The Vanquished by Brian Garfield Page A

responsible for securing that hoist.” And went on up to the pilot house.
    The saloon door batted open and two men—Crabb and Sus Ainsa—were outlined in the dizzy light; the door slammed shut. Helen Zimmerman came out of her cabin with a heavy coat over her dressing gown and screamed when the ship rolled. She fell to the deck, climbed to her feet and windmilled wildly to regain balance, trying to get back to her cabin. The ship went over still a few more degrees, and the girl slid across the deck against the rail, grabbing hold. Still heeling over, the ship maintained a precarious equilibrium against the port beam, and a wheeling spar spun along the mainmast to knock a heavy pole down. The pole skidded across the deck and Charley saw it lodge against the girl. On that sign Charley let go his hold and half-slid, half-fell down across the deck to the girl. He lifted the heavy wood off her and saw it drop into the hungry sea. For a moment he was staring horizontally into the whiteness of the ocean. The girl moaned and grasped him in a locked grip about the waist. Charley took her at the shoulders as the ship plunged into another trough. Slate-colored sheets of water swept the decks madly. The mate came into sight crazily lurching and bawling obscenities into the night, and lost his balance, falling against the rail and teetering on it for a long time; the boat lifted its side and the mate slowly tumbled over backwards, sliding across the slick deck and disappearing down an open hatch. He screamed as he went out of sight.
    A whirling mass of men surrounded the braces of the starboard lifeboat, and when Charley noticed them they were trying to lower the boat. Some fool cut the cables, and the water lifted massively and came down all confusion over the freed lifeboat, capsizing it. The crowd backed up in horror, moaning loudly, and the captain shouted hoarsely from the Texas deck: “Get inside, you idiots!”
    The girl spoke against his chest; Charley could not make out her words. He saw the bodies of struggling people battered about on the storm-tossed deck, and then a great plunging mass of water shattered over his head.
    Breaking over him, the force of the sea tore loose his hold on the rail. He heard a scream. The water carried him away from the deck and he had the awful sensation that he was going to drown. He felt the girl’s hands hooked into his belt. The sea slammed them down onto the deck, whirled them about, pulled greedily at them; they bobbed and flattened against the ship. The foam rippled away leaving the deck high-sloping in the air. Head hanging down, Charley gasped in gulps of air and spray. He saw the girl lying across the deck and, beyond her, the eerie whiteness of a man’s face, the correspondent, her brother. Zimmerman grinned widely at him and shouted, “Hang on!” And just as Charley sought a handhold the water swept over them.
    He lurched about and when the water receded again he could not lift hishead to see the sky, but he knew by the gray light reflected from the deck that the dawn was coming up somewhere; he could see only the ocean and the glistening deck. The boat dropped stem-first. His hands were locked on a hatch wheel. Charley pulled in his breath. His legs were numb. The sea flashed over them again, impetuously angry but now in retreat, and when its fingers slid away he looked at the corpse-hue of Zimmerman’s face and the dead-stubborn way Zimmerman was hanging on to his sister, and Charley wondered how it was that a man could give up a fist fight so easily and yet brave a storm at sea with level courage.
    The Sea Bird plunged up and down. Charley’s nose hit the deck. He felt the warmth of blood in his nostrils and heard the muffled run of his own oaths. Zimmerman’s voice shouted faintly across the few feet between them:
    â€œLet’s try and get inside.”
    â€œGo ahead,” Charley said, forcing his tongue to form the