The New Sonia Wayward Read Free

Perhaps they were still looking at the quaintest little creature in the world.
    But she went in and down with hardly a ripple. Once he had got her over the side – which was a struggle – she just sank, lost form, vanished. He had been intent on the job, secure in his solitude. He had been so secure, indeed, that he had failed to notice that it was no longer solitude, after all. He had got her over the port gunwale; he turned to starboard – and there was another little yacht, no distance away. He was gripped by horrible fear – fear that took him and unmanned him, so that he could hardly stumble into the cabin before his knees gave way and he was on the floor. He lay for a long time shivering, expecting to hear a hail, or even the sound of another craft coming alongside. But there was no sound but the faint lapping of the water against the shell of his own yacht. Even that terrified him. It sounded like somebody tapping. It sounded like her …
    Nothing happened. He got up and peered out – first warily through the little porthole, and then from out in the open. The other yacht had grown small in the distance. Of course he hadn’t been discovered. But it had been a near thing. Lucky he had chosen the port side. He had been careless, of course – not to take a good look round. And one can’t afford to be careless.
    Petticate paused, frowning. Why had he said that to himself? It was the sort of thing a fellow said when engaged in a piece of wrong-doing, even in a crime. He himself wasn’t in the least involved in anything of that sort. He had simply been taking a modern, strictly rational view of the sensible way of disposing of a dead body. It might offend old-fashioned sensibilities. There were still people who were shocked if you didn’t wear mourning. And no doubt if the undertakers got hold of the matter, they might feel done out of a job. But of course he had acted entirely within his rights. He was more than three miles out at sea – decidedly in international waters. And he was captain or master or whatever it was called of this particular craft. It was entirely for him to decide for or against burial at sea. It would have been a shade more regular, perhaps, if he had read the appropriate parson’s piece. But that wasn’t among such literature as the yacht carried.
    It was almost dark, and he busied himself with his light. He had no fancy for being run down by a liner. If he was to drown, he would, somehow, like it to be in another part of the ocean. And something was puzzling him. He tried to remember what it was. Yes – of course. Why had he put Sonia into that bathing-costume? It didn’t seem to hitch on to burial at sea. He must have had something else in mind. And if he could only recall what it was, then things would be more comfortable.
    In great perplexity, Petticate wandered back into the cabin. There was, he seemed to remember, some whisky somewhere. A dash of that might serve to clear his head. But now he couldn’t find the whisky. The bottle, although it was straight in front of his thin and rather handsome nose, somehow eluded him. He sat down wearily and listened again to the lapping. This time he connected it with nothing in particular – except with hearing it, night by night, as he went to sleep. Yes, it was a pleasant drowsy sound.
     
    He woke up to darkness, and to cold and cramp. Something was digging into his side. But for a moment he didn’t attend to that, since his mind was wholly occupied with some inexplicable sense of horror. He called out incoherently to his wife, but she didn’t answer him. Then he knew that an irrevocable thing had happened. That was why he was sitting here, with the little folding table digging into him, instead of lying in his bunk. He had done something gratuitous and wanton, something with no reasonable sense to it. He sat up, and the movement put him abruptly in possession of the whole thing. What he had done had been not merely irrational. It had