty girl if you just could take off some of those pounds you’re a-carryin’ around.’ Now you find us up on the deck and I’ll make sure you meet Roger because he’s a real honey, and I like you, Mal, and you two boys will get along real sweet for this trip.”

She followed in the wake of the three men who had just left the room. The engine shudder decreased in tempo. The mess boy saw Mal’s puzzled look. He stepped forward. “Vee dropping bilot. You vish vatch. Ah, no. More coffee? Goot coffee?”

Mal grinned and nodded. Again his cup was filled. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. The captain and the young man Mal had guessed to be the second officer had left the officers' mess.

The man in the cerise shirt smiled over at Mal and said, “I heard the young lady introducing herself. I shall do the same.” He spoke with the smothered crispness of Oxford. “I am Mister Gopala, Mr. Atkinson.” He came over to the table, shook hands with one firm downward jerk.

“Won’t you sit down?” Mal asked.

“Thank you, no. I wish to watch this affair of dropping the pilot. You see, this is my first voyage in over twenty years. It seems quite new to me. Later I wish to talk with you. The esteemed Mr. Dolan informs me that you have recently been in China. I have a deep interest in that country.” He smiled, almost shyly. “And I, too, play bridge.” He bowed and left hurried, walking with short quick steps.

Mal could hear, at a distance, the shouted commands and instructions as the river launch came alongside to take off the pilot. The cessation of motion had stilled the air coming from the ventilators and the room began to grow uncomfortably warm. The coffee was still too hot to finish.

The door from the galley swung open and a short man of about thirty came in. The minus quality of chin, the protruding teeth, the bright eyes gave him the inevitable look of a chipmunk.

He stared at Mal. “Hullo! Another one! No wonder I had to give up my cabin. Who are you?” It was a harmless question, but insolently expressed.

“Another passenger,” Mal said flatly.

The short man clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Good!” He sat, unasked, at Mal’s table. “I’m damn tired of polite people. I’m Torgeson. Chief Engineer. Minnesota ’39. This is my one and only trip on this venerable old lady. I'm a specialist. We converted her from steam to diesel and I’m along to see how she takes the operation. What’d you expect? A dour Scot?”

Mal smiled. “I give up. My name is Malcolm Atkinson. I'm a reporter. I need a rest so I picked a slow ship.”

Torgeson signaled for coffee. “The word is that we have a couple of dollies aboard, Atkinson. Can you confirm that?”

“A very acceptable pair, Chief. One well-married and the other one hovered over by two boys with a mean look.”

The slight man sighed. “Always my luck. Do we ever get an unattached female aboard? No. My undeniable charm and beauty never gets a chance to function. I suppose you expect to enjoy the trip?”

“Why not?”

“Hark ye, Atkinson. Here’s a brief run-through. An incompetent captain. A jealous first officer of international fame. He’s the guy who lost the Cathay on the rocks outside Boston harbor on a sunny afternoon. A second officer with an IQ of about fifty-eight, I’d say. Sparks is an alcoholic, well into the delusion stage. And they all hate me because I say what I think. Happy trip, Atkinson!”

There was a dancing light of wry humor in the small bright eyes.

“How big is the crew?” Mal asked.

“Seven in my gang, counting me and the second. Ten topside hands plus the three officers. That makes twenty. Cookie and two mess boys. Twenty-three. The seven passengers brings it to thirty. Oh yes, and Sparks. Thirty-one aboard.”

The sound of the engines picked up again. Ka-thud... chung; ka-thud... chung; ka-thud... chung. Torgeson cocked his head on one side, listened, nodded. Breeze began to sigh through the ventilators cooling the perspiration on their faces. In a few moments the Bjornsan Star began to lift and sigh and creak with the first ground swells of the coastal sea. Mal glanced over through the ports and saw the horizon line lift into view, hang there for a moment, then slide down out of sight.

Torgeson finished his coffee, clattered the cup into the saucer, shoved the chair back and stood up, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

“If you want to tell lies,” he said, “look me up. They moved me up to the forecastle. I’m bunking in with Sparks and the second. Two guys have my cabin and a bald-headed guy has Sparks’ cabin. The babes are in Paulus’ cabin and the Hindu is bunking in with Dolan. Aren’t we a happy little family? Grinning, he went out through the galley.”

Mal stood up and started to go out through the other door. As he reached it, it swung open and Mrs. Temble came in. Her eyes went wide for a fraction of a second and then she gave him a shy smile. “Please, Mr. Atkinson, were you leaving? Would you mind sitting with me for just a moment?”

“Not at all.” He followed her back to the cleared table where Mr. Gopala had sat. She walked ahead of him, her shoulders straight with that rigidity he had noticed on the garden dance floor of the Great Eastern. Like the Farrow girl, Mrs. Temble wore tailored shorts. Hers were a vivid yellow. Her slim legs were tanned and beautifully formed. She wore a jade green halter tied at the small of her straight back. She had let the burnished red-brown hair down and it reached to her shoulderblades. It was tied with a scrap of yellow yarn. On her slim brown feet were flat-heeled Indian sandals.

Once they sat opposite each other and after she had given her order to the smiling mess boy, it seemed to take her a very long time to lift her eyes to his. Mal saw that he had underestimated the loveliness of her face, the short straight nose, the delicate bones of the eye sockets and temple, the clean line of jaw and rounded chin. She could live to be ninety and carry beauty to her grave. It was possible to see in her face just how she had looked at twelve, just how she would look at forty. Her eyes were on that borderline where they are neither gray nor green nor blue — but something of all three.

She said tonelessly, “I want to ask you to forgive me for last night. I wish to explain that we have been under considerable strain during the past year and my nerves are not what they should be. Lately I have been doing inexplicable things and my husband feels that it is high time we returned to the States. You must have thought me a perfect fool to act as I did.”

Mal looked at her for a long moment. “Your name is Sara, isn’t it?”

She nodded and again the fear was in her eyes.

“Sara, tell me how long it took you to memorize that little speech.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s as phoney as a nine-cent dime and you know it. I frightened you last night and you were frightened for a good reason, I would guess. I don’t know what that reason is. You could call me a recent expert on fear. I’ve seen a hell of a lot of it lately. I would guess you’re in some sort of trouble. I’m not going to try to ride to the rescue with banners waving. I’ve outgrown the knighthood impulse. I just want to tell you that you have nothing to fear from me. I’m a tired guy on my way home. That’s all. Somehow your fear is hooked up with recognizing me from the hotel. That was coincidence of the simplest sort.”

He could not read her expression because she was looking directly down at the empty plate in front of her. But he saw her firm breasts encased in the jade halter lift with the quickness of her breathing. And her hands, on either side of the plate, were clenched so that the knuckles, against the tan, whitened to ivory.

She looked up again. “You are... exactly what you said you are?”

“A reporter — headed home after the world’s worst assignment. Yes.”

“I... I can believe you, Mr. Atkinson, bait the others...”

“My name is Mal,” he corrected gently. “The others won’t believe that I am what I am, eh?” He smiled. “Just what sort of an expedition was it, Sara?”

She shut her eyes for a moment, then started to stand up. He reached across the narrow table, put his hand firmly on her warm brown shoulder and forced her back down into the chair.

“Stay and have your breakfast. I’m going up on deck.” He stood up. She kept her face turned away from him. He looked down at the shining hair and said, “I won’t meddle, but even a guy who has given up a knighthood will have to come running if the lady makes a direct appeal.”

He left her without looking back.

He went up onto the boat deck that was on the same level as the bridge. The captain’s cabin was between the boat deck and the bridge itself. Off to the right the mainland of India was a hazy line on the horizon. Dr. Temble and Gina Farrow stood close together at the rail between the bow of one lifeboat and the stern of the second.

Gina turned and smiled at him and called, “Come here, Malcolm.” He went over. “Malcolm Atkinson, Dr. Roger Temble.” Temble’s grip was surprisingly strong. The eyes, behind the glittering rimless glasses, were liquid brown.

“So nice to meet a fellow passenger,” he said softly. “Mr. Atkinson, I am afraid you will have to forgive us for any irregularities of behavior you may see. Our little group has had several taut hours over the past seventeen months and you could call us a bit unstrung. My wife, particularly. She told me last night of her very ridiculous behavior when she met you on deck. This expedition has been very hard on her. She came with me under protest, you understand. My protest.”

Dr. Temble smiled in a friendly way, but Mal had the impression that he was being watched very carefully by both of them.

“Your wife has already explained that to me, Doctor.”

“Ah, good! She is a very sensitive and excitable girl. I am really afraid that if we had delayed getting her back to a familiar environment, her mind might have given way, wouldn’t you say so, Gina?”

“Sara’s a sweet kid, Roger,” Gina said, “but she’s got too much imagination. You know how those things are.”

“So, Mr. Atkinson,” the doctor said suavely, “if you should happen to notice any... uh... aberrative symptoms during our voyage together, I would appreciate your bringing them to my immediate attention.”

“I’ll certainly do that, Doctor.”

“I understand you’ve been in China on an assignment, Mr. Atkinson?”

“That’s right.”

“How did you get out?” Both of them seemed to be watching him with a very intense interest. A perverse devil took charge of Mal.

“You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I duck the question. It’s all happened so recently. You know how it is. Too early to talk about it.”

He had thought Dr. Temble’s liquid brown eyes to be warm. Now he noticed that behind the lenses they had all the expression of congealed jelly. Gina, for once, was not in ceaseless motion. Her face, without its vivacity, was more rapacious than striking.

Temble said quickly, and with great joviality, “Well, I sincerely hope that after you have rested you’ll be able to tell us about that great country during these months of severe trial.”

Gina clutched the doctor’s arm. “Roger, the man plays bridge!”

“Excellent!” Dr. Tenable said. “The two girls and I could have alleviated many hours of boredom if we had had a fourth, but neither of my two associates, Mr. Welling and Mr. Branch, proved themselves capable of learning the game. Once we get our sea legs, I suggest that we make up a game. Where would you suggest, Gina?”

“The cabin Sara and I have would be perfect. Light and airy, Roger.”

“Tomorrow would be about right for me,” Mal said.

He smiled and left them. He spent the next hour or so learning his way around the ship. The radio shade was at the after end of the boat deck, beside the ladderway leading down to the main deck. The only above-decks cargo was the group of four big used bulldozers near the bow, British Army surplus consigned to New Zealand. As he walked around he noted that the cargo winches, life boats, all rigging, were in superb condition. He also learned that, of the crew, only Dolan, Torgeson, Sparks and the one mess boy spoke English. The other crew members, except for the sullen-looking second officer, seemed smiling and amiable.

He went back up onto the boat deck and looked in at Sparks. The man did not look up. He was about fifty, with a gray ravaged face, eyes deeply set. He had a long wave receiver set to a Calcutta station, set softly to a program of Indian music. He was reading a tattered copy of Plutarch’s Lives.

At last he seemed to grow conscious of Mal’s shadow in the doorway. He looked up with nervous jerkiness.

“Passengers not allowed in the radio room,” he said in a rasping voice.

“My error,” Mal said, backing out.

