But she simply took hold of one of the wooden supports of the wheelhouse roof and looked back at him dumbly.
“Untie me!” Macklin said fiercely, but Neil, ignoring him, slowed Vagabond down slightly to permit Lucy Mae to come up alongside. Jim threw an armful of fishing gear into the cockpit and then went back for more. Olly handed something to Frank and shouted to Jim to get off. Frank was trying to hold the two boats together as they rolled and smashed into each other’s sides while Olly turned back to the wheel and tied a line to one of its spokes. When Jim had thrown the last of Lucy Mae’s salvageable gear onto the trimaran and boarded, Olly jumped aboard Vagabond, tugging on the line. Lucy Mae, still under power, swung away and veered off at a right angle into the darkness.
“Damn pretty boat,” Olly commented as he watched her go.
All the hatches and door slides had been put in place earlier, and now everyone except Neil crouched in the wheelhouse, looking aft through the Plexiglas window at the low wall of water rising up out of the horizon behind them, the wall made visible by the huge hill of light that filled the low southern sky from the explosion over Norfolk.
“Untie me!” Macklin pleaded to Jeanne, who just looked past him at the approaching water.
Neil had opened Vagabond’s throttle up all the way, and Vagabond rushed forward, away from the tidal wave at over nine knots, but the wall still grew toward them, and they clearly heard a roaring sound as the wave smashed along the shore of Tangier Island. Neil had swung the boat slightly toward the island, but when the wave was only a hundred feet away he turned back to present Vagabond’s stern directly to the racing sea.
The first wave was over twenty feet high, a mound of water rather than a wall, a cap of white froth bubbling down its forward side. The roaring noise grew louder, the wave grew immense, and then was upon them, first lifting Vagabond’s stern, then burying it as it struck at her three hulls, a river of water ten feet high rushing across the whole boat, smashing through the rear of the wheelhouse, hurling the trimaran forward at twice her previous speed, leaving Olly, Jim, Jeanne, and Frank in a heap against the wall and hatch slide of the main companionway and tangling Olly in Neil’s feet as he stood clutching the wheel.
Jeanne, crushed up against the cabin wall by the cold salt water swirling over her, choked and gasped as she struggled upward in a nightmare of drowning, clawing at the wall as the water still seemed to be pinning her down. Frank grasped her arm and pulled her, sputtering, up into his arms and wedged himself against the control panel shelf.
The water was up to her knees, and she assumed that they were sinking, but then she saw Neil looking back over his shoulder with a look of concentration devoid of dismay. The roar was still all around them and she felt they must be hurtling through the water at some fantastic speed, but even as she thought this, she saw that Neil was actually gunning the throttle.
“We’ll anchor behind Tangier Island just as we planned,” he shouted. “It’ll take us awhile to pump her out and clean up.”
The water had already fallen to her ankles, some of it pouring into the main cabin through the broken hatch slide and the rest draining out the holes of the self-bailing cockpits and wheelhouse.
Jim crawled forward to prepare the anchor, while Frank stared at the smashed fragments of plywood, Fiberglas, and Plexiglas that had been the back wall of his wheelhouse.
“Not too many boats going to be floating after that ripple,” Olly said to Neil with an uncharacteristically grim expression.
“Check our main bilge, Olly.”
“Jesus, what’s the use,” said Frank. “Every time we—” “Go check your starboard cabin bilge,” Neil interrupted. “Jeanne, check your children. We’ve survived.”
Vagabond had had ten tons of water sweep over her, had shipped over half a ton in her three bilges from stove-in windows and hatch slides, the wheelhouse rear wall was reduced to splinters, but all her rigging had come through intact. In another half-hour they had pumped or bailed out most of the uninvited water and were anchored behind what was left of Tangier Island. They set up a rotation of two-hour watches and, numb, shell-shocked, exhausted to the point of not caring, all at last were permitted to sleep.
Neil didn’t waken until nine o’clock the following morning and thus had five full hours’ sleep, a luxury after the previous forty-eight. As he emerged from his damp cabin he felt anxious and irritated. In the daylight he saw clearly for the first time the extent of the damage to the rear wall of the wheelhouse, saw Olly’s gaffs, fishing nets, oyster tongs, and other gear still lying in a heap in the starboard cockpit, saw the smashed cabin hatch slide, saw Frank sprawled asleep on one of the wheelhouse settees—it was Frank’s watch—and felt a strong breeze blowing, now out of the north. The thought that they had been sitting still doing nothing for almost seven hours rankled him, and he had to stop on the afterdeck to calm himself down.
But as he gazed around the bay his irritation and impatience gave way to an entirely different emotion. A house was floating only a hundred yards to the east; on the shore of Tangier Island were the remnants of several wrecked houses and boats. On the island itself not a single building seemed to remain standing. Farther to the south was the now-familiar ghastly gray mass squatting in the otherwise clear blue sky like an ugly, swelling toad. However much he was displeased by the current condition of Vagabond, she was afloat; she had survived.
As he stepped down into the starboard cockpit to begin work he stopped. Where was Macklin? He’d been left tied to the mizzenmast. Neil leapt down into the starboard cockpit, ran into the wheelhouse, and then stopped: Macklin was sitting nonchalantly in the sun of the opposite cockpit, sipping coffee. Jeanne emerged from the main cabin and behind her he saw Lisa at the galley stove.
“Good morning,” she said.
“How’d he get loose?” Neil asked grimly.
Jeanne flushed in response to Neil’s unconcealed anger.
“He was free when I got up,” she replied. “Can I fix you something for breakfast?”
Neil walked farther into the port cockpit and saw with a start that the .22 was lying across Macklin’s knees.
“Good morning,” said Macklin neutrally.
“May I have the rifle?” Neil asked.
“Sure,” said Macklin. “It’s of no use to me.” He put his coffee cup down on the seat beside him and handed the .22 to Neil. “But look, Loken, let me sail with you. Putting me ashore would be murder.”
“How did you get loose?” Neil asked quietly, noting that the .22 he had taken from Macklin was loaded.
“Child’s play,” Macklin replied with a sneer.
“Why didn’t you take the dinghy and escape?”
“Escape, shit,” Macklin snapped. “There’s no escape out there. My only chance—I admit it’s smaller than a flea’s cock,” he added parenthetically, glancing to his left at the blast cloud over the Norfolk area, “is on this ship.”
“Are you all right?” Neil asked Jeanne.
“Yes. I thought you had released him.”
He nodded, grimacing.
“Would you like to eat now?” Jeanne asked again.
“Thanks,” Neil answered. “Use whatever’s in the refrigerator first—bacon, cheese, other things that will spoil when we turn off the propane to conserve it for cooking. Don’t cook potatoes, for example.”
“Fine,” she said, disappearing down into the galley.