Long Voyage Back

Part Three WATER

Free. Except for the threat of radioactive fallout, of storms, of pirates, of their overloaded trimaran breaking apart, of death from thirst or starvation or disease, of mutiny, of the antagonism that the whole rest of the world now felt for the white people of America and Russia, both of whom they blamed for the war, those aboard Vagabond were free to do as they pleased. They sailed south.

The war sailed with them. Although they increased their distance from the coast as they moved south and the threat of fallout receded, the bodies of at least two of their crewmen—Frank, Olly, and possibly others—had already absorbed the poison. Frank looked much more haggard than anyone else, had lost ten pounds, and was sick again after a three-day remission. Olly was better but still “feeling poorly.” Even Neil still felt unaccountably nauseous once or twice.

Nevertheless, at sea, after a whole day of adjusting sleeping accommodations, mealtimes, and rations, they settled into a routine. Their watches remained the same, except that Katya sometimes spelled Lisa and shared a watch with Jim. Macklin and Tony berthed together in the forepeak, Katya was in with Jeanne, and Olly slept either in Neil’s cabin or on the dinette settee.

Tony, in his bluff, self-confident way, had made himself thoroughly at home again. Although he spoke loudly the first day or two about being forced to let his country down, after they heard a report about heavy radioactivity over Morehead City and the mass evacuation of everyone who could move, he didn’t raise the subject again. He flirted with both Jeanne and Katya, helped them in the galley more than any of the other men, and turned out to be an excellent cook, especially good with fish, which was their principal food. He was also, Neil admitted to himself, the best all-around sailor on his crew.

Katya and Jeanne got along well together, and though Katya wasn’t a cook, she let Jeanne, Lisa, and Tony instruct her. She was, as she had advertised, a good sailor and tough; she usually volunteered to help with sail changes on any watch when she was awake. When Tony and Macklin began to come on to her, she handled each of them in his own style. With Tony she was casual and playful; with Macklin quiet and direct. Neil never knew precisely what passed between her and Macklin their second evening at sea, but he saw him speak to her in the side cockpit with a tight smile, saw her flush and speak to him angrily. He sneered, said something back, and wandered quietly away. If Katya was good at “fucking,” she apparently was in no hurry to prove it, at least with Macklin.

Macklin himself rarely said or did anything to draw attention to himself. He blended in. On land he had stolen a case of canned fruit, a carton of cigarettes, and five six-packs of beer. Though the fruit was relegated to emergency rations, they worked their way through the beer at a rate of two a day, dividing it up and sipping at it as if it were fine champagne. When asked where he had gotten these items, he had simply shrugged and said he’d “stumbled across them in some guy’s cellar.”

Their destination was the West Indies, initially Puerto Rico. But with the southeast wind forcing them to sail directly south, by the end of the third day Neil felt they were already so close to the Bahamas that they should make a landfall on Great Abaco Island. There they might barter for more food and water, even, if they found the right conditions, try to settle. However, Radio Nassau reported debilitating food shortages throughout the islands, and Americans were not welcome. If their principal food was fish, they might as well remain at sea.

Fishing was, in fact, the focus of every morning and evening’s activity. They had two ocean rods and reels with good line, but only five lures, one of which they lost on their second day. At dawn and dusk they usually trolled with both rigs, one from each cockpit. The rods were usually jammed into place with a strong drag on the reels so that no one had to sit and hold them all the time. When a fish was hooked, the helmsman would bring the boat up into the wind to slow it down, and someone would stand by with both a gaff and large net while the other man on watch duty, who was responsible for the rods, would begin to reel in the hooked fish.

Because this type of fishing was new to most of them, and because, ultimately, their lives depended on it, bringing in a fish was a major community event. They caught two bluefish their first evening, a twenty-pound tuna the next dawn, two dolphins and a tuna at dusk, then inexplicably lost two hooked fish and a second lure at dawn the next day. The third evening, however, they recouped their losses with another dolphin and a barracuda.

Neil was still wearing his arm in a sling after cracking his elbow on the Moonchaser and couldn’t help with the fishing, but it interested him to watch the different styles of bringing in and gaffing the fish his crew had evolved.

When Frank was in charge of the gaffing there was shouting and confusion and irritability before Frank could get the man controlling the rod and reel to position the fish properly for gaffing. Once the fish was flopping around in the cockpit, there was always a delay and more shouting before Frank, looking pained, would knife the fish out of its misery.

When Olly was in charge everything proceeded as quietly as a silent movie, the only sound being Olly’s soft crooning to the fish. Olly never told the man with the rod or the helmsmen what to do, but by talking to the fish—“Come on in a little closer, fella, my back hurts and I don’t like leaning down none”—the man with the rod would know exactly what to do. When he had gaffed the fish, Olly would say something like “Up you go, sonny, easy does it,” as if the fish wanted to come aboard, and all of them were involved in a cooperative enterprise. Then, after the fish was flopping on the deck, Olly would take a minute to praise the fish to all the onlookers. “Look at those colors, will you? I ain’t seen anything as pretty as that since my second wife bought herself that new dress,” or “Now isn’t that a big fella. Must weigh twenty-five pounds and not an ounce of fat. Bet he was an Olympic champ down below…”

And when Olly killed, he always began talking to the fish again.

“Okay, big fella, afraid we got to quiet you down. I gave you time for your prayers but if you got anything else you want to say you better say it now…” The fish would flop violently in response to this, or once, so everyone agreed, made some distinct grunting sounds, and then Olly with one neat slice would quiet the fish forever.

“Don’t he look beautiful?” Olly would conclude. “Just hope I look half as good when the Big Fisherman hauls me in and lays me out. I’m damn sure I won’t taste as good.”

Conrad Macklin on the other hand gaffed and killed a fish with a fierce scowl, as if he were involved in a life-and-death combat with a lifelong enemy.

When Jeanne participated in the fishing, Neil found himself focusing more attention on her than on the fish. Her glistening dark skin and full lithe body distracted him considerably from the problem of boarding the fish, especially as she wrestled with the rod and reel or stuck her behind in the air to lean down to gaff a fish, clad as she usually was only in shorts and a bikini top. She and Katya seemed to have the same effect on Tony, Macklin, and Frank. Lisa’s budding body, perhaps because of her shy dignity, was less observed, except by Jim.

They were adapting to a world of scarcity. Neil had decreed that their remaining two gallons of diesel fuel could only be used to charge the three batteries. Oil was unavailable everywhere now except to the military. To avoid having to charge the batteries any more than necessary, Neil used them solely for the shortwave radio. For illumination they used kerosene lamps and, if necessary, flashlights. They had only four gallons of kerosene, and that too might never again be easy to obtain. The two dozen candles aboard Neil stored as light of last resort. Even matches were scarce. Fortunately, no one smoked except Jim, who smoked marijuana and was abstaining, and Macklin, whose cigarettes had been confiscated by Neil to use in the West Indies as barter.

But the bleakness of the land world and of shortages Neil and Frank and Olly kept to themselves. For all of them the sea represented a haven, a relief from the terrors and suffering they had experienced on land, and Neil wanted to try to keep it that away. For the first time there began to be casual joking among them that had been missing before.

On the second afternoon Neil had overheard Captain Olly teasing Frank about Vagabond.

“Yep,” Captain Olly was saying. “You got a good ship here, Frank. All you got to do is take off those two side boats you got, and unstep the masts, and put a bowsprit on her and paint her black, and she’d be right pretty. Might not even have to paint her.”

Frank laughed as he sat down in the wheelhouse with a small cup containing his daily ration of beer.

“Thanks,” he said to Olly, who was at the helm with his own cup.

“Don’t be embarrassed your boat don’t look like a boat,” Olly went on. “Brazen it out. Pretend you got yourself a beginner’s boat. You know, a three-wheeler so you won’t tip over.”

Frank laughed again, and Neil realized that it was the first time since the war had begun that he had laughed.

“I tell people I got a special three-for-the-price-of-one deal that I couldn’t pass up,” Frank said.

“Yep. Good story. Good story. Got to tell them something, that’s for sure, so they won’t know you’re nuts,” Captain Olly concluded.

While Neil assumed responsibility for the sailing of the ship, Jeanne began to assume responsibility for the way they interacted with each other. At dinner their second day out she suggested that at every evening meal they observe a half-minute of silence before eating, and if anyone wanted to offer thanks for the food or for life, he or she might. Jeanne usually spoke, occasionally mentioning some specific individual she wanted to acknowledge. Often Katya or Jim or Frank would also add a brief word, more rarely Tony or Neil.

That night too she embraced and kissed each of the others who were still topside before she went below to her berth. Although all she said was “Good night” and the person’s name, Neil could see the physical contact breaking through the isolation each of them tended to feel. Even Conrad Macklin flushed and looked pleased. Among the men, at Jeanne’s insistence, there were more “Good job, Frank,” and “Thanks, Jim,” and “That’s good, Tony,” where before there had been either cold correctness or nothing.

Captain Olly had the most trouble adapting to the more affectionate routine that Jeanne kept urging upon them. When Neil relieved him at the helm at the change of watch and said “Nice job, Olly,” he testily replied, “Can’t expect me to run aground in five thousand feet of water.” When Jeanne gave him a goodnight kiss the second night, he grimaced and grinned. “’T warn’t much of a kiss,” he said. “If you want to get laid, you got to do better than that.” Jeanne looked surprised and then smiled. “Don’t worry,” she had said, her eyes flashing. “When I want to get laid, the man will know it.”

Most of them found the meals repetitious and skimpy. They were rationing themselves severely on the last of their canned foods and some remaining fruits and vegetables, and salting and drying some of their fish steaks for later. They were cooking in salt water and had cut their fresh water intake to a quart per person per day. The six adults were experimenting with drinking a cup or two of sea water every day.

To help avoid unnecessary gloom Neil became a censor. He permitted only Frank and Olly to listen to the shortwave and transistor radios with him. The violent antiwhite, anti-Americanism he was picking up from stations in the West Indies they kept to themselves. The probability of mass starvation within a month on many of the islands they did not mention. Officially they were sailing for a chain of islands that were still untouched by the war. In his heart Neil knew that no place and no one and nothing would ever be untouched by this war.