The hooded eyes stared at him. “Error is the great common denominator of mankind, sir. Life itself, once you have studied it, reveals itself to be a structural error generated in the heat of the primal world, in the hot depths of a lifeless sea. History is but the recounting of errors compounded as a result of that first one, the first creation of a uni-cellular animal which divided itself to make two.”

“And so,” said Mal, “you sit in there with that belief and take pleasure in reading what a compounded error has written about other biological errors, eh?”

Sparks stared at him. “Come back in here, sir. Sit down. It was too much to expect that there would be anyone to talk to this trip.” He reached out and cut off the whine and wail of the music. “My name, sir, is Stephen MacLane. I taught philosophy at the University of Glasgow until one sunny morning I found that I did not believe any word which I said. Since then I have made it my habit to break down the beliefs of others to basic and hence meaningless fundamentals. I wish to know what you believe in, sir. And I wish to know your name. Do not be frightened, sir, at the wee blue monkeys that infest my board here. I’ve found that they are harmless despite their evil appearance.”

Mal glanced at the board with a chill feeling at the back of his neck. The man had stated it all so soberly that the idea of tiny blue monkeys seemed feasible.

“My name is Malcolm Atkinson. And I do not know what I believe in.”

“A common state. Less positive than those who follow Sartre, the high priest of believing firmly in nothingness.”

“I may believe that I exist. A year ago I was certain of it. Now I feel as though I were a cleverly created illusion, Mac-Lane.”

One gray eyebrow went up. The man smiled. “A pleasant sourness to find in one so young. Take that fool, Dolan. He believes in himself. He thinks that if the factor of luck could be taken out of his life, he could rule his environment. Paulus believes in nothing but a clean ship and good digestion. Torgeson believes the world is a comic opera devised for his special amusement. He, too, is a determinist. The second officer exists only on the animal level. He is possibly the happiest man aboard.”

Mal did not leave until the mess boy came to the doorway and announced that it was time to eat.

For the mid-day meal he was directed to the main table. The Captain sat at one end, Dolan at the other. Sara Temble was seated at the Captain’s right, Gina Farrow at his left. Dr. Temble sat beside Gina, facing Tom Branch. Mal sat at Dolan’s left beside Branch, facing Welling. Mr. Gopala, considered a second-class citizen, sat smiling and alone at a table for two. The other men entitled to eat there came and went during the meal, wolfing the food and departing hurriedly.

Paulus ate with shocking carelessness, liberally spattering the front of his whites and the table around his plate. As he hastily chewed each mouthful, he stared frankly and with obvious pleasure at the bare brown shoulders and arms of the girls on either side of him.

The food was plain and good. Branch and Welling did not indulge in table talk. Of the two, Tom Branch was the larger, but only by a little. His white shirt bulged across the barrel chest, the buttons pulling the fabric tight. Mal thought that he did not look as alert as Welling, the slightly leaner man. Both of them moved with the coordination of natural athletes and neither of them dropped their poker expressions for a moment. At close range Mal found that they were both older than he had first thought.

Mal was curious about the two of them. As research geologists, they were beautifully miscast. Even if there were a mining engineering tie-in, it still did not make a great deal of sense. The details were wrong. Details of scarred knuckles, of the constant controlled alertness. In fact, Temble’s relationship to them smacked a bit of the relation of trainer to animals.

Mal grinned inwardly as he saw both Gina and Sara pointedly avoiding any glance toward the captain’s lusty eating habits. Dolan gave Mal a solemn wink.

III

Wearing canvas shoes as protection against the searing heat of the deck plates, Mal walked in swimming trunks to the blue canvas cover of the main cargo hatch, raised a foot above the level of the deck. As usual at this time of day, both Sara and Gina were already there, spread lax on their blankets, their honey-tan bodies gleaming with oil, limp under the fist of the brute sun. In their two-piece suits Gina’s body was a token of abundance, Sara’s a more delicate promise.

Gina lifted her head and said sleepily, “Ah! The man who opens with a psychic two bid.”

“Worked, didn’t it?” he asked as he spread his own blanket between them.

“It worked that time. Next time you try it, Roger and I will clobber you and Sara.”

“It kept you two out of slam, didn’t it? And next time you are thinking I’m trying it, we’ll have a fistful, won’t we, Sara?”

“Of course,” Sara said distantly. Ever since that first breakfast aboard a week ago, Sara had had an impenetrable reserve. She smiled willingly enough, but the smiles never reached her eyes. She played competent unemotional bridge. Roger Temble was a plunger. Gina had natural card sense. The way they had divided it off made it a close interesting game.

Mal adjusted his sun glasses and lay face down, his chin on one clenched fist. From the stern came the intermittent snapping of the target rifle, now so familiar that it had become a part of the background. Welling and Branch had devised a game involving the plunking of stoppered beer cans and bottles in the turbulent wake of the Bjornsan Star.

They were one day out of Colombo, heading southeast toward Perth. There was a faint breath of coolness in the air. Soon they would get so far south that sunbathing would be out.

He had been planning this special moment for two days. He said idly, “Girls, have you noticed how much more cordial the good doctor has been these past two days?”

Gina rolled over onto her side and stared at him. “How do you mean?”

He felt Sara looking at him from the other side. “Now I am his buddy-buddy. Before that I was some sort of a menace. Reporters get so they can feel those things.”

“You’re working that old imagination overtime,” Gina said tightly.

“Am I, now? It seems that three days ago during our bridge game some inquisitive character, probably either Welling or Branch, neatly forced the door to my cabin and went through my stuff. In the bottom of my flight bag he found my credentials and a copy of one magazine carrying my picture along with the last article of the German series. So he tipped off the doctor that I was okay and the doctor has been beaming at me ever since.”

“Boy!” said Gina. “You’ve been taking it in the leg.”

“Gina, my lass, sometimes you bore me. And this is one of the times. You five people have your guard up so high that you’re all about to fall over backward. What is it, kids? Smuggling? Tell Uncle Mal.”

With an odd sound in her throat, Sara jumped up, picked up her blanket and walked quickly away. Mal laughed. “You see, Gina, you’ve got one weak sister in the group. The rest of you can play poker, but that’s not Sara’s game. She’s your giveaway.”

“Shut up!” Gina said.

“Why should I? It makes a long trip very interesting. The tough little doc and the frightened wife and the vivid widow and the two muscle boys. I guess one of the endemic diseases of the reporter class is an itching bump of curiosity and—”

She put her hand on his wrist and her fingers tightened down. Her dark eyes, looking into his, were hard and direct. “You talk a lot, Mal. That’s a disease, too. Now use your head. If this was a small matter, we could all carry it off so you’d never guess. But it’s big. It’s so big, Mal, and I want you to believe me because it may be pretty important to you — and you are a nice guy. It’s so big that it’s worth risking a shipboard... accident to protect it. Is that clear enough.”

“Am I to take it that you’ve just threatened me?”

“I thought it was pretty clear.”

“Come off it, Gina. That’s melodrammer. Is a threat supposed to scare me?”

He had turned onto his back. She was propped up on both elbows, her dark hair falling forward by her cheeks so that a long strand of it brushed his arm. She looked beyond him up the expanse of deck. Then, very deliberately, she lowered her head and covered his lips with hers. Her bared teeth were bruising. As he involuntarily grasped her upper arm, feeling the sun oil under his fingers, she pulled away.

“That,” she said, “is for being a guy who can’t be frightened.”

He saw that the sunglare had shrunk the pupils of her eyes to pinpoints. She was breathing shallowly. “Now I get the approach,” he said. “It comes in three levels. The first one is to scare me. I don’t scare. The second two levels are intermingled. An appeal to be rational about this, plus the promise of a bonus named Gina if I act like a good boy.”

She pushed herself back onto her haunches. Her face was suddenly ugly. She called him a name which he had never before heard a woman use. For a moment he thought she was going to leave. But she lay down again, on her back and shielded her eyes with her forearm.

“Naughty, naughty,” he said. “Such language.”

Her voice was far away. “Have you ever tried to live on what our fine colleges pay an assistant professor? You wouldn’t understand that, would you? You wouldn’t understand watching the years go by. You wouldn’t know what it can do to a woman.”

She sat up again and leaned toward him. “Mal, I mean this. If anybody... anybody... tries to take away from me what I’m going to have, I’ll kill them. I’ll get something sharp and I’ll kill them with it. And if they- take it away from me, I’ll spend the rest of my life finding them and killing them for doing it to me, even if I have to do it on a busy street.”

Then she did get up, picked up the bottle of lotion, the towel and her blanket and left in the direction Sara had taken. He watched her leave. Her flanks moved solidly under the thin trunks. The black hair, spilled down to her shoulders, glinted blue in the sun.

The Bjornsan Star churned and waddled placidly down through the blue seas. Routines became more fixed. Mal knew from Temble’s unchanged attitude that neither of the girls had spoken to him about the conversation in the sun. Their motives in keeping silent were not clear to him. Routine brought with it an emotional and intellectual lethargy — precisely what he had sought for in taking passage on the ship. It was a time for healing. Later would come re-evaluation. He had been filled with a hundred springs wound tight. Each day more of them relaxed.

During the daily bridge sessions it became easier for him to forget that there was a mystery about the five which he had not unraveled. Then he would look over and see Gina’s dark eyes and he would remember again.

He sunbathed until it grew too cold. He played chess with MacLane, talked football with Torgeson, talked ships and the sea with Bob Dolan. Each night he fell immediately into dreamless sleep. Slowly he regained the weight he had lost, and he kept it from settling around his middle by a series of exercises in his cabin that took a half hour each morning and a half hour each night.

There were odd little incidents. One night he could not sleep. He went up onto the boat deck with such unconscious lack of noise that Temble and his wife did not hear him. Mal went to the far side of the boat deck. He could hear Temble’s hoarse angry tones, but he could not make out the words. Finally Temble passed him ten feet away, went down the ladderway to the main deck.

When Mal walked over to the other side he saw that Sara still stood there, looking out across the placid sea, clad in a pale robe. The hem whipped in the wind as did her hair, glowing faintly in the starlight.

She turned as she heard his steps. “Nice night,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep.”

He stood beside her. “Neither could I,” she said. The silence between them was not awkward.

“It seems too bad,” he said, “that trips must have an end.”

Her response startled him. She turned into his arms with a sob in her throat. She was trembling. He held her closely, her head against his shoulder. She cried with almost perfect silence. When the interval between the racking sobs grew longer, he put his knuckles under her chin and gently forced her to look up at him. He kissed her on the lips, meaning it for a gesture of kindliness, doing it without conscious thought. He heard her breath catch in her throat as her arms went strongly around his neck and she pressed herself closer to him, responding to the kiss with a silent ferocity that turned it into something not at all like the gesture he had planned.

Then he kissed her cheeks and tasted the salt of tears on his lips.

He tried to make a joke of it. “A fine thing,” he whispered. “This would look just fine to the honorable doctor.”

“If he thought anything about it, he would probably find it amusing,” she said.

“I don't think I understand.”

“Don't try to. There’s been nothing between Roger and me for... for a very long time, Mal.” She pushed away from him, almost roughly. “But that’s no reason for this. You caught me when I was feeling sorry for myself. Please, Mal. Let’s both forget it.”

