Her Name Will Be Faith (42 page)

"Help!" Mark was screaming. "We're
sinking! Help!"

Michael found himself lying on the cabin roof, while there
seemed
water everywhere, together
with books and pots and pans and clothes
and
sail bags. Despite the utter darkness, he knew immediately that they had been
capsized, and that it was probably a pitchpoling, ‘ass over tit’ as
he would say in the bar of the yacht club at home.
If he was ever going
to stand in that bar again. But before he could
even gather his thoughts
Esmeralda
was coming upright again, throwing him on to the
cabin sole.
He groped for the companion hatch, which had flown open,
splashing
through several inches of water,
hearing the shouts and groans from
behind him, standing on Sam's
priceless MF set, which for all its extra lashing had become dislodged and
smashed on to the deck; from being a place of warm refuge, indeed, the cabin
had turned in an instant into a trap threatening to drown them all.

Michael was more concerned with what had happened on
deck, gave
a gasp of horror as
he saw the wheel spinning free. Before he could reach it, the next wave had
reached them, and hurled the yacht on to her beam
ends,
that is, on her side so that the mast would have lain in the water,
had there still been a mast, while tons of ocean
poured over her. It seemed
impossible
that she would not fill and go to the bottom, but the yawl
came up
again, bobbing like a cork, the enormous amount of air in her hull giving her
total buoyancy.

Michael
dived aft and grabbed the helm, twisting it to bring the ship straight as she
rose to the wind. He tried the engine starter, but this was dead, and he
guessed that the batteries must also have come loose. But
the yacht did respond, if sluggishly, and just in
time to ride the next wave,
which, although huge and breaking, he knew
could be only a fraction of the size of the rogue that had sent them over. Once
he had her under reasonable control, he could start thinking and looking for
his crew. He spotted Jon, lying on the deck several feet forward of the
cockpit. One of the steel harness hooks had opened straight as if made of
plasticine, but the second had held, and the young man was at least still with
the ship, although he appeared to be unconscious. But to Michael's horror there
was no sign of Sam Davenport.

"Deck!"
he screamed at the hatch. "All hands on deck!"

Larry came up the companion ladder, fell into the cockpit
with a splash;
the
well was self-draining, but there were still several inches of water in
it. Mark followed a moment later. "We're
sinking," he gasped again.
"The water's up to
the bunks. Oh my God, we're sinking!"

"Pete's broken
something," Larry gasped, more coherently. "Maybe
his shoulder. He's groaning terribly."

"He's
alive," Michael snapped. "Get forward and find Sam."

He himself looked aft. In addition to their safety
harnesses, the men
on
watch each wore a lifejacket, and Sam would still be floating, although
as
Esmeralda
was picked up by another huge wave
and rushed forward he
knew there was no hope
of turning back for anyone. But he saw nothing astern save for the roaring
seas, and now there came a reassuring shout from the foredeck. "Give me a
hand," Sam was calling.

Mark and Larry formed a human chain to drag him back into
the
cockpit. Both his
harnesses had failed, but the second one had taken the force out of the
enormous power which had hurled him forward, enabling him to wrap both arms
around what remained of the mainmast; that had
snapped off just below the lower crosstrees, or
spreaders, some fifteen feet
from the deck; at least
it had gone cleanly and disappeared, taking most
of its shrouds with it, ripping them out of the chainplates; had it
remained
linked to the yacht they
would have been dead in the water. And
amazingly, the mizen still stood.

"We're sinking," Mark gasped a third time.
"She'll be gone in a
moment."
He reached past them in an attempt to free the six-man life raft,
the canister containing which was still strapped to the
deck on the
transom.

Michael
released the helm with one hand long enough to slap the boy
hard across the face. Mark gave a shriek and
tumbled to the cockpit sole.

"Get him below," Michael snapped. "Take
Jon down as well. Give me
a report on him and
Pete. And on damage. And start the pumps. All the pumps. Get with it."

They
hurried below, and he fought with the helm. It was still daylight,
although the clouds were so low and the rain so
continuous it was difficult to see more than the ship's length – which
was no bad thing, he reckoned:
every few minutes the evening would be
cut open by a jagged lightning
flash, and
then the immensity of the seas all around them was horrifying.

It seemed an eternity, but could only have been a few
minutes later
that Sam reappeared. "Pete has
broken his shoulder," he said. "We've strapped him up and I've given
him a sedative, and we've tied him to his bunk. Jon is still out. I don't like
the look of him at all."

"Is
he breathing?"

"Yes.
But skipper..." His voice trembled.

"Pumps?"

"No good. All the batteries have broken loose.
They're all over the
place.
It must've been one of them falling that hit Pete. The radios are
both
out, and the instruments. Michael, maybe Mark is right, and we should abandon
ship."

"For the life raft? For Christ's sake, do you
suppose a life raft could
survive those seas?
Esmeralda
is
not sinking," Michael said, his voice harsh.
"Yachts
don't sink unless they are holed or catch fire. You know that as well as I do.
The water in the cabin came in through the hatch when we were rolled over and
then knocked down. So we've no electrics. Man the hand pump and get Larry and
Mark bailing. But first, bring me up my
harnesses."

