This thought, in turn, was overwhelmed by more immediate concerns as Pilar’s stern slid back and down into the trough immediately before the big wave — a trough which the inexperienced young seaman had entirely failed to notice in his fascination with the white-topped wall that followed it. He staggered forward and, had he not been hanging on to the radio mast, he would have fallen. He found himself looking down on to the deck once more. Both of the boathook men were trying to get the transom section in place now, in spite of the fact that the net was still in the way. Two more were fighting to get the hatch cover closed, but the harder they tugged, the more firmly it seemed to be stuck. It was only when Hernan joined them and glanced up so that Miguel-Angel could see the expression on his face that some idea of the true danger registered with the boy.
With a sick fascination that mounted second by second, and held him statue-still, the youngster watched events unfold. Pilar settled into the bottom of the trough. The wind that had been blowing so powerfully in Miguel-Angel’s face faltered. It occurred to him that this was because he was in the wind shadow of the wave. The roaring of the waters seemed to stop as well, replaced by a sinister, all-pervasive hissing. Pilar’s stern bit into the face of the oncoming wave and she began to rise like the thoroughly seaworthy vessel she was. But the nets did not want to rise as fast as she did, for they were heavy, laden and caught in the undertow. Still Pilar struggled gamely up the watery slope of the huge roller, pulling the protesting weight of the drift net with her. It seemed to Miguel-Angel for a moment of dizzying hope that Pilar, like the strange vessel half a kilometre north, would ride sedately over the wave.
But even as he thought this, green water slid over the bundle of net and flooded sinisterly across the deck. The water level rose and rose until Hernan’s boots were filled once more. And still the boy did not quite comprehend the danger. For the deck had been awash before. The scuppers he had kept so clear would surely let even this amount of water wash away.
Suddenly the wind hit him in the face again and he staggered back, still hanging on to the radio mast. He found himself looking over the top of the white wall of surf that crested the wave. He saw the other boat in the near distance, settling into the trough in front of the next great wave, bleeding smoke from her stern up into the torrent of air. Beyond her, the ocean was grey and ridged with more waves that looked even bigger than this, each one part of a much more powerful movement of water that the boy did not recognize as a rogue wave. Above the grey of the surge there was a low, grey sky and, as Miguel-Angel watched, the two were joined by a massive bolt of lightning.
Then Pilar gave a kind of lurch. Miguel-Angel looked down and understood at last. As though she had used up all her strength, Pilar stopped rising and was slowed to a stop by the drag of the nets. So the crest of the wave had killed her. Miguel-Angel understood that even had the transom been closed, the nets would still have pulled her down. Had the hatch closed beneath the desperate hands of Hernan and the others she might have stood a chance. But the hold was stuck open wide to receive the catch from the nets. And that was the end of it all.
The last two metres of the wave came straight aboard, topped with another metre of foam. The weight of the water washed the men with the boathooks helplessly back and drowned them. Then it reached the open deck hatch. Not only was the top of the wave two metres high, it was twenty metres wide. And, for the time it took those twenty metres to wash over Pilar, untold tons of water thundered down into the hold, so that the catch, like the net, was suddenly pulling her down. The water exploded out of the freezer hold into the lower decks and killed the engine — as well as those men tending it. The crest of the wave smashed through the bridge house immediately below Miguel-Angel and burst out of the front, taking the windscreen with it while flooding down the forward companionways into the crews’ quarters. As well as the windscreen and much of the bridge equipment, it vomited out Capitan Carlos Santiago, dead already, his body as broken as that of the shark as he was forced through the narrow metal frame of Pilar’s windscreen.
One moment Miguel-Angel was standing on the top of the bridge, elevated high above the surface. The next, a wash of foam exploded over his boots with such force that he lost his footing and fell. He fell forward off the bridge house into water that was already knee-deep. It was only at this instant that he realized that not only had the wave been rising but that Pilar had been sinking too. The roiling surface closed over his head and icy brine filled his eyes. He floundered helplessly for a moment. The too-big gloves and boots slid off his hands and feet. The too-big jacket, full of air, buoyed him up until his head broke the surface and he found himself in the middle of a vicious squall, surrounded by steep grey rollers that seemed enormous in size and force. And he was alone. Absolutely and utterly alone.
Stunned, he trod water, looking around for Pilar, still unable to comprehend that she and all aboard her were gone. ‘Capitan?’ he called. ‘Hernan? Hernan?’ But there was no reply. As he fought to keep his head above water, the air began to leak out of his oilskin and he was jerked beneath the surface once again. The shock kicked his mind alive and he remembered that Hernan had given him a lifejacket to help keep his face out of the water and away from jellyfish. His fingers scrabbled at the front of it. Found a handle. Pulled. The jacket sprang to life, inflating with incredible rapidity. His head and shoulders exploded out of the water once more and he twisted round, looking for the other boat. She hadn’t looked much like a safe haven, but if Pilar and her crew were really gone, she was the only hope there was.
But although she had looked to be nearby from the top of Pilar’s bridge house, from down here she was invisible. And probably unreachable. Certainly, he thought, he would never be able to swim to her through the storm that seemed to have sprung, like the wave, out of nowhere. But if he could attract her attention, he thought, then she might come to him.
The lifebelt had a whistle attached to it, but that would never sound loud enough in this. It had a grab handle that would let someone pull him aboard, but only if someone came close enough to reach it. And it had a light that flashed like a beacon, activated automatically by the water. If he turned his head, he could see the light flashing red. But it was tiny. A pinprick in the massive storm that was relentlessly overwhelming him. And what use was a single light in the middle of the vast ocean? He needed something that would broadcast more than a simple flash of light. And then he realized that he had just such a thing. With some difficulty, Miguel-Angel reached in past the inflated lifebelt and through the front of the oilskin. In the inner pocket there was the beacon that Capitan Carlos had put on the end of the float line and which Hernan had told him to stow safely away. Thanks to both San Andreas and San Telmo he had not obeyed that one fatal order. Its signal on Pilar’s electrical equipment had guided Capitan Carlos unerringly to the net. Perhaps it would guide the other boat to him.