Heartbroke Bay (14 page)

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Authors: Lynn D'urso

BOOK: Heartbroke Bay
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Michael drills all hands in the operation of the vessel, defining sheets and halyards, sail trim, and the finer points of following a compass. He demonstrates tacking and reefing, passes on tips for avoiding oversteering in a following sea, and provides a minimal education on balancing the helm “so the rudder doesn’t fight you or you fight the boat. Nothing will wear a man faster, and the sea never tires.
“There’ll be times when I need you, especially after we clear Cape Spencer. After that, there will be no more shelters until we fetch Lituya Bay. We’ll shorten sail at night, but keep going, and I’ll need a wink or two of sleep now and then.”
Saint Lazaria falls behind, growing smaller as the lessons proceed. Hannah proves an apt pupil, but plays herself down. After Hans tries the helm and sends the boom crashing from port to starboard in an accidental jibe, she takes the blame, claiming to have been too slow on the sheet.
The Sound widens, the islands draw apart, and the horizon expands as
Tara
rounds Cape Edgecombe. Dutch scans the immense distance with darting eyes, peering left and right in search of some dire symptom of doom: a squall line—though he has no idea what one looks like, but supposes to be something dark and furious in the distance—or an angry sea spout, a rogue wave; surely something in all of that space must lurk evil and hungry for men’s bones.
Harky is silent and stares into the distance before asking, “How deep would the water be here? Below us right now?” He thinks of how little it is that separates them from the might of the ocean and the impenetrable darkness of deep water.
Michael’s answer is to sing. Throwing back his head, he hails the great ocean’s spirit in a fine, ringing tenor, wailing out a song of Inishbofin, where he and his brother fished tub trawls for cod out of a two-man dory, rowing for hours across the gray, heaving waters and running home under a leg-o’mutton sail only after the dory had settled low under the weight of a dozen hauls of fish. The words are in Gaelic, alien and magic, and Hannah wonders at their spell when she sees Harky’s foot begin to pat in time with their ancient rhythms.
Beyond the cape, the wind strikes up a tune and the sea becomes a willing dancer. A swell rising from the southwest builds until the cutter must dip and bow to each passing wave. Michael orders the sails sheeted in until the leach of the main flutters like a bird’s wing at the top of each surge. The ship heels. Small gear left loose in the cabin shifts and crashes to the sole. Hannah smiles at the exuberance on Michael’s face.
The crew settles into a routine, hopscotching from harbor to harbor up the coast. On the afternoon of the third day, which has been nearly windless and seen little distance marked off on the chart since noon, Michael starts up the Hundsted and uses precious fuel to motor into an islet-studded bay. He manhandles the dinghy over the side, touching his nose and says, “The lot of us are stinking. It’s time we did something about it.”
Ferrying back and forth to the shore, he carries first Dutch, then Harky, who sits upright, clutching at the gunwales, trying not to make any sudden motions. Hannah and Hans go in last together, then they wait as Michael returns to
Tara
a final time before returning with a shotgun and pack.
Leading the group up a faint trail, he grins, bursting with barely controlled eagerness. At the end of the track, above a rocky beach sheltered between slabs of dark stone, there is a split in the bedrock from which steaming, sulfurous-smelling water flows.
“A fisherman told me about this hot spring. It’s the only bath for a hundred miles.” He opens the pack and passes out towels, soap, and a change of clothing for each of them. Hannah feels her cheeks burn at the thought of his hands sorting through her things.
“Ladies first, hey, gentlemen?” says Michael, leading Harky and Dutch away. Hans stands guard while the heat of the water turns Hannah’s skin pink. When she is done, her muscles feel relaxed, her skin smooth and elastic. She dries herself languidly before dressing. Hans’s face turns ruddy and fierce from the bath, and he wishes aloud for a razor.
There is a
haloo
from the bush, and Hannah shouts back that the coast is clear. The three men emerge from the trees, grinning and waving. Harky and Dutch each hold a brace of grouse in their hands.
“Our captain’s a crack shot,” whoops Dutch, waving a bird overhead. “Six birds out of the flock with only two shots!”
Hans and Hannah walk back down the path to give the others their privacy, then sit on a log, plucking at the birds. The soft, warm feathers drift at their feet.
“This is all fine,” grumbles Hans, “but I wish we could get on to the goldfield.”
Hannah is about to chide her husband for his impatience but swallows the admonishment when Michael comes along looking fresh and invigorated. The others are close behind him.
Harky drops to his haunches beside Hannah, measuring out shreds of tobacco into a straw-colored paper. Licking and twisting the makings into a cigarette, he inspects it closely, then uses it to gesture at a stand of tall, straight trees.
“Good timber around here,” he rumbles.
“That’s true,” says Hans. “But we’re after gold, not trees.”
Harky does not reply, but considers the pile of plucked grouse a moment, cocks his head to listen to the rustling silence around them, then looks again at the trees. They are not so large that he could not lift and heft them into place in the shape of a cabin by himself, much as he had done for Marta more than twenty years ago down in Mexico.
Popping a match with a horny thumbnail, he draws at the smoke and blows it out, muttering, “Gold ain’t everything.”
Only Hannah hears the longing in his voice.
The first day of April, 1898
 