“That might be a difficult thing to do, Sara.”

“Don’t try to be gallant, Mal. I’m not in the mood. Just forget it happened. That ought to be simple enough, hadn’t it?”

“If you say so, Sara. Good night.”

“Good night and... thank you very much, Mal.”

That was one incident. It did not quite end there. The next afternoon Gina came to him where he stood alone on deck and said, with waspish humor, “Let’s both try to forget, darling.”

“Couldn't you sleep?”

“Not with you comforting our solemn girl about six feet from the porthole over my bed, I couldn’t. It was a sweet scene, dear. You played it well. But don’t try to follow it up.”

He grinned at her. “Jealous?”

“That might be a good word for it, now that you mention it, Mal.”

And there the incident ended.

When they docked in the narrow channel at Perth, he went to a book store in Freemantle and bought a heavy bundle of books. After one day and one night in harbor they pulled out, headed east for Melbourne. The winds became bitterly cold. There were frequent cold slanting rains that left the decks gray and glistening. Sara stayed out on deck during the rains whenever she could, with a borrowed coat on. He noticed that when she went back to her cabin after a rain, the red-brown hair pasted tight to the clean lines of her skull, there was more peace in her expression than at any other time.

They had been partners long enough so that their partnership play became far better than that of the Roger-Gina combine. Both Roger and Gina grew sulky about it, and there was not as much fun in the game as formerly. Mal suggested that they change the set match so that he and Gina would be partners. As he suggested it, he looked at Sara and found no flicker of disappointment in her eyes. Roger and Gina put up only a token argument. Once again the match was on an even keel.

As they docked at Melbourne, Gina came up to him and said, “I want an evening out, and you are the lucky boy. Thrilled?”

“Through and through.”

They went out together and he tried to give her enough liquor so that it would loosen her tongue. Her face slackened and her eyes grew dulled, but she gave him no information at all about what he wished to know. She clung to him all the way back to the Bjornsan Star, but once they reached the deck she passed out. He managed to get her up onto the boat deck to the door of the captain’s cabin and there he turned her over to an unstartled Sara who thanked him and asked him to please put her on that bed over there and good night. I’m enjoying the book you loaned me.

When Mal awakened the next morning they were heading south around Tasmania into a heavy blow. Gina was at breakfast, bright-eyed and apparently unabashed.

At Wellington the cargo winches were broken out again and the bulldozers were hoisted, one by one, and swung over onto the pier. A large tonnage of food was taken on for Pago Pago.

The sky was a dim unbroken gray when the doll-houses on the slopes or the hills encircling Wellington harbor faded back into the distance.

Gina stood beside Mal and said, “My tan is about gone. How long before we can start the sunbaths again?”

“Four days or so, I should judge.”

“Let’s round up the bridge experts and whup them again, man.”

It was near the end of the bridge game that the pitch and roll of the ship grew more pronounced. Doctor Temble began to look a bit gray around the mouth. It was Dr. Temble who broke up the game.

When Mal went out onto the boat deck he was startled by the hard force of the wind blowing out of the south. He had heard the whine of it in the rigging, but the actual personal violence of it was completely unexpected — as was the sudden feeling of awe. Huge swells, flattened by the wind, came driving steadily out of the south. Their large foamless crests were very far apart.

Mal had difficulty with his footing. At last he reached the ladderway at the after part of the boat deck. He looked down onto the main deck and saw Dolan supervising the stringing of life lines. The ship’s carpenter was working with timbers and spikes, strengthening the hatches.

Mal felt his way cautiously down the ladderway and went close to Dolan. “Storm coming?” he yelled over the sound of the wind.

Dolan put the red beard close to Mal’s ear. “The old fool wouldn’t lay over in Wellington the way I wanted him to. Don’t worry though. The old lady makes work of it, but she’ll ride it out. It’ll take us off course, though. Good thing you’ve got your sea legs, Mal. We’ll start taking water over the decks in another couple of hours. Then you’d better stay below. And eat hearty. It may be the last hot meal for a while.”

By the time of the evening meal it was almost as dark as night outside. Mister Gopala, for the first time, seemed to have lost his happy spirits. Even the mercurial Torgeson seemed subdued. He ate rapidly, seeming to flinch each time the pitch of the ship lifted the screw half out of water so that the entire vessel shuddered as the screw flailed the air astern.

Captain Paulus did not appear for the meal. The mess boy’s durable smile was a trifle strained. “Where’s Gina and Roger?” Mal asked, leaning forward to speak across the silent Tom Branch.

“Both ill,” Sara answered.

“So’s Welling,” Branch said. It was the second time Mal had ever heard the man speak.

Dolan came in and sat down. The mess boy brought a plate heaped with food to him. The pitch was slowly growing more pronounced. The Bjornsan Star seemed to coast down at a steep forward angle for an interminable time, before slowly lifting her bows, creaking and complaining as she did so.

Dolan grinned behind his beard. “Decks awash now, people. She’s riding hard, Stay off the weather decks.”

“But I have to go on deck,” Sara said, “to get up to our cabin.”

“Not tonight,” Dolan said firmly. “You stay below.”

“But Gina’s up there alone,” Sara said.

“She’ll be fine. I’ll look in on her on my way to the bridge,” Dolan answered.

After Sara finished her meal she left the room. She was back again in ten minutes. She sat down across from Mal in the chair Welling usually occupied. She smiled wanly at Mal. “Roger’s really ill. Mr. Gopala’s being very sweet. He insisted that he could take care of him and practically forced me out of the room... Oh, that was a big one!” The Bjornsan Star slowly came up and they heard the sound of tons of water roaring along the deck overhead. Water sloshed over the weather sill into the room and then began to wash back and forth with each movement of the laboring ship.

Only Sara, Tom Branch and Mal were left in the room. Mal glanced at Branch and was surprised to see that the husky man was pale, that he licked his lips continually.

“Not my racket,” Branch said solemnly. “Not my racket.”

He left the room. He was back within a few minutes, peeling the plastic from the top of a bottle of Irish whiskey. He sat down heavily and lifted the water glass out of its slot in the false top that had been fitted to the table.

“Want some?” he asked of Sara and Mal.

She shook her head. Mal held out a glass. “Two fingers,” he said.

The bottle neck chattered on the rim of the glass and Branch sloshed about three inches of liquor into it. He poured himself more than half the tumbler full. Keeping a firm grip on the bottle he tossed it down in about five thick swallows; then coughed and shook his head.

Mal took his time with his potion. It had a pleasant smokey flavor. Branch took his bottle and glass and moved cautiously over to a corner table. He sat with his wide back to them.

“How long will it last?” Sara asked.

Mal shrugged. “These things sometimes last for a full week. I don’t know. We’re running with it.”

There was a long convulsive shudder of the ship and the screw was lifted out of the water.

“I ought to get up to Gina.”

“She’ll live through it, that one,” he said.

They sat for a long time. He remembered the kiss on the boat deck and tried to capture her eyes. She would not look at him. She wore a thick tweed skirt, a white fuzzy turtle-neck sweater. She had fashioned the ripe hair into two braids which gave her a school-girl look. He wanted her to look at him. There was something about a storm and its flavor of catastrophe that broke down reserve and inhibitions, sent a heady excitement pounding along the pulses.

A long time passed in silence. The motion of the ship grew choppier, more abrupt, harder to anticipate. One violent heave slid her half out of the chair. She smiled at him apologetically.

The bottle smashed on the floor. They both turned and looked at Branch. It was obvious that the bottle had been emptied before it fell. Branch turned and focused his eyes on them, grinning, and his underlip sagged away from strong yellow teeth.

“Come talk to me, baby,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Sara asked coldly.

He gave here an exaggerated leer. “Don’t tell me it’s over your head, baby. Right along you’ve known how it’s been with me. But the old man is laid up now. C’mere, kid. Sit over here where I can sweet-talk you.”

Sara started to get up. Mai tried to restrain her. She shook off his hand. “It’s all right, really. He’s just drunk. There won’t be any trouble.”

She had to hold onto the table for a moment until the ship steadied. Then she went toward Branch in a half run, urged on by a new tilt of the ship. He laughed loudly, caught her by one wrist and swung her into his lap. The chairs had been bolted to the floor. Sara gave a shrill cry of fright as Branch wrapped his big arms around her, saying huskily, “You know how it’s been with me right from the beginning, baby. With a little luck we can keep the whole works for just you and me.”

As Mai jumped toward them, the first roll of the Bjornsan Star flung him in the other direction. He fell against one of the fixed chairs, but on the next surge he went uphill toward Branch, moving like a man breasting waist-deep water. Throughout the ship unfastened doors banged and equipment thudded.

Branch looked up as Mal was upon him. He pushed Sara off his lap and she fell, rolled hard against the wall. Branch came up out of the chair and clubbed at Mal with a fist like an oak knot, but the movement of the ship destroyed his aim and they fell against each other. Mal brought his knee up hard and tried to rush Branch against the bulkhead, but the bigger man twisted easily and it was Mal who hit the steel, his head snapping back hard against a row of rivet heads, the shock and pain dazing him.

Branch set his feet and, grunting with each swing, he drove his big fists into Mai’s middle. Then the roll of the ship carried him backward out of range. He went back, off balance, until the backs of his thighs struck a chair back. He toppled over with a surprised look frozen on his face. He was on his feet immediately, blood flowing from a cut across his left cheek. Sara, off to Mal’s left, had pulled herself to her feet.

“He’ll kill you!” she screamed.

The tip of the floor brought Branch on in a blundering rush. Mal barely had time to get his foot up. He kicked Branch in the pit of the stomach but the big hands clamped on his ankle as Branch’s mouth sagged open. Branch twisted hard and Mal fell heavily. A hard fist thudded against his head just over the ear and the room spun.

Then suddenly Branch was gone. Mal rolled onto his hands and knees and, peering up, he saw Dolan standing there, feet planted, red beard matted, braced against the sway of the ship, holding Branch by the nape of the neck with, effortless strength.

As branch tried to kick him Dolan laughed, a laugh which merged with the roar of the storm. Dolan was like a creature out of the sea. He held Branch with his left hand and drove his right fist against the man’s jaw with such a cat’s quickness that there seemed almost to be no interval between blows. Branch fell. He lay on his back and his head lolled back and forth on his limp neck with each movement of the ship.

Dolan reached over and fingered the jaw. “Didn’t break it,” he said with satisfaction. He straightened up. His eyes suddenly held a weary look. “We’ve lost a man. Swept overboard. We saw him go and we couldn’t do a damn thing. And we’ve lost a passenger.”

“Who?” said Sara in a tone barely audible.

“Welling. Broken neck. The way I see it, he must have started out of his cabin and lost his balance and got thrown against the rail that protects the ladderway down to the engine room. He toppled over. Torgeson found him down there. I tied the body back in the bunk.”

“Can I get to my cabin?” Sara asked.

“No. I can’t let you take the risk and I can’t spare the men to take you on a rope. You stay below.”

He turned and went out, cat-footed, steady as a rock against the wild pitch of the floor. Mal looked at the unconscious Tom Branch and then over at Sara.

