"I thought of that," she told him. "Sandwiches."
She went below. Terry continued to watch, while figures at the stern of the schooner went through an involved process of visual measurement. It was not simple to determine the dimensions of a patch of shimmering light flashes from a boat in motion. But presently, Davis came toward him.
"It's thirteen hundred yards across," he told Terry. "Plus or minus twenty."
"I didn't expect all this," Davis said, frowning. "I've been making guesses and hoping fervently that I was wrong. And I have been, but each time the proof that I was wrong has led to new guesses, and I'm afraid to think those guesses may be right."
"I can't begin to guess yet," said Terry.
"You will!" Davis assured him. "You will! You try to add up things.... A half-mile-wide patch of foam that piles up thirty feet above the sea...."
"And into which," Terry interrupted, "a sailing ship does not sink but drops out of sight as if there were a hole in the sea."
Davis turned sharply toward him.
"There were some photographs and a newspaper clipping on the cabin table," explained Terry. "I suspected they might have been put there for me to see."
"Deirdre, perhaps," said Davis. "She's resolved to involve you in this. You've got scruples, so she suspects you of having brains. Yes. You'll add those things up. You'll include the remarkable success of a fishing boat named La Rubia and the fact that she sometimes brings in very strange fish ... And then you'll add ..."