WHEN I AWAKENED, it was daylight.
I didn’t waken because I had slept enough, or because the daylight had caught my eye. Not forty-eight hours of sleep would have been enough. Not a searchlight could have disturbed my profound sleep. I wakened because of Pagan’s sudden change in behavior. Her pitching and rolling became suddenly beyond what I had ever felt before. She inclined to flatness on both beams; and pitched so high that it seemed incredible she didn’t jerk her keel off.
I thought at first my boat must be turning over and over. But I could see the overhead remain near where the overhead should be—and I tried to explain to myself what was happening.
Most perplexing was the absence of the storm’s noises. I had passed out with the hurricane shrieking in the rigging. Now, aside from the wash of water in the bilge, a pounding on deck, and an occasional swish of sea, there was little else . . . strange.
The combination of quiet and violence scared me.
Unbinding my lashings, I wavered to the hatchway, barely able to keep off the plunging bulkheads. I opened the hatch doors a foot and pushed my eyes above the cabin. I saw a vast circle of foam upshot with rearing cones of water . . . but not a breath of air stirred. There were no rollers or combers as such, only peaks of water shooting up and falling away flatly.
Instantly I knew I was in the lull of the hurricane; which is to say, the airless central circle around which revolve the cyclonic winds. Pushed into this diabolic arena were thousands of wind-churned seas from countless directions to collide and intercollide.
I don’t know how to explain it, unless I suggest that you visualize yourself on a crag, surrounded by numberless other such, then, at a given signal, they resolve themselves to liquid and each sets upon the others as would hunger-crazed beasts.
As far as I could see, great pyramids of water bolted masthead high from the sea surface. Here and there great cross seas crashed into them, dispersed, re-formed, and crashed again. Pagan lay to her scuppers beneath a constant deck of water. Her sea anchor was helpless; she danced to all points of the compass, her mast scoring the water on either side. Suddenly she was high and suddenly she was low.
Nausea assailed me. The sickening surge of the boat, and the unstable watery sight, set me to vomiting. I couldn’t hold myself up longer.
I stumbled into my bunk and lashed myself down. I realized that I should get up and pump the bilges; also plug the broken porthole—but I was too dead sick to move. I couldn’t even brace myself against the lurch; I just lay there, rolling against my lashings.
All morning my head spun as the jaunty craft threatened to fall apart. Not once could I sleep, even fitfully. I lay listening to the noises. I was nervous to distraction as to what could happen to my boat in this constant, violent rough-and-tumble.
Early in the afternoon I nosed into the outer circle of the hurricane. Once again the rigging dinned with the howling winds. This time the wind had shifted into the south and my bunk was on the windward side. One inch of tired oak planking—only a span away—stood between me and disaster-crested seas. Most of the time I was tilted high in the air with the other bunk below me at the bottom of the slanting deck. Water was overtopping the decks and sloshing through the smashed porthole. It wet me down, refreshed me, eased the seasickness a bit.
I was still strapped in my bunk. The seasickness was pacified by the more consistent motion of the boat. Now that the wind set upon her again, there was a system in her wild behavior that was kindred to my experience.
From where I lay, I could hear the bedlam of wind in the rigging, could feel my boat wince before each header. The furiously whipped seas were snarling across the decks like packs of wolves. Because of water slopping through the porthole, I got up and stuffed a pair of pants in the opening. I realized that while I was up I should go out on deck and cut free the boom, which, flying at the end of the topping lift, was smashing at the stern end. Also the bilges needed pumping. But, remembering my narrow escape on deck, I reasoned that the threat of boom and wet bilges was naught compared to the risk of venturing in the open. I remained in the safety of my wet bunk and tightened the lashings over me. Again I waited . . . listening.
The process of riding out a hurricane in a small boat is terribly nerve-racking. It’s the sense of futility you feel in the face of imponderable odds. The hurricane is supreme master; you are its trifle—a cork in a tempest.
There is only one safe way to ride out a hurricane on a small boat: flat on your back lashed in the bunk with ports and hatches dogged, and everything strapped down. But lying there strait-jacketed to a mattress is depressing: you always wonder what’s going on in the rest of the boat. You wonder if somewhere a leak is breaking, or a repair needs attention. To keep the boat under constant examination is too bruising a job: the prospect of overseeing things on deck is taboo, positively taboo. So I passed the long jolting hours in my bunk . . . waiting, and determining Pagan’s condition from a distance.
The fact of Pagan’s years, the fact that she still had her original wood—this was the reason I listened the more intently. She was too old to be bucking up to a hurricane and this thought was cropping up all the time. Another concern which accosted me was my life raft.
It had been trailing astern since the start of the hurricane. When I was last on deck I had caught a glimpse of it, wallowing to its gunwales in the angry froth. But that had been during the lull when I was sick. I could only hope it was still there. If not, I had nothing to escape in, if trouble came. I thought of going to the deck to look for it, but I didn’t figure it was worth the risk. There was nothing I could do if I needed it but go out and look for it; if it wasn’t there, well . . . that was that.
