The Jonah Watch

Chapter 23

Two vessels dancing. A slow dance between ill-matched partners; Islander, thick, fat, hollow. Adrian a wisp, a sliver, like a small, objecting white blade prancing before the loud mouth of the land; before the white line of frozen water marking the high point where white surf ran, rumbled, threw ice and ice-coated debris toward the land. Adrian circled the iceberg hulk of Islander, which in the darkness of early evening was aglow with light. The car deck glistened, a sheet of ice, across which ran thinly etched lines, the shadows of lifelines.

Islander pivoted broadside to the surf at Adrian’s approach. Figures of men on the car deck hauled the thin line of the sea anchor, and from the crossing stern of Adrian the etching of a heaving line curved flatly into the wind. It hit a man in his raised hands, and he looked like an outfielder shagging a fly.

“I did it,” Brace yelled. “Me.”

“Get it down next time, you cow milker. Get it lower.” Yeoman Howard, running like a skein of snoopiness through memory, conversation, and through the log, would someday “get the picture.”

Both vessels straightened. They angled directly seaward as hawser came taut on short tow; the hawser with its tons shaking flakes of ice as Adrian sat its stern into the sea. The stern rose slowly, the ship clawed toward the sea. The engines churned at three-quarters, then rose nearly to full.

“If we can get a little sea room.”

“We’re getting some.”

“Where’s that rock?”

“Ain’t your business, chummy. Let the cap worry.”

“I reckon it’s my business.”

On the glazed fantail, beneath floodlights that turned the iced decks into wan sheets of treachery, men stood, retreated backward; waited to lengthen the tow. Men crouched behind iced gear lockers, and wind pebbled the lockers with an increasing assault of ice as inshore water smacked the hull, rose, was blown across the fantail.

“I hate this part. I hate this worst of all.”

“Maybe it’ll hold.”

“Stand back, there, clowns, stand back. The line is goin’ thin.”

Adrian dashed forward, hesitated, ran quickly seaward as the hawser parted; one length rising in a whipping, arcing, snake-like, boldly-moving line above the fantail. The other length fell atrail of Islander and sagged toward the surf where it indifferently streamed like a web waiting to foul the propellers of anybody’s ship.

“You hurt, chum?”

“It’s moving. I can move it. I don’t think it’s broke.” Gunner Majors rose, fell back toward the scupper, rose slowly. He grabbed a chain, fell forward, twisting, like a man tackled.

“Help him below.”

“Get Lamp.”

“Get hauling on that line, get haulin’.”

“My gut hurts. That’s mostly what it is.”

“Get him below.”

“I do it,” said Majors. “I do it by myself.” He once more hauled himself erect. He stood trembling. He bent sideways, on a slaunch, panting as he accommodated a couple of broken ribs. He moved slow and crablike from the deck, and he braced himself against stanchions and chains.

The short line came in, hauled by hands that came away sticky from the hawser as ice rapidly formed and seemed attempting to steal mittens. The line was short and did not need to be walked. Across the fantail men skidded, to ride, to slide to their knees as they attempted to set up a new rig. Adrian crashed forward in the building inshore water. Blown ice, no larger than mist, was like a thin cloud about the ship. Dane stood above the men, watched them scrabble and claw, watched Islander.

“Belay that. They’re dropping line.”

Aboard Islander, men hung desperately to lifelines, tied themselves to lifelines, and attempted to recover the broken hawser.

“Not a chance. They don’t have a winch. Offshore without a winch.”

“They got nothing,” said Dane, and he was disgusted. “No winch, no hawser, no spare parts. Nothin’.”

Aboard Islander one side of the yoke was freed, then, moments later, the other side. The towline slid toward the surf like a dying snake.

“It’s all they could do. I reckon it is.”

“Where’s that rock?”

“If we double up on one bitt…”

“Can’t tow that way, can’t tow on a slaunch.”

“Dear Jesus, Jesus dear, it’s cold.”

On those northern shores, when the wind sets north-north-east above that line where land and water meet, the surf holds claws, steeples of rock, the discarded tops of mountains—and to be spit onto those shores through that rocky surf is a certain warrant that a man has misplaced his faith in something—towline, perhaps.