Shortwave and AM reports from the U.S. mainland raised a new specter on the third day at sea. A summer flu that seemed to be afflicting many people in the west and southwest had already caused an unusually high number of fatalities. One ham operator speculated that a biological warfare laboratory had been destroyed, and that part of its stockpile of disease germs was responsible for the epidemic. In any case it now seemed to be killing more people than fallout. Typhoid had also become a problem. Of the fighting itself there was little news. The superpowers were still technically at war, but now they were more like two exhausted and glassy-eyed fighters who had landed such devastating blows in the first round that they now seemed barely capable of standing up, much less hitting each other. Thus it seemed that each day the ramifications and elaborations of the world disaster spread a little further, like a spilled bottle of black ink slowly soaking along a paper towel. Cuba had been heavily bombed with conventional ordnance early in the war, and when the Cubans tried to take the naval base at Guantanamo, the U.S. had used a tactical nuclear weapon to destroy most of the enemy forces. Cuba’s air force and navy had allegedly been destroyed, but no effort made to invade the island. Guantanamo was being evacuated.

Although nuclear explosions had destroyed the Panama Canal, Miami, Cape Canaveral, American forces in Central America, and the oil refineries in Venezuela, the Caribbean area had been spared since the third day of the war. Some rich Americans were flying to Puerto Rico and this influx of the privileged was deeply resented. Despite the presence of the U.S. Navy, which, with the losses of its other Caribbean bases now had its largest facility outside San Juan, pirate attacks were reported against both private and commercial ships, both small and large. Food riots occurred on a regular basis in San Juan and smaller cities although officially there was as yet no famine.

It was to this island that Vagabond was supposedly heading, but in the new world that they all had experienced over the last ten days, no one aboard really expected anything. Neil set a course, they sailed on. In this new world the future was something that could only hurt or terrify or kill. To look beyond the next wave was dangerous. Neil set a course, they sailed on. To hope for more could only be done in whispers.

On their third night at sea Lisa and Jim had the ten-to-two watch, with Neil awake in the wheelhouse. Near midnight Jeanne fixed them some hot tea, one bag for three cups. Vagabond was still sailing due south with a good easterly breeze. An afternoon squall line seemed well behind them. With Jim now at the helm and Lisa watching the trolling rig in the side cockpit, Neil and Jeanne sat kittycorner across from each other a few feet apart in the unlit wheelhouse, sipping at their weak tea.

“Do you think about where we’re going to end up?” Jeanne asked him unexpectedly.

Neil did think about it, frequently. It made for depressing thinking.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Will we be able to settle in Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands?” Jeanne asked after she saw that he wasn’t going to go on.

“Perhaps,” Neil replied, doubting it very much. As he looked at her he wished he could share his fears, but he wanted even more to spare her the burden. Even though the sky was mostly overcast, the nearly full moon shed light on Vagabond’s decks and allowed Neil to see the outline of Jeanne’s face and body. She was very still, her teacup held in her lap. The afternoon squalls had dampened the seas, and for a change, Vagabond wasn’t pounding but rolling gently through the water.

“I suppose, ultimately, it has to be South America, doesn’t it?” she went on. “Some place untouched, where the… infrastructure of civilization is still solid.”

Neil sipped at his tea. He’d heard a report that half a dozen South American countries had set up internment camps for American refugees. The threat of the mysterious plaguelike disease that was spreading from the western U.S. was increasing their fear and resentment of Americans.

“Yes, I guess it will,” he said, without elaborating.

“That was a strange time we had that other night, wasn’t it?” she asked unexpectedly in her low, intense voice. Neil suddenly realized that Jim, at the helm, eight feet away, and Lisa were both within earshot. “That other night” in the side cockpit had been… my God, almost a week before.

“It was more than that,” Neil answered.

For a half-minute, as Neil stared at Jeanne’s indistinct face, neither of them spoke.

“There aren’t any rules anymore, are there?” she said after a while. “We have to create our own.”

“There are rules,” Neil said. “Blowing up the world didn’t get rid of them.”

“I mean… some of the old ones can’t be applied anymore.”

Like what? Neil wondered. Like widows and a period of mourning? Love leading to marriage? Love leading to bed?

“Like what?” he asked. He noticed Lisa coming in from the port cockpit to talk to Jim.

“The old rule that you could go to bed with a man for enjoyment,” Jeanne said in a low voice.

Startled, he waited for her to go on. It wasn’t an old rule he had expected her to come up with.

“In the new world,” she continued softly, glancing toward the wheel, where Jim and Lisa were also talking in low voices. “In our new world, in this small world of Vagabond, that rule won’t work. My sleeping with… a man would transform our universe.”

“Yes, it would,” Neil said.

“Frank wants me to sleep with him,” she announced,

“I see,” he said in a voice so low he wasn’t sure she could hear it. Then, louder: “Rather popular, aren’t you?”

For a moment the only sound was of the water rushing past Vagabond’s three hulls. In the darkness Jeanne was only a vague silhouette.

“…Neil…”

The sound of anguish in her soft voice made Neil move to the edge of his seat, and leaning toward her he started to speak, but knew that even whispers would be heard by Jim and Lisa. He slowly lifted his right hand in the darkness to touch her unseen face. When it reached her cheek, she held it against her face with both hands, turning to kiss his palm.

“I see,” Neil said in a normal voice.

“I hope you see,” she answered in a low voice, but still loud enough that Jim and Lisa could hear.

“What I see,” said Neil slowly, caressing her face with his hand, and fully aware of the absurdity of the conversation, “is that you are still temporarily insane. Am I correct?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“And you see that I am still temporarily insane. Correct?”

“Yes. I hope so. Yes.”

“And now you’re telling me,” he went on in a low voice, barely able to contain his joy and laughter, “that Frank has become temporarily insane too. Is that right?”

“Yes.” She giggled softly.

“How about Jim? Is he insane?”

She laughed again.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Well, I think so,” said Jim suddenly from the wheel. “I can’t tell what you two are talking about. You sound nuts. ”

“Mother, you are being silly,” Lisa added with a childlike primness that Jeanne thought she’d lost since the war began.

As Neil and Jeanne stopped laughing Neil could feel Jeanne tense, her hands still gripping his.

“Oh, Lisa,” she said, “you missed it all. We’re joking about the insanity of trying to create a new world in South America, but that’s where all of us—Frank, too—think we have to end up.”

“Not me,” said Jim. “I think we should head for the South Pacific.”

“See,” said Neil, grinning in the darkness. “You were right, Jeanne. Jim at least is still sane.”

“Thank God,” said Jeanne.

“Right,” said Neil.

“Around Cape Horn,” said Jim, and Neil and Jeanne’s laughter burst into the wheelhouse again, Jim and Lisa turning to stare at them in slight bewilderment.

“Christ, how do you expect me to sleep?” Frank’s voice cut into Neil’s giddy world like an executioner’s sword.

Pulling away from Jeanne, he turned to see Frank’s gaunt body outlined in the entrance way behind him.

“I’m sorry, Frank,” Neil said quickly. “We got a little silly, I guess.”

“You sure as hell did,” Frank said, still looming in the entrance ten feet away. “You sounded like a couple of loonies out here.”

Jeanne stood up.

“It was thoughtless of us,” she said. “Forgive us, Frank.” She walked over to him and put her arms around him. Neil saw him respond stiffly at first and then put his arms around her and lower his head to rest on hers.

“You make it kind of tough to hold a grudge,” he said.

“I hope so,” she said softly.

“What were you doing, anyway?” he asked.

There was a brief silence.

“Flirting with Neil,” she answered. “I’m trying to get out of even-day garbage detail.”

“Try flirting with me,” Frank said. “I own the damn boat.”

Jeanne stretched up and kissed Frank on the cheek.

“Good night again,” she whispered and moved off toward her cabin.

“You might pay a little attention to the boat,” Frank said to Neil. “Every now and then, for appearances.”

“I pay attention to this boat every second of every day and you know it,” he snapped back.

Jeanne had stopped at her cabin entrance, and Jim and Lisa, who had withdrawn from all this, were still standing at the wheel.

“Yeah,” said Frank after a strained silence. “I guess you’re right. I’m sorry, Neil.”

Neil waited a moment before responding.

“Don’t worry about it,” Neil said. “I’m sorry about the noise.”

“Yeah. Good night. Good night, Jim. You, too, Lisa.”

Frank moved away again to his cabin, sliding his hatch closed behind him. Neil walked over to where Jeanne was still standing at her cabin entranceway.

“I’m sorry,” he said to her softly.

She looked up at him in the darkness and then away.

“I… think I love you, Neil,” she said in a low voice. “But it’s no good. We’re a family. Our… love would be… a kind of incest.”

“You’re not my sister,” he replied almost sharply.

“Ahh, but I am,” she said softly, looking up at him. “Don’t you see, you and Frank are brothers, and Frank and I are brother and sister, so you… we’re all too close, Neil.”

“I see that Frank would be hurt if we made love,” he said after a pause. “And I don’t want to hurt him. But he’ll be hurt by our love whether we… act on it or not,”

She turned away her face, barely visible in the dark, and glanced toward Jim and Lisa.

“In this world… in our new world, no one must be alone,” she said.

“Does that mean no two can ever be together?” he asked, pulling her gently against him.

She turned to look at him, then again turned away.

“Oh, Neil, I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’ve got to get things right with Frank. You must see that.”

Neil stared down at her barely visible face.

“I’m not sure that’s possible, Jeanne,” he suggested quietly.

When he tried to lift her head to look at her she pressed her face against his shoulder, refusing to budge. He could feel the wetness of tears on his bare shoulder. He held her, stroking her hair against her back; his smile faded, and he suddenly had a clear image of himself on a ship racing through the night away from a universe of death to the north. A second image, of Frank angrily looming up in the wheelhouse entrance, returned to him, and he felt a great sadness.

“It’s no use, Neil,” Jeanne finally whispered. “We’re not free.”

In the wheelhouse after Neil and Jeanne had gone off to their separate cabins Jim and Lisa carried on with the task of keeping Vagabond on course. For many minutes neither of them spoke. Lisa left Jim to check on the trolling rig and spent two minutes reeling in the lure to look for seaweed. She cleaned off the lure and let it back out again, adjusting the drag. When she returned to Jim at the helm, they were both silent. They didn’t touch each other.

A muffled sobbing from Jeanne’s cabin cut through the silence, and both of them stiffened. After another minute in which every groan of a line stretching, every slap of a halyard, rustle of a sail, whine of wind in the rigging, seemed for a brief second to be the sound of a woman moaning, Jim finally spoke:

“Are you all right, Lisa?” he asked quietly, touching her briefly on her shoulder, then letting his arm fall.

“It’s so sad,” she said in a small voice.

“It’s hard on my father too,” Jim replied. “He…”

“I know,” she said.

