By The Sea, Book Three: Laura (19 page)

The deck leak above him had plagued his
whole life. He remembered it from when he was two; he learned the
word "wa-wa" in a rainstorm by pointing to the trickle that was
coming through where the deck was cut around the bulwark stanchion.
Over the years the leak came and went, and this summer it was back.
His father had shown him how to fix it, and Neil thought he'd done
a pretty good job this time. But that was for a sea that didn't
come crashing down on the bow, the way it was doing now. He held on
to the bunkboard as the
Virginia's
bow lifted high up,
higher than he ever remembered, and fell.

He didn't know what to do. He was too tired
to open his eyes, too wet to stay where he was. He should've taken
Colin's saloon berth when it was offered; but then where would
Colin go? It was all such a mess. Everything was a mess. His
blanket was soaked, and his pillow, and he was just so tired of it
all. He had been trying very hard to be tough and strong like the
others and to smile when he was afraid. But this wasn't fair.
Nobody else's berth leaked. When they got back he was going to make
his father sell the boat and get a house, and then he could sleep
in a dry, steady berth all night long, and have a dog.

And he was cold, colder than he'd ever been.
His teeth were chattering, and he was shivering and wrapping
himself with his arms, but it didn't do any good. It seemed to him
that the noise on deck was worse than ever, and the
Ginny
was getting slammed by seas more often than ever, and he started to
cry. Not enough so that Stubby and Billy could hear him, but enough
to relieve himself of some of his misery. After two or three
minutes he reached a decision. He tied his shagreen bag to his belt
and climbed out of his berth. Stepping down with difficulty in the
pitching boat, he began to make his way aft in the dark with the
utmost caution: Stubby's rat could be anywhere.

The noise in the cargo hold was tremendous.
It was nothing but an open space, and any sounds on deck
reverberated below. He could hear water sloshing in the bilge, and
it sounded high. The rough-hewn planking of the sole of the cargo
area was wet under his bare feet, and he became worried about
slipping and falling and the rat biting his leg. It seemed to him
that every time the boat lifted and fell, he heard flagstone
cracking, a horrible sound since it had been his job to pack the
straw between the slabs.

At last he emerged in the main saloon, but
here, too, it was dark. Only the tip of the wick in the kerosene
lamp glowed, the way it did when the lamp bowl was empty but the
wick was still a little wet. He could not see whether Colin was
asleep or not; he hoped he was, because he did not want to be seen
crawling, like a baby, to his mother for comfort. He felt his way
by heart across the saloon, holding on to the table, then the seat,
then the fireman's pole at the foot of the companionway steps to
steady himself, until at last he was at the door of his mother's
cabin.

He lifted the latch carefully and pushed the
door open a little. "Mama?" he whispered in a furtive voice. "Mama,
it's me."

There was no light in his mother's cabin,
either. But as he stood there whispering, "Mama?" in an inaudible
voice, moonlight broke through the clouds and streamed through the
cabin portholes, burning the scene before him into his memory for
all time: two people, mere shadows, in his parents' berth, and one
of them wasn't his father.

He stood there, his mouth ajar, his hand
still on the cabin door. The boat lurched and his hand went up
inadvertently, lifting the latch, which fell back with a little
"click." It was nothing, a tiny sound in nature's wild cacophony;
but Colin heard it. He turned and saw Neil. And then the moon went
away and the cabin went dark again, so dark that he could not see
his mother.

Which made the anguish in her voice all the
more plain. "
Neil
—"

But he could not bear to hear any more—he
wanted so desperately to cling to the notion of the mother he
knew—so he slapped his hands over his ears and ran from her cabin
until he stumbled into something and fell. He crawled after that,
not trusting his balance and not even thinking about the rat, all
the way to the forecastle. When he got to his berth he tumbled into
it as if it were a secret cave, and sat listening to the sounds of
the storm, hearing nothing.

****

"Oh dear God. What have I done?" Laura kept
repeating, grabbing wildly at any clothing that she saw. "What have
I done? He'll never understand." She fumbled with buttons, pulled
on pants that were too big, threw them off with horror. All of her
actions, all of her utterances were supercharged with emotion; she
was raw with it.