“Sooner or later,” he said, “He’s going to come out of it and make trouble. I think we’d better go to my cabin. I won’t bother you.”

She nodded. Once they reached the companionway leading from the mess room the going was easier as the swing of the ship merely knocked them from side to side of the narrow corridor.

Water was ankle-deep in the corridor, sloshing back and forth, wetting them midway to the knees. At the turning where his cabin was off to the left, Sara stopped, clung to a wall brace and stared off to the right where the door to the deck was open, the pin in the wall slot holding it open.

The noise was louder here. “Can we look?” Sara called.

He shrugged. “No harm in looking.”

They went cautiously down to the open doorway. The weather sill was a foot high. With each swell the Bjornsan Star was burying her nose as she came up out of the trough and the water, waist high, was roaring down the weather decks. There was a fascination in the sight of the wild sea. The wind was still strong, stronger than before, but each mountainous wave was crested with white froth that streamed away in the wind. The sea and the sky were the color of gray metal.

As a massive angry roar of water went by the door, seething and bubbling, Sara stepped quickly out over the weather sill and ran for the amidships ladderway leading up to the boat deck.

Mal was frozen for a moment, and then he gave a great cry and plunged after her. He saw that she could not possibly make it. Nor could he reach her. He got as close as he could and then clamped his right hand on a round metal rail support. As the wave brought her tumbling back to him he reached out and managed to catch her by the arm. He took a deep breath and shut his eyes. The hard weight of the water closed over him, roaring in his ears. He felt the popping and crackling of his shoulder muscles, felt the slow slip of his fingers down her wrist to her hand. Then, as he thought he would lose her, the pressure eased. When the water dropped away, he let go of the rail support, grabbed her other wrist and ran backward away from the next wave already breaking over the bow. She was unconscious. He tumbled her in over the weather sill and, barely in time, with the water pulling at his legs, he fell in on top of her.

He dragged her back toward the brandling of the corridor, rolled her onto her face, kneeled straddling one slim leg and pushed down with his hands against her small waist for a slow count of three, then took the pressure off, counted to three again before reapplying it. After he had done it twenty times she coughed and retched up a gout of sea water. She moaned just loud enough for him to hear her.

He picked her up and stumbled heavily toward his cabin.

IV

As the open door banged violently, he carried her in and put her on the bunk. Then he returned to the door, took the key from the outside and locked it on the inside. His locked door banged with an irritating clatter. He latched it.

Both of them were drenched. She lay, rigid and white-faced. Long shudders shook her body. She opened her eyes and looked up at him and tried to say something, but her teeth were chattering so badly that he could not make out the words. The blueness of her lips and fingernails frightened him and he tried to remember what he had read about shock.

He unlaced her sodden shoes and took them off, stripped the soaked wool ankle socks from her feet. Then he tried to strip the white sweater, heavy with water, up over her head. She fought him.

“Sara! Listen to me. You’ve got to get dry and warm. Please.”

She did not fight any longer, and he threw the sodden sweater over under the wash stand. She lay with her eyes shut. “Can you hear me?” he asked loudly.

She nodded. “Okay, Sara. Here’s two towels. I’m going to turn my back and count slowly to a hundred. Then I’m going to turn around. You’d better have everything off, be dry and be under those covers. Understand?” She nodded again as a great shiver possessed her.

He went over and stared out the closed porthole at the wildly tossing sea. Once the porthole rolled underwater, startling him.

“All right?” he called, without turning.

“Y-y-yes,” she answered. He turned. Her clothes were in a damp heap beside the bunk. The covers were pulled up to her chin and she was trying weakly to dry her hair. He made her hang her head over the edge of the bunk, where he knelt beside her and rubbed the gloss back into the glowing strands. They came alive as they dried, springy under the towel.

He took the flask from his flight bag and made her drink several swallows of straight brandy. She coughed and her eyes streamed, but she had stopped shaking.

“Thanks, Mal. Thank you very much.”

“That was a damn fool stunt, Sara. You could have died.”

“Would that have been important?”

“To me? Yes.” She flushed and looked away. “Turn over and face the wall, Sara. See if you can sleep. I’ve got to get out of these clothes.”

He stood and toweled himself dry, looking over at the autumn flame of her hair spread on the pillow. He put on dry clothes, wrung out their wet things in the wash stand — her heavy sweater and skirt, the diaphanous undergarments. He lurched over and stood beside the bunk, braced against the deep swing of the ship. She seemed to be breathing heavily, regularly, in spite of the movement that rolled her back and forth. He was drugged with weariness. He made a bed of the damp clothes by spreading a blanket over them. He stretched out on the floor against the wall after turning out the light. The Bjornsan Star labored her weary way through the endless night.

Heavy banging on the door awakened him. He was stiff and sore from the pummeling of the wall and floor. He stood up. The movement of the ship was oddly different.

“Who is it?” he called. Sara was sitting up in the bunk, her eyes wide with fright, the covers clasped to her breast.

“Dolan. Is the Temble woman with you?”

He glanced over at Sara. She made no sign. “Yes,” he called back.

“Both of you get down to the ward room as fast as you can make it. Hear?”

“Right.” Dolan was gone.

“What is it?” Sara asked. Her voice trembled.

“He’s worried. Something about the ship.” He looked at the port. It was rolling under with every third wave. “She’s lower in the water, Sara. Logier.” He went to the flight bag, pulled out a white shirt, flannel slacks and a heavy cardigan sweater. He threw them over onto the bunk. “Get dressed fast. Your stuff isn’t dry yet. Roll up the sleeves and cuffs.”

He turned his back to her. Dressed in his clothes she looked amazingly frail. He unlocked the door and they went down to the ward room. Everyone stared at them with varying expressions as they came in, fighting the pitch of the ship. Gina looked into Mal’s eyes with amused insolence. Sparks stood braced in a corner, a book in his hands. He glanced up absently and then began reading again.

Roger Temble’s complexion was green, but his eyes were alert, his smile sour. “I’m happy to see you’re alive and... unharmed, my dear,” he said. “We were worried about you.”

“Listen,” said Mal, “your wife couldn’t get back up to...”

“Please shut up, sir,” Dr. Temble said. “I think there are things of importance to be discussed.” Sara stared woodenly down at the floor.

Tom Branch, his mouth puffed, his eyes disclosing the extent of a brutal hangover, sat numbly in one of the chairs. Anger flickered in his eyes and disappeared almost immediately as he glanced at Mal. Torgeson, looking like the small gray ghost of a once cheery squirrel, sat near Branch. The cook, both mess boys and six other seamen were crowded into the room.

Dolan stood, his feet spread, his eyes bleak. Behind him Mal saw the figure of Mister Gopala clad in a huge fuzzy blue sweater, with a pink scarf over his head and tied under his chin.

“This meeting,” said Dolan in a voice that filled the room, “is to bring you up on the state of affairs. At three this morning she hit a bad one and some starboard plates amidships buckled. The water’s coming in faster than the pumps can handle it. One of the boats was swept away yesterday. At dawn Captain Paulus stole the other one and left with the second officer and six seamen. I don’t think the boat lived in that water.” He turned and repeated what he had said in Swedish this time. The men took the information stoically.

“Now for an accounting. After yesterday’s two accidents there were twenty-nine of us left. Eight took the remaining boat. So there’s twenty-one of us. You six passengers, the two men up at the wheel, nine seamen in this room, Sparks, Torgeson, myself and Torgeson’s second in the engine room. The radio shack is gone.”

MacLane folded his book, keeping a finger between the pages. “And now, Dolan, I can tell you what I’ve been trying to say. Last night I ducked out to eat, and when I got back to my board I found that some clever devil had been at work in there. Tubes cracked and connections torn loose. In the best of weather it would have taken me three days to get back on the air.”

Dolan gave him a look of heavy contempt. “The blue monkeys did it, I suppose.” At that second the Star rolled so badly that MacLane was forced to take a step away from his corner. He fell back against the wall heavily.

“I am not saying, Dolan, that they couldn’t have done it. I just doubt they had the technical ability. At least all the little creatures are gone now.”

Dolan shrugged as if it were no longer a matter of importance. He turned to Torgeson. “How do things stand below?”

The chipmunk mouth quivered, but the voice still had its truculent rasp. “Water ten inches over the floor plates when I left. An hour, maybe, before it douses the engines. They’ll suck in water vapor and in diesels that’s a more explosive mixture than the oil and they’ll run away with...”

“Skip the technical information, Torgeson. Damn a man with my luck. Now get this. We haven’t been able to take a shot for twenty hours. We’re headed northeast. There’s one hell of a lot of open sea around here. I want to stay with the ship until the last minute. Then we’ll spread oil and take to the rafts. Everybody has to be ready to go at thirty seconds’ notice. Guessing our speed and drift, we’ve got one chance in a thousand of hitting a little French pimple of an island. The oil will give us a chance to get everybody lashed to the rafts and...”

“I’ve got to get into the hold,” Dr. Temble said in a loud hoarse tone.

Dolan stared at him. “What the hell for?”

“My... my specimens! The expedition specimens!”

“Even if you could get into the hold, which you can’t,” Dolan said, “I wouldn't load any rocks and bones onto our rafts.” He stared at Temble and seemed to be waiting.

Temble’s eyes had a glassy shine behind the dewed lenses. “You don’t understand, Dolan. It’s more than...”

“Shut up!” Gina screamed, her face contorted.

Temble stared at her and his mouth hardened. He advanced a step toward Dolan, and he clung to the table to steady himself. “You intend to abandon ship?”

“Yes,” Dolan said, and Mal sensed a grin behind the beard.

“Then I have to tell you this. Our expedition was set up as a smoke screen. A wealthy Hindu, enormously wealthy, was in danger of having his fortune taken over by the Pakistan government. During the fighting he converted everything into jewels and gold and hid them. We went in and located sediment containing skulls of entelodonts of the Miocene period. We cut blocks of the sediment and the standard procedure is to cover the exposed bones with shellac and wrap the blocks with burlap soaked in flour paste for shipment. There can be no question of import on such items. We cracked one such block, bored a hole in the middle for the treasure and recemented it with mud before wrapping it. I have to tell you all this so you won’t abandon ship unless it is suicide to stay with it.”

“Go on,” Dolan said.

“I would guess the total value at about... six million dollars. Dolan, if you can save this ship I’ll cut you in for a sixth share.”

“A quarter share,” Dolan said. “And besides, who are you to cut me in? Where’s the owner?”

Mal looked over just in time to see the look in Sara’s eyes as she lifted her glance to his. It answered Dolan’s question with cruel clarity.

“He did not survive the trip,” Temble said.

Branch startled them all with a loud laugh in which there was no trace of humor or amusement. It sounded more like the bray of an animal.

As Dolan gave orders to the crew, one of the mess boys broke open the locker containing the life jackets. They were of dingy gray canvas designed like a vest, with blocks of cork sewed in around the waist.

Once they had been donned a new flavor was in the air — of expectation and immediacy. Mr. Gopala made sharp clicking noises with his tongue, indicating extreme disappointment with the cut and fit of the garment.

