The Curse of the “Star”

IV

As the open door banged violently, he carried her in and put her on the bunk. Then he returned to the door, took the key from the outside and locked it on the inside. His locked door banged with an irritating clatter. He latched it.

Both of them were drenched. She lay, rigid and white-faced. Long shudders shook her body. She opened her eyes and looked up at him and tried to say something, but her teeth were chattering so badly that he could not make out the words. The blueness of her lips and fingernails frightened him and he tried to remember what he had read about shock.

He unlaced her sodden shoes and took them off, stripped the soaked wool ankle socks from her feet. Then he tried to strip the white sweater, heavy with water, up over her head. She fought him.

“Sara! Listen to me. You’ve got to get dry and warm. Please.”

She did not fight any longer, and he threw the sodden sweater over under the wash stand. She lay with her eyes shut. “Can you hear me?” he asked loudly.

She nodded. “Okay, Sara. Here’s two towels. I’m going to turn my back and count slowly to a hundred. Then I’m going to turn around. You’d better have everything off, be dry and be under those covers. Understand?” She nodded again as a great shiver possessed her.

He went over and stared out the closed porthole at the wildly tossing sea. Once the porthole rolled underwater, startling him.

“All right?” he called, without turning.

“Y-y-yes,” she answered. He turned. Her clothes were in a damp heap beside the bunk. The covers were pulled up to her chin and she was trying weakly to dry her hair. He made her hang her head over the edge of the bunk, where he knelt beside her and rubbed the gloss back into the glowing strands. They came alive as they dried, springy under the towel.

He took the flask from his flight bag and made her drink several swallows of straight brandy. She coughed and her eyes streamed, but she had stopped shaking.

“Thanks, Mal. Thank you very much.”

“That was a damn fool stunt, Sara. You could have died.”

“Would that have been important?”

“To me? Yes.” She flushed and looked away. “Turn over and face the wall, Sara. See if you can sleep. I’ve got to get out of these clothes.”

He stood and toweled himself dry, looking over at the autumn flame of her hair spread on the pillow. He put on dry clothes, wrung out their wet things in the wash stand — her heavy sweater and skirt, the diaphanous undergarments. He lurched over and stood beside the bunk, braced against the deep swing of the ship. She seemed to be breathing heavily, regularly, in spite of the movement that rolled her back and forth. He was drugged with weariness. He made a bed of the damp clothes by spreading a blanket over them. He stretched out on the floor against the wall after turning out the light. The Bjornsan Star labored her weary way through the endless night.

Heavy banging on the door awakened him. He was stiff and sore from the pummeling of the wall and floor. He stood up. The movement of the ship was oddly different.

“Who is it?” he called. Sara was sitting up in the bunk, her eyes wide with fright, the covers clasped to her breast.

“Dolan. Is the Temble woman with you?”

He glanced over at Sara. She made no sign. “Yes,” he called back.

“Both of you get down to the ward room as fast as you can make it. Hear?”

“Right.” Dolan was gone.

“What is it?” Sara asked. Her voice trembled.

“He’s worried. Something about the ship.” He looked at the port. It was rolling under with every third wave. “She’s lower in the water, Sara. Logier.” He went to the flight bag, pulled out a white shirt, flannel slacks and a heavy cardigan sweater. He threw them over onto the bunk. “Get dressed fast. Your stuff isn’t dry yet. Roll up the sleeves and cuffs.”

He turned his back to her. Dressed in his clothes she looked amazingly frail. He unlocked the door and they went down to the ward room. Everyone stared at them with varying expressions as they came in, fighting the pitch of the ship. Gina looked into Mal’s eyes with amused insolence. Sparks stood braced in a corner, a book in his hands. He glanced up absently and then began reading again.

Roger Temble’s complexion was green, but his eyes were alert, his smile sour. “I’m happy to see you’re alive and... unharmed, my dear,” he said. “We were worried about you.”

“Listen,” said Mal, “your wife couldn’t get back up to...”