"He
will
understand, Laura," Colin
insisted, trying to get hold of her. "If not now, then later."

Laura twisted away from him. "You don't
understand him
.
You
don't
understand him. This will
destroy him," she wailed. "Oh God. What have I done?"

She bolted from her cabin in pursuit of her
son. In the moonlit saloon she could see that he was not there.
Somewhere her subconscious registered that the skies had begun at
last to clear. The wind was shifting, though not decreasing; even
in her distraught state she could feel the pattern of the boat's
motion changing. The cargo hold, with no portholes to let in
moonlight, was like a coal mine. Laura bounced off one object and
into another, her hands outstretched before her, feeling her way to
the forecastle.

Her hand was on the cold porcelain rim of
one of the bathtubs when the unthinkable, the incomprehensible,
happened. The
Virginia,
lifted high on a crest, fell with a
nauseating, soul-searing crash of splintering wood and cracking
timbers: she had hit bottom.

Hit bottom hard. Laura was thrown violently
forward, landing with bruising force up against one of the cement
bags that was stowed in the tub. It broke her fall, possibly saved
her life. Stunned and with her breath knocked out of her, she lay
against the bag with aching, sore breasts while the
Virginia
lifted on another crest, fell with another crash, more sickening
than the first: all Laura heard was the sound of breaking bones, of
poor old
Virginia
being methodically brutalized. There was a
dragging sound as cargo shifted; the granite slabs were breaking
loose. Laura struggled to her feet and made her way blindly forward
through the tumult; she had to find Neil.

Another lift, another fall, more breaking.
Laura was thrown against a supporting column with such violence
that the head of a protruding nail tore through her shoulder. With
a cry of pain she grabbed at the wound: blood, sudden and warm,
flowed freely. The lumber on deck began to break away from its
moorings, creating unspeakable noise above, as if they'd been
boarded by an army of marauders. The multiple heavy layers of
canvas that had been nailed over the hold were torn away like so
many sheets of paper, and great volumes of water came cascading
through the now exposed hatch, flooding the hold and washing over
Laura with apocalyptic violence. "Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no," she
kept repeating numbly as she stumbled and crawled and drove herself
forward.

When she found Neil he was clinging to the
foremast the way he had clung to her leg when he was in diapers.
Billy was trying to pry him loose, and gesturing to the booby hatch
above. In the middle of her despair Laura felt her heart lighten:
Billy was loyal, and her son was alive.

When Billy saw Laura he shouted, "Can we go
back that way?" In the moonlight that poured through the booby
hatch he looked like Sam, only frightened.

"No. The cargo's loose," Laura shouted over
the din. She was knocked down, struggled painfully to her feet, was
thrown forward. It was drier in the forecastle, away from the
enormous open cargo hatch; but even here there seemed to be water
everywhere. "Help me lift Neil out of here," she shouted, taking
her son firmly by his wrist. He seemed limp to her touch, and she
thought he might be in shock.

The angle of the schooner was becoming more
acute as the boat was driven further and further aground. Despite
that, and despite the pain of her injuries, Laura managed to hand
Neil up to Billy and Stubby, who were both lying flat on deck now,
hanging their arms through the hatch to grab Neil. Stubby's face
was excited but hardly terrified, and Laura thought, he
still
doesn't understand. They yanked Neil up through the
hatch; Laura followed.

On deck it was impossible to stand. The
Virginia
was almost flat on her side, her heavy masts nearly
horizontal, the tiny storm jib still drawing, still doing its best
to keep the boat steady. They had to climb to the high side—there
was no path left along the leeward deck—and crawl their way aft
with excruciating slowness, like human caterpillars. The seas were
breaking on the hull with such appalling violence that the water
streamed straight over their heads, leaving them relatively
unscathed; Laura had been in more danger of drowning in the cargo
hold. In a split-second lull she caught a moonlit glimpse of land,
but it was hundreds of yards away.

