he was getting to his. The only chance he had was to hurt him, and hurt him badly, right at the start. But even as the blow landed, he knew he’d lost. Bellew rolled back with it with the ease and the beautiful reflexes of a pro and counterpunched with almost unbelievable speed for a man his size. Ingram felt the wind go out of him as a fist like a concrete block slammed into his stomach; and then another, which he only partially blocked, hit him over the heart. He started to fall but came back against the mizzen. Bellew hit him twice more in the stomach. Sickness ballooned inside him. He heard Rae shriek behind him, and Mrs. Warriner was trying to get past him to reach Bellew herself.
It was no place to fight; there was no room. He pushed off the mast, blocked Bellew’s next punch, and managed to get under his guard with a right. Saracen rolled down to starboard. Bellew straightened, off balance, and Ingram hit him again. Bellew went back across the cockpit seat. Ingram swung again, lost his balance, and came down on top of him. They were in the after end of the cockpit, against the binnacle, and Ingram landed with his right forearm across the side of Warriner’s face. Warriner stirred and groaned.
Ingram felt an arm lock around his neck and the thumb of the other hand groping for his eyes. He ducked his face down in Bellew’s throat and brought his right hand up, grinding the heel of it as he pushed upward, and felt the nose flatten with the tearing of cartilage. Bellew released his neck, pushed him upward, and then kicked out with both feet against his chest. He came up and back, felt his head strike the mizzen boom, and sagged to his knees. Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw Rae emerging from the hatch with the shotgun barrels in her hand, raising them to swing.
Bellew whirled as lightly as a cat, caught her arm, and yanked. She came catapulting up on deck. Bellew plucked the gun barrels from her, threw them outward into the sea, and cuffed her backward across the deckhouse in three smooth and almost simultaneous blurs of motion. Ingram was on his feet again. Bellew turned back to him, grinning and hideous with blood running down his face and onto his chest from the pulpy ruin of his nose. Ingram tried to swing, and then something like the popping of a flash bulb went off inside his head and he was on the bottom of the cockpit.
He wasn’t completely out, but dazed and too sick and too weak to get up. He tried. He pushed upward with his arms, felt Saracen roll all the way over and spin end-for-end, and collapsed again. He was under the edge of the wheel, and inches in front of his face two feet in white canvas shoes were bound to the bottom of the binnacle with a section of old heaving line. He was absorbing and cataloguing this phenomenon with the bemused wonder of a baby discovering its navel, and only beginning to fit it back into its position in a framework of time and place where everything had blown up and hadn’t yet finished settling, when somewhere far off he heard the scream begin. Then the feet moved upward—quite casually, it seemed to him—and the heaving line parted as if it were rotten string.
His mind was clear now, but he still couldn’t get up. He fell back on his side and was looking up past the wheel and the binnacle. Bellew, the gory face split in its wolfish grin, was leaning over Warriner. And Warriner was sitting up, cringing backward, still screaming.
“No, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, no! No—no—!”
Ingram vomited. He could feel the warmth of it on his hands, and the deck was slick with it as he tried again to push himself up. Mrs. Warriner materialized out of somewhere, flinging herself across his line of vision onto Bellew’s shoulders. Bellew shrugged her off. Only half turning, he slapped her backward, and she fell on Ingram’s legs.
“Come on, old Hughie-boy, old shark-killer.’’ Bellew grabbed Warriner’s shoulders and lifted. He was apparently still talking, for Ingram could see his lips move, but all sound was lost then in another cry from Warriner, a mindless, unceasing, animal screaming that lifted the hair on Ingram’s scalp and ran like ice along his back. Warriner lunged upward from