“Stay in this room, all of you,” Dolan ordered, striding out. Torgeson had gone below to watch over his precious steel monsters. The crewmen huddled in a group. Sparks was reading again. Mal sat on the floor beside Sara, their backs against the wall, their legs braced. Between them, where the others could not see, she held his hand tightly. Her slim fingers were strong and icy. Temble and Branch had their heads together. Once Branch stared over at the two of them. It was a flat stare, without emotion. A carpenter might stare in that way at a board he was about to cut. A trap shooter might stand and wait, his eyes on the trap, with precisely that expression.

Once the Star heeled over so far that every mouth went taut, all eyes went wide. From Mal’s position, staring along the floor was like looking up a steep hill. She remained in that position for an impossible, interminable length of time before slowly creaking and sighing back to roll, not quite so far, in the opposite direction.

“I thought it was going all the way over,” Sara said, her lips close to his ear.

“It won’t, don’t worry.”

“I’m sick, Mal. Sick inside. I’ve been sick for a long time. It started when I found out what he is. What Roger is. They killed that man when he left the fire and went down to the stream to wash.”

He pressed her hand. “Don’t talk about it.”

“I don’t care any more, Mal. If I live I’m going to tell what he did.”

“Don’t say that!” he said sharply. “If he should hear you...”

“Gina’s his kind of woman. She has the same streak in her that he has. They found it out on this trip, Mal. The way she watches me... I know what she wants him to do.”

“Please, darling.”

She looked into his eyes and then her slow smile came. It was a faintly crooked smile, uptilted more on the right than on the left. Her eyes at that moment were as gray as the sea — as gray as the sky — and as warm as lips against his heart.

“Like that?” he asked.

Her fingers tightened on his hand, “just like that, Mal. And I didn’t know it before. What a time to find out!”

“Stay close to me. No matter what happens. Stay close to me.”

“I will. Oh, I will!”

Every moment the Bjornsan Star increased the spasmodic extent of her labors. The salon windows rolled under with each wave. So much water came in that Sara and Mal had to stand.

Dolan came to the doorway and bawled, “Lines are strung. Everybody up onto the boat deck. Watch yourself?”

The sailors, when he repeated the order in their language, made a frantic rush for the doorway, clogging it for a moment with their struggling bodies. Mal let the others go first. He and Sara and MacLane were the last to leave. Mal supported Sara with a strong arm around her waist.

At the exit to the weather deck he yelled into her ear, “Run out and grab that rope when I push you. Hold on with both hands all the time. Move by sliding your hands along it.”

Then she was ahead of him, clinging to the rope. They made ten feet before the water roared down at them. It swept her off her feet a fraction of a second before it knocked him down, burying them both in its turbulence. She slid back against him and he got his arm around her, locked his hand on the rope in front of her body. As soon as the deck was clear they scrambled up and made another eight to ten feet before the water smashed at them again.

The third time a body slammed against them with brutal force, almost tearing them from the life line. It tangled in Mal’s legs as the water drained away. He looked down and saw Gina there. Her eyes were open and she seemed to smile up at him. But then he saw that the water swirling away from her, was pink, saw the great wound where her throat had been slashed. The next wave spun her away into the screaming grayness astern. Sara had not seen. Her movements had grown feeble and he knew that she was but semi-conscious from the buffeting she had taken. The absurdly large slacks he had given her were pasted to her long legs. But there was no longer the danger of chill. The long night had carried them far enough north so that the sting was gone from the air and even from the water.

At last they reached the point where it was but a dozen feet around the corner to the amidships ladderway leading up to the boat deck. He forced her along, spending the last of his energy to get her to the foot of the ladderway. The next boiling wave caught them there, but he had both hands clamped to the steel railing, his arms around her.

She climbed slowly. When she paused to rest he looked back to see how MacLane was faring. MacLane had reached the foot of the ladder. He looked up with a face so strained that it resembled a skull. As Mal watched he saw the wave smash the weakened man against the steel treads of the steps. MacLane dropped and the wave carried him ten feet before it receded. There was no chance of reaching him. He lay with the book beside him and Mal wondered vacantly how he had managed to bring his reading along so far. Then the next gray wave swirled MacLane away, around the corner and out of sight.

Sara fell once she reached the boat deck. He picked her up, supported her, as they made their way by the empty davits and along the side of the captain’s cabin to the bridge where the others were gathered.

Temble ran to Mal, grasped him and shook him, yelling into his face, “Where’s Gina? Where’s Gina? She was right behind me!”

“Swept overboard,” Mal said crisply. “I couldn’t save her.”

Temble’s shoulders slumped. He staggered wearily and almost fell. Up on the boat deck the rolling motion of the ship was even more pronounced, but they were at least out of the reach of the waves. The superstructure looked as though a giant’s hand had swept casually along the ship, from stern to bow and back again.

Mal found Sara a relatively dry corner. Dolan and a husky seaman fought the wheel. Dolan’s mouth sagged open with strain, so that it formed a wet red orifice in the middle of the matted beard.

“Cross your fingers for luck,” Dolan roared. He gestured dead ahead with a motion of his head. The glass ahead of the wheel had been smashed out. Mal squinted against the driving spray. Dead ahead, revealed only when the Bjornsan Star rose sluggishly to the top of a great wave, Mal could see the spray thundering high from the reefs, see a low gray island beyond.

It came closer with startling speed, always nearer each time it became visible. And suddenly, in the midst of the storm, there was an odd silence. Mal realized that the vibration, unheard but felt through the soles of his feet, had ceased.

The following sea began to slowly turn the Star broadside to the giant combers that leaped forward to smash against the reefs.

Dolan jumped back from the wheel roaring a great oath into the wind. “He couldn’t give me five minutes more!”

Once broadside to the waves, the Star made one gigantic roll that tumbled the unwary into a heap in one corner of the bridge. A seaman was thrown against the jagged shards of glass remaining in the frame. Badly slashed he began a ceaseless screaming.

Mal crawled and fought his way to Sara. Once he reached her he craned upward until he could see from the side windows the reef so close that the spray was flung into the air to fall on the Star. The next wave would bring them down onto the reef and all he could hope was that through some miracle they could get into the relatively quiet water beyond the harsh coral. He dropped and shielded Sara with his body. The Bjornsan Star lifted up and up, seeming to hang poised for a long moment. She came down with a rending, crashing, long-drawn-out jar, breaking her back and her heart.

She sagged over, steady for a moment at a precarious angle. And the next wave smashed her broadside. With a long scream of steel on coral she slid over the reef and down into the quiet water beyond. She floated for a moment and then the bow struck and the wind slid her slowly around. She came to gentle rest.

V

It was a breathless dawn, hot and torpid and muggy. The sun was a rising ball of brass and steam rose from the brush and the palms and the damp main road of the small thatched village.

Of fifty huts a good score had been smashed by the wind. This was Dakeet, child of catastrophe, step-daughter of the great winds, and island five miles long, three quarters of a mile wide, ringed about with coral reefs. The gray sea, not forgetting anger so quickly, still thundered at the reef and the outrigger canoes would not be launched for several days.

Mal stood on the sloping sand of the beach and looked out at the dead hulk of the Bjornsan Star. She was canted at a forty degree angle, resting on the shallow bottom, her starboard rail under water for all of its length except for a few feet near the bow. Some of the native boys had swum out to her. They sat on their heels on the canted port rail looking for all the world like three dusty brown birds. Between the thunder of each wave on the reef Mal could hear their chattering as they discussed this strange and wonderful deviation from the norm of Dakeet.

Sara came down to the beach from the shelter of the line-brush. The slacks, though badly wrinkled, were almost dry. She had rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt and she wore it open at the collar. Her hair was badly tangled and lifeless from the crusted salt, but her smile was for him alone.

“Dry, eh?” he asked.

“Enough to wear. Now tell me what you found out last night, Mal, after I collapsed on that cot in the resident’s house.”

“We were twenty-one, weren’t we? Now it’s fourteen. That man you saw slashed died of loss of blood. Torgeson was trapped below decks when she settled. He said he was going back for something just after the engines failed. MacLane and Gina are gone, of course. And two other men were swept away. One of them was the English-speaking mess boy.”

Her eyes clouded. “He was nice... and Gina... she was my friend, I guess.”

“We’re being given breakfast at the house of the resident. He’s had no time for us. Too busy taking care of his people here. There’s about two hundred of them. They had some deaths in the storm. There’s a bad food situation because of the storm. He told Dolan that he’d talk with us after breakfast.”

“Did you see him last night?”

“Just for a moment. Small, nervous type. French of course. His name is de Beauharnais. Been here for a long time, right through the last war. The people are Micronesian — probably stranded here during one of their long jaunts a few hundred years ago. We’d better head toward his place. It’s a ten minute walk, wouldn’t you say?”

Even the sturdy residency had suffered damage from the storm. The roof of one of the wings had been torn off despite the anchor cables fastened to buried logs. But the wide screened porch was intact. It was placed at the head of the village street and but fifty feet from the waterfront. The next building was a store, undamaged, its windows still boarded up. The neatly lettered sign over the closed door said, “A. Hayaka — Merchandise” in three languages.

The others were all gathered at the end of the big porch which, in L shape, encircled the village side and the sea side of the building.

Mal and Sara nodded at the others. Temble said to her, “Come here, my dear.”

She glanced up at Mal then shook her head firmly. Branch took two slow steps toward her, looking back at Temble like a dog eager for command. Temble said softly, “Not now, Tom.” Dolan chuckled dryly.

There were not enough chairs for all of them. Sara and Mal wandered away from the rest. In a little while de Beauharnais came up the steps onto the porch, his face sagging with a bone-deep weariness. He carried a small black bag which he handed to one of the house boys.

In spite of his obvious tiredness, there was an electric vitality about the small man. He faced the group in silence. “Have you injured?” he asked. “Forgive me for not asking before. I am the doctor here, too, as you see.”

“One bad wrist,” Dolan said. He turned and spoke to the man in question, who held out a swollen, discolored hand, wincing as the resident fingered the wrist.

“Sprained only. Tell him to remain with me. I will tape it.” Dolan spoke to the man who then stepped back into the group. “Are all of you here? Yes? It makes fourteen, eh? Did you radio your position?”

Dolan explained about the radio. De Beauharnais gave a Gallic shrug. “You will be with us for some time, I see.”

“How do you mean that?” Temble demanded harshly.

De Beauharnais raised one eyebrow and stared at Temble as though astonished by the tone of rudeness. He answered quietly. “It is three weeks before one of the island ships will stop here. We have no mode of communication with 'outside’. We must plan what must be done. What cargo have you? Anything salvagable?”

“A good deal of tinned food, sir,” said Dolan. “Australian butter. Tinned New Zealand beef. I took a look at the ship. At low tide it shouldn’t be much of a chore.”

“Excellent!” the Frenchmen said, smiling. “That will help solve bur most pressing problem. As soon as you have rested I shall require you to take a party of your men and begin salvage operations. The foodstuffs will be brought here for storage. Now as to living arrangements—” He found Sara in the group, bowed to her. “I would be most pleased if you would accept my hospitality, Mademoiselle.”

“She is my wife,” Temble said truculently.

“Ah, so? Then perhaps you too, sir.”

“It might inconvenience you, M’sieur,” Sara said, “as we shall require two rooms.”

