(5)

In the few moments it took to accommodate to the disaster, Bob watched helplessly as the water poured into the Triton’s innards. Linda backed into a corner, holding out her hands as if she could forbid the water to reach or touch her. Then Bob collected his senses and dived for his wife. In an almost fluid action he ripped off her pajama bottoms, found a pair of jeans, stuffed her into them, found a sweat shirt, pulled it over her head, crammed her into a life jacket, found a rope, lashed her to him, and began swimming for an exit.

“Take a big breath,” he ordered. Linda gulped air and held her nose. They plunged down into the shockingly cold water. Finding the central hatch door ajar, Bob shoved with his hands and it broke off easily. They swam through the hole, plunging further into the depths to avoid the broken pieces of mast and railing. They swam for what seemed an eternity, probably thirty seconds, their lungs aching and bursting, until Bob felt they were clear of the Triton and able to surface.

When they came up, the Triton was an arm’s length away, helpless as a dead whale, only the hump visible above the water, with two smaller whales—the outriggers—in escort. Bob grabbed the slippery boards and pulled Linda and himself onto what had been the Triton’s cerulean bottom, now the only part not claimed by the sea. Everything else—mast, sails, cockpit, sleeping quarters, cupboards, supplies, clothing, charts, barometer, chronometer, radar reflectors—all were under water. The exposed bottom was slimy, hard to hold, but sheer will kept Bob sprawled on the surface, Linda digging her hands into his shoulders.

Only when the shock began to wear away, perhaps a few seconds, perhaps five minutes, did Bob remember that Jim had been at the wheel at the moment of capsizing.

Both began to call for Jim. Linda spotted him, swimming frantically toward the upturned hull.

Disappearing from sight as the great waves washed over him, Jim fought his way along the safety line that bound him to the cockpit. Now it was his umbilical cord. Choking, flopping at last onto the overturned boat, he collapsed, slipping back toward the water until Bob pushed out a leg near enough for him to grab.

But none of them could last here long, no more than a man could dangle indefinitely by his fingertips from the roof of a building. Their hands were cold, their fingers numbing, and soon they would lose their grip. Desperately, Bob looked about for a better place. At the stern, the steel railings of the cockpit were visible, not totally submerged. “Over there!” Bob shouted. He began to inch his way, Linda still lashed to him. In the journey of ten feet, the ropes trailing from each of them became entangled, and Bob saw that he would have to duck into the water and under the railing, else his line would snag and deny him refuge. He could not bear the idea of going under again, so he felt for his knife to cut the line. But while he sawed, the knife fell from his slippery hands to his knee. He reached for it, missed, and the knife tumbled to the bottom of the ocean. Cursing, he watched it vanish. A Swiss knife, with numerous tools and gadgets, by day’s end it would have been priceless.

The waves had ebbed to ten-foot swells that came rolling over them with punishing regularity, floggers with merciless whips. There was no discussion about trying to right the overturned boat. The two men knew that would be impossible without a block and tackle, a pulley, and the labor of several men in a still marina. Instead, the three survivors could only huddle together, half submerged in the still angry sea. Jim offered no apologies for his seamanship, but his face reflected his shame and his agony.

Linda was first to spot the debris floating away. She called out, whereupon they all saw the bright red bobbing corks attached to the fishing reels drifting away from them. After that came gasoline cans and clothing and boxes of food, a parade of flotsam.

“We won’t need them anyway,” said Jim. He looked at his watch, which still worked. It was almost 10 A.M.

“You’re sure they’re sending a plane?” asked Bob.

Jim nodded. But the nod lacked conviction, and though Bob wanted to pin him down, to wrestle the precise words of the Coast Guard from him, he feared to press the subject lest it shatter under examination. At that moment, more than steel railings were needed to cling to.

Until almost noon, they hung to the railings, their eyes turned to the skies, watching, waiting, listening for the sound of the plane.

Bob had held Linda so long that he did not realize her body was limp in his arms. Only when she began to jerk and twist, thrashing in convulsions totally out of his grasp, only then did Bob realize something terrible was happening to his wife. Within seconds, her face turned white, then the bluish white of dead winter, and her eyes rolled to the top of their sockets. She collapsed, falling against the rail like a marionette shorn of strings.

