ever seeing me. I fired off a couple of flares, but nothing happened. I guess you couldn’t see ‘em that far away in sunlight—”
“It was probably while we were below eating breakfast, anyway,” Ingram said. “And the water’s up in your engine now?”
“Yes. But it hasn’t worked for a long time anyway. I tried calling you on the radio, but of course if you hadn’t seen me you wouldn’t have yours turned on, not out here. So my only chance was to try to get over to you with the dinghy before you caught a breeze.” He sighed and brushed a hand across his face again. “And am I glad you saw me.”
“Yeah, that’s cutting it a little fine.” Ingram grinned briefly and reached for the ignition key to start the engine again. “But we’d better get on over there. How many aboard?”
“Nobody,” Warriner said. “I’m alone.”
“Alone?” Involuntarily, Ingram straightened and looked out across the metallic expanse of sea toward the other yacht. Even at that distance it was obvious she was larger than Saracen. “You were trying to take her across the Pacific single-handed?”
“No. There were four of us when we left Santa Barbara…” Warriner’s voice trailed off, and he stared down at his hands. Then he went on quietly. “My wife and the other couple died ten days ago.”
2
“Oh, how awful!” Rae cried out and checked herself barely in time to keep from adding, “You poor boy!”—in spite of Warriner’s being in the neighborhood of six feet and probably not more than six or eight years younger than she was. Already drawn by the clean-cut, boyish appearance, good looks, and obvious good manners in the face of disaster, she felt a stab of almost motherly compassion and an illogical desire to take him in her arms and comfort him. “How did it happen?” Then she went on hurriedly, “But never mind. You can talk later. Can I get you something to eat? Or some more water?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Ingram, I’m all right,” Warriner replied. “But I could use a cigarette if you have one.”
“Of course.” She produced them from the pocket of her shorts and held out the lighter. “And why don’t you take off that life-jacket? It’s hot enough without wearing that thing.”
“Oh… sure.” Warriner looked down at it uncertainly and began unfastening it. He placed it on the seat beside him. “I guess I forgot I had it on.”
Ingram’s cigar had gone out. He relighted it and tossed the match overboard. “What happened?” he asked.
It was some kind of food poisoning.” Warriner stared somberly at the smoke curling upward from the cigarette forgotten between his fingers. “They all died in one afternoon, within four hours. It was horrible…” He shook his head and then went on in the same flat, mechanical voice. “No, there’s no word for what it was like, alone in the middle of the ocean with three people sick and dying, one after the other, all in different stages of the same symptoms, and not being able to do anything about it. And knowing after the first one died there was no hope for the others. My wife was the last one, just at sunset. And the terrible part of it was I wasn’t even sick. I just stood there and watched them die, like something that was happening on the other side of a glass wall I couldn’t get through.”
Rae reached down and put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But don’t talk about it now. You’ve got to get some sleep.”
“Thank you,” Warriner replied, “but I’m all right. After the first couple of days I managed to snap out of it and get going again. And it was about then I began to notice the bilges were filling up with water and that it took longer every day to pump them out. Before long it was so bad I didn’t have time to think about anything but staying afloat. Maybe that was what saved me from cracking up.”
“Do you know what the poison was?” Ingram asked.
Warriner nodded. “The only thing it could have been was a can of salmon that must have spoiled. I didn’t eat any, because I don’t like salmon.”
“Had it been opened a long time?”
“No, just a few minutes before they ate it. But it wasn’t commercially canned; it was some Russ and Estelle—they were the other couple—some they put up themselves. Every year Russ goes up to the Columbia River for a week’s