Buried At Sea (11 page)

" So he tried to listen for clues. At first it all sounded the same, a rush of sound like driving with the windows open. But when he strained he began to distinguish fluttering sailcloth from the hiss of waves breaking beside the boat, the smack of the hull cutting the water, and the rush of wind past his ears.

Suddenly, the boat heeled hard over. He couldn't figure out what had happened. Then he realized that the trade wind,

which for days and days had cut across the bow at the same angle, blowing always from the same quarter, had abruptly changed direction.

He let out the mainsail. His instinct was good and the boat responded. He was moving toward the jib winch to do the same with the headsail when the wind shifted again, back where it had been. Hustle lost speed. Again his instincts served and he hauled in the main. But she kept slowing, so much so that the waves she'd been cutting through began batting her off course.

Baffled, Jim sat alone in the dark, trying to figure out what had changed so drastically. The wind. The northeast trade wind, that constant of every waking and sleeping hour on the boat, had stopped.

The sails went slack. The boat began rocking uncomfortably, pitching fore and aft, which caused the sails to slat and bang. When he looked up at them, he saw that the rest of the stars had vanished. Suddenly, the still air was stirred by a cold breeze. Will ran up on deck. "What the—bloody hell, you should have waked me! It's going to hit us like a freight train."

Now Jim saw what he had missed. A quarter mile off to the right, so bright as to glow beneath the black sky, a heavy, bone-white line was bearing down on them like a huge grin in a dark face.

"Furl the jib! I'll reef the main!" Will paused only to put Jim's hand on the proper line, reminding him that they were sailing with the roller-reefing jib instead of the enormous genoa he had dropped the day they spotted the ship.

Then he switched on the work lights—which shone down from the spreaders, illuminating the decks and a patch of sea around the boat—leapt out of the cockpit, and hastily lowered the mainsail halfway down the mast. This time, instead of letting the sailcloth tumble in an out-of-control avalanche, Will kept it in tight control as he made it smaller, tugging on the reefing lines and securing it firmly to the boom, even as he shot anxious looks at the swiftly advancing white line.

Jim, aware that he had screwed up big-time by not paying

attention to his surroundings, tried to furl in the jib. The line he was tugging turned a spool on the front of the boat that was supposed to crank the sail around its forestay like a vertical window shade. But it was balking: jamming, turning fitfully, and jamming again.

The next wind puff was warm and considerably stronger, and when it filled the sail there was no budging it.

"Furl it all the way. Hurry, hurry. Jesus, what were you thinking? When you see a squall coming at you, you have to act."

"I didn't see it."

A third puff struck the boat, icy cold and so strong that it whistled a low note in the rigging. It filled the reefed mainsail and ballooned the jib that Jim was struggling to furl.

"Will, I can't move it."

The wind had filled the headsail rock-hard, and though Jim put all his strength against the winch handle, it wouldn't budge. The next gust shoved the boat so violently that it overrode the auto-helm and turned downwind. Suddenly the sea was frothy white.

"Hang on!" yelled Will, lunging for the wheel.

Another gust from a new direction banged into the sails. The boom swung across the boat, slamming from left to right with a crash that shook the deck, and Hustle jibed about. Racing out of control, smashing sea to sea, she stampeded from the wind.

"Close that hatch!" Will roared from the helm. Jim slid the main hatch cover closed. A wave broke into the cockpit, surged around his legs, and poured down the companionway into the cabin.

"The washboards," Will yelled over the roar of the water. "Under the bench." Kneeling on the floor of the cockpit, Jim opened the cockpit bench, found the wooden boards, and worked them clumsily into the vertical slots that flanked the companionway opening. When he was done and had the hatch closed tight, he realized that Will had somehow battled the boat around, back on course, and was forcing her to head into the wind so they could try again to furl the jib.

The wind was whining in the rigging and blowing cold spray. Neither man had had time to don a windbreaker. "Take the helm and try and hold her in the wind while I—" The wind shifted again and knocked the boat half over. Jim was astonished to see the deck at so steep an angle it was nearly vertical. He fell down, toward the water, and smashed painfully into the lifelines that fenced the deck.

