Chapter Five

The storm’s masterstroke came just after dawn. What actually happened, I never knew for sure. Perhaps some freak combination of waveforms resulting in a rogue wave much higher than the others. Perhaps the waves had changed their period and the Wahini was out of synch, and caught still rolling to port under the influence of one wave when a second one added its force to the first. The reason was irrelevant; only the result mattered.

I was shocked fully awake by a sound like an explosion, a shudder that ran through the hull and the sickening feeling of overturning. I sat up so quickly that I slammed my head against the overhead, but my curses were cut off by a firehose spray of salt water in the face. Before I knew it, I was out of the bunk and standing with my feet on the side of the cabin, looking down through the portholes into green swirling water that went all the way down, miles down, to the deep ocean floor.

Wahini was lying on her side. Raven’s bunk hung above me. Her eyes were like twin coals glowing in twin caverns, her mouth worked with fear but no sound came out. She clawed at the ropes that held her canvas restraint in place and came slipping out like the sudden, final rush of birth. I caught her as she fell.

Wahini’s masts must have been nearly horizontal. If she had had even one stitch of canvas set, it would have driven her down that last degree to her death – and ours. Instead she hung there for agonizing seconds that felt like years, mastheads just above the surging waves, rail buried, cabin sides buried so that we could look down between our feet out the porthole into the green depths where Leviathan sleeps. 

There was absolutely nothing I could do. Not even pray. Raven’s hands were making furious crosses, forehead to waist, shoulder to shoulder. Please, God! Please! Another bucketful of water came in the broken hatch and washed the canned goods, ketchup, and coffee grounds around our ankles, covering the portholes and hiding the sight of the depths that lay beneath us.

We braced each other up, arms wrapped around each other, trembling in the darkness, helpless as mice beneath a lion’s paw.

Slowly, regally, Wahini found her feet. The cabin side slid sideways beneath us and we scuttled back to the narrow floorboard. Wahini groaned around us.

I swallowed my heart, and as the fear-buzzing numbness faded from my ears, I became aware of the fact that I was holding Raven in a close embrace. She had buried her face in my chest and the scent of her hair was strong. Raven black. Long, firm body pressed close and trembling. And I had no time for her! I disengaged gingerly, cooing reassurance and cursing our timing. more tomorrow

The hollows between the waves had become like caverns. Wahini would crest a wave then plunge down into the trough with such speed that it seemed as if she would bury her bowsprit and keep on driving clear underwater. I could no longer trust my steering to prevent disaster. I had been up so long that I could hardly trust myself to stay awake. I had to put out the sea anchor.

It was a clumsy device of boards and welded chain that Will and I had fashioned months ago, hoping we would never need it. I turned the Wahini into the wind and dropped it off the bow on a long line. I paid out the warp until it coincided with the period of the waves and the Wahini settled into a wild but regular pattern of motion. The sea anchor dragged her bow around, holding Wahini’s head to the wind as she worked the waves. She seemed to move forward while actually sliding backward under the press of the gale. As we crested each wave, the sea anchor snubbed the bow down until green water came over and shot a thin sheet the length of the deck. Then the wind would catch the full height of the masts and Wahini would shake her head like a horse with a harsh bit in her mouth. Down the face of the wave then, nearly plunging through the swirling surface and on down to the sea floor miles below. In the trough, crashing into the face of the next wave; then struggling, shuddering, up to the next crest to repeat the cycle.

I lashed the wheel amidships and waited. I had been without sleep for thirty-seven grueling hours, but I had to stay long enough to know that I had done all I could for Wahini. Finally I slid the hatch back and went below.

All was chaos. The crazy motion had been magnified below decks. The latch on one of the food cabinets had broken and canned goods were rolling around underfoot. A bottle of ketchup had broken, turning the narrow deck into a smear of bloody-looking broken glass, mixed with grounds from the overturned coffee pot. The blanket I had wrapped up in was half soaked in the mixture. Raven was in her bunk again, clinging with both hands to keep from being thrown out as the boat shuddered and staggered from wave to wave. Her face was full of terror and seasickness.

I said, “Look,” and showed her how to adjust the canvas restraint that would pin her into her bunk so no motion, however violent, could throw her out. Then I replaced her seasickness patch and dug out a pair of chocolate bars. She refused hers, so I ate them both.

I shook the broken glass out of my blanket, wiped the worst of the ketchup and coffee grounds on the edge of the transom, crawled into the bunk opposite Raven’s, and fell instantly asleep.

