White-faced and grimacing, Frank swung the wheel to bring Vagabond around toward the channel and deeper water, but also back toward the Coast Guard cutter.
“It’s just turbulence!” Neil shouted from behind them. “Does it stay steady at one or zero?” he asked.
“It says zero now,” said Jim, frightened. “And just occasionally two or three.”
“It’s turbulence,” Neil said, staggering up between Jim and Frank to look at the controls while Jeanne seemed to be trying to hold something against his arm. “We should swing her southwest now. Away from the cutter.”
“I’m not running her aground,” Frank said urgently, holding his course back toward the channel. He stared down first at the depth-meter, which fluctuated erratically between zero and now four or five feet, and then at the compass, which showed them on a southeast heading.
“We’re free, Frank!” Neil insisted, grimacing in pain. “We’re out of the inlet. Head her southwest, even west. They’ll see us if we stay on this course.”
Frank, frowning, his face, like all of the others’, wet with rain and sweat, looked once briefly, fearfully at Neil.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Head her west!”
“Six feet!” Jim announced.
Frank turned the wheel back to the right, and Vagabond swung to starboard, first heading south, then southwest, where Frank straightened her out. As they surged into the blackness, taking the swells now on their port side, Jim took a long look aft and saw the light sweep along Fort Macon Point, then out toward them. A white beam blinded him as the wheelhouse filled with light, and then the light moved away out to sea.
None of those standing in the wheelhouse spoke, and Neil joined Jim in watching the subsequent movement of the light.
“They didn’t see us,” Neil said quietly. “Take her full west, Frank.”
“I’ll keep her on southwest,” Frank said, not looking at him.
“I tell you we’re free!” Neil shouted.
Frank didn’t answer.
“Five feet,” said Jim. All three men now looked at the depthmeter, which held at five feet for a few more seconds and then went on to six, seven, then ten feet. Frank eased the wheel a little to starboard, and slowly the boat swung more to the west until, after a half-minute, Frank steadied her at 260 degrees, ten degrees south of west.
And again the light, less bright now, exploded into the wheelhouse as the distant cutter swept the sea with its searchlight. Again it did not hesitate or return to Vagabond, which sliced and plowed away at full speed. For two or three more minutes the depthmeter read between ten and twelve feet, and then began climbing rapidly through the teens. Indeed, they were free.
Part Three
WATER
Free. Except for the threat of radioactive fallout, of storms, of pirates, of their overloaded trimaran breaking apart, of death from thirst or starvation or disease, of mutiny, of the antagonism that the whole rest of the world now felt for the white people of America and Russia, both of whom they blamed for the war, those aboard Vagabond were free to do as they pleased. They sailed south.
The war sailed with them. Although they increased their distance from the coast as they moved south and the threat of fallout receded, the bodies of at least two of their crewmen—Frank, Olly, and possibly others—had already absorbed the poison. Frank looked much more haggard than anyone else, had lost ten pounds, and was sick again after a three-day remission. Olly was better but still “feeling poorly.” Even Neil still felt unaccountably nauseous once or twice.
Nevertheless, at sea, after a whole day of adjusting sleeping accommodations, mealtimes, and rations, they settled into a routine. Their watches remained the same, except that Katya sometimes spelled Lisa and shared a watch with Jim. Macklin and Tony berthed together in the forepeak, Katya was in with Jeanne, and Olly slept either in Neil’s cabin or on the dinette settee.
Tony, in his bluff, self-confident way, had made himself thoroughly at home again. Although he spoke loudly the first day or two about being forced to let his country down, after they heard a report about heavy radioactivity over Morehead City and the mass evacuation of everyone who could move, he didn’t raise the subject again. He flirted with both Jeanne and Katya, helped them in the galley more than any of the other men, and turned out to be an excellent cook, especially good with fish, which was their principal food. He was also, Neil admitted to himself, the best all-around sailor on his crew.
Katya and Jeanne got along well together, and though Katya wasn’t a cook, she let Jeanne, Lisa, and Tony instruct her. She was, as she had advertised, a good sailor and tough; she usually volunteered to help with sail changes on any watch when she was awake. When Tony and Macklin began to come on to her, she handled each of them in his own style. With Tony she was casual and playful; with Macklin quiet and direct. Neil never knew precisely what passed between her and Macklin their second evening at sea, but he saw him speak to her in the side cockpit with a tight smile, saw her flush and speak to him angrily. He sneered, said something back, and wandered quietly away. If Katya was good at “fucking,” she apparently was in no hurry to prove it, at least with Macklin.
Macklin himself rarely said or did anything to draw attention to himself. He blended in. On land he had stolen a case of canned fruit, a carton of cigarettes, and five six-packs of beer. Though the fruit was relegated to emergency rations, they worked their way through the beer at a rate of two a day, dividing it up and sipping at it as if it were fine champagne. When asked where he had gotten these items, he had simply shrugged and said he’d “stumbled across them in some guy’s cellar.”
Their destination was the West Indies, initially Puerto Rico. But with the southeast wind forcing them to sail directly south, by the end of the third day Neil felt they were already so close to the Bahamas that they should make a landfall on Great Abaco Island. There they might barter for more food and water, even, if they found the right conditions, try to settle. However, Radio Nassau reported debilitating food shortages throughout the islands, and Americans were not welcome. If their principal food was fish, they might as well remain at sea.
Fishing was, in fact, the focus of every morning and evening’s activity. They had two ocean rods and reels with good line, but only five lures, one of which they lost on their second day. At dawn and dusk they usually trolled with both rigs, one from each cockpit. The rods were usually jammed into place with a strong drag on the reels so that no one had to sit and hold them all the time. When a fish was hooked, the helmsman would bring the boat up into the wind to slow it down, and someone would stand by with both a gaff and large net while the other man on watch duty, who was responsible for the rods, would begin to reel in the hooked fish.
Because this type of fishing was new to most of them, and because, ultimately, their lives depended on it, bringing in a fish was a major community event. They caught two bluefish their first evening, a twenty-pound tuna the next dawn, two dolphins and a tuna at dusk, then inexplicably lost two hooked fish and a second lure at dawn the next day. The third evening, however, they recouped their losses with another dolphin and a barracuda.
Neil was still wearing his arm in a sling after cracking his elbow on the Moonchaser and couldn’t help with the fishing, but it interested him to watch the different styles of bringing in and gaffing the fish his crew had evolved.
When Frank was in charge of the gaffing there was shouting and confusion and irritability before Frank could get the man controlling the rod and reel to position the fish properly for gaffing. Once the fish was flopping around in the cockpit, there was always a delay and more shouting before Frank, looking pained, would knife the fish out of its misery.