“Everyone seems so alone,” said Jim. “It makes me feel lonely.” He had to put both hands on the wheel as Vagabond slid off the face of a swell.

Lisa took his arm and hugged it, then put her arms around his waist and pressed her head against his shoulder.

“Don’t feel lonely, Jim,” she said. “Don’t ever feel lonely.”

Jim released one hand from the wheel to put his arm around her. Still facing forward, he hugged her to him. He was grinning.

“Hey,” he said, looking down at her until she raised her head to return his gaze. “I wish I could kiss you.”

“Why can’t you?” she replied, looking up at him seriously.

“I thought you wanted us to be the best watch team Neil has?” Jim asked.

“I do,” she said. “But a good helmsman should be able to steer and kiss too.”

Joyously Jim bent and kissed her, Vagabond almost immediately racing slightly off course, and after fifteen seconds she slammed into a wave with a boom and shudder, effectively interrupting their embrace.

As Jim wrestled the wheel with both hands to get Vagabond back on course Lisa clung to him, her head buried against his chest.

“I love you, Jim,” Lisa whispered. “Please love me, please love me.”

Jim squeezed her against him, his heart pounding, his eyes facing forward but seeing nothing.

“I do,” he whispered down at her.

“And I want you to make love to me,” Lisa said. “Before we die, I want you to make love to me.”

“We’re not going to die,” Jim said.

“Yes, we are,” Lisa said. “Oh, Jim, hold me, hold me. You’re the only solid thing left in the world—”

Jim hugged her to him with his left arm and held Vagabond roughly on course with his right.

“Make love to me, Jim,” Lisa whispered hoarsely. “I so much want us to make love.”

“We will,” he said. “We will.”

“We’re so alone…”

Frank lay on his berth, staring up at the white overhead, where the reflection of sunlight off the water danced like cold white fire. He’d gone to sleep about a half-hour after coming off watch at six that morning, and he figured it must be getting close to noon.

He didn’t feel rested. He felt bone-tired. There was a dull ache in his lower back that had been bothering him off and on for the last several days. His belly ached. An occasional wave of nausea swept over him like a pestilential fog. He wanted the voyage to be over. He loved Vagabond and was completely at home on her, but his ship, like the rest of life, was slipping out of his control. As long as he had owned her—three years now—he had loved her partly because she was his, his creation and his to control. Now she was no longer his. She belonged to… to everyone who needed her. If he didn’t like to see Skippy’s comic books lying around, or Jim taking over half his cabin or playing his guitar up on the foredeck, or Neil always sitting or standing around in the wheelhouse as if it were his personal command post, he was no longer free to say so. It was their boat too. If he tried to have everything run to please him, everyone else would be miserable. So instead he had to be miserable.

Vagabond was getting junky. No matter how often he and Neil spoke about it, no one ever seemed to clean the blood and fishscales from the side cockpits, ever remembered to pick up the lures and leaders and line that always seemed to be lying around. The wheelhouse was always cluttered with comic books, towels, paper cups, books, bits of food, or somebody’s shirt or socks. Bullet holes in the Plexiglas. The aft wall now a sail. The blankets and sheets were starting to stink. Jeanne and Katya kept the galley and dinette in good shape when they were around, but at other times Olly, Tony, and Jim left little messes. Neil and Macklin were neat, he supposed, but Neil didn’t seem to be trying to control the others.

And he hated the way Neil made all the decisions without even the pretense of consulting him. He felt like a passenger on his own boat. He knew he didn’t have Neil’s experience or instincts, but he knew his boat, had handled her more than Neil had, and resented being shunted aside. He felt he had the right at any time to override any of Neil’s decisions, but hadn’t yet found the issue that was right for reasserting his control. Neil didn’t even seem to be aware of the ways he was ignoring his skills, advice, and rights as owner.

And Neil seemed to be starting to flirt with Jeanne. Jeanne. There was the fucking rub. Frank wanted her closeness, needed her closeness to protect him from the shocks that were coming at him from all directions, felt that she needed his closeness and comfort, but suddenly, out of nowhere, there was Neil. He himself had known Jeannie since before Skippy’s birth, and in the past few years had become damn fond of her. It wasn’t so much sexual attraction, except on occasion, just a strong feeling of warmth, affection, longing even, that he found hard to express to her, but which he felt she sensed. Shit, maybe he was in love with her and had been for a couple of years.

And now Bob was dead, and he needed her, and suddenly there was Neil. It wasn’t fair. He rolled from his back onto his stomach and wrestled angrily with the pillow.

When he’d finally told Jeannie of his feelings two nights before, he’d felt subtly rejected. She’d admitted that she’d sensed his affection and appreciated it, and said she had admired him over the last year for not creating conflict for her by approaching her overtly and forcing her to respond. She seemed to think it was okay now for him to express his feelings, but,wasn’t at all sure about herself. Events had moved so fast that she didn’t think she could depend on any of her emotional responses. But now he wondered if it was all just bullshit to cover up the fact that she was turned on by Neil.

“Turned on”. Jesus, that phrase made him sick. His feelings for Jeanne went far beyond just being turned on. So Neil was younger and had muscles like a gymnast and always stood around looking like Patton in his underwear: what kind of a relationship could you have based on that?

But what could he do about it? What could he do about anything? Vagabond hissed and plunged forward as if she were an independent creature fleeing for herself southward through the sea, he and Neil her obedient servants. Would Puerto Rico solve his problems? Neil’s getting pressganged back into the Navy would certainly solve one problem… but even the idea of Neil’s leaving saddened him. Although Neil had become self-absorbed lately, normally he was the only one he’d ever sailed with who appreciated Vagabond the way he did, could communicate with a glance what a blast it was sizzling along at thirteen knots or swinging at anchor in a squall…

But even sailing these last few days didn’t inspire him with enthusiasm. Nothing did. A part of him felt he was dying and he needed someone to talk to, but she always seemed too busy. He felt lonely and alone, his two best people, Jeanne and Neil, beginning to sail away from him on a different tack. He wanted to alter course, stay with them, but in the nightmare world he was inhabiting he couldn’t find the sheets or, finding them, had no sense of whether they should be pulled in or eased. Rudderless, his life raced through the night and he, its captain, no longer knew his position or his course. He was lost. And his fucking back ached. And he wanted to puke. And it was noon: his and Tony’s watch again.

The nice thing about Neil’s insisting on a tight, rigidly maintained watch schedule was that every six or eight hours it forced you to stop thinking and act. Frank pushed himself heavily up off the berth and lowered his feet to the floor. Action. Action. Slowly, painfully, he began putting on his boat shoes.

That night in the forepeak Jim and Lisa finally found the place and time to make love. Olly and Macklin were on watch, and Tony, who also had a berth forward, was talking with Katya up in the wheelhouse. The others were asleep in their cabins. For Jim and Lisa it was the only place they could find to be alone.

The motion of Vagabond into and over the swells alternately accented and interfered with the motions of their lovemaking in ways that made Jim and Lisa giggle. Everything—even their awkwardness—was a delight. The few couplings Jim had known, burdened with the pressure of performance and the absence of love, hadn’t prepared him for the unexpected joy of being with Lisa, who, inexpert, shy, and passive, made him feel that his every touch was a miracle of perfection. When he first entered her it had been painful for her; his first climax a disappointingly minor event, soon forgotten in the midst of rising pleasure and the excitement of the continuing play of their hands and lips and words. They were naked and sweating, suppressing their noises and giggles, and enraptured with the discovery of so much happiness. When Jim had climaxed a second time, they lay side by side facing each other, grinning, laughing, trying halfheartedly to raise their conversation above the level of the idiotic.

“You did too squeal,” Lisa insisted. “And it was nice.”

Jim shook his head, smiling. “I didn’t hear a thing.”

“Do I make noises?” Lisa asked.

“I was too busy to notice.” Again they laughed, until a noise behind the curtain reminded them that they were only a few feet from the main cabin. They lay quietly, staring at each other, listening. They heard Tony swear and Katya laugh.

“Do you think they might come in here?” Lisa asked.

Jim grimaced and nodded. “They might,” he said.

“Should we let people know?” Lisa asked. “You know, about… what we’re doing?”

“No,” said Jim. “Our parents have enough to worry about without—”

“I know,” said Lisa. “After Frank and mom had that long talk after dinner tonight, I found her crying in her cabin.”

“Really? I don’t understand what’s happening with them all, do you?”

“I think—”

Katya abruptly ducked underneath the curtain and poked her head up only a few feet away.

“Oh!” Katya said. “Hey, I’m sorry. I must have the wrong room.” She laughed briefly and just as quickly stooped down to disappear behind the curtain.

As they heard Katya and Tony begin arguing, Jim grabbed his swimming trunks and pulled them on, and Lisa scrambled for her shorts and blouse.

“What is this?” Tony said, suddenly pushing past the curtain. “Neil gives me the worst berth on the boat and even then it’s not mine.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jim, whispering. “Would you please keep your voice down?”

“I can’t even talk in my own cabin?” said Tony.

“Oh, shut up,” Katya whispered from behind him. “Leave them alone.”

“We’re leaving,” said Jim. “And I’m sorry we… used your bed.”

“It’s not mine, it’s Conrad’s,” said Tony. “But it’s the principle of the thing.”

“Tony, you’ve got as many principles as an eel,” said Katya.

“Come on, Lisa,” said Jim.

“Do your parents know you’re screwing?” Tony asked.

“Not yet,” said Jim. “And I’d like it if they didn’t.”

“Sure,” said Tony. “I dig it. I don’t imagine your dad would be too hot about your fucking with Jeanne’s baby. Hey, you know, it’s statutory rape! How about that?!”

“Go,” said Katya to Jim and Lisa. “Tony, you’re an ass.”

“Statutory rape. Army desertion. I’m witnessing all sorts of crimes.”

“You witness a crime every time you look in a mirror,” said Katya. “Good-bye, kids. I’m glad you’re lovers.”

Jim and Lisa left, the shame and uncertainty that Tony had stirred not dispelled by Katya’s blessing. They stopped for a drink of water in the galley and then soberly climbed the steps to the wheelhouse.

Olly was snoring on a settee while Macklin stood at the wheel, the light of a cigarette casting a brief reddish glimmer on his face. Jim was aware that Macklin had been ordered not to use up any of the cigarettes, and he automatically stopped and looked closely at him.

Macklin didn’t speak, simply returning Jim’s gaze, then looking at Lisa, then back at Jim. Lisa left to go to her cabin with Jeanne. Macklin exhaled a cloud of smoke toward Jim, but the rush of air from the port entranceway blew it aft.