Yeoman Howard climbed across the small helm like a tortured prisoner on a wheel, as Adrian came about, while Islander again swung broadside the surf. Close to land, the swells began to build. The water seemed to move closer together in a gesture of frozen companionship. Adrian rose, fell, jolted, jolted again. As Levere brought his vessel into the lee of Islander, Adrian rattled like an empty freight car on rough track. A white sheet of ice fell from the flying bridge, dropped before Howard’s eyes; a slate on which might be written the names of men. Defrosters on the bridge chuffed, whirled, blew. The glass panes between helmsman and sea were streaked, running with icy glaze through which the icy bow appeared. The caked ice in the bow blanked the dead eyes. The anchor chain was buried beneath ice. Ice rose from the mats of woven hawser that hung over the bow, the ice rising above the mats like small walls of ice.

“I have the eighty-three boat on the horn,” said Chappel. “I’m sure it is the contact.”

“Distance.”

“An hour.”

“Lay us alongside,” said Levere. “Our engineers have no luck.” He paused. “I hope they have some.”

Chappel droned, was calculating as he droned. “Bibb Rock bears two-two-zero, range eighteen hundred.” Levere did easy sums, as did Howard and radioman James.

“Chief Dane to the bridge. The faster we get alongside…”

“Cap, if we can clear that rock, we’ll have the time.”

“We’ll clear.”

Radioman James laid aft like a wisp, a quick moving spirit, to fetch Dane. Adrian lay rolling in Islander’s lee. Islander’s crew grasped lifelines, passed lines, leaned forward to grasp the hands of Snow and McClean. A canvas tied to bursting with asbestos and shims and springs was drawn aboard with a line.

Dane appeared on the bridge, followed by James, and Dane stomped up the ladder in spite of feet that were surely almost frozen. His foul weather jacket was wet with melting ice. His mouth was clamped tight, thin, froglike, in control; and Dane was cold and clearly on the raw edge of control. He huffed as he stomped. The fathometer went click-whickety-whickety.

“We’ll tow from the starboard cleat,” Levere told Dane. “Try to get sea room. At least we can swing it sharp down wind.”

“Short tow. Double the line.”

“Take some men.” Levere looked forward, into the bow which carried a burden of ice that canted Adrian heavily forward into the sea. The bow shook, shed ice, added more. The buildup on deck was so great that it was impossible to tell where the deck ended and the rails began. A faint sound flashed from aft as ice in hundred-pound hunks crashed to the boat deck.

“If I have to shove the thing,” Levere said, “I’ll take it on the starboard quarter, turn it end for end to spin it.”

“You want fenders. Crash mats. They don’t have ’em.”

Levere looked at Dane, and in the red lights of the bridge Levere’s face was shadowed, stern. “All they have is you,” he said. “As a matter of fact, all we have is you.”

“That Conally,” said Dane. “Now he’s a good kid, and he has the deck. That punk Joyce, now he just ain’t so bad.” Dane wiped the back of his hand across his thin mouth, then flipped water from his hand. “Phil… bust this thing one more time, and they’ll hang you.”

“With a short drop,” Levere told him. “Ops is already telling me that I’m a shipkiller.”

“This iron’s been dead for twenty years.”

“You know it,” said Levere, “and I know it.”

“Key to the arms locker,” said Dane by way of a request. “I got a notion, and gunner Majors caught hisself a little trouble.”

“Now that should be logged,” said Chappel. “What is the nature of the trouble?” He turned, horse-headed, from the radar.

“He got some clothesline across his gut,” said Dane. “What’s the range, quartermaster?”

Chappel, wordless, stepped back to the radar. Levere fished for his keys.

“Lamp is tapin’ him,” said Dane. “Don’t worry.”

“I wish I didn’t hear all this.” James spoke, but he did not take his eyes, his face, his stance, his effort from the fathometer. “Seven-eight,” he said, “and take me with you, Chief. We got water ’til near all the way in.”

Dane stomped, opened his frog mouth, looked at the puniest, weakest man aboard. He began to say no. He stared at the deck like a philosopher immersed in a grand platitude. “Get your clump aft the minute you get relief. I’ll send Rodgers to relieve.” To Levere, Dane said, “A guy could take the helm and still give engine orders.” He spun from the bridge, stomping down the ladder like a troll that walks where and when it wills.

“Stay on the helm,” said Levere. “Chief Dane has a lot on his mind.”