Sam blinked, for the first time appearing to notice that
his skipper was
wearing not even a
lifejacket, indeed, nothing at all save a gold Rolex
wristwatch. He dived below for the gear, and helped Michael strap
himself
to the boat and the helm. "Skipper . ."

"Get
to work," Michael told him. "Get bailing. All of you."

Sam
disappeared, and a moment later a thin stream of water began to
empty over the side. Another wave roared up with
such force that Michael
lost control, and the following one knocked them
down again; he sat on the transom with water round his neck. But the hatch had
been bolted tight shut again, and the ship came upright. Michael laughed aloud.
He
remembered Byron's 'Manfred' where the
hero shouted his defiance of
God and
the elements as he stood on his mountaintop. Well, here on the
edge of
the Gulf Stream was the biggest mountaintop he had ever
experienced. "You won't beat me, you bastards," he shouted at
the clouds
and the lightning and the rain and the waves and the wind.

As
if in reply he heard a noise. It was a noise with which he was thoroughly
familiar, that of a rogue wave coming up astern. "Oh, Christ,"
he muttered and turned his head, and felt exactly
as if a mule had kicked
him in the belly. Behind him the entire ocean
seemed to be rising in awesome fury. The white streaked green wall went up and
up and up, perhaps to 80 feet, and was topped by 10 feet of curling white foam.
It
reared above the yacht, a wall of water as
high as a house, and now it
was toppling over and falling.

After
Richard had returned to the studio, Jo began making her pre
parations. There was a lot to do. First of all she
telephoned Bognor.

"Have
you seen the forecasts?" she asked Big
Mike.

"Yeah.
Would you believe that fucking storm seems to be following us about? Thank God
we're here."

"I thank God, too. Listen, Dad, I thought the kids
and I might come
up to you for the
weekend. If everyone is right it's going to be a little unpleasant in
town."

"Sure, do that, honey. What time tomorrow were you
thinking of
coming?"

"Well..." She hesitated. She had given Richard
her word to leave
that evening. But it
would be most inconvenient – quite apart from Big Mike's pointed
suggestion – and somewhat of an unpleasant drive in the darkness and the rain:
she certainly didn't want to upset Mike and Babs
all over again by suggesting there was any danger. Besides, even if
Richard
did manage to talk the Mayor and the police into ordering an
evacuation of the city, they were extremely unlikely to get anything moving
before
dawn tomorrow. "How about first
thing in the morning. We'll be there
for breakfast?"

"Breakfast?
Holy shit! That'll mean leaving the city before dawn."

"We're
early risers," Jo assured him.

"Okay.
We'll expect you. Any word from Michael?"

"Not
as yet. He's out of radio contact right now. I'm going to try him again later
tonight. Do you reckon he's all right?"

"Sure I do. Especially if the storm is turning west
and he's making
north. He'll run out of
it."

"I
worry about the Gulf Stream. From what he's told me those waves can be
horrendous."

"They can," Big Mike agreed. "I've seen
them. But Michael can
handle that."
He seemed to have entirely recovered his
ebullience.

"How are Babs
and
Belle?" she asked.

"Well… Belle is taking things easy right now."
Which Jo guessed
meant
she was under sedation, probably the reason Big Mike didn't want
noisy kids around before tomorrow. "Babs is doing
well. She'll be the
better for seeing you
and the young 'uns. Breakfast, eh? See you then."

"The
weekend in Bognor? Neat," Owen Michael said.

"Well,
that means an early night, because I want to get started at the crack of dawn.
Now, give me a hand with the packing."

She
packed for a weekend, and then pinched her lip. Suppose that
window did shatter and let a whole lot of rain in?
Richard seemed to
think it could.
All of her treasured possessions… but wasn't she thinking
of giving most of them up, anyway? Certainly she
couldn't take them with
her.

She
fed the children and put them to bed. The six o'clock forecast had revealed
Faith's westward turn, but not dramatically, and Richard had been studiously
calm and relaxed about what he had had to say; she guessed he was waiting to be
given his instructions by JC and decided against calling him to give him her
change of plan. She'd do it later.

Instead she tried getting a shore to ship call through to
Esmeralda,
but
after an hour the operator
told her it was impossible to raise the yacht
and
that she must still be out of range. That was a lot preferable to wondering if
she could have been dismasted and lost her aerials, so Jo agreed to try again
tomorrow morning, immediately before leaving for Bognor.

By now she decided it might be a good time to tell
Richard what she
was
doing, or rather, what she was not doing before tomorrow, and called
the
studio, but the switchboard said he'd gone out for a bite to eat. "Ask him
to call Mrs Donnelly when he comes in, will you," Jo said. By now everyone
in the world, she supposed, knew that she and Richard had something going
– and she didn't mind.

To keep herself awake, she kept the TV on and watched
some irrelevant
mini-series,
and promptly fell fast asleep, to awake with a start. There
had
been a succession of rain squalls slashing the windows on and off during the
evening, and distant rumblings, but she was totally surprised
by the sudden flash of lightning and the almost
immediate crack of
thunder right
overhead. The whole apartment block shuddered again and
again, a vicious reminder of what it might be like
were the hurricane
really to hit the city.