“Have a good time?” Macklin asked.

Jim returned his stare a moment longer and then walked past him and out of the wheelhouse toward his own starboard cabin. His futile rage at Tony and Macklin had him trembling.

Down in the cabin Frank was awake, staring at the ceiling.

“Where you been, Jim?” he asked.

Jim went to the little sink to wash the sweat off his face.

“With Lisa,” he answered after a moment. “Talking…”

His father didn’t say anything for a while. Jim wiped off his face and chest; the salt water still left him sticky.

“I’m glad, Jim,” Frank said. “I mean you and Lisa getting together. Being friends. It’s good.”

Jim, his back to his father, felt a wave of emotion flood him— gratitude to his father, love for Lisa, sympathy for his father’s troubles.

“Thanks, dad,” he said, wiping his face and chest.

“You know,” said Frank, still invisible on his berth, “Jeanne and Lisa and Skip are really part of our family now. We’ve got to take care of them… take care of them just as we would… your mother and Susan.”

In the darkness Jim put the washcloth and towel down on the sink and went to his narrow berth forward of Frank’s.

“They… they’re good people,” Jim said as he climbed up onto the foam mattress.

“They’re family,” said Frank. “Lisa’s your sister.”

Jim pulled the sheet up over his damp, sticky body and pulled off his swim trunks. He felt a chill when his father referred to Lisa as his sister, fearful that Frank was thinking in terms of his relationship with Jeanne and not seeing Lisa as separate, as… a woman.

“Good night, Dad,” he said.

“All of us…” Frank seemed to be saying softly, but Jim didn’t know what he meant, and in another minute he could hear the heavy rasp of his father’s breathing as he slept.

Lying in her berth beside Katya the next morning, Jeanne thought about Neil and about Skippy’s not eating enough and of how gaunt Frank was beginning to look, and about Neil’s thighs and Skippy’s fascination with fish guts, and about Lisa and Jim, and about the planet withering with the plagues unleashed by the war, and about how tired she was of dealing with it all, and about Neil. At times their voyage seemed hopeless; at others selfish and narcissistic. Part of her felt that she ought to be suffering and dying on the mainland with the rest of the world, not falling in love. She wanted to be a nun ministering to the suffering victims of war; she wanted to be naked in Neil’s arms. She wanted to devote her life to bringing up her children so that the world they created would be free of the evil that her generation had unleashed. But she wanted a house, a big double bed, with a supermarket and restaurant next door. She wanted Frank to stop loving her and Neil never to stop. She wanted the world to stop surprising her with its ability to kill people; she wanted to die. No, she wanted to live, to live, to live.

She slipped abruptly out of her berth, and though it was still forty minutes before she was due to feed the two watch teams, she began to dress.

“Hey, what’s the problem?” Katya asked her unexpectedly. “You’ve been tossing and turning as if you were trying to solve the whole world’s problems in one long think.” Resting on one elbow, Katya was looking sleepy-eyed at Jeanne, who stood a few feet away, buttoning her blouse. Katya spoke in a low voice so as not to disturb Lisa and Skip, who were still asleep in the adjoining berth. At five the light was just gathering in the east.

“Restless,” Jeanne answered.

“Men do have that effect, don’t they?” Katya remarked, not accepting the evasive answer. Jeanne stared back but didn’t reply. “Frank and Neil are both coming on to you,” Katya went on, “and you’re interested in Neil. What’s the problem?”

Jeanne leaned down to put on her boat shoes. Although she liked Katya, she was not used to confiding in another woman, especially one she barely knew.

“I don’t think my emotional problems are worth talking about,” she finally said in a low voice.

“They’re worth talking about if you plan keeping me awake every night thinking about them,” Katya replied. “Hey, come on, I’m exactly the person you should talk to.”

Jeanne walked softly to the forward part of the cabin to check that Lisa and Skip were asleep. When she got back, a gentle swell rolled under Vagabond, making her three hulls tip, slide, and roll with a queasy sideways motion that always made Jeanne feel a mild dizziness.

“Have you slept with Neil?” Katya asked after the silence continued.

Unused to such bluntness, Jeanne did not even turn around to face her.

“If you’d like me to vacate this berth and take Skip off your hands today so you and Neil can be alone, I will,” Katya said. “I mean getting it on with a lover on this boat is going to involve a major logistical effort. It’s worse than a girl’s dorm.”

Jeanne turned back to Katya.

“You… and Tony?” she asked.

“Oh, me and Tony are the types that could make it in Grand Central Station… if that’s what I wanted,” Katya replied, smiling sleepily. She sat up and stretched, the sheet sliding off and revealing her small breasts with their long nipples.

Jeanne looked away. “It’s not a problem of privacy,” she said softly.

“Well, tell me what it is,” Katya said. “I promise to give you bad advice, which you can ignore. It’s the telling that will help.”

Jeanne glanced again at her sleeping children and finally, with a rush, began talking.

“Oh, Katya, I love Neil, but it’s no use. It can never work out. It’s so mixed up. I’m fond of Frank too. We’re all a family now, and I can’t do anything that’s going to make Frank bitter and divide us. I just can’t do it.”

Katya, now sitting up. and leaning back against the partition between her berth and Lisa and Skip’s, was brushing out her curly ash-blond hair. When Jeanne stopped talking, Katya frowned.

“So don’t sleep with either of them,” Katya concluded, looking puzzled. “Most men survive. Or they find someone else they can bury their sorrow, and other parts of their anatomy, in.” She looked at Jeanne questioningly.

Jeanne was depressed by this advice. It was excellent advice, but had the flaw of asking her to stay away from Neil.

“Or sleep with both of them,” Katya went on, watching Jeanne carefully.

“No, I can’t do that,” Jeanne said simply.

Katya swung herself out of bed to begin dressing. As she reached into a cubby to get her shorts, she suddenly became irritated.

“You think too much, Jeanne,” Katya said. “If you and a man love each other, that’s it, that’s first. The rest of the world doesn’t count. Family doesn’t count. A woman friend doesn’t count. Grab it.”

She stepped into her shorts, then grabbed a yellow T-shirt and pulled it over her head, shaking her hair and brushing it down when her head emerged.

“Everyone else does,” she added and, with Jeanne staring after her, she climbed the hatchway steps, slid back the hatch, and was gone.

According to Neil’s noon sunshots, Vagabond was now about fifty miles north of the reef and cays off the northeast coast of Great Abaco Island. Sailing at about seven knots, Vagabond might come within sight of land a little before sunset.

The thought gave Neil little satisfaction. He found himself approaching this landfall warily. He and Frank had already argued that morning about whether it was absolutely necessary to take on additional food and water before sailing on for Puerto Rico. Frank was concerned about cutting their rations in half for up to two weeks, while Neil felt that starvation was not their primary danger. The Bahamian government had announced that it was impounding any foreign vessel that landed in Bahamian waters without first clearing customs at Freeport or Nassau. All weapons aboard any ship were being confiscated. The rash of piracies that were infesting Bahamian waters could be stopped only by the rigid enforcement of these rules. All food was strictly rationed by the authorities. Foreigners unable to pay with gold, silver, or barter for their food were being forced to join labor gangs or—those who had them—give up their boats as exchange.

If the wind direction had not made a landfall on Great Abaco Island their most logical choice, Neil would have preferred to stay out at sea, away from the dangers he foresaw in closing with the land. The sun was shining brightly, the sky a deep blue, and the sea sparkled with small whitecaps from the twelve-knot breeze still blowing out of the east southeast. Frank, at the helm, was pinching Vagabond a bit east of south, because when they came to the reef they would have to proceed southeast alongside it until they decided if, where, and when to take Vagabond into land.

It was a little before the changing of the watch at two o’clock that Jeanne spotted a ship with the binoculars. At first this was all she could be sure of. Ten minutes later she and Neil, trading off the large pair of binoculars, had determined that it was a sailboat heading north, but without any sails up. A minute later, when the sailboat altered its course to the west, Neil thought that it, like the only other sailing vessel they had seen on their trip south, was starting to flee from them. Then he realized differently.

“What is it?” asked Jeanne.

“It’s a drifting sailboat,” he replied, handing back the glasses. “Probably abandoned, a derelict.” As she began studying the mysterious ship, Neil walked out into the port cockpit where Frank and Tony were looking through the smaller glasses.

“Alter course,” Neil said to Tony at the helm, “We’re going to take a look.”

“What the hell for?” Tony asked.

“There may be survivors,” Neil replied. “If not, there may be supplies we can salvage.”

“Anybody still alive on that boat we can do without,” Tony commented. “This close to land the ship’s probably been sacked already.”

“We’re going over,” Neil said.

Within a half-hour Vagabond had come to within a hundred yards of the derelict. The ship’s white paint was blistered and peeling, fragments of the mainsail lay loosely along the boom, and a halyard was slack and swinging idly back and forth with the rocking of the boat. There was no sign of life.

“Ahoy, Windsong!” Neil shouted as Tony brought Vagabond so close to the wind that all three sails luffed and she was almost dead in the water ten yards away from the forty-foot ketch.

“Hit the horn,” Neil said to Tony, who gave one loud blast from the air horn on the control panel shelf.

“Are you going to board?” Frank asked Neil.

Just then a figure emerged from the cabin into the ship’s cockpit. Crouched and blinking in the bright light, a small, unshaven man in his forties wearing only a bathing suit stared at them.

Neil and the others stared back, stunned.

“Can we assist you?” Neil asked loudly after the shocked silence.

“Water,” the man said hoarsely. He was hollow-eyed. “Water,” he repeated more loudly.

As Jim ducked below to get some of their precious water and the man peered down into his own cabin, Frank came up to Neil.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Take him off,” Neil answered, staring glumly at the stricken Windsong. “Back her off a bit,” he added to Tony, “then bring her up to the port side. Get the fenders.”

“There must be others aboard,” Jim said, returning with the water. “He can’t be alone.”

“The guy’s practically dead,” Tony said, easing Vagabond alongside Windsong. Neil and Frank moored the two boats side by side, with the fenders cushioning their impact.

“Do you want to abandon ship?” Neil asked. “We can take you aboard.”

The man, the bones of his ribcage protruding grotesquely beneath the skin of his emaciated body, lowered his head and stared at the water.

“We’re all dying,” he answered. “I don’t know.”

“Radiation sickness isn’t necessarily fatal,” Neil said. “You may recover.”

