Dead Calm by Charles Williams Page A

she hadn’t disappeared.
    She cringed and tried to scuttle backward, but there was nowhere to go; behind her was only the sea. She was cut off; she couldn’t reach the wheel or the ignition switch, or even the rest of the boat, without getting past him. There was nothing to hit him with, even if she had the strength.
    The hand slid down her ankle and was caressing her bare foot. He turned around again. “You have such beautiful feet,” he said. “And women so seldom do. I mean, they do to start with, but they ruin them. Especially European women.”
    She could only stare in horror.
    “In fact, I’ve often wondered if Gauguin didn’t run away to Polynesia simply because he was revolted by the feet of European models.” His eyes sought hers in a glance that was amused and intimate, as though they shared some secret joke. “Of course it’s silly. It’s just something you say to clods at cocktail parties.”
    Dear God, how did you get through to him? “Listen!” She made it to a sitting position this time, lurched once as Saracen rolled, and caught herself with a hand on the lifeline. “Please! We’ve got to go back! Don’t you understand? Turn around. Turn. Like this.” She made a lateral motion with her free hand, as though trying to explain the mechanics of wheel-turning to an idiot or to someone who spoke another language. She realized immediately this was wrong, but was too frantic to know how to correct it. She went on, the words tumbling over each other in her haste. “Let me! Let me take it!”
    “No.” The smile disappeared. He gave a petulant little shrug, as though she had disappointed him, and faced forward to stare into the binnacle again.
    She turned and looked wildly astern. How far had they come? At first she couldn’t even see the other boat and felt herself begin to give way to panic. Then she made it out, almost hull down on the horizon directly behind them. There was no chance at all of seeing the dinghy at that distance, and she didn’t know what had become of John. Except that he wasn’t here, and they were already nearly three miles away and going farther with every minute. She was the only chance he had. She turned back and caught Warriner’s shoulder. “Go back! We’ve got to go back!”
    He brushed her hand off. “Please, Mrs. Ingram, do you have to shout? You’re being unreasonable again.”
    “Un—un—Oh, God!” She tried to calm herself; if she went to pieces she’d never get through to him. “Unreasonable? Can’t you understand? My husband’s back there. We can’t go off and leave him. He’ll drown.”
    Warriner dismissed the whole subject of Ingram with an abstracted wave of the hand. “He won’t drown.”
    “But the boat’s sinking—”
    “It probably won’t. Anyway, he wanted to go aboard there, didn’t he? It’s his own fault.” He turned and looked at her, as though puzzled by her refusal to grasp so obvious a fact. Then he went on, as if talking to himself. “My trouble has always been that I trust people too much. I don’t see their real motives until too late…”
    It was hopeless, she realized then. Communication was impossible. Then what was left? Try to take the wheel away from him? Even in her desperation she realized the futility of that. And if she provoked him to violence again, this time he might kill her or throw her overboard. It wasn’t fear of being hurt or even killed that made her rule that out, or reserve it as a final gamble when everything else had failed, but merely the simple, monolithic fact that her staying on here and staying alive represented the only chance they had. She had to try every other possibility first. But what? Then the answer occurred to her: she couldn’t make him turn back, but at least she could stop his going any farther. It was still dead calm, and there was a good chance it would remain that way for hours, or even the rest of the day; if she could disable the engine, John might be able to reach them