Howard, who in later years would have cause to wonder if he had ever done anything correctly, thankfully stayed on the helm.

Opening the arms locker with Levere’s keys, Dane ignored the line-throwing gun which was the only weapon that Adrian had ever earnestly used. He climbed aboard Islander, and he was packing a .45 pistol. Dane looked like a top sergeant leading an attack uphill. Behind him Glass, Brace, and James followed like hooded monks in attendance on one crusade or another. The men rigged a doubled line to the starboard cleat of Islander, then disappeared from the iced deck as Adrian once more turned into the sea.

When the line parted the second time, men fell along icy decks, attempted to recover line, and they banged against stanchions, sprawled like squashed spiders. They braced their feet against the stanchions, against piles of backup hawser, against lockers. They lay on their backs, braced, rose to grab line, fell backward as it came aboard. The line shook drops of water that laid a funnel of ice along the deck over which the line ran. The line was like a frayed end of failure, and the men heaped it on deck with contempt, with fear, with hatred.

Above the crash of surf, and distant on the car deck of Islander, Dane’s pistol popped like a small and unimportant theory, as Dane—knowing that he did not have time for sophisticated equipment like marlinspikes—blew holes through every mattress he could find in Islander’s cabins. Brace and James, with Glass as a desperate and cooperating overseer, ran line through the holes and tied the mattresses into bulky lumps, overlays of padding that would have to serve for crash mats. The mats looked like overstuffed, cartoon pillows as Adrian, with the port searchlight flaring, closed slowly onto Islander’s starboard quarter. In the sharp, glaring light, Dane’s face seemed two dimensional, white and blanched and worried; as only a face can look when it views what it considers will be disaster. Glass, Brace and James stood beside Dane, attending the lines, ready to adjust the crash mats.

Somehow, and Howard would never know if Levere had made the correct command decision, nor would Levere, the plates held. Adrian dug in with its screws. Ice cracked from the bow in shatters, chunks, massive sheets. The great bulk of Islander moved in a slow spin to seaward, shoved turning in a pirouette of slow motion so that it slid past the rock with something under a hundred yards to spare. Conally rigged towline. The 83 boat arrived. What one vessel could not do, two vessels could. Islander was pulled seaward as Snow and McClean repaired the clutch. Islander proceeded to Boston under its own power.

In the last minutes, as lights flared and every man on both vessels held his breath, perhaps prayed, and certainly talked to steel plates, the best seaman in the world lost his title.

Dane backed from the scene, away from the flashing ice that still splintered from Adrian’s bow which hovered like a crazily dressed spectre above Islander’s open-ended deck. Dane turned toward the inner recess of the car deck, headed for the bridge and the radio. He walked aft as a sheet of ice rattled loose from Islander’s superstructure.

The ice crashed about Dane. In the brilliant light the ice turned into an explosion of sparkles, cold fire, prisms; and Dane momentarily stood in the explosion like a figure of myth consumed by flames. Then he fell, slid, flailed across the open end of the car deck, and he grasped for lifelines and did not find them; a squat form with short, waving arms, and he was followed by Brace, who, like a football lineman faked into a wrong move, recovers only in time to get one hand on a runner’s arm. Brace skidded beside Dane, struggling, missing the life lines too; then Brace had a streak of beginner’s luck. He skidded hard into a steel pole on the lip of the deck—the pole designed to hold a guard line to restrain future commuters from simplemindedness, from premature advances on their busy and important rounds. Brace hit the pole with one arm, and that arm went limp. He spun, hooked his knees on the pole like an acrobat on a swing, and he kept his grip on Dane’s arm. Dane spun forward, over the lip of the low deck, and into the sea. For moments in the flaring lights all that could be seen was Dane’s hand rising above the deck and held in Brace’s failing grasp, as white water framed the background, as white water rose and thickly turned to ice.

Glass moved, skidded, and James flipped a heaving line after Glass, the line arriving like a throw to home. Glass caught the line, skidded to a stop, grabbed the pole in one hand—grabbed Dane’s arm with the other. Glass stepped on Brace, kicked Brace’s face in his scramble, and Dane struggled back aboard.

From topside in the superstructure another piece of ice crashed down, and it seemed to fill the night with sparkle. Brace tried to stand, gazed stupidly at his dangling arm, and then he settled in a curled slump around that pole as surely as Amon had ever curled beneath a table.