De Beauharnais took a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and held it at arm's length to read it. “The note you gave me, Mr. Dolan. Let me see. I have four rooms that can be put in order. I should suggest the following people in that case. Mrs. Temble, Dr. Temble, Mr. Gopala and Mr. Atkinson. You, Mr. Dolan, along with the remaining passenger, Mr. Branch, can remain with the crew can you not?”

“I would prefer that Mr. Branch be given a room,” Temble said.

“That has already been discussed with Mr. Dolan,” De Beauharnais said, “and it was decided that Mr. Branch is in better condition to withstand a... primitive environment. My work crews are helping rebuild the huts now. The day after tomorrow they can begin the construction of huts for your crew. Until that time the crew and you too... gentlemen can sleep out of doors.”

“Where?” Branch asked sullenly.

“That brings up a most serious question. You will forgive me for speaking this way in your presence, Madame Temble. Mr. Dolan, you must keep crew members away from the village women. I would not have thought that men who had so recently been close to death would have had the spirit for amorous adventure. There was one incident last night. I have spoken to the girl. She is quite certain that she inflicted at least one deep scratch on the face of the stranger.”

The crew stood stolidly, not having been able to follow the conversation in English. Mal looked and saw one heavy man with three parallel scratches down the left side of his face to the corner of his mouth. The man slowly grew conscious of all the eyes on him.

“Mr. Dolan, please explain to them what happened. Mrs. Temble, please go inside the house immediately.”

As Dolan explained, the other men moved nervously away from the scratched one. He lifted his fingertips to the scratches on his face. Dolan’s voice was rough and angry.

“Please explain to him that here on Dakeet we do not have time for all the judicial niceties.”

Dolan gave de Beauharnais an odd look, and did as requested. Mal felt the tension in the air, felt it grow to a quivering edge.

De Beauharnais said, almost shyly, “You see, these are my people and they love me and they also expect certain things of me.” With these words he took a small automatic from his side pocket and fired once, seemingly without aim. The man with the scratched face took one unsteady sidestep and stood, legs spread for a moment, before going down. Two drops of blood appeared at the rim of the small hole over his right eye.

The man shuddered against the wide board floor and lay still. De Beauharnais said, “The evidence was sufficient. I pronounce the man dead. If I had not done this thing they would have taken him tonight and death might not have been as pleasant. Mr. Dolan, you will take your crew and Mr. Branch to the east end of the island. Take the body along and bury it there and put up any marker you think advisable. My boys will bring food to you. Report to me on the progress of your salvage operations.”

Temble, Mal and Gopala stood beside de Beauharnais on the porch and watched the group of nine walk down through the village. Four of them carried the body. All the way through the village they were watched by the populace. There was no sound, no jeers, no laughter.

De Beauharnais sighed. “My table is set for five. Will you give me the pleasure of joining me. I have opened the last tin of good coffee.”

While Sara napped, two women sitting on the floor outside her door, Mal walked east down the beach. The tide was high, almost covering the Bjornsan Star. When he reached a small patch of high ground set back from the beach he saw that Dolan had set the men to work cutting bamboo, tying the lengths with vines. The men were stripped to the waist. Branch, with sullen face, was working and sweating with them.

Dolan smiled at Mal, walked and met him sixty feet from where the men were at work. They sat on their heels on the beach. Dolan drew meaningless lines in the sand with a bit of shell.

He said, “You see how I did that? I wanted Branch and Temble split up. The girl doesn’t matter. She’s against it and against Temble anyhow, isn’t she?”

The big red beard was crisp in the sunlight. “Maybe I’m not quick enough,” Mal said, “but I don’t see what you’re driving at.”

Dolan cuffed him roughly on the shoulder. “Use the sense God gave little animals. Count off who knows about the six million dollars out there. The Tembles, you, Branch, Gopala and me. MacLane and the mess boy knew and Torgeson. They’re out of it now. The Farrow woman is out of it. Now, just for the hell of it, try to imagine what would happen if you and me and Gopala were dead. Mrs. Temble is gutless enough so that the doctor could make her keep her mouth shut. The island ship comes. By then Temble has gotten his specimens, the right one anyway, out of the hold. Away he goes. Thank you for your kindness, M’sieur. I’ll send you a Christmas card. But we’re alive. You and Gopala and Sara Temble are witnesses to his agreeing to a one quarter split. The fool know’s he’s got to buy you and Gopala off, too. He must realize that.” He cuffed Mal again, so hard that Mal sprawled over onto the sand. “Can’t you see it? This is a big chess game from here on in. I made a move. I split Branch and Temble. And I’m the boy who takes charge of salvage.”

Mal stood up. “What do you expect to get out of it?”

Dolan towered over him. He scowled. “My full quarter share. I’m going to sleep with both eyes open and my back against a wall, Mal. And, by God, you’re going to do the same. You’re my witness.”

“What makes you think I won’t tell the whole dirty story when I get to customs at Los Angeles or wherever we dock?”

Dolan laughed so hard that he staggered. “Mal, you’re a funny lad. Ye are, Mal. I don’t care what you say to customs. I’m taking my split right here, my full quarter, and I’m staying in the Pacific. I know where I can buy an island. I’ll stock it. I’ll build a teak house on it and I’ll have the best liquor and the fairest women for a thousand miles around. This is my way out, the one I’ve been waiting for. They broke me and they spit on me, on Bob Dolan. I’ve been waiting. Now it’s going to be my turn to spit. They better all stand back. If you’ve got the brains God gave geese you’ll come in with me, pry all you can out of Temble by threatening to tell de Beauharnais. That little Frenchy, if he knew about it, would find some law where he could grab the whole pile. The Temble woman likes you. Bring her along if you go for that sort. We’ll all take what we can get and let Temble, Branch and Gopala figure out what to do with what’s left.”

Mal looked out to sea. He took a long time answering. “Maybe, Bob, you’ve figured it all out a way that looks good to you. Hell, that much money would start anybody’s heart thumping. But there’s one factor you’ve overlooked.”

“And what would that be?” Dolan asked scornfully.

“Gina Farrow. She wasn’t washed overboard. At least not alive. Her throat was cut. So you have to know who did that, because whoever did it wants the whole works for himself. And did Welling fall, or was he pushed? Could be the same person. And if anybody has already gone that far, a few more aren't going to bother him.”

After Mal was a hundred yards down the beach he looked back. Bob Dolan was still standing in the same position, scratching the back of his head with one big hand.

Sara lay in a patch of shade wearing the cheap print dress which had come out of the smiling A. Hayaka’s stock. Mal sat a few feet from her, his back against a palm trunk, his hands locked around his knees. Through an opening in the brush he could look out across the bay to where, at low tide, the outrigger canoes were clustered around the hulk of the Star like insects around a bit of food.

Bob Dolan stood atop the wreck, his beard a pinpoint glint of fire at that distance. The sailors had rigged a makeshift block and tackle hoist, using a weighted canvas hatch cover for a sling. The native boys would dive down into the water in the hold and transfer cases to the sling. The sailors would haul away until the sling was above the deck level and then the cases, one by one, would be transferred to a canoe. Each loaded canoe was paddled to the village beach where the native women waited to carry the cases up to the residency.

“Mal?” she said softly.

“Darling.”

“Do you feel like I do? No yesterday. No tomorrow.”

“That’s what an island like this is supposed to do to you. But it doesn’t do it for long. Just for the first week or so. Then the heat and the monotony and the flies and the sun glare begin to get you down. A year and you’re island-happy, talking to yourself.”

“How about you, Mal? What is it about you? It pu2zles me. You’re all mixed up in this and yet you’re not part of it. You’re sort of a... watcher.”

“I’m having an emotional convalescence, maybe. I don’t know how to explain it to you. I saw so much death and so much suffering concentrated into a few months that all this... it seems artificial, somehow. Like Roger and Dolan and Branch are playing some sort of a game for backward children.”

“And me too?”

“No, Sara. Not you. You’re the only real part of, and you don’t even belong in the script. How is Roger acting?”

“He’s forgotten I’m alive. He’s put me off in a little compartment in his mind labeled 'For Future Action’. He’s frantic because Dolan is keeping him out of the salvage operations. You’ve seen how strained his eyes look. He’s borrowed binoculars from de Beauharnais and he watches them out there every moment they’re working. I think he’s going a little mad, Malcolm.”

“His boy, Branch, is out there.”

“He doesn’t trust Tom Branch. He didn’t trust Welling either. He got them, you know, by putting a blind ad in the papers. 'Young man. Profit and adventure.’ That sort of thing. He interviewed hundreds.”

“And let the good ones go, eh?”

“Yes. And losing Gina seemed to do something to him. She was strong, you know. He was beginning to depend on her. Now he’s alone. He knows that I’ve got nothing but contempt for this whole plan of his. I never really understood Roger before. That terrible ambition of his.”

“How did you happen to marry him?”

“I was a coed at Northeastern. A miserable little sophomore. Seven years ago. My people were killed in an airline crash and... Roger was there. Sweet, gentle understanding. Sometimes you have to have someone to lean on, you know. I think he agreed to bring Gina and me along on this trip as sort of insurance against anything Branch and Welling might try. I guess he thought chivalry wasn’t dead. It is, you know. Quite thoroughly dead.”

Mal thought of Gina, of how he had last seen her. “It seems to be,” he said softly.

“Let’s walk, Mal,” she said, getting to her feet. He marveled at her way of making every move with coordinated grace.

As they headed west along the beach she said, “There are thirteen of us, Mal. And so quiet. Like that usual part of a symphony where you wait and wait for the music to crash out.”

“Just before the coda.”

“What’s going to happen, Mal? Somebody else is going to die. They are, aren’t they. Don’t let it be you, Malcolm. Please don’t let it be you.”

“I'll consider the request.”

“Don’t joke about it. Take me seriously.”

“I do. Always.”

“I keep hoping and hoping that nothing more will happen. I want to go home and I want to leave Roger and divorce him and marry you.” She blushed and looked away. “I forgot. You haven’t even asked me.”

“I don’t want to ask you. Not here and now. Not in this comic opera atmosphere of treasure and dusky maidens. I want a scene with piano in the background, holding your hand across a table, with you wearing flowers I’ve bought for you. And before I ask you I want to learn how to come alive again. I want to know what I’m going to do with my life.”

“Our life.”

“All right, you forward wench. Our life.”

The small cranky gasoline generator quit that night and the table was set for five under the hard white glare of a Coleman lantern hung from an overhead beam. It made hard shadows on the floor. De Beauharnais, looking more rested than at any time since their arrival five days before, sat at the head of the table. Gopala and Malcolm sat at his left facing Sara and Roger across the wide table. The night was still and muggy and one of the house boys pulled on the string which moved the swinging fan back and forth under the lantern making a metronome shadow which swept from one end of the table to the other and back again, slowly.

The meal was a rich, highly-spiced curry, which Mr. Gopala, for one, ate with great enthusiasm. As he wrapped the bits of spiced rice in the green leaves and popped them into his mouth, he raved to de Beauharnais about the beauties of the island.

“Unspoiled, untouched,” he said. “A gem. A jewel of the Pacific.”

