Aground by Charles Williams; Franklin W. Dixon Page A

to the bowsprit. But the chances of doing it without waking either of them were admittedly dim; at any rate, he’d have to wait until after midnight.
    A shriek of laughter reached his ears, and then the sound of music. They’d switched on the all-wave radio. He lay back on the sand and watched the slow wheel of the constellations while the sound of revelry came to him across the night. For a while he pictured the inevitable progress of the brawl, but gave it up with the accumulation of disgust and tried to shut it out. It was none of his business. His thoughts broke off then as he caught the sound of oars. He heard the raft scrape on sand, and stood up. The slender figure would be Ruiz. It waded ashore in the starlit darkness and pulled the raft onto the beach. He appeared to be carrying something in his arm.
    “Over here,” Ingram said quietly.
    “Don’t try to get behind me, amigo.”
    “I’m not,” Ingram replied. He flicked on the cigar lighter. “Party get a little rough for you?”
    Ruiz came into the circle of light, the fatal olive face as expressionless as ever. “I brought you some bedding,” he said, dropping a blanket and pillow on the sand. “Gets a little cool out here before morning.”
    “Thanks a lot,” Ingram said. “Sit down and talk for a while. You smoke cigars?”
    “I’ve got cigarettes, thanks.” He took one out and lighted it, squatting on his heels just precisely out of reach with the eternal vigilance of the professional. A shellburst of maracas and Cuban drums came to them across the water. “Están bailando,” he said with faint reluctance, as though he felt he should say something of the party but wished to make it as little as possible. Well, if they were dancing, Ingram thought, the brawl must be still on a more or less vertical plane. He wondered what difference it made.
    “What kind of guy is Morrison?” he asked.
    “Rugged. And very smart.”
    “How long have you known him?”
    “Off and on, since the war. We were in New Guinea together, and later sent in with a kind of shaggy and irregular outfit in the Philippines. On that guerrilla stuff, he could write the book.”
    “That where he learned Spanish?”
    “Yes, but not during the war. He was born in the Philippines; his father was in the mining business. But he has the knack—some people have it, some don’t. He also speaks Tagalog and German and a couple of very useless Central American Indian dialects. And Beatnik. Incidentally, where did you learn it?”
    “Mexico, and Puerto Rico. But my accent’s not as good as his.”
    “No,” Ruiz said.
    “Where are you from?”
    “Here and there. I went to school in the States.”
    “U.S. citizen?”
    “Yes. Since the war.”
    He fell silent. Ingram waited. He hadn’t come out here merely to exchange biographical information. Maybe, with the Spaniard’s innate dislike for drunkenness, he was just escaping from the party, but he could have something else on his mind.
    “How far are we from the coast of Cuba?” Ruiz asked then.
    “Hundred miles,” Ingram said. “Maybe a little less. Why?”
    “I just wondered. What would you say were the chances of making it in that raft?”
    “How many people?”
    “Call it one.”
    “Still very dim, even with one. It’s too small.”
    “That’s what I thought. But when we get started again, if we do, we pass pretty close, don’t we?”
    “That’s right. The way into the Caribbean from here is through the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti. You’ll be within sight of Cape Maysi.”
    “Maysi?”
    “Punta Maisí . It’s the eastern tip of Cuba.”
    “I get the picture.”
    He’s going over the hill, Ingram thought. But why? They’ve got it all their way at the moment. Something nibbled at the edge of memory, and then was gone. “What’s the trouble?” he asked. He wouldn’t get the truth, but he might get one of the wrong answers he could eliminate.
    “This is a sad operation,” Ruiz said. “And