They were on a reef, then, and between the
reef and the island was more water. How deep, how navigable, she
had no idea.

When they got aft it was worse than Laura
had feared. The main boom had splintered in two, with one section,
still attached to its running rigging, waving a deathly finger at
the sky above them. The cockpit was half filled with water, and she
could tell by the way the steering wheel was poised motionless that
it was no longer connected to the rudder. The skylight over the
after-cabin had carried away, and water was crashing into the cozy
galley and saloon, which seemed like the greatest outrage of all.
Where could they hide? Her mind went blank for a moment; and then
Colin appeared, and she snapped out of it.

"Colin! Where were you?" she screamed over
the horrendous noise of wind and sea and wreckage.

"Looking for you in the hold," he yelled
back. "Everyone here?"

He was perhaps three feet away, and yet she
had to strain to hear him. She saw, even in the moonlight, that he
was hurt. Blood streamed down the side of his face; he had done
battle with the loose cargo, looking for her. It was pointless to
ask whether he thought he'd be all right. She shouted instead, "Do
you think that's Pineapple Cay?"

"No way to tell," he answered in kind.

The
Virginia
was lifted again by a
sea, but not quite as violently; she was filling with water,
becoming sluggish, too beaten, too broken to fight back much
longer. It filled Laura with panic, as if she had stumbled upon
someone suffering from convulsions and had no time to react.
"Should we let her try to bounce over the reef into the water? If
that's Pineapple Cay it will be deep enough on the other side, and
we can get out through the break in the reef."

"We don't know that. I think our best bet is
to use the yawl-boat to kedge off an anchor and try to keep her
from being driven farther on the reef. It's low tide. We may be
able to float her off at high."

All this was screamed into her ear through
his cupped hands. Laura nodded vigorously, fired with hope that all
wasn't lost after all. Just then a sea, higher than the half dozen
preceding it, washed over them all, drenching them anew. Someone
would be washed overboard for certain, despite the footing the
cabin house afforded them. "Let me stow Neil below," she shouted
back to Colin. "Wait for me. Stubby can't row—we can't count on the
engine—and Billy will have to work the windlass. I'll go with you.
Wait for me."

He nodded once; she wasn't sure he'd heard
her. Fearful that he'd try something heroic, she grabbed up Neil
and with great difficulty got him below. The saloon was awash,
though not badly. But she'd forgotten, in the space of the time she
was on deck, how horrifying the sound of the hull being dragged
over the reef was. It echoed and re-echoed in her ears, a death
rattle. "Neil," she said in a clear, loud voice to her utterly
silent son as she dug out a lifejacket and tied it around him,
"listen to me very carefully. I want you to stay below until we're
finished. We're going to kedge off, just like Dad and Billy have
done a dozen times. Don't be afraid. You'll be safe here. Climb up
on my berth; it's on the high side. Stay there until one of us
comes for you. Someone will, don't worry. But do not, no matter
what, leave the
Virginia.
Don't try to swim to shore. Stay
with the boat. Do you understand? You'll be safe here. Safe."

He stared at her.

"Neil? Neil. Stay here. Stay here." She
wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight, unwilling,
despite everything, to let go. "No matter what, I love you."

The
Virginia
lurched again, pushed up
further on the reef like a beached whale. In an agony Laura
released her son and climbed back up on deck. Colin and Billy were
at the stern, next to the davits on which hung the yawl-boat, still
miraculously intact. They were pulling back its canvas cover,
getting ready to lower it into the water breaking over the
reef.

Whether she and Colin could successfully
manage to get the yawl-boat through the surf and around to the
Virginia's bow, hold it steady while Billy and Stubby lowered the
kedge anchor into it, and then row the anchor out to a suitable
spot while dragging the two-inch rope that Billy would be paying
out from the
Virginia ....

Laura looked at the island, so fetchingly
close, so irresistibly safe. They could wait until the storm blew
out, then take the yawl-boat ashore. Sooner or later they would be
found, even if there were no settlements there, which there might
well be. "Colin!" she suddenly shouted. "It's too late! Let's let
the boat go!"