#          #          #

My night was broken. Every hour – it seemed like every five minutes – Wahini’s wild motion would bring me to wakefulness and I would lie staring into the darkness, feeling her drunken dance with the storm and gauging her condition. Eventually I would drift off again, and an hour or so later wake again with that steel-twisted feeling of helpless. So it went, all night. I made no move to go on deck. Unless Wahini lost her sea anchor and I had to makeshift another one, there was absolutely nothing I could do to make things better. There was no reason to look out for other ships. If one were bearing down on us, there would be nothing I could do to avoid it. It was better to just sleep and wait. more tomorrow

There is no accounting for what drives the engine of memory. In the midst of storm and danger, my mind went sailing again on a Swiss lake, on board one of the lovely old paddle wheel steamers. It was my first trip from Geneva to Montreaux by way of Luisanne, fresh out of the Army and happy to just play tourist. I stood for hours watching the bow wave curl back in smooth mustache of green water, probably dreaming of crossing an ocean in my own small ship. 

Funny thing, the mind. Here in the middle of screaming wind and angry seas, I should have been remembering scenes of similar violence in my past. The shock of cold, swift water as my canoe overturned in the rapids of the Canadian sub-arctic; or crouching silently in the dark, waiting with Greta for East German guards to find us. Instead, I remembered my first entry into Luisanne by steamer, with swans slipping gracefully and unconcerned out of the way. Beyond the embarkation pier were parks and a marina where I had spent an hour admiring the sailboats. The swans had come to beg crumbs, and I had shared part of my bread-loaf lunch.  Young swans – cygnets – as dark gray and ungainly as Hans Christian Andersen’s ugly duckling, trailed in their mothers’ wakes.

When I returned to the dock, two young femmes were sharing a park bench, singing to the guitar one of them was playing. They were perhaps fourteen, as fresh and awkward and innocent as cygnets. They were singing in English, with accents that said they were French. Suzanne, Leonard Cohen’s first real success, a song full of pain, disillusionment, and wry bitterness. Their sweet voices curled around his salt-sour words, singing of things they could not possibly understand. It made the words more bitter, and the beauty of their innocence more poignant.

When they sang that “the sun came down like honey”, the scene came together in my mind in one unbreakable gestalt. The awakened innocence of the girls, the honey warm air, the clear, flat green water with mountains rising up in the distance across Lac Léman. The sound of birds in the bushes; the swans parading awkwardly on dry land down near the marina. I took it all in – a small satori – and it was mine forever, to rise up again when least expected.

Like now, cold and stiff and a little fearful, caught in the midst of a gale a thousand miles from safety. With another girl, more awakened than innocent. With waves that rose up all around me, awaiting a moment’s inattention to destroy both of us. more tomorrow

Chapter Four

Wahini was laying over too far. I could feel it even below decks, and as soon as I could, I disengaged myself from Raven, put on a sweater under my oilskins, and went on deck. Once I let Wahini fall another point off the wind, the pressure on her storm trysail eased and her masts came back closer to perpendicular.

I watched her and felt her motions for a while. She was still laboring. Even under that single small sail, she was sailing too fast. Her broad, blunt bow was crashing into the waves, sending shudders through her massive hull, and showers of spray cascading over the decks.

The wind was force eight and still rising. I released the lashings on the wheel and eased her into the wind as she approached the next wave. This time she took it obliquely, slid sideways as she went up the back of the wave, and slipped down the far side with a twisting, corkscrew motion.

For the next hour I steered her over the waves, letting her slip away to lessen their force. Eventually, I had to take down the last sail, change course, and run her off under bare poles. The masts and rigging alone were enough to carry her downwind as fast as I dared to let her go.

Once Raven stuck her head out of the hatch, looked around her, and slammed the hatch closed again. I didn’t blame her.

Wahini was not a typical yacht. She was a replica of Captain Joshua Slocum’s Spray, built to plans reproduced by Pete Culler.  Slocum had been the first man to sail around the world alone in 1895, and ever since, dreamers have been building replicas of his ship.

I had inherited my Wahini, left half-built in the corner of a trucking yard in the industrial district of San Francisco. When I had first seen her there, forlorn and abandoned, I had been bitten by the same sea fever. Over the next three years, Will Hayden and I had finished and launched her.

Slocum had twenty years of experience as a professional seaman when he circled the globe, but even still, he and the Spray had gone missing on a later voyage. The original Spray had been too shoal, too wide, and inadequately ballasted for her length and sail plan. She was extremely stable, up to a point, but if she lay too far over, she would just keep going until she reached her new position of stability – upside down.

When I inherited the Wahini, I had known none of this. By the time I found out, it was to late. I was committed. So I stayed at the wheel for the next fourteen hours, corkscrewing up and down the waves, and worrying.