“Please shut up, sir,” Dr. Temble said. “I think there are things of importance to be discussed.” Sara stared woodenly down at the floor.

Tom Branch, his mouth puffed, his eyes disclosing the extent of a brutal hangover, sat numbly in one of the chairs. Anger flickered in his eyes and disappeared almost immediately as he glanced at Mal. Torgeson, looking like the small gray ghost of a once cheery squirrel, sat near Branch. The cook, both mess boys and six other seamen were crowded into the room.

Dolan stood, his feet spread, his eyes bleak. Behind him Mal saw the figure of Mister Gopala clad in a huge fuzzy blue sweater, with a pink scarf over his head and tied under his chin.

“This meeting,” said Dolan in a voice that filled the room, “is to bring you up on the state of affairs. At three this morning she hit a bad one and some starboard plates amidships buckled. The water’s coming in faster than the pumps can handle it. One of the boats was swept away yesterday. At dawn Captain Paulus stole the other one and left with the second officer and six seamen. I don’t think the boat lived in that water.” He turned and repeated what he had said in Swedish this time. The men took the information stoically.

“Now for an accounting. After yesterday’s two accidents there were twenty-nine of us left. Eight took the remaining boat. So there’s twenty-one of us. You six passengers, the two men up at the wheel, nine seamen in this room, Sparks, Torgeson, myself and Torgeson’s second in the engine room. The radio shack is gone.”

MacLane folded his book, keeping a finger between the pages. “And now, Dolan, I can tell you what I’ve been trying to say. Last night I ducked out to eat, and when I got back to my board I found that some clever devil had been at work in there. Tubes cracked and connections torn loose. In the best of weather it would have taken me three days to get back on the air.”

Dolan gave him a look of heavy contempt. “The blue monkeys did it, I suppose.” At that second the Star rolled so badly that MacLane was forced to take a step away from his corner. He fell back against the wall heavily.

“I am not saying, Dolan, that they couldn’t have done it. I just doubt they had the technical ability. At least all the little creatures are gone now.”

Dolan shrugged as if it were no longer a matter of importance. He turned to Torgeson. “How do things stand below?”

The chipmunk mouth quivered, but the voice still had its truculent rasp. “Water ten inches over the floor plates when I left. An hour, maybe, before it douses the engines. They’ll suck in water vapor and in diesels that’s a more explosive mixture than the oil and they’ll run away with...”

“Skip the technical information, Torgeson. Damn a man with my luck. Now get this. We haven’t been able to take a shot for twenty hours. We’re headed northeast. There’s one hell of a lot of open sea around here. I want to stay with the ship until the last minute. Then we’ll spread oil and take to the rafts. Everybody has to be ready to go at thirty seconds’ notice. Guessing our speed and drift, we’ve got one chance in a thousand of hitting a little French pimple of an island. The oil will give us a chance to get everybody lashed to the rafts and...”

“I’ve got to get into the hold,” Dr. Temble said in a loud hoarse tone.

Dolan stared at him. “What the hell for?”

“My... my specimens! The expedition specimens!”

“Even if you could get into the hold, which you can’t,” Dolan said, “I wouldn't load any rocks and bones onto our rafts.” He stared at Temble and seemed to be waiting.

Temble’s eyes had a glassy shine behind the dewed lenses. “You don’t understand, Dolan. It’s more than...”

“Shut up!” Gina screamed, her face contorted.

Temble stared at her and his mouth hardened. He advanced a step toward Dolan, and he clung to the table to steady himself. “You intend to abandon ship?”

“Yes,” Dolan said, and Mal sensed a grin behind the beard.

“Then I have to tell you this. Our expedition was set up as a smoke screen. A wealthy Hindu, enormously wealthy, was in danger of having his fortune taken over by the Pakistan government. During the fighting he converted everything into jewels and gold and hid them. We went in and located sediment containing skulls of entelodonts of the Miocene period. We cut blocks of the sediment and the standard procedure is to cover the exposed bones with shellac and wrap the blocks with burlap soaked in flour paste for shipment. There can be no question of import on such items. We cracked one such block, bored a hole in the middle for the treasure and recemented it with mud before wrapping it. I have to tell you all this so you won’t abandon ship unless it is suicide to stay with it.”