“If you had seen Dakeet forty years ago, my friend,” said the Frenchman, “you would not say that. A few ships had touched here in the days of sail. They left their usual gifts to the island. Diseases that rot these peoples. For generations they were sullen. Now we are bringing them back to life. It is a long process. You ask why, and how France can afford philanthropy. It is not exactly that. At one time there were good pearls here. The beds have been seeded again. Another five years, maybe ten, we shall begin to get those fine pearls once more. And these people grow strong again. They will dive for us and gladly.”

Sara, as always in Roger’s presence, ate quietly, rarely lifting her eyes from her plate. Roger Temble had lost weight. His hand shook as he ate.

Mr. Gopala leaned back from his empty plate with a small, satisfied belch. “Now tell me, M’sieur, is it possible to leave this island in an outrigger canoe? Can any port be reached?”

“There is an island without inhabitants, smaller than this one, almost forty miles to the north. That is the only place that can be readied. It is without water. Sometimes my people go there for the fishing when they know the weather will be calm for many days. In the proper season. Why do you ask?” De Beauharnais smiled. “Are you tiring of my hospitality?”

Gopala held up both hands in protest. “But no! It is just a small matter of curiosity. I do not wish to...” He frowned, then beamed at Mal. “Ah, I remember your American word. I do not wish to snitch. But I saw something which puzzled me. I have done much walking around your island, of course. Mr. Dolan and Mr. Branch, they have from somewhere acquired one of the outrigger canoes. At dawn I saw them repairing it. They have paddles. They seemed to be talking earnestly about some plan, but I did not wish to approach near enough to find out. It seemed to me that they could only be thinking of escape. I should not wish them to attempt something foolish and die because land is too far away.”

Mal glanced at Temble. The man had a fork raised halfway to his lips. The fork was motionless in the air for long seconds, and then he lowered it back to the plate. He looked pale under his tan.

De Beauharnais said, “I have talked to Mr. Dolan many times, Mr. Gopala. He is a capable ship’s officer. He has looked at my charts. I am positive that he would not attempt anything so silly. You must be mistaken. They must have the canoe for some other purpose. Maybe they wish to try their luck at fishing.”

Temble laughed. It was a hard spasm in his throat. “Yes,” he gasped, “I think they want to try their luck at fishing. At fishing for...” He looked warily at de Beauharnais and stopped talking abruptly.

Gopala said quickly, “Oh, I forgot that... other matter, Dr. Temble. I can see how they might hope to...”

“Shut up, Gopala!” Temble said.

Gopala smiled. “Ah, of course. How stupid I am!”

“What is this all about, please?” the Frenchman asked coldly.

“Nothing,” said Temble. “Nothing at all.” He pushed back his chair and without further comment he left the room. De Beauharnais shrugged.

“Forgive his rudeness,” Gopala said. “He has been under considerable strain, you understand.”

“Of course, of course,” de Beauharnais murmured. He clapped his hands for the house boy to bring the coffee.

Mal had taken the first sip of his coffee when he heard, as did the others, a distant cry from within the house, the thud of a fall. De Beauharnais sprang up, dabbing his lips with the napkin. He ran toward the inner doorway and stopped abruptly, slowly raised his hands and backed away. “What is the idea of this?” he demanded in a shrill, indignant voice.

Roger Temble, an automatic pistol in his hand, aiming directly at de Beauharnais, advanced into the room. His brown eyes had a staring look behind the clear lenses.

“Don’t try to stop me. I went into your rooms to find one of your guns, M’sieur. One of your boys tried to stop me. He will be all right, I’m sure. Don’t follow me and don’t try to send anyone after me. I’ll be back soon.” He moved around the Frenchman to the doorway that led onto the porch. They heard the screen door slap shut, heard his feet thud against the packed dirt as he ran off into the darkness.

Mr. Gopala inserted a cigarette into his filter holder. He lit it with the gold lighter he had managed to cling to throughout the shipwreck. He said, “M’sieur, I took the liberty of borrowing a tiny bit of petrol for my lighter.”

De Beauharnais put his hands on his slim hips. “What is there that I do not understand? What sort of madmen have been wrecked on my reef? My apologies to you, Madame Temble.”

“I think,” said Sara in a small thin voice, “that my husband has gone to kill Mr. Dolan and Mr. Branch.”

Wide-eyed house servants had appeared in both doorways. De Beauharnais gave his orders in the multi-voweled tongue of the islands. He said to those at the table, “Kindly stay where you are.” He left the room. He was back in five minutes wearing a face net, carrying a small calibre rifle and two revolvers.

His smile was tight. “So long as we deal with madmen, we must act accordingly.” He handed one revolver to Mal. “You will come with me.” He handed the other to Gopala who took it gingerly. “And you will stay with Madame.” He gave a curt bow in her direction. “Forgive me. I intend to bring him back with me. If he does not come willingly, I shall harm him.”

Five boys were waiting at the foot of the porch steps. They all carried fish spears and wore the long flat trading knives. They were excited. They fell in behind de Beauharnais and Mal as the two men headed for the beach to walk up to the new encampment at the eastern end of the island.

VI

Mal had accepted the revolver and the responsibility with a blandness that had no conscious thought behind it. He was now being carried along in the course of events with a numbed acceptance. There was an unreality about it, and he tried to concentrate on the impressions his senses received in order to recreate reality.

The rising moon flooded the beach with silver and made the waves molten. Far out in the bay a deeper shadow hinted at the spot where the Bjornsan Star had sunk after sliding off the reef. His shoes made small scuffing sounds in the dry sand. Behind them the boys padded along, talking to each other in hushed liquid tones. The sea against the outer reef was more vibration than sound. Phosphorescence glimmered through the smaller waves that licked up along the packed sand.

De Beauharnais used a long tireless stride and Mal felt the pull of muscles in his thighs.

Far ahead and to the left Mal saw the white hard spot of light from the Coleman lantern de Beauharnais had loaned to the encampment of the nine men. As he saw it, they heard, above the soft sounds of the sea, a distant shout and then the flat snapping sound of shots fired in the open air, three of them in rapid succession.

De Beauharnais yelled orders to the five boys and broke into a lithe ran. Mal had difficulty keeping up with him. His hand was sweating on the cool grip of the revolver. As he ran de Beauharnais turned and said in almost a conversational tone, “I will go along the beach. You head toward the encampment and fire into the air and try to drive him down to me. If he tries to stand against you, find cover and try to shoot his legs.”

The nightmare feeling of unreality did not diminish. As they neared the light Mal, obeying like an automaton, swerved left and ran directly toward the light. He did not realize he was shouting until he heard his own voice in his ears.

He topped the small rise and saw two figures, directly under the lantern hung by a taut wire from tree to tree, rolling and struggling. Another figure lay ominously still a few yards away. The other men were standing nearby and one of them kicked heavily at the two struggling figures on the ground. They all moved back as Mal shot twice into the air, the heavy revolver jumping his hand.

Mal shouted to de Beauharnais to come. Dolan rolled onto the top of the other figure, casting a mighty shadow in the hard blue-white light. Roger Temble was underneath and Dolan’s two big hands were locked around the smaller man’s throat. Dolan’s arms were so long that Temble could not reach Dolan’s face. Already Temble’s motions had grown loose and languid.

The automatic glinted in the hand of one of the men nearby. Mal aimed the revolver and the man hurriedly tossed the automatic into the dust at Mal’s feet. He snatched it up and yelled, “Bob! Bob, let go of him!”

Dolan gave no sign that he had heard. His eyes were squeezed shut and the corded muscles stood out on his bare arms. Temble no longer struggled.

Mal hesitantly struck Dolan over the head with the barrel of the heavy revolver. Dolan shook his big head. Mal, as de Beauharnais came up behind him, hit Dolan again, much harder. The big man sagged. It took a third blow before he dropped and even then the big fingers had to be pried off Temble’s throat.

Both men were unconscious. Mal gave the automatic to de Beauharnais who slipped it into his pocket and went over to the other man who lay face down in the dust. One hand scrabbled spasmodically at the dust, as de Beauharnais gently rolled him over. It was Tom Branch, his pale eyes wide and frightened, and dust caked on his lips. There were two bleeding holes in the center of the thick chest and a third one high, near the base of the throat. Each time Branch breathed the air whistled and bubbled in the hole at the base of his throat.

“Amazing vitality,” de Beauharnais said calmly.

Blood clogged the throat hole and gouted from the side of Branch’s mouth. His body went into sustained tremble, from head to foot, and then he lay still, the eyes no longer frightened, staring instead at a fixed point an incalculable distance away.

“What happened?” de Beauharnais asked of the nearest man, who made a gesture to show that he didn’t understand. By then Temble was forcing himself up into a sitting position. Every breath made an audible rasp in his bruised throat. He gagged, and began to paw at the ground on either side of him. “Glasses,” he said in a husky whisper. “Glasses.”

Mal found them, off to one side. Both lenses were shattered, the bows bent. He kicked them over to Temble, who felt them with his fingers. “Can’t see without them,” he whispered.

Dolan came alive with no intermediate period of helplessness. One moment he lay still, the next he was on his feet, rocking a bit, fingering the top of his head ruefully, his green eyes full of comprehension. He looked hard at Temble who sat like a chubby helpless child, the broken glasses in his thick hand.

“One for the books, lad,” Dolan said. “He came up roaring, yelling for Tom and me. Thank God, Tom was closer and got out first. By the time he tried to swing toward me I was halfway down his throat. I tumbled him over and I don’t remember much after that.” He glanced over at Branch. “Dead, eh?”

Temble still could not speak above a whisper. “And you should be dead too, Dolan. Both of you should be side by side. No power on earth is going to cheat me out of what’s mine.”

“I happen to be a power on earth at the moment,” de Beauharnais said briskly. “Kindly get on your feet, Doctor, and walk back to my bungalow.”

Temble got up. He walked with the extreme care of the grievously near-sighted deprived of glasses.

“You will come also,” de Beauharnais said to Dolan. “Appoint one of these men in charge. Tell them no one is to leave this encampment.”

The boys were not in evidence during the long walk back down the beach to the bungalow. Mr. Gopala sat alone at the table, the revolver beside his plate.

He smiled. “I sent the lady to her room. I thought she might be safer there, as I’ve never discharged a firearm in my life.”

De Beauharnais said, “Kindly remain seated, Mr. Gopala. Doctor, please sit where you were before. Mr. Dolan, pull that chair over to the end of the table and sit there. And you, Mr. Atkinson. Kindly take your place.”

The Frenchman sat down at the head of the table and delicately dusted his hands. “Now then, we must talk sense. A great deal of sense. I am, by hobby a mathematician. This equation contains an unknown factor and until I know what it is, I cannot solve it. The unknown is a random factor leading to unpredictable variations in the behavior of this small group.”

“It’s time to talk business,” Dolan said. “I agree.”

The Frenchman looked down the table toward Dolan. “Proceed, please.”

“It’s pretty clear, isn’t it, that the doctor here is a murderer, M’sieur. I mean there's no way for him to get out of paying a penalty.”

“Just a moment,” Roger Temble said, peering at Dolan. “Don’t go too fast. De Beauharnais is a man who will understand my rights to...”