The man looked back up at Neil. “I know,” he said. “That’s what’s hell. But my wife and daughter… are almost dead. They’ll never make it.”

Jim handed a plastic jug of water across to the man who, with sudden agility, grabbed it and hugged it to his chest.

“Let me go below and… decide what we’ll do,” he said and made his way less nimbly down into the cabin of his boat. Neil, Frank, and Tony were left in the side cockpit waiting.

“What is this shit?” Macklin said, suddenly appearing beside them, looking sleepy, the hair on his chest glistening with sweat. “You bringing more people on board to raid our food and water?”

Neil didn’t reply.

“If they’re all dying,” Tony said, “it’ll just be a waste. You said yourself that prospects of finding food in the Bahamas don’t look good.”

“I know,” Neil said.

“What happened to your fucking principle of triage?” Macklin interjected.

Neil didn’t answer. The four of them stood silently in the gently rocking Vagabond, awaiting the reappearance of the dying man. What had happened to triage, thought Neil, was that at sea you didn’t abandon a fellow sailor.

The man emerged from the cabin.

“I’d appreciate it if you could take us off,” he said. When they stared at him, he finally added, “I’ll need help.”

“Mac,” said Neil, “get aboard and give the man a hand.”

“Go yourself,” Macklin said and stalked away.

“I’ll go,” said Frank. He boarded Windsong ahead of Jim but suddenly noticed along the combing and in the corners of the cockpit a fine gray ash. He first took it to be sand, but with a stab of fear realized it was radioactive debris. He clambered quickly on board Vagabond, pushing Jim back ahead of him.

“Jesus Christ,” he told Neil. “There’s fallout on deck.”

Neil looked and frowned.

“This is ridiculous,” said Tony. “Let’s get out of here.”

Neil hesitated again, then turned to Frank.

“I’ll get on board and help them off,” he said.

“I’ll help you,” said Jim.

“You stay here,” Frank said gloomily to Neil, grabbing his shoulder. “With your bum arm you’re the wrong man for the job.”

After Frank boarded Windsong, Jim quickly followed. Ducking below into the main cabin, Frank saw that there were two women lying under dirty sheets on opposite sides of the main saloon on what normally would have been settees. The cabin was a jumble of pails, towels, open cans of food, dirty dishes, clothing, blankets. The stench of sweat, urine, and excrement was stifling. The small hollow-eyed man stood apologetically next to his wife.

“They can’t walk, and I can’t lift them,” he said.

Frank pushed himself over to the older woman, bent over, and tried to force himself to smile. But when he saw the gray-faced, frozen apparition that was staring up at him, the “Hi” he had been about to speak froze in his throat. He gasped. Without any further efforts at sociability he leaned over and picked her up and headed back toward the gangway. The woman was almost dead. She was wearing nothing under the sheet, and the contact of his hands with her naked flesh after seeing death on her face horrified and disgusted him. He wanted to run up the stairs, but Jim appeared, on his way down.

“Bring the girl and get out quick,” he said sharply.

Teeth gritted, his face showing his fear and disgust, Frank climbed the cabin steps, went quickly over to Vagabond and, refusing Jeanne’s offer of assistance, thrust himself from one boat to the other.

“Where are you putting her?” Jeanne asked.

“Frank’s cabin, I’m afraid,” Neil interjected. “All three.”

Frank carried the woman below.

Jim had suffered the same sickening shock at the sight and smell of Windsong’s cabin as, with face averted, he gently slid his arms under the daughter and lifted her up. She was small and light. As he took her in his arms, he noticed that she turned her face away from him.

“Come on,” he said to the man and started back to Vagabond.

“Are there things we can salvage from Windsong? Neil asked Frank, who was coming out of his cabin after lifting the woman up on his double berth and instructing Jim to put the girl in beside her. Macklin stood nearby, glaring.

“No,” Frank snapped back. “Let’s get away now, fast.”

The skeleton of a man, standing slightly bent over in the starboard cockpit a few feet away, grimaced.

“We’ve got a few emergency rations that you can have,” he said. “It’s stored—”

“Let’s go!” Macklin said sharply to Neil. “That ship’s contaminated. Everything on it may be carrying death. Let’s go.” He brushed past the man and untied the aft line that kept Vagabond rafted to the other ship, and then hurried forward to get the other line. In just a few seconds Vagabond fell away, her sails filling, then surged forward and past the stricken Windsong.

The owner turned and looked at her as Vagabond steadily moved away, then the man moved slowly to the hatchway to go below.

Frank stepped trembling into the wheelhouse to stow the fenders Macklin was handing back to him.

“Take it easy, Frank,” Neil said.

“We’ve brought death aboard,” Frank said grimly.

Neil, staring forward past the little transistor radio that lay on the control panel shelf, was as tight-lipped as Frank.

“I know,” Neil replied. “But when was he not aboard?”

The presence of the three apparently doomed refugees upset Vagabond’s company. Having three dying people aboard was a disturbing reminder of their own danger and gave rise in some to a guilty resentment of the new burden of stricter rationing and more limited space. Frank now had to sleep in the wheelhouse, Jim aft with Neil. Frank found himself resenting mild Sam Brumburger as if he were a boorish guest who’d crashed a previously enjoyable party. He was naturally appalled by his resentment. He realized that if they had abandoned Sam and his family, he would have felt worse.

He was annoyed, too, with Jeanne for showing so much solicitude for the refugees; she seemed to spend the whole afternoon in endless trips down into the hellhole of his cabin to minister to their needs. None of the men had any appetite for that sort of thing, although Olly went down and spent an hour talking with Sam.

“Wife’s just about dead,” Olly said to Frank afterward. “The daughter’s not going to make it either. Sam thinks now he should have scuttled his ship.”

“Sam looks pretty bad too,” Frank commented.

“Yep. Tough way to go,” Captain Olly said. “Prefer a quick sinking myself.”

“Me too,” said Frank.

The rescue of the Brumburgers had cost them more than two hours, so that when the wind fell away to nothing at dusk they were still fifteen to twenty miles from land.

Sam Brumburger told his story after dinner that night.

Sam, his wife and daughter, and two male friends had set out from Miami to bring their boat north for the summer. On the night the war started the ship was shaken by a tremendous blast. With his two friends on watch, Sam was with his family below. He was thrown off the settee berth onto the floor. Recovering, he staggered up and hurried topside. Although there was a terrifying brightness to the southwest that lit up the night, he couldn’t at first see anything wrong. He called to his friends and got no reply. Then he saw one of them lying across a seat in the rear of the cockpit. His friend’s body was smoking. He had been literally burned to death.

The other friend had disappeared, presumably thrown overboard by the blast. His wife, sleeping in an upper berth forward, had been badly burned on the stomach and upper thighs. He and his daughter had escaped direct injury from the blast.

That morning, when fallout began to fall onto his deck, he got his engine going and motored to the northeast for eleven hours, skirting north of Grand Bahama Island until he ran out of fuel. Meanwhile, he, his wife, and his daughter had begun to vomit.

On the fourth day Sam spotted a fishing boat and fired a flare and the boat came over to investigate. It was a beat-up twenty-five-foot runabout with an outboard that was on its last gasp. There were two black Bahamian men aboard and one white man. They looked shocked at the sight of Sam and his boat and Sam’s wife. At first Sam was afraid they were just going to motor away. But they decided to stay. They locked Sam in the forepeak, looted Windsong, and took turns raping his daughter on the settee berth, three feet away from her dying mother. Since then Windsong had been drifting helplessly.

When Sam told his story, Frank found it strange to listen to a man who knew he was dying, accepted that he was dying, and who looked at everything with emotionless objectivity. His manner was also strangely apologetic, as if the needs of a man who was going to die were futile and irrelevant. Commenting on the war, Sam seemed to speak from some other world that he alone had moved into. “I never thought we could spend a trillion dollars on something without sooner or later demanding our money’s worth.”

Later that night, after everyone but Neil, Frank, and Jeanne had gone below, and Vagabond was wallowing in a dead calm, there was a strange scene. Jeanne had just returned from another visit to Frank’s cabin to clean up after one of the Brumburgers and had stopped, after washing out a towel in salt water, to take a look at Neil’s elbow. Frank was steering, and Jeanne sat beside Neil on the wheelhouse settee and adjusted the kerosene lantern to get a good look.

The swelling on Neil’s elbow had gone down considerably. He could move his lower arm about forty-five degrees without pain, although there was still redness over a three-square-inch area. They had not used antibiotics and were depending on Neil’s immune system to handle the infection by itself.

Neil tried to joke lightly with her about his arm and her ministrations, but she seemed solemn and withdrawn.

“You’re sure you want to keep trying to do without the sling?” she asked after they’d finished the examination and wrapped the elbow again with gauze.

“Yes. I think that’s the best way to put pressure on myself to use the arm more normally.”

“All right. But the infection’s still there.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Frank suddenly interjected. “Put some mercurochrome and a Band-Aid on it, and let him be. People dying all over the world and you’re worrying about Neil’s sore elbow.”

Jeanne looked up at Frank, who kept his back to them, and then glanced fearfully at Neil. She moved away from him and stood up.

“She also spent half the day with the Brumburgers,” Neil said to Frank’s back.

“At least they’re dying,” Frank shot back, half-turning. “Can’t you take care of yourself anymore?”

In the awkward silence that followed Jeanne gathered up the medicine kit and hung the lantern back from the roof.

“I promise either to heal myself or to go terminal as soon as possible,” Neil finally rejoined.

“And you, Jeanne,” Frank said, ignoring Neil’s remark and stopping her on her away down to the main cabin. “Don’t waste so much time with the Brumburgers. You’re got your own life to live.”

“I thought I was living it,” she replied coolly.

“You’re not,” Frank countered loudly. “You’re spending all your time with Lisa and Skippy and cleaning up vomit and mothering Neil and not a second on yourself.”

Neil saw Jeanne watching Frank closely, seeming to study him.

“I’m sorry, Frank,” she said. “I suppose I am compulsively doing things whether they need doing or not. I’ll try to relax.”

Frank stared at her, seeming as surprised as Neil by her abrupt acquiescence.

“Well…it’s just that I want you to be happy,” Frank finally said.

“I know,” she replied. Then she stepped down into the main cabin.

Later, after she’d gone over to her own cabin to sleep, Frank stopped Neil as he was headed for bed.

“That’s one incredible woman,” he said to Neil.

“Yes,” said Neil.

“If I don’t accomplish anything else in the rest of my life except see to it that she’s been taken care of, I think I’d be satisfied.”