#          #          #

Exhaustion, the pounding, twisting, heaving motion of the Wahini, the howl of the wind, an unseasonable cold punctuated by salt spray working its way down from the neck of my oilskins, drove all thought of Raven from my mind. But even fear can become numbed in time. By the third hour I was flogging my mind to remain on task; by the fourth my responses had become automatic while I dreamed awake. more tomorrow

She couldn’t kick in the tight dress, so she drove her spike heel into Davis’ instep, dodged Weasel, and ran forward. Davis and Weasel followed. It was fifty feet to the mesh half-gate. Within two steps, she knew she wouldn’t make it. They caught her, each one grabbing an arm, and she screamed. She got a good breath and screamed again, louder, until Weasel clamped his hand over her mouth and began pawing her. Davis pushed Weasel off and said, “There’s no time for that now.”

Davis twisted Raven’s arm up behind her back and shoved her against the rail. She could see the water rushing by forty feet below. Then they all heard the sound of the heavy steel door opening behind them.

Davis spun Raven around and threw his arms around her.

An old couple stepped out onto the deck and stopped. Raven tried to cry out, but Davis’ arms crushed the breath out of her.

The old man took them for lovers. He said, “Sorry,” with a wry smile, and pulled the door shut behind him as he retreated into the ship.

Davis spun her around, slamming her against the rail, and reached down to grab her thigh and tip her over. That was the part I saw, captured as an afterimage while Raven fell.

“I never fainted,” Raven said. “I never lost consciousness. I remember every foot of that fall – the water frothing out ten feet from the side of the ship and rushing up to get me. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget that fall. I thought, ‘Just let me break my neck and die. Don’t let me drown.’ But reflexes took over; I straightened out at the last moment and went in clean.”

#          #          #

Raven had to stop her story. She had my hand in a death grip.  Wahini was pitching and rolling and groaning around us, but she took no notice of that. She was too lost in the memory of fear.

“The water was cold. I had thought it would be warm. When I went under, I could hear the throb of the propellers and I tried to swim away from the ship to avoid them. I couldn’t move my legs in that damned dress, so I peeled it over my head and kicked off my shoes. The sound was all around me – terrifying.  It scared me more than drowning and I swam straight out until I thought my lungs would burst before I came up for air.

“When I did come up, I couldn’t scream. I had used up all my air, and I could barely get a breath. The ship was rushing by, not fifty feet in front of me. I could see couples leaning on the rail above me, staring into the darkness. They never saw me. I tried to scream and just squeaked. It was horrible. It was worse than anything else that had happened. Seeing the ship roll by, seeing those people staring out over my head, and I couldn’t even call out to them. Then they were gone, the ship was gone, and I was alone.”

She came into my arms, sobbing, struck wordless by the horror of being left alone in the water as the ship rolled on uncaring into the empty ocean night. I braced my legs against the opposite transom and held her tight against the rolling of the ship and the trembling of her body. I could imagine dimly how it might have felt. Falling overboard is a constant danger to singlehanded sailors, and a reason to never go on deck at sea without safety harness. I could too easily imagine what it would be like to fall off Wahini and see her sail away, unmanned and uncaring.

I could imagine it, but Raven had gone through it. That would be a whole different story.

There were no words to comfort her. I simply held her. more tomorrow

“I didn’t see Davis again until the next day, after the ship sailed. We left Bermuda at four PM. He was in the dining room when I went in at seven for dinner. I ignored him, but he came up during the meal and apologized for seeming rude on the island. He said he had been a little drunk. But that was a lie. He was cold sober on the island, and he was cold sober when he threw me into the ocean!”

Her eyes were burning. I decided that if I were James (the Cat?) Davis, I would take care not to fall into her hands.

“I went back to my cabin after that. I wasn’t having much fun on board. Most of the other passengers were middle-aged or older. I should have flown to Bermuda. Anyway, after an hour I started to get stir crazy, so I went down to a lounge and watched the old folks dance a while, and then went to the movie. After the movie, I went for a walk on deck. By that time, I had forgotten all about Davis.”

But Davis had not forgotten about her. From the lounge, she had gone up two decks by an inside stairway, in the direction of her cabin. She saw Davis following her. It spooked her, so she turned aside into the duty-free shop. After he passed, she followed him and found him in front of her cabin.

Raven began to get scared. She didn’t want to confront him by herself, so she turned to get a ship’s officer. She never had the chance. Her second assailant, a slim, weasel faced man she had not seen before, was waiting to cut her off. He stood at the head of the stairs, not saying a word.