“Be still!” the Frenchman said. “I am listening to Mr. Dolan. And kindly do not tell me what I will and what I won’t understand. I shall make a complete report of this affair, including the statements of all witnesses, and I shall turn the report, the statements and Dr. Temble over to the authorities so that he may be taken from here and given a proper trial.”

Dolan pursed his lips. “Now I wonder if we couldn’t persuade you to take care of the justice angle yourself, the way you did that first morning we were here.”

“That was a case affecting my people. This doctor killed one of you. I cannot regard the two affairs in the same light, obviously.”

Dolan rested his big freckled fists on the edge of the table and leaned forward.

“I want to make a deal, M’sieur. You know the doctor is a murderer. If you can kill him, or have one of your boys kill him while trying to escape, I can make a dream of Paris come true for you. I can put a million dollars right in your hands, no questions asked. How does that sound?”

“Wait, wait!” Roger Temble said shrilly.

“Be still!” de Beauharnais said. No boy swung the overhead fan. The black shadow of the hanging blade was sharp and clear on the white cloth, as clear as the blade of a guillotine. The seconds passed, one by one.

“And what,” said de Beauharnais, “if I should prove to be exceptionally greedy?”

Dolan did not answer. Mr. Gopala’s eyes were like black buttons. Mal stirred restlessly. De Beauharnais had neglected to relieve him of the heavy revolver. It was in the waistband of his trousers, digging into him uncomfortably.

“Once Temble is dead,” Dolan said soothingly, “we can discuss terms more carefully.”

“Once Temble is dead, you would have a lever to use against me, Mr. Dolan. Is that not true? I would have exceeded my responsibilities. The price might go down rather than up.”

Gopala, like a spectator at an intriguing game, shifted his eyes back and forth from one speaker to the next.

“If you wanted to be very greedy,” said Dolan, “it wouldn’t be much of a trick for you to... eliminate Temble, me, Gopala, Atkinson and the woman. I suspect that you might not be willing to stomach such a wholesale procedure.”

Mal heard Sara’s light step approaching. As the others looked toward the door he eased the revolver out of his belt and laid it between his thighs, moving his chair a bit closer to the table so as to conceal it from Gopala on his right.

Sara was pale. She halted in the doorway and he could see the gladness in her eyes as she saw him. “I... heard your voices,” she said hesitantly.

“Sit down, my dear,” Dr. Temble said in a husky whisper. “Sit down and listen to these gentlemen bargain over me. Dolan has offered de Beauharnais a million dollars as a fee for killing me.”

“He shot and killed Branch,” Dolan said, his tone indicating that it was ample explanation for everything.

Sara slid into her chair. “I... I don’t understand.”

De Beauharnais smiled at her. “Madame, these men are most amusing. I gather that there is a treasure of some sort on that ship. The ship rests in my bay, at my island of Dakeet. They are stupid to think they have any bargaining power at all. If it is there, I shall find it and I will handle it as an honest official should. There is no question of killing your husband, no matter what Mr. Dolan may have thought.”

“As an honest official, you will see that it is given to me,” Temble said.

“It is yours?” the Frenchman asked politely.

Mal caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see that Dolan had moved his big feet under him for balance. The hands were tight on the arms of the heavy chair. Dolan leaned forward, a slow inch at a time. The intent was clear. If he could spring the length of the table those massive hands could snap the Frenchman’s neck like a twig. And it would be, in a sense, an answer to all Dolan’s problems.

Mal felt the awakening inside him, the sudden urge to stop being a spectator. Across from him was the woman who would give point to any direct action he took.

He slipped his finger through the guard and said, “Dolan!”

The big man stopped his slow movement. In the silence Mal thumbed back the trigger of the double action revolver. The click was surprisingly loud.

“Sit where you are, Dolan. Don’t move. You too, de Beauharnais. And don’t call your boys. All of you sit still. And don’t look so pleased, Mr. Gopala. I want some answers from you. Where were you when Welling fell or was thrown down the ladderway?”

De Beauharnais looked puzzled. Gopala reached out and butted his cigarette in a saucer. “I believe I was attending Dr. Temble in his illness.”

“And where were you when Gina Farrow’s throat was cut, Mr. Gopala?”

The slim brown hands placed another cigarette in the filter holder. “If I remember correctly I must have already reached the bridge. I was ahead of her. I am glad to know precisely how it was done.”

“Throat cut!” Dr. Temble whispered. His eyes were wide. Sara shut her eyes and leaned her head back against the back of the high chair. Her full underlip trembled.

“Dolan!” Mal said, “Did you and Branch have an outrigger canoe hidden away?”

Dolan looked dully at Mal. “Hidden? Hell, no! Drawn right up on the beach near the encampment. We used it to get out to the Star.”

Mal smiled at Mr. Gopala. “Now maybe you’ll explain a bit to us. I think it had better be a pretty good explanation. I think that it had better be good enough to clear yourself of Gina Farrow’s death.”

Mr. Gopala sucked smoke into his lungs and suddenly ceased to look, in his boo-gay clothes, like any sort of a comic figure. The button eyes looked like flint rock.

“My name, of course, is not Gopala.” He looked directly at Dr. Temble. “My brother spoke to me of his plan to get our monies out of Pakistan. He spoke of this honorable Dr. Temble, who, out of the goodness of his heart, and for a small fee, would aid him, I cautioned my brother. He would not listen. He should have listened. If he had, he would not have been struck over the head and tumbled into the stream at night.”

“He was a stubborn man, and a gullible man, but I was fond of him. I knew of his death two days after it happened. I examined the body. It was no great feat to book passage on the same boat as you, Dr. Temble. Money speaks loudly in any tongue. After I studied you and your wife and your two... helpers, and that other woman, the greedy one, I was prepared to act.”

He smiled at the cigarette in his hand. “Though I am not, in many ways, a devout Hindu, I do ascribe to our rules against the taking of life. So, much as I might have enjoyed it, I could not work directly. Mr. Branch proved to be an easy problem. I had merely to ask him if he had been playing the American game of poker. He said that he had not. I then told him that I must have made a mistake, because I was certain that I had heard his friend, Mr. Welling, promising to Dr. Temble that Mr. Branch would cash in his chips before they reached Los Angeles. Mr. Branch was quite unexpectedly clever about the mode of death, I thought.”

“It is easy to play the part of the slightly stupid person who overhears interesting fragments of conversation. Dr. Temble, you will remember my speaking to you of seeing the Farrow woman and Mr. Branch in amorous closeness in the night on the boat deck and hearing her say something to Mr. Branch about 'poisoning the old fool’. Then I waited to see which one you would remove. It was an interesting wait. I rather thought you overdid the part where you demanded to know what had become of her. She was behind you on the life line. An excellent opportunity in all the confusion. I assume you were motivated by jealousy as well as fear.”

“You devil!” Temble whispered.

“And it was not difficult in your nervous condition to make you attack Mr. Branch and Mr. Dolan. I rather hoped that Branch would die and Dolan would escape. So you see I got my wish. Now Mr. Atkinson has brought all this to a head sooner than I had hoped. I rather thought he was beginning to consider me as a factor. Now, of the original five only Dr. Temble and you, Mrs. Temble, remain. I could not have him kill you or you him as I have learned to consider you as an innocent party to this adventure of his, motivated by a rather questionable loyalty. And, Mr. Dolan, you are merely a greedy fool. Your god is luck. But all your life it hasn’t been bad luck which has brought on catastrophe, merely bad judgment. It has been a most interesting game.”

“You talk as though it were over, Gopala,” Dolan said slowly.

Gopala shrugged. “Isn’t it?”

“There is the treasure,” Dolan said.

“I shouldn’t worry about that, Mr. Dolan. My brother wished the treasure transported to Calcutta and put in the vault of Lloyd’s Bank there. I saw to it that his wishes were fulfilled. Our family wealth never left Calcutta. It was removed while the Bjornsan Star was still at the river dock. An intermediary explained the situation to Captain Paulus and gave him a small gift in return for his cooperation. If, Mr. Dolan, for the sake of a treasure which was never on the ship I could have encouraged you to kill Dr. Temble, I would have... how do you say it... racked up a perfect score...”

Dr. Temble sprang to his feet, knocking his chair over backward. He screamed at Gopala, “You lie! You lie!”

Gopala looked up at him with unconcealed amusement. “Poor little man,” he murmured. “Poor little professor.”

Temble wheeled before anyone could guess his intent and ran from the room. De Beauharnais stood up. “Why don’t you let him go?” Gopala said. “He can do no harm, except to himself.”

Dolan put his face in his hands. After a long moment he looked up. “I’ve done nothing I should lose my ticket for, have I?” he said defiantly.

“You might even be commended for beaching the ship here,” Gopala said.

Dolan walked heavily to the doorway and out into the night.

Gopala said, with striking tenderness, “Mrs. Temble, this has all been most difficult for you. I am sorry that I had to be the one to allow you to find out that your husband was capable of killing a woman.”

Sara managed a smile. “I really don’t think it matters. I really don’t think it has mattered for a long time. I think I will go to bed now. Good night, gentlemen.”

The squat, sturdy trading vessel churned through the placid sea. Malcolm stood on the afterdeck beside Sara, looking back toward Dakeet, low on the horizon.

“You’ll be able to forget, Sara,” he said.

She glanced at him. “There would be more to forget, Mal, if you hadn’t turned me away when you did, so that I couldn’t see it happen. What do you suppose he was after?”

Mal shrugged. “I don’t know. Some crazy idea of diving down into the hold himself to prove that Gopala was lying, that Gopala was trying some trick. But he was clumsy with that outrigger canoe and his eyesight was so bad that when he tumbled out, he probably didn’t even notice the band of shovelnose sharks that had come in through the gap in the reef. It didn’t last long. The way to think of him, darling, is to remember how, in the beginning, he was good to you. But there was madness in him ever since he got his hands on that treasure.”

There was a polite cough behind them. They both turned. Mr. Gopala, wearing a wine red shirt from A. Hayaka’s stock, and a pair of white duck trousers too large for him, beamed at them. “This one,” he said to Sara, “is a good man, but with a tiredness in his soul. You will bring him back to life, you know. He will grow from your strength, but it will take a long time.”

Mal frowned. “You’re a pleasant little guy in some ways, but you’ve got a knack of keeping your nose in other people’s affairs.”

Mr. Gopala’s smile was not dented. “Quite true.” He pulled a small chamois bag up out of his shirt. It was tied around his neck by a leather thong. He reached into it with two thin brown fingers and pulled out a green stone the size of a hazelnut.

He held it out to Sara and put it in her hand. His smile grew broader. “You see, there is always some treasure. Not much, maybe. But a little. It may be only my conscience speaking. Or it may be that I yearn to be young again. It is for you. For both of you. There is a curse on it, however. If you should ever separate, it will turn to glass. And the longer you stay together, the deeper will grow the green fire in its depths.”

He bowed ceremoniously and turned away.

“How deep can we make that fire, dearest?” she said.

“Deeper than deep,” he answered as she stood tall and proud and unafraid beside him.

Content

John D. MacDonald
The Curse of the “Star”

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