“Linda’s out!” cried Bob, grabbing her and throwing her down onto the arching surface of the Triton. He flung his body over her, pressing his mouth to her, gulping the salt-flecked wind and blowing it into his wife’s lifeless form. Linda’s dead! he sobbed inwardly, furious at the irony of surviving the capsizing, cheating the cold sea, and now losing her so unexpectedly to classic shock.

But abruptly she gasped—her chest heaved, and tiny bubbles of air appeared on her lips. Linda’s eyes burst open and stared wildly. She pushed Bob away from her as if he were a molesting stranger and tried to rise on the slippery incline. Standing uncertainly, as frail in the winds as a blossom, her eyes darkened. An odd mask of anger dropped across them. She flung out her hands in a don’t-come-near-me attitude, the same she had used in their cabin in futile attempt to stop the sea from menacing her. And she began to scream.

“You’re killing me!” she shrieked at both of the men watching helplessly beside her. Then she lashed out in fury at the master of the Triton. “Why are you trying to murder me, Jim? Why? Why? Why?”

Bob moved toward her, but she shoved him away. Her screams quieted into babble, a jumble of weeping, cursing pleas for her daddy, cries for a lost doll. “She’s hallucinating,” murmured Bob, while Jim edged backward in horror. Then she stopped and looked at the two men as if she had just been introduced—shyly, a moment of coquettishness. Then the screams commenced again—primitive, animal-like shrieks, like nothing Bob had ever heard.

“Please, baby, let me hold you,” he said gently, trying to touch the shoulder where so often his head had rested. Linda recoiled in disgust, her shrieks intensifying.

“I know what you want,” she shouted, “you want to kill us. I won’t let you kill us.”

“Us?” said Jim, puzzled.

But Bob understood. He looked at his young wife, he saw the way she pressed her hands against her stomach, and he knew, in an instant of revelation, that Linda was pregnant. They had not wanted children so early in their marriage; certainly pregnancy was an accident. Linda’s seasickness and her revulsion at the kerosine fumes had been hints and clues, but he had been unwilling, or unable, to recognize them. Now, in the midst of a great storm, clinging to an overturned boat, her body cold and wet and shaking, her mind as turbulent as the sea, she unknowingly betrayed the secret. This time when Bob moved to her, trying to contain his own tears, she beat her fists against his chest. But he accepted her incoherent anger, locking himself forcibly about her for more than an hour, not caring about the screams that rained on his ears. Once, he tried to quiet her by placing a jelly bean from his pocket in her mouth, thinking its sweetness would distract her. But she seemed unfamiliar with food. The candy rolled about uneaten in her mouth, and Bob fished it out, afraid she would choke.

Finally, by mid-afternoon, when Bob realized that he could no longer hold her with his deadening arms, that he might lose her to the sea, he found more rope and tied her securely to the steel railing.

Thus did they endure the last hours of daylight that July 11, the woman on the edge of madness, the husband in the torture of helplessness, the zealot in the passion of prayer. By five, the winds eased, pacifying the sea to the extent that the waves no longer beat against them with the familiar shock. One last time Bob called out to Jim, as he had done so often this day, “Is the plane coming?”

But Jim, his trembling hands locked in prayer, did not respond. He either could not, or would not, answer.

“I’m so cold, Bob.” Linda’s voice was normal.

He turned and saw that she was free from whatever had been tormenting her. Her face was composed, her eyes no longer beat like newly caged birds.

“Poor baby, you blacked out on us,” said Bob kindly.

“I don’t remember a thing,” said Linda. “What time is it?”

“A little after five,” answered Jim, happy at her recovery, but quickly returning his eyes to the lusterless skies. There had not yet been a sign of the plane, no sound save that of the wind.

“I only remember us turning over, then swimming out. After that …” Linda shook her head in bewilderment.

“It’s okay,” said Bob. “I was holding you.” Bob drew her inside his wet jacket, hoping it would block the wind’s chill.

“Is the plane still coming?” asked Linda, suddenly full of questions.

Bob shrugged noncommittally. He knew there would be no plane today. Search missions did not waste time looking at the sea in twilight and darkness. But he did not say this, fearful of setting her off again. “I’ve been thinking,” said Bob instead, “we’d better figure out some way to get through the night. If that storm comes up again, we’ll have a hard time hanging on here.”

He tapped his foot against the arching bottom of the Triton, riding but a foot or so above the waves. “What do you suppose it’s like under here?” he said.

