The sailcloth shroud - By Charles Williams Page 0,50

the harbor on the auxiliary, between the big stone breakwaters where the surf was booming. Baxter took the wheel while Keefer and I got sail on her. It was past midmorning now and the Trade was picking up, a spanking full-sail breeze out of the northeast with a moderate sea in which she pitched a little and shipped a few dollops of spray that spatted against the canvas and wet the cushions of the cockpit. She was close-hauled on the starboard tack as we began to beat our way offshore.

“How does she handle?” I asked Baxter.

He was bareheaded and shirtless, as we all were, and his eyes were happier than they had been. “Very nicely,” he said. “Takes just a little weather helm.”

I peered into the binnacle. “Any chance of laying the course?”

He let her come up a little, and slides began to rattle along the luff of the mains’l. The course was still half a point to windward. “It may haul a little more to the easterly as we get offshore,” he said.

I took her for a few minutes to see how she felt, and called to Blackie. “If you want to learn to be a helmsman, here’s a good time to start.”

He grinned cockily, and took the wheel. “This bedpan? I could steer it with a canoe paddle. What’s the course?”

“Full-and-by,” I told him.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a term seamen use,” I said. “Mr. Baxter’ll explain it to you while I make some coffee.”

I made sandwiches at noon and took the helm. The breeze freshened and hauled almost a point to the eastward. Baxter relieved me at four with the mountains of Panama growing hazier and beginning to slide into the sea astern. She was heeled over sharply with all sail set, lifting to the sea with a long, easy corkscrew motion as water hissed and gurgled along the lee rail with that satisfying sound that meant she was correctly trimmed and happy and running down the miles. Spray flew aft and felt cool against our faces. When he took the wheel I looked aloft again and then eyed the main sheet with speculation. He smiled, and shook his head, and I agreed with him. You couldn’t improve on it.

“What’s her waterline length?” he asked.

“Thirty-four,” I said.

There is a formula for calculating the absolute maximum speed of a displacement hull, regardless of the type or amount of power applied. It’s a function of the trochoidal wave system set up by the boat and is 1.34 times the square root of the waterline length. I could see Baxter working this out now.

“On paper,” I said, “she should do a little better than seven and a half knots.”

He nodded. “I’d say she was logging close to six.”

As I went below to start supper I saw him turn once and look astern at the fading coastline of Panama. When he swung back to face the binnacle, there was an expression of relief or satisfaction in the normally grave brown eyes.

The breeze went down a little with the sun, but she still sang her way along. Keefer took the eight-to-twelve watch and I slept for a few hours. When I came on deck at midnight there was only a light breeze and the sea was going down. . . .

* * *

“What the hell is this?” Bonner demanded. He came over in front of us. “Are we going to sail that lousy boat up from Panama mile by mile?”

“Foot by foot, if we have to,” Slidell said crisply, “till we find out what happened.”

“You’ll never do it this way. The machine’s no good. He fooled it the first time.”

Flowers stared at him with frigid dislike. “Nobody beats this machine. When he starts to lie, it’ll tell us.”

“Yeah. Sure. Like it did when he said Baxter died of a heart attack.”

“Shut up!” Slidell snapped. “Get back out of the way. Take the girl to the kitchen and tell her to make some coffee. And keep your hands off her.”

“Why?”

“It would be obvious to anybody but an idiot. I don’t want her screaming and upsetting Rogers’ emotional response.”

We’re all crazy, I thought. Maybe everybody who had any contact with Baxter eventually went mad. No, not Baxter. His name was Reagan. I was sitting here hooked up to a shiny electronic gadget like a cow to a milking machine while an acidulous gnome with popeyes extracted the truth from me—truth that I apparently no longer even knew myself. I hadn’t killed Reagan. Even if I were mad