Will, braced at the helm, played the wheel until the boat began to level off. "We have to get that sail in. Here, you—"

An explosion cut off his words, a concussive boom. Where the jib had billowed full and stiff a second earlier, all that was left of the white sail was a black hole fringed by wildly flapping shreds of cloth.

Released from the overwhelming pressure on the sail, the boat snapped straight up and forged ahead, the reefed mainsail driving her hard. The seas were suddenly flattened by a roaring, hissing cascade of rain that blinded them. It turned into hail. Pellets of ice raked the deck, ricocheted, and piled ankle deep.

They grew larger, the size of marbles, then golf balls. Jim saw a baseball-size chunk explode on the gunnel and another clang against the steering pedestal. Then he was down, knocked off his feet, vaguely aware he was floundering on hands and knees, stunned by a huge hailstone that had smashed into his face. He clapped his hand over his nose and it came away blood red. Spray washed over him and salt stung in the wound. Shocked and confused, he tried to stand up just as a tremendous gust hit the boat full on her side. It bellied the mainsail and she tipped, tossing him toward the water again. He reached for the lifelines but fell smoothly between them—swish like a perfect basket—

through the double wires and into the sea.

THE WATER WAS warmer than the frigid wind, as welcoming as a Jacuzzi. But it closed over his head with an awful silence as if the noise of wind and water were life and their absence death. The hull shouldered past him and Jim panicked. A triathlon swimmer might stay afloat for days, but the sailboat was plunging away from him into the storm and when he tired in the end, he would drown alone—a flailing speck under an enormous sky, his weaker and weaker struggles attracting scavengers. His heart hammered in his chest, his body went rigid, and he opened his mouth to scream for Will to stop the boat, turn it around, and pluck him from the sea.

All of which, Will had informed him repeatedly, shaking a safety harness under his nose for emphasis, was impossible. "No way anybody can save you." They should wear the harness whenever they left the cockpit, particularly at night. "You're gone in a flash. So don't fall overboard."

As Jim screamed for help, salt filled his mouth. And suddenly he was right back in the water with the sharks the day Will had dared him to swim. The sharks that had turned out to be dolphins. He closed his mouth, gagging brine from his airway, and tried to kick toward the surface.

Immediately, his foot struck something hard. And he realized that, in his panic, what had seemed like hours in the water had been a fraction of a second. He was still beside the boat; its smooth side was slipping past his shoulder. He lunged for it, reached out, and felt Will's hand close on his.

Then hail was stinging his face and drumming the water again. The squall was roaring in his ears and he was coughing and spitting, but he was sucking sweet air. His back was to the hull, his left arm twisted overhead. He felt the boat rise; it rolled violently and his hand began to slide from Will's. His hand felt flimsy and unsubstantial, his strength overwhelmed by floods of fear-spurred adrenaline.

"I can't pull you aboard," the old man gasped in his ear. "I cracked a rib." Squinting up into the glare of the work lights, Jim saw Will sprawled half over the side of the boat, his chest crushed against the gunnel, his face contorted with pain as he stretched under the lifelines to hold Jim's hand.

Galvanized by Will's suffering, Jim called upon the discipline with which he had built his body. He had trained for years to override pain and hopelessness and expend his last reserves.

The boat rolled downward. A lifeline stanchion was for a brief instant almost in reach. He flutter-kicked and reared backward and seized it. "Let go. I've got it."

"You sure?" Will gasped.

"Let go."

Jim pivoted until he was facing the hull. He grabbed the lower safety wire with his other hand. The boat was rolling, jerking him up, driving him down. She was moving ahead, too, dragging him through the water. He stopped fighting it and let his legs and torso rise with that flow. When he was skimming the surface, he gathered arms and chest, pulled up, tucked his legs into a tight ball, and hooked a foot on the gunnel. The boat rolled up, nearly shaking him off. When it rolled down again, he used the force to stand, tumble over the safety wires onto the hail-slicked deck, and pull Will down into the cockpit.

"Are you okay?"

