And the Deep Blue Sea Read Online Free PDF

ripped the canister loose from its supports and threw the whole thing over the side. Karen heard it splash in the water below them, and in a moment a torchlike flame appeared, lighting up the surface of the sea as it began to drop astern. The chief mate turned and called out to the helmsman inside the wheelhouse. “Hard left!”
    “Mr. Lind!” the captain said angrily, drowning out the helmsman’s reply. It was obvious even to Karen that Lind had vastly exceeded his authority, since it wasn’t his watch and the captain was on the bridge besides, but the big man was completely at ease.
    He winked at Karen. “Cap, it’ll cost us ten minutes to find out. If there’s nobody there, I’ll buy the company a new life ring, and Mrs. Brooke will give a cocktail party.”
    The ship was already beginning to swing. The captain started to countermand the order, then shrugged and remained silent. Karen sighed with relief as she retreated from the bridge where she had no business. Lind, she thought, was something of a man.
    And with a mocking and reckless sense of humor that could have wrecked it, she added to herself, thinking of the “cocktail party.” Captain Steen was a Baptist, a teetotaler, and a dedicated crusader against alcohol. She crossed to the port side of the boat deck where she could continue to watch the flare after they completed the turn, trying to sort out her reactions to the odd fact that she had probably saved a man’s life. What was that old Chinese belief? That if you saved somebody’s life you had meddled in his destiny and you were responsible for him from then on?
    Goddard saw the flame blossom on the surface of the sea, and collapsed, shaking all over and too weak to do anything for a moment. He saw the ship begin to swing in her hard-over turn, circling to come back through the area, and when he had his breath back he slipped over the side again and began to push the raft toward the circle of light, some two hundred yards away. By the time he came up to it the ship had already reached the limit of her opposite course and was turning toward him again. He stopped in the edge of the illuminated area with the raft between the flare and the oncoming ship so he would be silhouetted against it, and climbed back aboard. He waved, knowing they would have their glasses on the light and would have seen him by now. Lying on his back, he fought his way into the soggy dungarees. He sat up, drank the last of the water in the bottle, and waited.
    The ship came on. While still a quarter mile away they backed down briefly on the engine to take most of the way off her there, before they came abreast, so the wash from the propeller wouldn’t sweep him away from her. The engine stopped, and she began to drift slowly down on him, coming to rest at last not more than fifty yards away. He saw men working on the boat deck, and one of the starboard boats started to swing out in its davits. They didn’t know what kind of shape he might be in, or whether there could be somebody else lying in the bottom of the raft.
    He cupped his hands. “Don’t lower a boat! Just a ladder!”
    A voice came back from the darkness of the bridge. “You sure? How about the accommodation ladder?”
    That would be stowed, and it would take twenty minutes to break it out and rig it. “Just a pilot ladder,” he shouted back. He took a quick look around to be sure there were no cruising dorsals attracted by the flare, slipped over the side, and began pushing the raft ahead of him. In a minute the beam of a flashlight probed downward from the after well-deck to give him a mark, and just before he reached the ship’s side there was the rattle and bumping of a pilot ladder being dropped over. The lower end of it was in the water under the beam of light. He pushed the raft aside and swam over to it. The end of a line dropped into the sea beside him.
    “Make it fast around yourself,” a voice called down. They were determined to make a stretcher