Raven turned left and went out of the heavy steel doors to the deck. She was above and forward of the main promenade where all the after-dance couples were strolling. Here the deck was narrow and slick with spray, with lifeboats every few meters.

The door wouldn’t latch. There was no other door letting out onto that small section of deck, only a narrow ladder forward leading up to the crew’s area. It was closed off by a waist high, steel mesh gate. Raven headed toward it just as the door behind her opened. Davis and his dark shadow came through.

“That was when I made my worst mistake,” Raven said. “I should have run like hell and crawled over that half-gate. But it seemed so melodramatic that I just couldn’t do it. I was scared silly, but at the same time I couldn’t believe I was in any real danger. Nothing that harsh words and a slapped face wouldn’t put a stop to. The second man being there should have warned me, but it was the kind of thing that never happens to real people.”

She shook her head .  “If you hadn’t been there, that would have been my last thought as I drowned.  ‘This sort of thing doesn’t happen to real people.'”

I reached across and took her hand. She jumped, then relaxed and finished her story.

Davis said, “What are you running from?” She told him to get out of the way. He just shook his head, and his weasel-faced shadow said, “Not ’til we’ve had some fun and done our job.”

Then Davis grabbed her arm, hard, while Weasel moved up beside her. She was dressed in a thin, clinging dress that half-bound her knees, and left her feeling vulnerable. For a moment she submitted to Davis’ grip on her arm, frozen by the shock of what was happening to her. Davis said, “Time for a swim.”

Weasel moved up beside her and began to touch her. He said, “Put her on the deck and hold her. You can dump her over when I finish.” more tomorrow

I said, “Who are you, Raven No-name? Who threw you off that cruise ship, and why?”

Chapter Three

She started to protest, but I went on, “I was watching through binoculars when it happened.”

“Did you get a good look at them?”

“I could give a description: one was heavy and muscular, the other was skinny and short. But I couldn’t pick them out of a police line-up. They were too far away. Who were they?”

She shook her head and said, “I don’t know. I never saw either one of them before.” I thought she was telling the truth.

“Why did they do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, what other weird things are going on in your life?”

“I don’t know, it’s just . . .  My father is Daniel Cabral. He’s a state senator in California. He has someone on his staff that I thought might be dishonest. Daddy wouldn’t believe me, so I hired a private detective to check her out. But he didn’t find anything wrong.”

“You think he might had stirred this up?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know. He was – kind of slimy.  Most P.I.s are, I guess.”

“Careful. I used to be one.”

“Really?”

“Sort of. I worked for a P.I. in San Francisco while I was in college. It was a part time thing. What else could account for what happened to you?”

“Nothing.”

“You aren’t an escaping Mafioso bride? Or the daughter of a drug kingpin? You didn’t find a secret treasure map in an old trunk in the attic?”

She laughed for the first time. She had a face made for laughter. 

“You’ll have to decide for yourself what I am. Everyone I know thinks I’m something different.” She folded her legs under her and the baggy jeans tried to conform to her curves, but there wasn’t enough of her to fill them. They remained shapeless, but I remembered those tan and lovely legs and I was having a little difficulty concentrating. “Daddy thinks I’m flighty and my sister thinks I exploit people.”

“What do you think?”

“I think I’m a pretty nice person,” she said, but she made it a challenge. Believe it or not. She was an odd one.

I said, “I believe you,” and refilled our coffee mugs.

The little cabin was cozy with the fire and the oil lamps reflecting off varnished wood. Raven was braced into a corner against the motion of the ship. The baggy jeans had drawn tight across the top of her thighs in this new position and her brown toes gripped at the side of a locker like blunt little fingers holding her in place. She worked a brush through the tangle of her heavy, black hair, wincing prettily when the brush stuck in rat’s nests.

I was having a little trouble breathing.

She stopped her brushing and said, “I think you are a pretty nice person, too. Thank you for treating me decently. Especially,” she grinned, “considering how I was dressed when you found me.”

“Tell me what happened, and what led up to it.”

“The big guy was named James Davis. Or so he said.”

“Jim Davis draws Garfield the Cat.”

“I know. Probably an alias, but not as obvious as John Smith.  He approached me in Bermuda the last night I was there. Used a pick-up line, made small talk in a bar, that sort of thing. I wasn’t interested so I turned him off, but I had a hard time getting loose from him. He said he had a car rented for one more day and wanted to give me a tour of the island. First I said no, then I made excuses, and finally I had to make a scene to get away from him.”

“Crazy jealousy? The revenge of a jilted lover?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t like that. He was insistent, but the whole thing didn’t last ten minutes and I gave him no encouragement. Unless he was completely psychotic, it couldn’t be a motive for what he did. And it wouldn’t explain the second man.”