“Go on,” Dolan said.

“I would guess the total value at about... six million dollars. Dolan, if you can save this ship I’ll cut you in for a sixth share.”

“A quarter share,” Dolan said. “And besides, who are you to cut me in? Where’s the owner?”

Mal looked over just in time to see the look in Sara’s eyes as she lifted her glance to his. It answered Dolan’s question with cruel clarity.

“He did not survive the trip,” Temble said.

Branch startled them all with a loud laugh in which there was no trace of humor or amusement. It sounded more like the bray of an animal.

As Dolan gave orders to the crew, one of the mess boys broke open the locker containing the life jackets. They were of dingy gray canvas designed like a vest, with blocks of cork sewed in around the waist.

Once they had been donned a new flavor was in the air — of expectation and immediacy. Mr. Gopala made sharp clicking noises with his tongue, indicating extreme disappointment with the cut and fit of the garment.

“Stay in this room, all of you,” Dolan ordered, striding out. Torgeson had gone below to watch over his precious steel monsters. The crewmen huddled in a group. Sparks was reading again. Mal sat on the floor beside Sara, their backs against the wall, their legs braced. Between them, where the others could not see, she held his hand tightly. Her slim fingers were strong and icy. Temble and Branch had their heads together. Once Branch stared over at the two of them. It was a flat stare, without emotion. A carpenter might stare in that way at a board he was about to cut. A trap shooter might stand and wait, his eyes on the trap, with precisely that expression.

Once the Star heeled over so far that every mouth went taut, all eyes went wide. From Mal’s position, staring along the floor was like looking up a steep hill. She remained in that position for an impossible, interminable length of time before slowly creaking and sighing back to roll, not quite so far, in the opposite direction.

“I thought it was going all the way over,” Sara said, her lips close to his ear.

“It won’t, don’t worry.”

“I’m sick, Mal. Sick inside. I’ve been sick for a long time. It started when I found out what he is. What Roger is. They killed that man when he left the fire and went down to the stream to wash.”

He pressed her hand. “Don’t talk about it.”

“I don’t care any more, Mal. If I live I’m going to tell what he did.”

“Don’t say that!” he said sharply. “If he should hear you...”

“Gina’s his kind of woman. She has the same streak in her that he has. They found it out on this trip, Mal. The way she watches me... I know what she wants him to do.”

“Please, darling.”

She looked into his eyes and then her slow smile came. It was a faintly crooked smile, uptilted more on the right than on the left. Her eyes at that moment were as gray as the sea — as gray as the sky — and as warm as lips against his heart.

“Like that?” he asked.

Her fingers tightened on his hand, “just like that, Mal. And I didn’t know it before. What a time to find out!”

“Stay close to me. No matter what happens. Stay close to me.”

“I will. Oh, I will!”

Every moment the Bjornsan Star increased the spasmodic extent of her labors. The salon windows rolled under with each wave. So much water came in that Sara and Mal had to stand.

Dolan came to the doorway and bawled, “Lines are strung. Everybody up onto the boat deck. Watch yourself?”

The sailors, when he repeated the order in their language, made a frantic rush for the doorway, clogging it for a moment with their struggling bodies. Mal let the others go first. He and Sara and MacLane were the last to leave. Mal supported Sara with a strong arm around her waist.

At the exit to the weather deck he yelled into her ear, “Run out and grab that rope when I push you. Hold on with both hands all the time. Move by sliding your hands along it.”

Then she was ahead of him, clinging to the rope. They made ten feet before the water roared down at them. It swept her off her feet a fraction of a second before it knocked him down, burying them both in its turbulence. She slid back against him and he got his arm around her, locked his hand on the rope in front of her body. As soon as the deck was clear they scrambled up and made another eight to ten feet before the water smashed at them again.

