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He slid the handles of the oars through the tabs that
served as oarlocks and began rowing. As soon as they
were out from behind the plane, he looked over his
shoulder and saw that Avery had approached nearer than
he had expected; the Dragoon was not more than four
hundred yards away. The sun was just coming up out of
the sea beyond her, throwing her into silhouette.
Beautiful, he thought if she weren t so obviously
aground. Boats in trouble always left you with an
uncomfortable feeling.
It was still dead calm, and the water lay as flat as steel
except for an occasional and almost imperceptible lift
and fall from some vestigial remnant of surge running in
from the Santaren Channel, attenuated by five miles of
shoal water between here and the edge of the Bank. He
dug in the oars. As soon as they were clear of the plane,
Avery started the starboard engine, swung, and taxied
toward the deeper water to the west. Ingram studied the
water around and under them as he rowed. Judging from
the color and from what he could see of the bottom
straight down, it was sand and at least two fathoms deep
all the way up to where the Dragoon was lying, and the
channel was a good hundred yards wide. The schooner
drew seven feet; if they could get her off into it, she could
probably make it back to deep water without trouble,
provided they made the attempt in good light.
But he shot another glance over his shoulder getting
her off didn t look too promising as they came nearer.
The blue water of the channel was half a ship s length
away from her stern. The deepest part of her keel would
be still another thirty feet forward of that, so she might
have to move back some sixty or seventy feet before she
Aground 44
found enough water to float her unless the tide came a
lot higher than it was now, and he was afraid it was very
near to slack high at the moment.
The sound of the plane s engine died abruptly as Avery
cut it off and let the plane come to rest about a mile
away. They were now less than fifty yards from the port
side of the schooner. He changed course to come around
under her stern.
Can t we go aboard on this side? Mrs. Osborne asked.
There s something I want to see first, he replied.
Oh, she said. The name.
Not exactly, he thought, but made no reply. She was
leaning to the right, trying to get a glimpse of it. Lorna,
she called out suddenly. And look you can still see a
little of the old lettering under that blue paint.
He glanced around as they came in under the counter.
She was right. The new name had been lettered in black
over the light blue with which they d painted the
topsides, but at either end the D and the n of Dragoon
still showed. It was a sloppy job of painting. He shipped
the oars and caught hold of the rudder post; they
stopped, and hung, suspended in utter silence. The tide
was almost at a standstill. He waited for the ripples to die
away, and then leaned over, peering straight down
through water as transparent as gin. His eyes narrowed.
What is it? she asked.
Look, he replied. See that long gouge the keel made,
leading backward toward the channel?
Yes. What does that mean?
She didn t drift in here. She was under way when she
hit.
She looked up. Then they were still aboard.
Somebody was.
He noted that unconsciously they had lowered their
voices. Well, there was something ghostly about it.
Maybe it was the silence.
Why hadn t they at least tried to kedge her off? From
the looks of the bottom they d backed the engine down,
throwing sand forward, but there was no sign of an
anchor cable, even a broken one. It was possible, of
course, that the dinghy was already gone, but they could
Aground 45
have floated the anchor astern, using one of the booms
for a raft, or carried it across the bottom a few steps at a
time by diving. He d better keep Mrs. Osborne on deck
until he d had a look below; there could be a body, or
bodies.
He shoved away from the rudder post and took up the
oars again. They went slowly up the starboard side. She
was low in the water, all right. Several inches. This was
the high side, the way she was listing, and the line of the
old boot-topping was almost in the water. If you had her
up to her proper water line, she d be within a foot of
floating right now. She must be holed. He peered down
but couldn t see past the turn of the bilge. They
continued forward, passed under the bowsprit, and came
aft along the port side.
When they came abreast of the main he shipped the
oars again and reached up to catch the shrouds just
above the chainplates. With the port list, the deck was
not too high above them. Gathering up the painter, he
climbed on deck. He made the painter fast and reached
down a hand for her. She scrambled up, ducked under
the lifeline, and stood beside him.
The deckhouses were long and low, rising not over two
feet above the deck, with small portholes along their
sides. Two or three of the portholes were open, but he
could see nothing beyond them because of the dimness
inside the cabins. The sun was above the horizon now
and warm on the side of his face as it gilded the masts
and rigging. Everything was wet with dew. He stood for a
moment looking along the sloping, deserted deck. There
was an air of desolation about it as though the schooner
had been abandoned for weeks, but he realized it was
probably nothing more than a general untidiness that
offended his seaman s sense of order. The sails were
gathered in sloppy and dribbling bundles along the
booms rather than properly furled, and at the bases of
the fore- and mainmasts the falls of halyards and topping
lifts lay helter-skelter in a confused jumble of rope.
Neither of them had said a word. It was almost as though
they were reluctant to break the hush.
They walked back to the break of the after deckhouse,
and stepped down into the cockpit. It was a long one, and
fairly wide, and at the after end of it were the binnacle,
wheel, and the controls for the auxiliary engine. Ingram
Aground 46
turned and looked back at the tracks they had left in the
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