Neil looked into Frank’s intent, confiding face and felt a distant stab of fear.

“She… she’s a fine woman,” he said.

“I hate to see her martyring herself,” Frank went on. “She’s working much too hard.”

“Maybe it’s better for her now than thinking,” Neil commented.

“Maybe,” Frank said and took a deep breath. “Jesus, what a world. Just when things were beginning to look good, we get three breathing corpses.”

“I know what you mean.”

“You think it’ll ever end?”

Neil looked into Frank’s face, less intent now and somewhat distracted, and without thinking answered simply, “No.”

And he went to bed.

At dawn the next day Sam came up from his cabin to report that his wife and daughter were dead. He made this announcement to Neil apologetically, as if he were confessing that he’d broken someone’s teacup. He and Neil discussed their deaths briefly and concluded that they should be immediately buried at sea. Land was visible four miles to the south, and Neil was worried about both pirates and Bahamian government boats.

By six thirty everyone except Jim and Katya, who were in their berths after an early morning at the helm, had finished a spare breakfast and was ready for the burial. Jeanne, concerned about the effect on Skippy of seeing bodies tossed casually into the ocean, asked Lisa to keep him occupied in the forepeak.

The adults gathered self-consciously in the cockpit outside Frank’s cabin and looked morosely at the covered bodies of the two women, which were stretched out along the cockpit seat. Jeanne had wrapped them together in a clean sheet, and Neil weighted the bodies with an old dinghy anchor.

Sam Brumburger was Jewish, but his wife was not, and he had told them he had no strong feelings about how she should be buried, only that he wanted to say the words over them before they were committed to the sea.

As he watched and listened Neil was struck by the grotesqueness of this funeral. Everyone, including Sam, was dressed in bathing suits or cutoffs or jeans and either bare-chested or wearing T-shirts. Vagabond was sailing along under cloudless blue skies through sparkling blue water. Only an unpleasant odor—either from the bodies or Frank’s cabin—reminded him of death.

Sam spoke again with that almost painful objectivity that his own death seemed to give him. He talked emotionlessly of the troubles he and his wife and daughter had had, their weaknesses, his, as if they were traditional parts of a eulogy. He was like an historian summing up a doomed civilization. Sam seemed to be not just burying his wife, but himself also. He was summing up before the Lord his being, offering it without apology.

“Human beings don’t plan to die,” he was saying. “They get picked up, incredulous and protesting, and leave the stage like a vaudevillian getting the hook. In some ways Ingrid and I’ve been lucky: we got to say our good-byes, sing our final song, and walk off the stage under our own power, knowing precisely where we were going.

“So, Lord, we commit Ingrid’s body to the sea. I thank you for her life. I thank you for her death.”

At first when Sam stopped speaking, Neil was not sure that he was really finished. Then he nodded at Frank, and Neil joined Frank in lifting up the shrouded bodies, first to the edge of the combing and then, with a quick thrust, into the sea.

Sam had stood with his head lowered as they did this, and he did not raise it to watch the bodies swirl astern, slowly sinking. Jeanne came up and gently embraced him, held him for five or six seconds, and then wordlessly went back into the wheelhouse. Neil, surprised by his mild revulsion at seeing Jeanne hugging the dying man, then went up and put his hand on Sam’s shoulder.

“That was fine, Sam,” he said, feeling awkwardly that he sounded as if Sam had just done a good job hauling anchor.

The others, too, after saying a brief word to Sam, moved onto the central part of the boat. It was Neil who, turning back to adjust the mainsheet, saw Sam Brumburger climbing up out of the cockpit. Neil saw him, one leg already over, straddling Vagabond’s combing, moving clumsily and weakly, knew what he was doing, knew he could stop him, but didn’t. As he watched, Sam pulled his other leg up onto the combing, looked down into the water rushing past, then pushed himself off into the sea.

“Hey!” Frank shouted from behind Neil and then rushed past into the cockpit.

Sam’s head bobbed up briefly in the wake of Vagabond’s starboard hull, then disappeared. Frank stared after him.

When Neil turned into the wheelhouse, he saw Captain Olly steering Vagabond as if nothing had happened.

“Good man, Sam,” Captain Olly said, staring forward. “Got himself a good death too.”

For Neil, Olly’s wisdom made only the smallest dent in the horror.

The low smudge of land lying on the horizon dead ahead grew slowly toward them through the hot, still morning. They had listened at eight to news of destruction and starvation throughout the world that made their recent losses and current privations seem insignificant, yet Neil sensed that his ship approached the land reluctantly, with more fear than hope. They’d had no rain and foresaw none through the next day anyway, and Neil felt they had to try to duck into an outer cay for water if the opportunity arose. Jim was reading a guide to the Bahamas, trying to determine which islands had fresh water and which didn’t, but the writers of the guide had never anticipated anyone’s wanting to get water on uninhabited islands when it was available at any port. Neil doubted that any of the small islands would have springs or wells. Any hope they’d had earlier of sailing into Hopetown or Marsh Harbor for supplies had been dashed by the government edict that all foreign vessels had to clear customs and surrender their weapons in Nassau or Freeport.

At eleven that morning they observed a small plane flying south. It circled low around Vagabond, which made Neil uneasy, and he called everyone together to discuss tactics for repelling pirate attacks. They had only three weapons, the 9mm pistol with four dozen bullets, Macklin’s .45 with two dozen bullets, and the .38 revolver with two bullets. They were “short on artillery,” as Olly had phrased it. They decided their flare gun could appear to be a fourth weapon. They talked about the possible ways they might be attacked, and Neil assigned them to various defensive positions with standing orders on how to respond in various contingencies.

By one o’clock they were only about a half-mile off from the ragged line where surf was breaking against the outer reef. They were sailing south-southeast along this barrier, and low islands were visible across the emerald lagoon beyond the reef. When they came within clear sight of an abandoned lighthouse, Neil was able to verify their landfall: they were off Man-of-War Cay. The next opening in the reef was six miles down and led into Marsh Harbor, the most populous town on Great Abaco. Neil knew that they had to land for food and water, but before he decided on whether to try to sneak in for supplies, or sail to Nassau, or bypass the Bahamas completely, he hoped to be able to talk to someone on one of the local boats.

An hour later the gloom that had accompanied the first hours of their fresh contact with land deepened when they sailed past the marked channel leading into Marsh Harbor. They could see the town and a few boats anchored in the cove and at the dock. They sailed past. They were outcasts.

After another mile Neil ordered Jeanne to bring them about to head offshore and avoid the reef. As soon as they had tacked, he noticed a launch speeding toward them from the Marsh Harbor inlet. Neil ordered them to take their prearranged defensive positions: Jeanne, Lisa, and Skippy below amidships with smoke flares, Neil standing in the aft cabin hatchway holding Macklin’s .45, Frank in the fore-peak hatch with the .38 revolver, Jim in the starboard cabin hatchway with the Navy 9mm pistol, and Tony in the port cabin hatchway with the flare gun. Captain Olly was with Katya at the helm. They all kept their meager weapons momentarily out of sight, their intent being to create the illusion of having four heavily armed men on guard at four widely separated points.

Neil, standing on the second step of his cabin, with his head and shoulders sticking out above the cabin opening, clutching the .45 in his right hand, watched the launch approaching them from the left. It had a machine gun mounted on the foredeck, manned by two black men. As the launch slowed down he saw in the cockpit two additional black men, one studying Vagabond through binoculars. When the launch swung up behind them, Neil saw that the second man in the cockpit, who was wearing white shorts and shirt in contrast to the khakis and jeans of the others, smile a big, white-toothed smile at Vagabond. Neil had the momentary absurd idea that he was about to shout, “Welcome to the Bahamas!”

Instead the launch pulled up broadside to Vagabond, holding off about thirty feet. For perhaps fifteen seconds the men on the two” ships contemplated each other, their two vessels slicing serenely through the water, side by side, at five knots. Captain Olly broke the silence.

“Hi, there, fellas,” he shouted amiably. “How they hanging?”

As far as Neil could tell, the launch was manned only by the four black men already visible, all of whom looked back at Captain Olly blankly.

“We need some food and water,” Captain Olly went on. “You fellas know where we can get some?”

“Where you headed, mon?” the officer, whom Neil had seen grinning, shouted back.

“Puerto Rico,” Captain Olly replied. “Where you fellas headed?”

“You have permit for Bahamian waters?” the officer asked.

“Shit, no,” Captain Olly replied. “We’re heading for Puerto Rico.”

“No weapons permitted in Bahamian waters,” the officer shouted. “You have weapons aboard?”

“No weapons,” Captain Olly replied, heading Vagabond into the wind and slowing her up some.

“We will board you then for routine inspection,” said the officer, grinning.

“You try to board us,” Captain Olly replied in the same easygoing tone, “and we’ll blast you all to kingdom come.”

The white-toothed smile disappeared from the Bahamian’s face.

“We ain’t got no weapons,” Captain Olly shouted as the two vessels continued slicing through the water side by side. “So you don’t got to inspect us.” Olly grinned. “Course if you do try to board us, we’ll have to sink all four of you fellas.”

The officer turned to the shorter man at his side and they whispered together urgently. The two men with the machine gun were staring back looking for orders.

“What you have to pay for watah, mon?” the officer shouted.

“Got a good Johnson outboard,” Captain Olly replied. “Got some cigarettes.”

“You have gold? Silvah? Jewelry?”

“Maybe,” said Captain Olly. “You selling water?”

“We sell you fifteen gallons of watah,” the officer replied. “You pay in gold, silvah, or diamonds.”

“Can’t we sail in to one of these here little islands and get some water?”

“Not without permit,” the officer replied, grinning. “For permit you must go to Nassau and surrender all your weapons.”

“Need a permit for water, huh?” said Captain Olly. “Seems a little shitty to me.”

“You have gold? Silvah?”

Olly frowned and looked aft at Neil, who shook his head slightly in the negative.

“Not a drop, sonny,” Captain Olly said. “Got some fancy clothes, though, you fellas might like. You like fancy clothes? Also got a bottle of whiskey.”

“I think maybe we go trade, right, mon?” the tall officer said and flashed his smile.

“Right, sonny, but you tell those two fellas with the peashooter to point it forward, okay? I get indigestion staring at the open end of a barrel.”

After the two men manning the gun moved aft, the two boats eased in closer to each other, Captain Olly bringing Vagabond up into the wind. He instructed Jeanne to come up and help Katya prepare the fenders, the four other men maintaining their defensive positions.

