“What’ve you done to her?” bellowed Martyr, replacing his daughter, dangerously close to Hood.
“Nothing!” But somehow the word didn’t seem true even as he said it. What he had seen made him feel guilty and that guilt colored the denial, making it a lie.
Without another word, C. J. Martyr reached for him. The huge New Englander would have taken him by the collar but neither man was wearing a shirt so he took him by the throat instead. Hood hesitated for a split second, tricked by the possibility that the old man had a right. What they had been through probably gave the Martyrs the right to punch the lights out of one guy in every five. But not him, he realized at last. Not Sam Hood. He brought his hands up between Martyr’s forearms, knocking them aside. The gesture of resistance, slight though it was, drove Martyr wild. He hurled himself forward.
The whole sequence of events from the moment Martyr first attacked had taken up scant seconds. Sam was preoccupied by his part in the action. Weary, caught off guard by the whole matter, was still trying to balance what was happening in the cockpit with what was happening to Katapult as a whole. And the latter still demanded his attention, for the multihull was creaming at eighteen knots straight under the massive stern of the tanker, less than fifty feet from the churning maelstrom above its single screw. But then rational thought stopped altogether as the forces that controlled them all took over.
Just as they hit the first high swell of the tanker’s wake, newborn in that restless cavern below her overhanging counter, the twisting bodies of Hood and Martyr hit Doc and knocked him across the cockpit. As he fell, he tried to keep hold of the wheel and so he tumbled awkwardly and struck his massive head upon a stanchion. He fell back into the cockpit beside the two writhing bodies, rolled over, and lay still.
Katapult pirouetted madly out of control. She spun into the tanker’s wake, outriggers threatening to tear themselves out of the water. The blade of the mainsail swung this way and that, threatening to rip its boom out of the mast. And, with a sound like a whiplash, the foresail tore free and flew overboard until brought up short by the last ten feet still firmly attached to the far end of the forward telescopic boom. The whole mast shivered to come down and only the steel shrouds held it together.
The bulk of the tanker, less than forty feet away now, began to suck at the helpless craft. It had created a vacuum in both wind and water because of its massiveness, and already Katapult was slewing over toward the suction of the thrashing propeller blade, preceded by the billowing dacron of the foresail. In all too few mo- ments, it seemed, first the sail and then the craft herself would be sucked in and pulled under and chopped to bits.
This was the situation Christine found when she ran back up the companionway. Weary was out cold. Her father and Hood seemed to have fallen on top of each other, and neither of them could be counted on to help. The actual sequence of events never occurred to her. It simply looked as though something catastrophic had thrown them into confusion. She was in action at once. The foresail was gone by the board. Should she try to jettison it? She didn’t know how. Her first priority in any case was to get Katapult’s head round and force her out of the vacuum here. How quickly would she answer the helm? Especially with the sail out there? Again she didn’t know. Only one way to find out, she thought.
Katapult’s momentum had carried her partway across the tanker’s wake and even as she reached the wheel, Chris could see the foresail begin to spread out down the back of a wave, as it slipped even farther toward the propeller, pulling Katapult’s head round after it. Without any more thought, she hit the sail furl buttons and both mechanisms kicked into life at once. Some very strange noises indeed began to come from the leading edge of the mast where there was no sail to be furled, but, good as gold, the boom began to telescope inward, pulling the floating sail along with it. But this of course only served to turn Katapult’s head more quickly. She needed power to put a stop to that. Chris spun the wheel over hard aport and hit the big red button to start the diesel. As soon as it kicked to life, she pulled the telegraph handle to full astern. Like a motorcar going into reverse, Katapult began to inch back and into the dead air, away from the suction of that great screw, along the line of least resistance.
As Katapult’s forward motion toward destruction slowed, Chris rose onto tiptoe, looking around for other shipping that might pose a threat, already planning ahead. If they went under, there was nothing she could do. But if they pulled free, she would need all the information she could get. The next tanker down the line was a good three miles behind. There was a big one inbound coming up, however, and she didn’t want to end up under that. If she did get them out of danger, therefore, she would have to turn around and motor back the way they had just come. She allowed herself one quick glance at the useless bundle of humanity on the cockpit sole. Jesus, she thought, men were a bloody nuisance. All over you when you didn’t want them, but the moment you needed some help…
Then she forgot them and concentrated on keeping Katapult easing back as the forward boom telescoped slowly down, pulling the heaving, twisting sail back out of harm’s way.
Her dad was the first one to make it to his feet, but he was still dazed and wasted time hanging on to her shoulder saying, “What…”
“Come on, Dad, snap out of it. Go and see to the foresail, will you?”
“What…” There was a bright streak of blood on his forehead at his hairline. She would have liked to have had time for sympathy. “Come on, damn it! We’re not out of this yet! Jesus!” She hardly ever swore. She didn’t smoke or drink. She held herself down hard all the time. But not now. She couldn’t afford to be quiet and controlled now if she were going to get them out of this alive. And, all of a sudden, she was surprised to discover how much she did want to survive. “Damn it, Dad, will you wake the hell up?”
But then Hood was there and his eyes were at least clear. “The foresail,” she yelled at him. “Get the foresail out of the water before it gets tangled in the tanker’s screw!” He didn’t even pause. He saw as clearly as she did that this was their only hope. Katapult was almost dead in the water now while the pull of her own propeller fought the power of the tanker’s. “As soon as we have it in,” he yelled, grabbing her father and pushing him up onto the foredeck, “you hit full ahead and come to starboard.”
“I know what to do, for God’s sake! I just can’t do it until the sail is out of the fucking water!”
But she called it after their retreating backs and within moments they were both at the end of the retracted boom, pulling in the sodden sail, hand over hand. As the weight of it came out of the water, so Katapult at last began to make a little sternway. Chris took in a great juddering breath and kept it in, watching through slitted eyes as the wringing bundle on the deck grew and grew, straining to know the first moment she could ease the throttle slightly. Katapult’s diesel did not like running full throttle in reverse like this and was beginning to run dangerously rough. A little more sternway. She eased back slightly. The wild note dropped out of the engine sound, but the multihull hesitated again. Damn! If they would only hurry! Then she felt her head spring free and Hood, unnecessarily, shouted, “Go!”
As Katapult, at Chris’s command, began to move forward, starting to swing right as she moved, so the two men heaved the last of the sail out of the water and swung it up onto the running deck. The whole pile of it tumbled backward as they did so, exploding against the mast-foot and drenching Chris at the wheel. She was so busy spinning the helm hard over that she didn’t even notice. Oblivious to the fact that her shirt was clinging to her like a second skin, she was completely caught up with the necessity of bringing Katapult round in the tightest possible U-turn and heading her, innocent of canvas now, back under the tanker’s stern toward the long shallow bay they had just tacked out of between Rass al Kuh and Jask.