The third time a body slammed against them with brutal force, almost tearing them from the life line. It tangled in Mal’s legs as the water drained away. He looked down and saw Gina there. Her eyes were open and she seemed to smile up at him. But then he saw that the water swirling away from her, was pink, saw the great wound where her throat had been slashed. The next wave spun her away into the screaming grayness astern. Sara had not seen. Her movements had grown feeble and he knew that she was but semi-conscious from the buffeting she had taken. The absurdly large slacks he had given her were pasted to her long legs. But there was no longer the danger of chill. The long night had carried them far enough north so that the sting was gone from the air and even from the water.

At last they reached the point where it was but a dozen feet around the corner to the amidships ladderway leading up to the boat deck. He forced her along, spending the last of his energy to get her to the foot of the ladderway. The next boiling wave caught them there, but he had both hands clamped to the steel railing, his arms around her.

She climbed slowly. When she paused to rest he looked back to see how MacLane was faring. MacLane had reached the foot of the ladder. He looked up with a face so strained that it resembled a skull. As Mal watched he saw the wave smash the weakened man against the steel treads of the steps. MacLane dropped and the wave carried him ten feet before it receded. There was no chance of reaching him. He lay with the book beside him and Mal wondered vacantly how he had managed to bring his reading along so far. Then the next gray wave swirled MacLane away, around the corner and out of sight.

Sara fell once she reached the boat deck. He picked her up, supported her, as they made their way by the empty davits and along the side of the captain’s cabin to the bridge where the others were gathered.

Temble ran to Mal, grasped him and shook him, yelling into his face, “Where’s Gina? Where’s Gina? She was right behind me!”

“Swept overboard,” Mal said crisply. “I couldn’t save her.”

Temble’s shoulders slumped. He staggered wearily and almost fell. Up on the boat deck the rolling motion of the ship was even more pronounced, but they were at least out of the reach of the waves. The superstructure looked as though a giant’s hand had swept casually along the ship, from stern to bow and back again.

Mal found Sara a relatively dry corner. Dolan and a husky seaman fought the wheel. Dolan’s mouth sagged open with strain, so that it formed a wet red orifice in the middle of the matted beard.

“Cross your fingers for luck,” Dolan roared. He gestured dead ahead with a motion of his head. The glass ahead of the wheel had been smashed out. Mal squinted against the driving spray. Dead ahead, revealed only when the Bjornsan Star rose sluggishly to the top of a great wave, Mal could see the spray thundering high from the reefs, see a low gray island beyond.

It came closer with startling speed, always nearer each time it became visible. And suddenly, in the midst of the storm, there was an odd silence. Mal realized that the vibration, unheard but felt through the soles of his feet, had ceased.

The following sea began to slowly turn the Star broadside to the giant combers that leaped forward to smash against the reefs.

Dolan jumped back from the wheel roaring a great oath into the wind. “He couldn’t give me five minutes more!”

Once broadside to the waves, the Star made one gigantic roll that tumbled the unwary into a heap in one corner of the bridge. A seaman was thrown against the jagged shards of glass remaining in the frame. Badly slashed he began a ceaseless screaming.

Mal crawled and fought his way to Sara. Once he reached her he craned upward until he could see from the side windows the reef so close that the spray was flung into the air to fall on the Star. The next wave would bring them down onto the reef and all he could hope was that through some miracle they could get into the relatively quiet water beyond the harsh coral. He dropped and shielded Sara with his body. The Bjornsan Star lifted up and up, seeming to hang poised for a long moment. She came down with a rending, crashing, long-drawn-out jar, breaking her back and her heart.

She sagged over, steady for a moment at a precarious angle. And the next wave smashed her broadside. With a long scream of steel on coral she slid over the reef and down into the quiet water beyond. She floated for a moment and then the bow struck and the wind slid her slowly around. She came to gentle rest.