When the two ships were secured, Olly went down into Frank’s cabin and brought back up two of his dress suits while Jeanne brought two packs of cigarettes and a half-full whiskey bottle from the main cabin. After the goods were spread out on the cockpit seat, negotiations began. The launch crew had brought up on their deck five three-gallon containers of water. While the grinning officer came aboard to finger the material of Frank’s suits and hold them up to his body to check the size, Captain Olly dipped a finger into each of the water jugs to see that they were fresh and potable. They all tasted heavily chlorinated but drinkable. Olly grimaced each time he sampled the water.

“Worst water I ever tasted, sonny,” he said to the Bahamian officer. “This horse piss or what?”

The black man just grinned.

“Two suits, whiskey, and cigarettes for nine gallon watah,” he said.

“No sale,” Captain Olly replied. “I’ll give you that blue suit there for all fifteen gallons, including the jugs.”

The black officer laughed and slapped his brown bare thigh below his clean white shorts.

“You crazy, mon,” he said, glancing at Katya with a grin. “Watah is gold. This suit’s just pretty shit. No way it’s gold.”

“Take it or leave it, fella. We got to get on to Puerto Rico.”

The black man glared.

“I sell you good watah, mon. You pay me whiskey, cigarettes, and suits. You want me arrest you?”

“Now, now, fella,” said Captain Olly, his wrinkled face breaking into its toothless grin. “I got an army of sharpshooters in all four cabins. Unless that there peashooter can shoot in four directions at once you ain’t arresting nobody, least not on this boat.”

The black man still glared, puffing out his chest and breathing heavily. The other three men looked on from their cockpit indifferently. The officer’s eyes abruptly narrowed and he scrutinized Captain Olly carefully.

“I sell you fifteen gallons without the jugs, for this blue suit, the whiskey, and the cigarettes.”

“With the jugs.”

“With two jugs, mon. I cannot give you more.”

“Okay, fella, you got yourself a deal.”

Captain Olly grinned and stuck out his hand. The officer grinned back, and they shook hands heartily. The three men in the other boat began laughing and talking, the whole atmosphere abruptly changing. Olly asked Katya to bring up three empty plastic containers to transfer the water from the three jugs, and the Bahamian officer called one of his men over to admire his beautiful new suit. Both men took a slug of the whiskey and then handed the bottle over to the two blacks who were still aboard the launch.

“Well, now, tell me, cap,” said Captain Olly to the officer, after taking a slug of whiskey himself when it was offered to him. “Why’s your government so fussy ’bout our landing and getting a little water?”

“I don’t know, mon,” was the reply. “Too many you Yahnkees, s’pose.”

“But you got plenty of water here, don’t you?”

The man frowned.

“Watah, yes, mon, but not food. Ships want food and can’t pay for it. They take our women too. You bettah keep your guns, mon, or you won’t have your women.” He looked over at Jeanne and Katya and grinned.

“Your government have other boats southeast of here likely to bother us?” Captain Olly asked.

“Doan’ know, cap’n,” the officer answered. “But it’s not us you ’av to worry about, it’s pirates. South of here the pirates so thick you can walk across their decks all the rest way to Puerto Rico. You ought to get to Nassau quick, mon. Pirates stay clear of Nassau.”

“Who are the pirates?” Olly asked, frowning.

“Everybody, mon!” the officer shot back, grinning broadly. “Everybody who’s got a boat. ’S only way a mon can make an honest living.”

Olly frowned again.

“Well, thanks, cap,” he said, and stuck out his hand again to the Bahamian officer. “We ’preciate your help.”

“That’s all right, mon,” said the officer, shaking hands and then getting back onto his launch with the others. After putting his new suit down neatly on a seat, he turned and gave Olly a big grin. “Welcome to the Bahamas, mon!” he said loudly, spreading his arms out wide, one holding the whiskey bottle. “Right?”

And the two vessels parted.

As the Bahamian launch withdrew toward the entrance to Marsh Harbor, Neil emerged from his cabin, ostentatiously wielding his pistol. The others soon joined him in the starboard cockpit next to Olly at the wheel.

“Well,” Neil said. “We’ve just survived our first pirates.”

“Shall we go to Nassau?” Frank asked, shaking his head and pursing his lips in disgust.

“We can’t risk it, Frank,” Neil replied. “It’s still on to Puerto Rico.”

“With only twenty gallons of fresh water?” Frank said, startled.

“If we go to Nassau we’ll never get out. They’ll take our weapons, make us barter away our equipment for food, and all we’ll get is extra water and two hundred extra miles of fighting off pirates. It’s not worth it.”

“But who knows if it’s any better in the Virgins or Puerto Rico?” Tony asked, joining them.

“Puerto Rico’s a lot larger,” Neil answered, “and they’re both presumably more friendly to Americans.”

“Isn’t there a chance Puerto Rico will have gotten involved in the war?” Jeanne asked. “We’ve got naval and air bases there.”

“And we can sail to either of them from Nassau almost as easily as from here,” Frank added.

“Not if they’ve taken our weapons,” Neil shot back, tight-lipped. “We’d be sailing a thousand miles through a sea of pirates armed with Olly’s gaff and a boathook. I’d prefer to die of thirst.”

Frank shook his head and paced into the wheelhouse and then turned around and came back.

“In Puerto Rico you’d be a draft dodger and Jim a deserter,” he reminded Neil.

“In a war in which all the fighting will be over,” Neil replied, “I doubt that by the time we get there anyone will care.”

“But can we go on much longer with so little food and water?” Jim broke in. “You told me yesterday we’ve got enough dried fish and water left for only three more days.”

Neil frowned, frustrated at facing three unacceptable alternatives. “I suppose we could try sneaking into one of the out-of-the-way cays,” he mused aloud.

“And if they catch us without clearance, they confiscate the boat,” Frank said. “There’s no way we should try that.”

“Can’t we land on an island at night, get water, and get away before daybreak?” Jeanne suggested.

“All the cays are buffered by reefs,” Neil replied. “We can only get in and out during daylight, when we can see the shoals and find the channels.”

“And we’d be spotted during the day,” Frank added. “The Bahamians probably have air patrols as well as cutters.”

No one spoke. They seemed to have reached an impasse. Frank paced into the wheelhouse, this time sitting down when he got there. Jeanne looked at him and then at Neil, finally at Olly, who stared forward humming lightly to himself.

“We should keep going,” she said quietly. “God’s put us in the middle of the biggest supermarket in creation, and if we can’t learn to eat and drink what’s out here we don’t deserve to live.”

When she stopped speaking, Frank ran his two hands through his thinning gray hair and stood up. He stared absently at Neil.

“The West Indies,” he said almost to himself. “Jesus, I bet by the time we get there, we’ll decide we have to go to Brazil.” He smiled mournfully at Jeanne.

Neil moved for the first time since the discussion had begun. He lifted up one of the new water jugs.

“I think we might begin planning on it,” he said.

“Well, Mac,” said Tony a few hours later. He loomed over Conrad Macklin, who was sitting in the side cockpit at the trolling rig. “How do you feel about our captain’s latest decision? You going to enjoy starving to death?”

Macklin looked up at Tony neutrally, then idly tested the drag on the nylon line. “Yes, I am,” he answered quietly.

“You are?”

“I enjoy starving,” Macklin replied, which made Tony stare at him uncertainly. “Considering the alternatives.”

“I still think we should try to dock in here and try to get some food.”

“Be patient, Tony,” Macklin said, looking up at him and smiling. “The thing you don’t understand is that sometimes retreat and lying low are the best strategy. Our Loken’s no fool: he’s not afraid to do that.”

“Yeah?”

“Just like us, Tony,” said Macklin, still smiling. “Just like us.”

And so they sailed on, past the white-sand beaches and gleaming emerald water of the eastern Bahamian cays and out to sea to the east, having to make long tacks against the southeast wind while Neil wished it would shift, hoped he could guess which way it would shift, and sailing on, to either San Juan or the Virgin Islands, whichever the wind and the radio reports made a more feasible haven.

And a new intensity took hold of the voyage. After their first escape from the mainland a certain exhilaration and hopefulness had accompanied them southward. They had food and water, and though both were rationed, it was something of a game, merely “contingency planning.”

But now they had been turned away from a place they had seen as a source of supplies; now they had been sailing almost a week without a landfall, and the contingency was upon them. There was no way to buy additional food; no sure way to get water. For at least another week the ocean was the only store in business and the skies the only source of water. Now they would sail successfully to Puerto Rico or the Virgins within two weeks or perhaps die. Now the billowing white clouds that flowed lazily above them represented not beauty but potential rainfall; the color of a sunrise was watched for signs of an approaching low-pressure system that might mean rain or a shift from the tradewind pattern they were heading into.

Now fishing was as serious an undertaking as war, and when some huge fish snapped through the wire leader, took off with Jim’s best lure, and left them with only three, he was as pale and shaken as if he’d lost an important hill in battle. Now that they were out of the Gulf Stream, the fishing was much less dependable. In the first five days after picking up the Brumburgers they caught only two fish.

Now they began the monotonous, unpleasant, bone-jarring bashing to windward, straight into the seas that the tradewinds seemed to be building malevolently against them. Since it was his decision that they sail on past the Bahamas with insufficient food and water, Neil became obsessed with the struggle to sail Vagabond to windward as fast as possible. Although one of his basic sailing principles was never to criticize the wind, he found himself cursing quietly each time he awakened to find it still on their nose. He began to view the wind and waves as opponents he was fighting, an uncharacteristic attitude that he tried to check. When he observed Lisa’s thinness, Frank’s weakness, and recognized a certain lethargy in everyone’s movements—including his own—this filled him with a rage to drive Vagabond eastward to a safe landfall where they could rest and eat and replenish their depleted stores.

He searched out the boat for useless weight as he might have searched for spies. Overboard went the portable television set, overboard some rusted chain, overboard two dozen of the ship’s trashy novels, old magazines, half-finished cans of paint, some junk wood, and nine or ten heavy bolts that might have been useful for something, though Frank had no idea what that could have been.

They also discussed removing Vagabond’s diesel engine, both to lighten the boat and to create a private berth for Olly to ease the overcrowding. With Frank concurring, Neil decided that its future usefulness in a world mostly devoid of fuel didn’t match the burden of six hundred pounds extra weight. In a six-hour operation that involved all the men, Frank and Olly supervised the unbolting and winching up of the heavy engine. By the time they were done, they had had to use half a dozen jury-rigged pulleys hanging from the main boom, wheelhouse roof, and mizzenmast. When the engine, from which they had removed the alternator, finally rolled off the afterdeck into the sea, the men let loose a long cheer and, dirty and sweaty, appropriated a beer each as their reward. It was the first successful mutiny on Vagabond, and Neil, clutching his own bottle, accepted it with a smile. The trimaran gained an inch on her water-line aft, and her trim was now much better.