How many hours I lay there straining at my lashings, waiting for some indication that the storm was abating, I don’t know. Night came. More hours dragged. The hurricane was twenty-four hours old. It labored on to somewhere near thirty. The same violent jerks of the boat, the same roaring wind, crashing sea, clatter of dislodged gear, and slosh of a water-filled bilge!
In the wee hours of the morning of September seventh—after two days of storm—hard luck struck. My first recollection that something was amiss came when Pagan broached to and refused to round up into the wind. Great seas were ramming against the beam and combing athwart the decks. She scudded before each tumbler, creaking loudly and inclining more than usual. She lunged as though filliped by a mammoth finger. It was punishment beyond what my boat could take for long.
I unbound my ropes and took a look outside. It was the same wild world as ever: a sea blown to windrows, heavy curlers boarding the decks, volleys of spray flying around my ears, Pagan yawing at the will of each disjointed sea and wind.
I could tell without seeing that the sea anchor was gone: evidently chafed at the bobstay. I was thinking of something I could use to replace it. Somehow my boat must be made to face up to the wind. Only a sea anchor could make it do that. With Pagan rolling and pitching eerily it was impossible to make one. What was worse—there wasn’t time to make one; an hour of this and Pagan would break up. To prove my point a swelling billow with a smoking mane sent us lurching on our beam ends. I acted quickly.
There was my rustic anchor lying on the cabin floor, lashed to the heel of the mast. If I heaved it over and let it drift out to chain’s length it should drag enough to hold the bow into the wind. It was worth the try. I groped for it in the dark. I wrapped it in the jib, and bound it on the outside with the sheets to make it act as a decent drag. I tied my life jacket to the flukes to prevent it from sinking; and made ready to heave it out of the hatchway into the sea.
The decision to go out on deck was hard arrived at. But I had to go. In some way I got the anchor into the cockpit and crawled in beside it, lying low under the wind. I heaved it overboard, clinging to the bitter end of its line. With just my eyes over the coaming, I watched it float forward. I had now to secure the line to the bow. I waited a long minute before facing the open decks. As she lay, Pagan was in a position to pound herself apart, broad-on to the breaking seas.
The windward bulwarks wore an uninviting look; so I jumped into the flooded lee waist. So long as I was alee of the cabin I could crawl. I had to be careful; the rail on the starboard side was gone, carried away by the flood. There was nothing to hold to if I should be washed outboard. When I edged out ahead of the deckhouse into the wind, I lay flat on my face and snaked my way. All the time a line was fast to my middle and connected to a stanch object. In addition I was gripping the knotted line strung over the deck.
I was afraid that heavy seas overrunning the gunwales would raise me so that the cyclonic fingers could roll me overboard. But I made it safely to the stemhead and fastened my waistline to the bitt. At the same time I hitched a hasty bowline with the anchor line to the chain leading from the chain locker. As quickly as possible I slipped back to the safety of the cabin. Pagan was yawing badly. If the anchor dragged more slowly than the boat, the bow would fetch up to the wind. I hoped she would answer soon.
Just then the most severe shock of all rocked her—a gust firing point-blank. Piles of water rambled roughshod athwart her to the height of the portholes. She heeled to her beam ends, and creaked loud enough to hear above the storm sounds. In abject terror I fled below.
Another roller struck her more heavily than the other. For a moment the beam planking became the deck under me. The rattle of loosened gear filled the blackness of the tight cabin. Before my little world could right itself, it shivered again beneath an impact. And a moment later again. This time the sea hurtled over the starboard quarter; she had been turned half around by the force of the sea blows. At the same moment a resounding snap of solid timber impinged on every sense of my body, froze me, stopped me short. The mast! I could tell by the feel of the wounded boat.
I knew what a broken thirty-five-foot spar could mean. I staggered faultily toward the companionway. Something heavy pounded her by the stern. Another heavy sea had hit her. Just then—and exceeding quick—the stout little doors dissolved into a sheet of gray. With black suddenness a lump of water shot at me. In the wink of an eye I was sledge-hammered back the full length of the cabin, rolling, twisting. When I stopped falling I was under the foredeck, sitting waist deep in rushing water, surrounded in dark.
In front of me was the heel of the mast. On one side were my mattress and blankets, where they had washed with the sudden inflooding. On the other were the sails, where I had stowed them. In my lap, pinioning me and fighting me, was a fifteen-gallon water cask, swept loose from its lashings. I was helpless to push it away. The surge of the knee-deep water forced it one way and another, against the mast or my chest. In either case it was still in my lap. When Pagan pitched, throwing her bow down, the water rushed me, and knocked me flat and covered me.
Pagan took another roller across the stern. More water poured through the companionway. The water rose to my chest and raced to and fro faster in the pent space. I was knocked under more often. It was harder to sit back up.
Pagan’s interior was a welter of attacking wavelets. It was like a tomb; it was frightening. With an ocean to drown in I was drowning inside my boat. I fought to get at least on deck. To be licked off by the wind and sea was more fitting than perishing under deck beams, hundreds of miles from a safe shore.