Will shook him off and scrambled to his knees. His eye leapt from the seas tumbling at Hustle to the double-reefed mainsail. Hunched over, favoring his right side, he hauled himself up by the steering pedestal and steadied the wheel. Jim sank to the cockpit sole and rested his head on the bench. He was trembling from head to toe and could barely raise his head when he heard Will barking orders at him.

"What?"

"Wake up, Jim. We're not out of this by a long shot:'

All Jim could think about was how close he had come to dying. Will wouldn't shut up.

"Put on your harness." He shook Jim's shoulder and pointed at the bench hatch where the safety gear was stowed.

Jim crawled to it and fumbled the lid open. The boat rolled sharply and the lid banged shut, nearly crushing his fingers. "Put it on," Will yelled. Jim pulled out a webbing harness, slowly untangled it, and buckled in.

"Clip onto the pedestal."

The snap shackle clicked onto a steel ring and he was now tethered to the boat by a sixfoot length of braided nylon line.

"Help me into mine."

Will lifted one hand from the wheel, then the other, as

Jim held the harness and clipped onto the pedestal.

"Now take the wheel," Will ordered. "Point her exactly where I tell you."

Steadying himself with his left hand, Will moved aside. Jim discovered that with the jib in tatters it was a lot harder to keep the boat on course. Breaking seas delivered unexpected blows from every direction. Crazy wind gusts banged the sail and rattled hailstones in his face.

"We've got too much sail up," Will yelled. "I'm going to take another reef in the main,"

"Maybe I better do it," Jim offered. "Your ribs—"

"Hold her as close as you can into the wind—take the

pressure off the sail." Will unclipped his harness line.

"Ready?"

From the wheel, Jim watched in awe as Will, hunched way over, clutching his side, edged forward on the icy deck. His every motion was a model of economy as he clipped onto a ring in the cabin roof and tackled the sail, never wasting a move on unnecessary action. With clear arm gestures he showed Jim where to steer whenever the wind shifted direction. The crackling sail inched lower, the reefing line stretched taut, and the cloth shrank smaller between the mast and the boom. When Will finally reeled back to the cockpit, his face haggard with pain, a meager scrap of stiff Dacron the area of a diagonally folded bedsheet was all the boat offered the wind.

Will took the wheel with his good arm.

"Run below and get me two morphine from the medicine kit." Desperate to atone for this catastrophe, Jim leapt toward the hatch. His safety harness brought him up short, and when he turned back to unclip from the steering pedestal, he saw in the work lights a weary grin on Will's face. The old man released the snap shackle and yelled, "Just take it easy. Calm down a little. And try and time the opening of the hatch so you don't let any waves in."

It was much quieter below deck.

There were three drawers of medicine and first-aid gear in a cabinet by the nav station. Bracing against the constant motion, he found the morphine. As he started to open the bottle, he had his first clear thought since the storm had struck, and he dried his hands before cupping two of the pain pills in his palm.

The coffee thermos was nearly full and he brought it to Will along with the pills and a windbreaker and received, for the still-warm coffee, a gratifying "Bless you, my son." Sometime before dawn the wind began to slacken. The hail, which had intermittently raked the boat all night, turned to rain. A steely light began spreading, and as the rain diminished to a warm drizzle, what Jim saw was unlike anything he had yet seen from the boat. Despite the drop in the wind, the sea remained vividly alive and frightening. The

word jagged took hold in his tired mind—the word he would use to describe the storm to Shannon. Jagged waves slashing at the sky, jagged cloud rocketing overhead, jagged tatters of sailcloth where the jib had blown out.

His face hurt where the hail had cut him, and his head throbbed. He was blind-tired. His skin burned where he had scraped it falling through the wire lifelines. And he blamed himself for the ruined headsail. But though he had fallen off the boat and nearly drowned, he was, instead, alive, and his spirit soared when Will put an end to his guilt with a generous, cheerful "Think you could raise the number three jib without falling overboard?"

It took an hour on the pitching foredeck to clear the ruined headsail and raise the spare, with Will calling instructions on the loud-hailer. The boat responded by settling down to a more comfortable ride.

Will welcomed him back to the cockpit with another question: "May I presume that a fitness instructor is qualified to tape cracked ribs?"

"Absolutely."

"Breakfast, first."

"I can get it."