 
It is difficult to find privacy or quiet to make my entries in this journal, but I must try, as the experience of this voyage is so wonderful. Hans chafes at the confinement, but other than the difficulty of private functions, I mind it little. Harky and Dutch clearly wish it over, but I sometimes feel I could go on forever. Mr. Severts enjoys it, laughing and joking from morning till night. His spirit adds much to the character of our party.
There is a wonderful, orderly progression to life at sea in a small boat, though every hour of each day offers something different. It sometimes feels as if the rest of the world has disappeared, leaving only what we see around us. The problems of life are reduced to those of the ship: whether the sails are properly set and trimmed, what cooking can be allowed by the condition of the sea, what is safe, and the most efficient way to be propelled in the right direction. There are clear rules of seamanship and physical laws that govern every action. The simplicity soothes the mind.
The prospectors dawdle over breakfast. Michael has decided to wait for high water to depart. From their present position behind a small island, they will stand nearly due west after leaving, reaching far out to sea before tacking north on a course designed to bring them landfall one hundred miles up the coast, near Lituya Bay. Icy Strait empties into Cross Sound, and the rushing outflow of this water will flush them well out to sea, where Michael hopes to avoid the rip and boil of currents running close to shore.
He is less cheerful this morning and lingers over the chart, measuring and remeasuring the course and distance. If the sea is kind, they might arrive within two days, but the furious Gulf of Alaska is not known for its benevolence. Storms, tide rips, fog, and contrary seas have much to say about when, or if, they will make their destination.
He reads aloud from the
Sailing Directions for the Coast of Alaska
, a booklet printed by the government that details the findings of a recent survey of the Alexander Archipelago and Gulf of Alaska by the U.S. Navy. His Irish accent curls softly around the words of the entry for Lituya Bay: “The entrance to the bay is extremely dangerous and must be attempted only at high slack water due to the strength of the current, which is reported to exceed twelve knots. During the outgoing ebb, southwest swells break with great force across the width of the entrance.”
He clears his throat and continues. “Lituya Bay was first discovered and explored by the French explorer LaPerouse, who suffered the loss of twenty-three crewmen in a single tragic event after surf overturned two boats at the entrance. Extreme caution is advised.”
Dutch’s throat works up and down before he mutters, “Jesus Christ,” and licks at his lips.
Hans and Michael exchange wondering glances at Dutch’s oath, and Hans asks, “How was it when you were up there, Dutch?”
Dutch scratches at a plate of fried potatoes with a fork. “Well, uh, I ain’t had no problem there.”
The fork trembles lightly in his hand. They press him for more information, but he stammers and says, “I forget. It won’t be no problem, that’s all.”
For reasons of its own, the cast-iron engine is reluctant to start, and the day is well advanced by the time it pops, chokes, and roars to life. Harky mashes a finger as he muscles the anchor aboard. Hans grumbles that the porridge is like glue; Michael’s banter sounds forced; Dutch goes forward to sit alone, staring at the mountains.
The airs are light, and it is the hand of the tide that pushes
Tara
offshore. Steep, briefly spaced swells come charging from out of the southwest, the spoor of a storm somewhere over the horizon. A vessel built for sailing does not power well, and throughout the day
Tara
slats and slams out of rhythm with the ocean. Sails slack and engine pounding, the cutter corkscrews and twists through the waves. Harky wedges himself into a corner, and his face grows dark. An unexpected pitch and roll slams Hannah across the galley, bruising her shin, and she breaks a dish.
The wind comes just as the purple hands of night begin to reach into the eastern sky, a contrary force that buffets
Tara
hard on the nose. As it strikes, the soft, slack sails become suddenly rigid as wood and bedlam breaks upon the cutter with a terrible banging of blocks and groaning lines. The trailing gulls rise screaming, and the rails run awash in green foam.
Harky steers as Michael and Hans crawl forward to bring in the jib. Leaving the staysail to its work, they move aft to fight a reef into the main. The sails struggle against them, wild as terrified horses, and there are skinned knuckles and streaks of blood on the canvas before they are done. Hannah helps where she can, paying out sheets and coiling them in again with the aid of the Texan, whose grip on the tiller turns white with strain. A moan issues from belowdecks where Dutch squats, huddled in fear.
After the sails are shortened,
Tara
heels, steadies to her course, and shoulders into the waves. Cold showers of seawater burst over the rail, flying the length of the cabin to rain down on all of them.
Across the horizon, the wind-vexed waters tumble and fall in endless waves, their peaks rising thin and sharp between
Tara
and the sun before crumbling into foam, and for that moment of suspension between heaven and sea, the light piercing the rim of each wave turns the water clear and green as an emerald. Gusts of spume cast into the air form a smoking mist that gleams like amber in the clean light.
Michael takes the tiller from Harky, exalting in the trumpets of spray. “It’s better than that god-awful pitching and rolling,” he says, then pointing west into the setting sun, he shouts, “Look!”

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