And knowing after the first one died there was no hope for the others. My wife was the last one, just at sunset. And the terrible part of it was I wasn’t even sick. I just stood there and watched them die, like something that was happening on the other side of a glass wall I couldn’t get through.”

Rae reached down and put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But don’t talk about it now. You’ve got to get some sleep.”

“Thank you,” Warriner replied, “but I’m all right. After the first couple of days I managed to snap out of it and get going again. And it was about then I began to notice the bilges were filling up with water and that it took longer every day to pump them out. Before long it was so bad I didn’t have time to think about anything but staying afloat. Maybe that was what saved me from cracking up.”

“Do you know what the poison was?” Ingram asked.

Warriner nodded. “The only thing it could have been was a can of salmon that must have spoiled. I didn’t eat any, because I don’t like salmon.”

“Had it been opened a long time?”

“No, just a few minutes before they ate it. But it wasn’t commercially canned; it was some Russ and Estelle—they were the other couple—some they put up themselves. Every year Russ goes up to the Columbia River for a week’s fishing when the Chinook run is on, and when he catches any they have some of it smoked and Estelle cans the rest because Russ claims—I mean, claimed—” Warriner took a deep breath and went on— “claimed it was better than the commercial pack. When we started out on this cruise to Papeete, they had four or five cans left over from last year, so he put them in the stores. About ten days ago—at least, I think it was ten days, I’ve lost all track of time—it was Estelle’s turn to fix dinner. It was hot and muggy and nobody was very hungry. But she happened to remember the salmon and thought she might be able to make some kind of salad out of it by cutting up pickles and onions and putting mayonnaise on it. I didn’t eat any; I always figured salmon was for cats, so I made myself a sandwich out of something.”

“And nobody noticed anything wrong with it?” Ingram didn’t know why he asked. There didn’t seem to be much you could do to change the outcome of a tragedy that had happened ten days ago. “The can wasn’t bulged or anything?”

“If it was, she didn’t notice it. Frankly, she’d had about three rum sours before she went below to fix it. We’d all had, for that matter. And if there was any odor, the onions must have covered it up.

“That was around seven p.m. The next morning between six and six-thirty Russ came up from below—I was at the wheel—and said Estelle was feeling nauseated and upset and wanted to know if I had any idea where those pills were that we’d brought along for the tourist trots. I turned the wheel over to him and went below to look for them.

“I thought they might be in the medicine closet in the head amidships, but when I got down there Estelle was in it, and I could hear her vomiting. When she came out her face was white and sweaty and she looked bad. She didn’t have much on, and when she saw it was me instead of Russ she motioned for me to look the other way and ran forward into their cabin. I found the pills and got a glass of water and called out to her.