The Last One Left

Chapter Three

The thirty-eight hundred pounds of the Muñequita dipped and danced on into the Atlantic dusk. Little Doll. Under considerably more power this same T-Craft hull design had won some savage ocean races. Fiberglass, teak, aluminum, stainless steel, plastic, perhaps ten thousand dollars for such a special plaything. With the twin Chrysler-Volvo inboard, outboards, 120 horsepower each, she could scat at forty-seven miles an hour, the deep Vee hull slicing through the chop, the wake flat.

With her fuel capacity increased by the two saddle tanks to over eighty gallons, at her cruising speed of thirty-two miles an hour, the engines turning at 4500 rpm, her maximum range was almost three hundred miles, without safety factor.

From the forward lift-ring a hundred feet of half-inch nylon line trailed upwind. She had been bought on whim and loaded with extras — convertible top, now folded and snapped into the boot, searchlight, rod holders, windshield wipers, bow rails, anchor chocks, electric horn, screens, a transistorized Pearce-Simpson ship-to-shore radio tucked under the Teleflex instrument panel, pedestal helmsman’s seats, two bunks and a head fitted into the small area forward.

Salt had crusted on her, and had then been rinsed away when she had drifted through the rain squalls. At times when the wind and the chop were at odds and the waves broke, she would falter in a moment of awkwardness, take water, then shake herself free with almost an air of apology for such flawed grace. The automatic bilge pump had been turned on when she was rigged for towing, and when the rain and the chop brought enough water aboard, the pump would drone, working off the batteries, until the bilge was again empty.

The graceful hull was a medium Nassau blue, her topsides white with just enough trace of smoke blue to cut the sunglare.

She had lifted and dipped and danced her way with an agile grace which matched her name. Muñequita. Little Doll. The out-drive stern units were uptilted and locked in place. The long line trailing from the bow steadied her, keeping her bow facing into the wind. Yet now movement was less graceful because the northeast wind was freshening, lifting the Gulf Stream into a chop. In that balance of forces the Muñequita moved due west, stern first, into nighttime.

Even in that posture, she seemed to anticipate and avoid the uglier motions, almost as if she were aware of the look of death aboard, aware of the naked body of the girl, face down on the cockpit decking, responding, slack as a pudding, to each variation of that long and lonely dance across an empty sea.

The boat drifted into the path of a brief hard shower that moved swiftly, dimpling the swells, then spattering against the topsides and against the sun-raw, blistered back of the girl. It soaked her hair and when it ran across her parted lips she made the smallest of sounds, licked with a slow tongue, moved one hand slightly.

The rain ended. The bilge pump started up, droned for two minutes and clicked off.

By midnight the boat had reached the western edge of the Stream where current and chop were diminished. The Muñequita’s motion eased. She began to drift in a more southwesterly direction.