Jim looked down at where Bob was tapping. Before 9:18 this morning, it had been the floor of the main hull of his trimaran. Almost simultaneously the possibility occurred to the men that perhaps the hull was not completely filled with water. Maybe an air pocket existed, with room enough for them at least to get some shelter for the night. But the sea still felt shockingly cold and neither man had the will to plunge back in and swim underneath to explore the hull.

“Why couldn’t we cut a hole?” said Jim, thinking out loud.

“Wouldn’t we sink?” asked Linda. A good question.

Jim shook his head quickly. The Triton was well lined with flotation material. “She won’t sink. If she’s lasted this long, she won’t sink.”

The memory of the lost pocketknife came back to Bob and he cursed his clumsiness.

Seeing a piece of wood bobbing near the railing, Bob grabbed it and tried in vain to scratch through the bottom. As Jim watched, he had a sudden inspiration. He removed the metal buckle from his life jacket and pried it apart. With the patience of a condemned man sawing a prison bar, Jim pushed the buckle back and forth against the boat on which he had spent two years of his life. The most important business in his world at this moment was to chew a hole in its upturned bowels.

Within minutes, he had created a hole directly in the center of the overturned hull, an entrance large enough for him to widen with his hands, tearing his flesh as he worked and coloring the passage with drops of blood. But it was big enough to squeeze through and within seconds, from below, came his exultant shout, “Air! At least a foot and a half of air pocket! Come on down.”

Wriggling his chunky body through first, Bob fell into cold black water up to his shoulders. He held up his arms to aid Linda into the darkness. For a moment all three stood uneasily in the upside-down cabin, their feet resting on what had been the ceiling of their living quarters. They could feel pieces of wood and other flotsam bump against them in the water. Now that they were sheltered, they were hungry and ready for sleep, but there was no time for anything but insuring survival. They could not stand in the water all night; who knew but it might rise and drown them. Failing that, they could die from the cold and the terrible wetness. The men sought for some way to raise themselves above the water line and stay there, hoping the air pocket would remain until morning.

Bob found a cupboard door floating near him and he carried it to the narrow end of the hull, where the sides came together in a V. There he wedged it in place, strong enough to support one person. He lifted Linda onto the platform, big enough for her to crouch in a fetal position, her face only inches from the boards above her. It seemed to her like a very small cave.

Then the men found smaller planks to wedge against the walls, jamming their bodies with backs against one wall, feet against the other. In this manner, they were able to keep the upper parts of their torsos out of the water. Something brushed against Bob and he reached down for it, almost fearfully. A can of root beer!

“Here’s dinner,” he said, pulling the snap tab and passing it around. Each drank carefully, holding the liquid in their mouths, savoring the taste, trying to wash away the taste of salt. When it was gone, and there was nothing left to do but listen to the waves, rising again, whooshing in and out of the chamber like the pressure noises of an iron lung, Jim asked if he could pray.

“I don’t mind,” said Bob, for he would take anything over the silence.

In the darkness, Jim closed his eyes and his voice rang out. “Dear Jesus,” he prayed, “please hear me in our hour of need. I do not always understand Your ways and Your will, but I always accept them. I realize there is a reason for our trouble, and I hope we are fit to bear it. If You have it in Your design to rescue us, then we are ready. We want to be rescued, Jesus.…” He prayed on, asking blessings for his wife and children and the others’ families, his voice continuing with that curious power. How, wondered Bob, did he still possess it after the ordeal of the last twenty-four hours?

When the prayer was done, Jim began singing, softly at first, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” But by the time he was finished, his voice ringing out in the resonant place, he no longer sang alone. Bob and Linda joined in, both surprised that they remembered the words. Then they all sang the “Doxology” and sang it a second time, for there was courage contained therein.

Later, when they said goodnight, when they began their attempts at sleep, sliding in and out of consciousness, each frightened at the blackness and the water that surrounded them, Linda screamed.

Instantly Bob came to, at first confusing her cry with the sound of a plane. But he called out comfort to her. She quieted. She slept only eight feet away from him, but he did not have the strength left to swim to her.

After midnight, Jim’s board gave way and he fell into the water. But he was too weary to put it back. Standing in the sea for the rest of the dark hours, he shivered and dozed and talked to his God.