Another long silence ensued, broken once by Fort Macon Coast Guard Station asking Avenger if it still “read me.”
“Affirmative, Macon. I’m waiting for my launch crew to report…”
Another silence. Captain Olly realized that Vagabond had slowed down and become stationary again. She was pitching and slamming more steeply into the swells. They must be at the rendezvous point.
After another minute, the voice returned: “Avenger to Macon. Something strange going on here. Launch reports there’s no radio aboard Moonchaser. How could she send a Mayday…?”
Bewildered by the nightmarish suddenness with which he had been pitched into the ocean and had the dinghy torn out of his grasp and flung into the turbulent darkness, Jim had dived clumsily into the water and struck out after it. He took six or seven strong strokes and saw no sign of the dinghy, when its rubber hull bumped the back of the head as if teasing him. He grabbed a trailing line just as another wave rolled indifferently over him. He found he could stand and, holding the dinghy and bracing himself for the next wave, called out into the darkness, “I’ve got it! Over here!”
There was no answer, and Jim could see neither the boat nor Neil. He shouted again.
“Neil! I’ve got it! Over here!”
“…Jimmmm!” came an answering yell from off to his left and slightly closer to shore. Jim began struggling through the water toward where the voice seemed to come from and was startled when a huge fish splashed almost on top of him.
“Help me,” he heard Neil’s voice say, and realized that it was Neil. He reached out with his free hand and grabbed hold of him. After a wave passed, Neil suddenly stood up, choking and gasping for breath and clinging to Jim.
“My arm,” he said, grimacing. “My elbow’s killing me. I can’t use it.”
The two men stood in three feet of water and braced themselves as another hill of water swept over them, slamming them a foot closer to shore.
“I’ll hold it now,” Neil gasped out. “You get in. Get in!” he shouted.
In a lull between waves Jim quickly hauled himself over one side of the dinghy and plopped into the middle. It was filled with five or six inches of water. As he got onto his knees, he heard Neil shout, “Start the engine!”
He turned around and groped for the release lever that would lower the prop into the water. A wave smashed into the dinghy, jerked it sideways, and spilled Jim over against the left side and almost overboard. He struggled to his knees again and groped for the lever. When he found it, the engine fell with an abruptness that pinched his first finger and he gasped out a Franklike oath as he pulled back his hand and grabbed the starting cord. He jerked it once, but the engine didn’t start.
“Start the engine!” Neil shouted again from someplace in the water near the bow.
Jim remembered the second time to pull out the choke and tried again. No catch. Again. The engine sputtered and died. Again. No catch. Again: sputter, sputter—he pushed the choke in—roar: the engine came alive.
“Help me in!” Neil shouted, now bobbing up right beside the dinghy; he could only throw one arm over the bulge of inflated rubber. “Grab the back of my belt!”
As Jim throttled down the outboard another wave broke over them and smashed them into even shallower water. Neil was then in only two or three feet of water, and his torso fell across the starboard side of the dinghy, permitting Jim to grab his belt and haul with all his strength to get him up and in. The next wave seemed to scoop Neil up and splash him down into the pool in the bottom of the swamped inflatable. Jim shifted into forward and pulled out the throttle.
The outboard roared, and the dinghy exploded against the next wave, plowing partly through it like a submarine rather than over it, then surged through fifteen feet of calm water before exploding through the next wave. Even with two men aboard and six inches of water, the dinghy was able to nose forward at four or five knots. Jim had no sense of direction, except the impulse to get out of the surf and back into deeper water. Crouched low in the plunging dinghy, he couldn’t see any channel lights and had only the vaguest idea of which way was west.
“Steer by the swells,” Neil shouted to him, kneeling beside Jim in the middle of the dinghy, one arm limp and held awkwardly in front of him. “Keep them coming at you on the port beam.”
Jim had been heading into them, but as soon as Neil spoke he realized that their destination was simply straight across the swells at a right angle. He swung the dinghy to starboard, squinted into the rain and spray, and steered at full throttle toward where he hoped to find Vagabond. A giant white eye suddenly peered at them from almost dead ahead, then swept away to the right. The Coast Guard cutter was coming directly at them.
“…Strange going on here. Launch reports there’s no radio aboard the Moonchaser.”
Captain Olly heard shouts from up on deck and felt something thud against one side of Vagabond.
“Okay, Fort Macon,” the voice from the Avenger went on. “We’re leaving our launch here to check for survivors, but Avenger is now resuming normal patrol duties. Something’s not kosher about this. Over…”
Captain Olly hurried up the cabin steps and bumped into Frank, who was scrambling across the wheelhouse to get to the controls and get Vagabond moving. Jim and Neil were barely visible in the darkness, hauling up the dinghy into the starboard cockpit.
“Coast Guard’s coming back,” he said to Frank, who simply gave him a wild look and put Vagabond into full ahead. Neil stumbled into the wheelhouse and collapsed with a groan on the cushioned seat. Jeanne followed and knelt beside him, then called Macklin over.
Captain Olly went to help Jim with the dinghy. He was pulling it off the open deck aft, up over the cockpit seat and into the cockpit. After the two of them had got it down into the cockpit, Jim asked, “Can we leave it here for now?”
“Sure. I’ll lash it down,” Captain Olly said. “Go help your dad.”
Jim took a long stride over the slightly squashed inflatable, went into the wheelhouse, and stood beside his father. Jeanne ducked past them into the main cabin, and then Jim leaned out to peer ahead into the rain.
They were motoring at full speed south along the western side of the inlet, headed directly out to sea. They were already far to the right of the big ship channel and pounding into the steep swells that rolled directly at them. Jim’s glance at the depthmeter told him it read four feet, which meant they were in only seven or eight feet of water. Vagabond, with her dagger board up but heavily loaded, probably drew a little less than four feet. There was a terrific slam and shudder as a big breaking wave smacked into all three hulls at once. Vagabond slowed seemingly to a halt and then surged forward again.
“Have we passed the point yet?” Frank shouted at Jim. “Look out your side!”
Jim stared out into the blackness off to his right, remembering that the point on which old Fort Macon and the Coast Guard station were located was the last land to starboard before the open ocean. He thought he could see a few lights, probably the Coast Guard station, slightly aft of their starboard beam.
“I see lights at about four o’clock,” he said to his father. “I can’t see anything directly abeam.”
Another breaking wave crashed into the trimaran, slowing her almost to a halt before she recovered and made good headway again.
“Two feet—dad!” Jim shouted to his father when he saw the depthmeter flicker at two feet, then zero, then three, then zero. “Zero feet!”