It was only a speck in the distance, showing for an instant as it rose to the broad crest of a swell. It dropped from view. He marked the location in reference to the other craft and tried to hold the glasses steady to catch it when it came up again. Saracen rolled, and he lost it. “Had it,” he said. “Wait—here it is again.” It was in view for several seconds this time, and he was able to make out what it was—”Dinghy,” he announced.

“Adrift?” she asked.

“No. There’s somebody in it.”

“Odd place to go for a row.”

Ingram frowned, still studying the tiny shell. “I think he’s coming this way. Must have sighted us and started to row over.”

“That’s doing it the hard way,” she remarked with a puzzled glance at the back of his head. “Why wouldn’t he crank up the auxiliary? He must have one.”

“I don’t know,” Ingram said. “Unless it’s out of commission.”

In another few minutes the dinghy was within easy view without the glasses, continuing to advance across the slick undulations of the sea as its occupant pulled rapidly at the oars, never pausing or even slowing the beat as he turned his head from time to time to check his course. It would have been long since obvious to him that Saracen was under way and headed for him, and Ingram wondered why he didn’t merely rest on the oars and wait. Judging from the distance remaining to the other yacht, he’d already rowed well over a mile, apparently at that same racing beat. The occupant was a man, bareheaded, wearing a yellow life-jacket.

He was less than a hundred yards away now. Ingram reached down and cut the engine, and in the sudden silence they could hear the creak and rattle of oarlocks as the dinghy came on, its pace unchecked, across the closing gap. Saracen slowed and came to rest, slewing around on the swell, port side toward the approaching boat. The man looked around over his shoulder but did not hail. He was going to hit amidships. Ingram stepped quickly up on deck and knelt at the rail. He caught the bow of the dinghy and tried to fend it off, but a last explosive pull at the oars had given it too much momentum, and it bumped anyway. It swung around against Saracen’s side. The man let go the oars. One of them started to slide overboard, but Ingram grabbed it with his other hand and dropped it into the dinghy. “Okay,” he said soothingly. “Just take it easy.”

The other paid no attention. His lips moved, but he uttered no sound, his eyes reflecting some furious intensity of concentration that excluded all else. Ingram took a turn around a lifeline stanchion with the dinghy’s painter and held down a hand to help him on deck. The man caught his arm between elbow and wrist with a grip that made him wince. The other hand caught the stanchion, and he came up all in one plunging and desperate leap that kicked the dinghy backward against its painter and almost capsized it, clawing his way over the lifeline and catching the handrail along the edge of the deckhouse. The suddenness of it caught Ingram unawares, and when the man crashed into him he fell backward and sat down abruptly on the deckhouse coaming.