A providential movement of the barrel enabled me to sidle from under it and struggle from beneath the forepeak. The cabin was a nightmare. It ran thigh-deep to water. Three quarters of my gear was adrift. The locker doors were gaping, and their contents were dropping into the brine. The lockers themselves, caught by the shifting water, were in the process of ripping from their fastenings.
I wavered through the morass and clambered into the brimming cockpit. Its coamings were gone, but I was protected from the wind when I lay low. Pagan was rounding up nicely to the drag of the anchor; I could tell by the feel she was plunging into it dead ahead.
The mast had snapped; that was definite. I could see it wrenching at the dark sky. I could feel it nearly jerk the planking off at the chain plates, and I could hear it stomping on the foredeck, threatening to break through the deck. The heavy pole was held up by the shrouds and stays. It was trying helplessly to fall. Each pitch, each roll, each twist, endangered the life of my boat. And lying there in the flooded cockpit I could see it all, and I could see there was no alternative but to chop away the shrouds and free the big spar to topple into the sea.
A hatchet was ready to hand in the cockpit. I bellied along my system of life lines, tying my waistline ahead of me as I went. The decks were still awash, and the wind still in high glee. Lying on my back I hacked at the now slack, now taut, wire shrouds. Eventually one cut through; it went singing into the dark obscurity. I chopped away at the other. The stress of the wavering mast would have snapped it, in a little time, without my hackings. It suddenly parted. The high, heavy pole slammed away to leeward and splashed onto a sea.
I cringed against the deck when it went and heard rumbling and splintering after it fell.
Without a mast the little craft lay more comfortable, less affected by the powerful winds. She no longer beat into it, but rose with it, and kept an evener keel. I crawled back close beside the cabin and crept through the breach in the coaming into the cockpit.
The cabin below was a bog. My boat was terrifyingly close to sinking. Water was the depth of hip boots, and was solid from the watertight bulkhead to the bow. Only the fact of that water-resistant wall kept her from foundering by the bow or stern as the water surged fore and aft with each upward lurch and toss of the bow. She had to be pumped out before more seas should crowd aboard her.
But how to pump her out? My bilge pump was aft of the cabin and connected to its overhead. Its position was vulnerable to the wind. I dared not expose myself by using it. But Pagan had to be emptied . . . somehow.
There was only one recourse: the bucket. I lowered myself into the hip-deep swirl and fished around till I found it. I commenced the awkward bailing. I braced myself against the carlings or clung grimly to the hatch coaming, while wrestling with the bucket. I bailed till I felt green in the face; and bailed on.
It was easiest to stand in the center of the cabin and heave the water into the cockpit, and when the boat rolled, the cockpit emptied through the splintered coamings into the scuppers. But when it pitched, some slopped back into the cabin. Also the forepart of the deckhouse was smashed in from the felling of the mast, and some big water came in occasionally. The three portholes to windward were out. But by a steady sweat I could gain on the threatening water.
The seasickness of earlier in the storm began creeping over me again as weariness set in. After hours of bailing the floor boards were visible. I took time to plug the dripping portholes and stow a few soggy items of gear in suitable corners. Then I dipped and poured till the boards showed dry.
I ragged my watered mattress onto my bunk and prepared to fall onto it. The floor rose sickeningly as Pagan spun before a bank of water. She was pushed off her heading till she lay stern-to, before the seas. I leaped atop my bunk as the first seas crowded aboard and roared around the decks. Braced against the deck beams I watched the floor fill to ten inches of water—an hour’s fast bailing and, tired as I was, a heartbreaking sight.
Another sea had at her and more water spilled through the companionway. I bolted out into the overflowing cockpit, hiding under the wind. A third sea overran the transom, licking at me, nearly forcing me back into the cabin. After that Pagan broached to and appeared to be coming about into the wind.
I was safer down below bailing than sitting out in the wind. I lowered myself into the watery hold and fished for my bucket. I filled and poured for endless hours. There was no consciousness directing my work—I bailed blindly and dumbly and unfeelingly. In fear of further swampings, and in completest indifference, I jettisoned anything and everything that came to hand. My mattress went by the board; also blankets, tools, dishes, canned food, coconuts, clothes, water breakers, sails—all that encumbered my bailing.
I was fighting for my life in hip-deep water, lightening my boat. Any moment I expected her to dip her stern into a sea and go under. I was fighting to lighten her before that sea came—if it was to come. There was no such thing as bailing just water alone, I bailed whatever I scooped up in the bucket; and I scooped and bailed till it was an effort to lift even the empty bucket.
When I could no longer think or even hope—for I hadn’t eaten, or drunk, for two days, or slept—I collapsed on my bunk boards. I slept as I fell. And I slept where Pagan rolled me. I wasn’t lashed down.
I was totally jaded, sick, and numb. I put myself in Pagan’s hands. I was aware of nothing. I never knew when the hurricane ended. Maybe it was an hour before I came to awareness or maybe half a day . . . or a day . . . I can’t know. I only know that I sat up, and that it was strangely quiet, and that Pagan rolled easier than she had done in days.
She was shifting on a light seaway. Outside it was dull and gray, but calm. The horizon mewed lightly in the direction the hurricane had gone—the adaptable sea was already composing itself for the friendly sky on the opposite horizon.