hurt now, and he wondered if he would make it. He’d been a fool to come under here; his first responsibility was to Rae. Just before he blacked out, his head broke surface and he gulped hungrily at the air.
He was almost under the counter, still too near the rudder and propeller. He swam out, trying to get Mrs. Warriner’s head above the surface. Rae had seen him now. “Others—too far down—no use—” He gasped. “Ladder—” It would take too long to tow her around to the other side. Rae disappeared above him, and almost immediately the ladder was dropped over the starboard side, just forward of him. He swam up to it, towing the inert figure behind him. With the beating he had taken from Bellew, he was very weak now, and he wondered if he could get her aboard. Time was precious. She’d been unconscious for minutes.
He ducked under the surface and pulled her across his shoulder. When Saracen rolled down to starboard, he got one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, caught a lifeline stanchion with his free hand, and heaved upward, with Rae helping from above to haul her in under the lifeline until her body was on deck. He came on up himself. They lifted her down onto one of the cockpit seats. Her hair was plastered to her face and she was bleeding from a half-dozen barnacle cuts on her bare legs and shoulders, but she appeared to be uninjured otherwise.
He turned her face downward and began applying artificial respiration. Water ran out of her mouth and drained from her hair, but there was no movement. A minute went by. Two. Three. He was on the point of turning her on her back to try the mouth-to-mouth method he’d read of when he felt her begin trying to breathe again.
She retched and began to gag from the salt water she’d swallowed. He stepped back. She was breathing regularly and without difficulty now. In a few more minutes she opened her eyes. She looked around, blankly at first, and then she screamed. She came off the seat, trying to get to her feet to lunge toward the rail where they’d all gone over. He’d been expecting it. He caught her and forced her back. She fought him, still screaming. Then just as abruptly all the strength went out of her again and she collapsed. She lay face downward while her whole body shook with sobs.
Rae had disappeared. She came running up the ladder now, carrying a glass. Between them they got her upright and forced her to drink. They eased her gently back on the cushion. In a few minutes the crying ceased and she lay still.
“What was it?” he asked.
“Codeine tablet,” Rae said. She fumbled a cigarette out of her pocket, but it fell from her fingers into the bottom of the cockpit. She made as if to reach down for it, then merely sighed and collapsed on the other seat. Ingram bent and picked it up for her, but with his wet hand and the water pouring off him and down his arm it was mush by the time he’d straightened. He tossed it overboard. Saracen rolled. They looked at each other in silence.
Then Ingram’s face twisted. “Maybe if I hadn’t hit him …”
She looked up. Her voice was thin and very near the edge as she said, “Stop it! And never say that again. He was going to do it, no matter what you did, and you know it. And you saved her, didn’t you?”
“I guess you’re right.”
She rubbed a hand across her face. Then she brought the hand down and looked at its trembling. She clenched it into a fist and opened it. “With luck,” she said, “maybe I can keep from thinking about it for ten minutes, and keep from hearing—from hearing—” She swallowed, and went on. “That should be—just about long enough—to get her into that forward bunk and into dry pajamas and wrap a towel around her hair. And then take one of those codeine things myself. Because if I don’t make it, you’re going to be picking up springs and cogwheels the rest of the night. Let’s go.”
* * *
Ingram awoke just at dawn. He ached all over, and his stomach muscles felt as if he’d been run over by a truck. He turned his head in the beginnings of light inside the cabin and looked at Rae asleep in the opposite bunk. She was