With the engine gone and no generator aboard, the batteries were unhooked from everything except the shortwave radio. Olly and Jim began trying to develop a man-powered generator out of the diesel alternator, but with three batteries aboard this project didn’t seem pressing.

However, after the camaraderie of removing the engine, the smashing to windward began to take its toll.

They all were being weakened by occasional seasickness and the scantiness of their diet. They were now primarily eating the fish steaks they had dried a week before. They opened one can of fruit a day— for ten people. They boiled or baked two potatoes a day. For liquids there was only occasional tea or powdered orange drink. Except for one six-pack they were saving for “an appropriate occasion,” the beer was gone. They drank water.

The tensions among them were building. Everyone needed more privacy than was available, and for some the small ship had become a claustrophobic trap. Tony exploded at Neil for assigning equal rations to everyone, arguing that a big man like him needed twice the food that Lisa and Skip needed. Neil replied that Tony still had twice the body fat and that until someone showed symptoms of malnutrition, the rations would remain the same. Both Tony and Macklin complained about sleeping in the forepeak, and Neil gave them permission to use his cabin or the dinette settee when either was free. Macklin complained continually of seasickness, but still somehow managed to eat his share of rations. Katya sometimes took his place as crew on Olly’s watch.

When Jeanne reported that a can of peaches was missing, Neil did nothing, but when she discovered that a small can of chicken spread had also disappeared, Neil laid down the law: if anyone was caught stealing food, he’d be put on half-rations and abandoned at the first landfall. Tony got angry again because Neil seemed to be directing his remarks primarily at him and Macklin. Neil said the rule applied to everyone.

Neil felt increasing irritation at such scenes, but he knew that if he could work things out with Frank and Jeanne, his other burdens would be more manageable. Although he and Frank treated each other with politeness, Frank’s jealousy remained fierce. By words and glances he showed his anger or disapproval of any intimacy between them while he himself showered Jeanne with attention—in the galley, helping with Skippy, inviting her to crew with him and Tony. Although Frank felt better than during the first ten days—he was now keeping food down and showing more energy—he still looked sick, and Neil couldn’t bring himself to do anything to hurt him.

But his relations with Jeanne, already sobered by the deaths of the Brumburgers and the bypassing of the Bahamas, and dampened by his obsession with getting Vagabond east to a safe landfall, were further restricted by Frank’s jealousy. Neil could feel a barrier going up between himself and Jeanne.

He wanted to be with her, touch her, speak gently to her, but somehow such opportunities never seemed to arise. The few times they’d managed to be alone had found Neil absorbed in some nautical problem and unprepared for intimacy: tongue-tied, abstracted.

The claustrophobic mood of the boat affected everyone. Jim and Lisa, depressed by the invasion of their privacy by Tony and the leers of Macklin, withdrew from the others on the boat, becoming an island unto themselves. Their love was obvious to everyone, and accepted, but they found it difficult to be alone. They resented the tensions between their parents and Neil, yet found themselves unable to break the knot of secrecy that they felt was oppressing them all.

Vagabond sailed on, the mood of her ship’s company heavy. The paltry meals, unvaried, sparsely seasoned; the stink of the fish steaks drying in the sun; the stiffness of clothes washed in salt water; the familiar grizzled faces and unkempt hair of one’s fellow crewmen day after day; the constant surge, sway, and smash of Vagabond; the constant hunger, and the suspicion that others were somehow eating more; the depressing reports from the outside world of war, disease, starvation, and violence spreading faster than they could escape them—all these oppressed them. Olly, who usually spent an hour every day telling stories to Skippy, now puffed violently on his unlit pipe. Katya and Tony were lovers, then fought bitterly, then were lovers again. Lisa and Jim, like two beings from some other planet, moved gingerly among them, doing their work, then retreating to Jim’s guitar, Lisa’s diary, long whispered conversations on the fore-deck. Neil, Frank, and Jeanne, caught in a tense tangle that couldn’t last, lived each day according to the rules of routine and decency, then each retired to loneliness.

They sailed on. The squalls that hit them four days after leaving Great Abaco eased the water problem. To gather water all the self-bailing cockpits were stoppered and even the inflatable dinghy was brought up on the foredeck and partially inflated to catch water. They gathered two and a half gallons in the first ten-minute downpour and close to six additional gallons in the two heavier showers that followed.

After the squalls the wind shifted to the south, the seas grew calmer, and Vagabond began a long tack directly toward San Juan. With the reduced weight of both man and material—the ship’s company had already shed almost a hundred pounds—Vagabond began to race toward San Juan at almost a hundred and eighty miles a day.

A week after they left the Bahamas, when they were less than eighty miles northwest of San Juan, the outer world, the one they were trying to escape, the one they were trying to rejoin, paid them another visit. It was after one a.m. when a sudden glow lit the distant horizon ahead of them, bloomed briefly like a bright flower, and warned the watchers that man had again unleashed his madness on man.

They reacted to this explosion over San Juan not with terror but with a kind of bewildered automatism. It seemed somehow so wrong, so unjust, that after fleeing for almost three weeks and for over two thousand miles they should find ahead of them still more; they could feel no emotion except despair.

Jim and Lisa, on watch, turned Vagabond off the wind to sail away from the explosion, Lisa going crisply to the winches to let out the sails—as if responding to this explosion were a normal part of their nautical duties. At Jim’s call Neil came hurriedly up on deck, saw the light, which was now astern of them, and went to the helm to check the course. Disoriented, he took a half-minute to realize that it was probably San Juan that had been hit. After calculating their approximate position, he ordered Jim to alter course back to the east. They would have about two hours before the tidal wave would reach them; only then would they turn to run before it. Because of the immense depth of water he guessed that the wave wouldn’t be breaking and would probably be less of a threat than the wave in the shallow Chesapeake. Meanwhile they would head east, toward the Virgin Islands. When Neil took out the transistor radio and tuned it to their usual station in San Juan, they found it was no longer broadcasting.

The tidal wave overtook them in the early morning hours on schedule; a wave a little less than twenty-five feet high appeared among the three-foot seas that had been running earlier. Frank was at the helm with Tony, Neil sleeping in the wheelhouse behind; they saw it almost at the last moment, a huge wall of water glistening in the light of the moon. Frank swung Vagabond away to run before it, but the gigantic, unbreaking swell hit them on the aft quarter. Vagabond lurched violently, skidded along the wave at tremendous speed as she was carried like a toy for forty or fifty feet, and then lurched again as she toppled back to starboard at the crest and the wave rolled under her like the back of a mammoth whale. The huge sea was followed by several other large waves in the fifteen-to-twenty-foot range, but by then Frank had swung Vagabond downwind and she was running before them, surfing down their faces sometimes for a half-minute and setting him to grinning with incongruous exhilaration at Vagabond’s speed and grace under pressure. Neil awoke with a shout after the first smash and, groggy with sleep, began to shout out contradictory orders, but Frank, having survived the first awful wall of water, was not much concerned with Vagabond’s handling the puny little fifteen-footers. He just grinned at Neil and kept doing what he was doing.

The sunrise the following morning showed them a terrible beauty. The whole southeast became a glowing sweep of bright reds and oranges such as none of them had ever seen before. Already above them high, dark clouds were spreading out across the sky, tinged now with the most delicate pink but, as the sun rose higher, shading to tannish yellow, then brown, then a brownish gray, and finally and simply to the all-pervading, thick, dull gray that they had so hated and feared over the Chesapeake.

By nine a.m. San Juan was about seventy miles to the southwest. Sailing east, they were moving in the opposite direction from the high altitude flow of radioactivity, which was westerly. Yet even sailing at eight knots, they didn’t gain on the expansion of the cloud; it spread outward from its center faster man they could flee. When the familiar terrifying ash first appeared on their decks, Neil once again ordered everyone below and had Tony dress in foul-weather gear to sweep the decks clean. By the time he had finished just the first cleanup, he was collapsing from the heat and, calling out weakly, had to be helped down into the main cabin. Neil had developed a technique of steering Vagabond by compass from below, since the steering cables passed down from the wheel at the rear of the main cabin and could be pulled alternately to adjust Vagabond’s course. The decks could be swept down every twenty minutes or so by someone as well-protected as Tony had been, but no one dressed for the Arctic had to be on deck to steer.

By noon, three hours after the first traces of ash had been discovered, they were no longer able to see any evidence of additional fallout. The dark cloud was mostly west and south of them, only a thin gray layer directly above.

It was Captain Olly who seemed most disturbed by the latest explosion. Neil discovered him late that afternoon sitting forward on the starboard hull, staring blankly out at the gray water to the southeast of them. Neil realized he must have been sitting there for hours.

“What’s happening, old fellow?” Neil asked him, holding on to a stainless-steel shroud for balance. Vagabond was rolling and plunging uncomfortably as she reached eastward in the southerly wind.

“Feeling a little poorly,” Olly answered after a brief pause.

“Your stomach?” Neil asked, concerned about radiation sickness.

“My heart,” said Olly.

“My God, what’s the matter?”

“Not that heart,” said Olly irritably. “I mean… I mean that dust gets me down.”

“I know.”

“I don’t mind explosions or tidal waves or fires or big winds. A sailor’s meant to have to deal with those. But when it rains death, how do you reef for that?”

Neil didn’t answer. They stared out at what seemed to be an ugly gray sea beneath the cloud bank to the south.

“And the ocean…” Olly went on in a low voice. “For fifty years I been figuring that no matter how much man ruined the land, the one thing he’d never destroy, no matter how hard he tried, and I knew he’d try his damnedest, would be the sea…”

Neil let the silence hang briefly and then said softly:

“It’s not destroyed yet.”

Captain Olly removed the perpetually unlit and empty pipe from his mouth and tapped it idly on the deck.

“No,” he said after a while. “It ain’t. But I seem to have underrated man’s talent for making a mess of things. All these years I been depending too much on man’s weakness and stupidity. I figured he was just too dumb to mess things up totally.” He looked up at Neil, his grizzled face and red eyes looking tired and old. “I just pray the Lord God will save us from man’s intelligence.”

Neil looked at him for a long moment and nodded.

“Amen,” he said.