“Go on.” more tomorrow

The wind was still rising. It wouldn’t be long until it would be blowing a full gale, so I ran up the trysail, then furled the mizzen and moved forward to bring in the tiny foresail. I almost lost it overboard, but when I had finished, I could feel a difference in the way Wahini stood up to the wind.

We went below and I built a fire in the Shipmate. It hadn’t been lit since Will and I left San Francisco six months ago. Even if Bermuda was just over the horizon – in the wrong direction now and further away every minute – this storm had sent the temperature plummeting.

Raven had wrapped herself in a blanket. She looked lost and alone. I refilled her coffee cup and opened a can of soup. I set it on the Shipmate, then took the transom seat across from her.

“If you don’t talk soon,” I said, “you’re going to just break down and cry.”

“How long was I unconscious?” she asked.

“I don’t think you were ever unconscious. You were in shock from your immersion, and as soon as I got you on board you passed out, but I would just call it sleep. And you only slept about six hours.”

“But the storm . . .,” she gestured toward the overhead.

“This storm was already building when you went overboard. You would have noticed the signs if you had been on a small boat.”

Her eyes searched my face, but I couldn’t read their message.  She said, “Where are you taking me.”

“I tried all last night to sail toward Bermuda to put you ashore, but this storm is blowing in exactly the wrong direction. By the time we ride it out, it will be too late to turn back. I’m afraid you’ve signed on for the whole journey. I can put you ashore on the Azores or at Gibraltar, or you can come all the way to Marseille. It’s up to you.”

I let her think about it while I served up the soup. She balanced easily to the motion of the Wahini and ate it in neat little bites while I drank from the rim of my bowl. Then I stuck my head out of the hatch to scan the horizon. The ocean is wide, but there are a lot of ships out there. It is a thousand to one against ever colliding with one, but if it happens, it can be awfully fatal.

The Shipmate was glowing now, and the cabin was growing cozy.  Raven had laid aside her blanket. Will’s shirt and jeans were wide cuffed and baggy on her.

I said, “Who are you, Raven No-name? Who threw you off that cruise ship, and why?” more tomorrow

I struggled upright and took another drink of coffee.

“It belongs to me and my friend Will Hayden. He is in Marseilles now. We had planned to sail her over to Europe together, but he got called away. That’s why I’m alone out here. Was alone, that is, until you dropped in.”

Her eyes were dark and lovely, and the fear in them had increased. I said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Where do you want to go? Bermuda?”

She wanted to slide further away from me, but there was nowhere to go and her grip on the blanket had become frantic. It made me angry. I said, “I didn’t risk my life saving you just so I could hurt you. I’ve told you you are safe. At least have the courtesy to pretend to believe me!”

I went forward to the drawers where Will’s things were stored. His clothing would be too big for her, but mine would swallow her completely. I brought her a pair of jeans, a wool shirt, a belt, and one of those plastic eggs like pantyhose come in.

I showed her the egg. “This is a one-size-fits-all string bikini. Some joker gave it to Will as a bon voyage present. It’s the closest thing I have to girls’ underwear. Pound on the hatch when you get dressed, but don’t take all day.”

The weather had gotten worse, but Wahini seemed to be happy with the sails as they were. I sat beside the lashed wheel and watched the compass card swing back and forth between east-north-east and east-south-east. The sky was darker than at sunrise. Behind us, there was no blue sky left. The sails were as hard and flat as boards, and the sheet trembled.

I was debating whether or not to dig out the storm trysail when Raven pushed back the hatch and stuck her head out. The wind grabbed her tangled hair and wrapped it around her face. She turned instinctively toward the wind to shake it out, and when she could see she said, “Oh, my God!”

For a moment I tried to see my world through her eyes. The southern sky was black, the sea was dead gray, and the wave tops were shattered, foaming infernos. Wahini was rail down, with water cascading alongside the cabin house and swirling around my sea boots. The mainsail was furled; the naked mainmast was cutting harsh circles against the low hanging clouds as Wahini plunged into troughs and corkscrewed her way up to the crests again. Only the tiny, reefed mizzen and a patch of canvas for a foresail were standing, slick with spray and hard as beaten copper.

She didn’t come on deck, but she didn’t retreat. She stood half in and half out of the cabin, drinking in the sight of the sea and the feel of the wind. I moved up beside her and shouted into her ear, “Don’t come any further out without a safety harness.”

Her eyes were glowing when she turned to me and she silently mouthed, “Magnificent!”

It was. So was she. more tomorrow