“Lemme past,” he said. “I’ve had enough of this.” He pushed the man next to him, and that man was Wysczknowski. Wysczknowski looked up, saw the flush across the pale face.
“You got a right to try,” he told Brace, “but you try it on the end of a pier, not on this ship.”
“Let the Jonah past,” Masters said. “Let’s see who can break what.” He began to rise, but before he rose, he deliberately dragged the boot down the bulkhead.
Wysczknowski shook his head in a sort of sad amazement. “You just made a nice piece of work for yourself, chum. When we pick up this tow, then you clean that mess. If you don’t get it clean enough, you’ll paint it.”
Conally tapped Howard. “Get ready to get into this.” The two men stood.
From forward a hatch boomed, a dog slammed and Dane’s voice rumbled like engines. He called all hands to station. Conally and Howard stopped, paused, and Wysczknowski looked at Brace as if Brace was a circus poodle wearing a bow, a pink one. Brace stood in a futility of frustration as men reached for their gear and staggered forward to the ladder like soldiers making a stumbling attack across a plowed field. Brace looked at his clenched fists, caught his balance against a bulkhead, looked at the dark, dirty stain where Masters’s foot had rested. He looked back at his fists as if they were pistols that had misfired. His fists unfolded into hands, and his hands trembled from a supply of adrenaline that had nowhere to go.
“I haven’t got a station,” he muttered to Wysczknowski. “I don’t know who I’m working for.”
“In that case you’re working for me,” Conally told him. “Get crackin’.” Conally spun away and up the ladder. Howard headed for the medical locker. Brace followed, shrugging into his tarred and patched foul weather jacket.
Aphrodite lay stern to the sea. A captain who had worked miracles in keeping the thing alive was working a little practical magic. With pumps meeting the leak, but not overcoming it, and with an engine running high and bearing a load for which it was not designed, Aphrodite’s crew of two deckhands and an engineman shifted everything moveable to starboard. The vessel’s owner, who in later years would tire of buying senators and arrange to become one (his colleagues—having made their own arrangements—then calling him an honorable man), huddled life-jacketed and chattering in the wheelhouse, like a baboon that fears it will be robbed of a cookie.
The yacht lay head down as it backed into the swell. Floodlights cast nebulous pools to illuminate its narrow deck. The tall masts rose into darkness, and here and there, rigging that had been blown or cut away snapped, flapped, made near ghostly movements in the dark. The floodlights turned the surrounding sea blacker. The waterlogged bow was like a dull club as the thing slid into the trough. At each crash the bow dipped. Water swirled at the rails, crossed the forward deck beneath the lights in foaming currents, white, threatening, and eerie. Then, the reversing propeller extracted the bow from the sea as the stern lifted. The yacht heeled to starboard, and Howard, arriving on deck, did not at first see how that could reasonably be so.
“Runnin’ on his port tank,” Conally said. “Trying to shift weight to starboard so’s to lift the leak.”
“What’s the word? Do we tow?”
“Pump if we can. Send a pump across. Maybe try to patch.”
Floodlights along Adrian’s deck and on the boat deck turned men into postlike figures of brilliance and shadow. The crew stood along the rail. From the darkened bridge shone the small glimmer of the chart light and the green glow from instruments. The radio threw static, blanked as Levere spoke to Aphrodite; then came static, and the clear answer from Aphrodite. Dane stood like a blot before the starboard running light, his head haloed in green. Brace stood beside Conally. He seemed both intimidated and defiant. Mutters from forward mentioned Brace. The mutters were deliberately pitched so that they could be heard along the rail, but not on the bridge. The sea rolled, dark, huge, cold and indifferent. Dane moved, disappeared into the dark bridge. A buzzer sounded from the engine room.
“Whatever we’re going to do, we’re doin’ it,” said Conally. He looked across the water at Aphrodite, at the churning white water washing the bow. Through the open hatch sounded the light, quick footsteps of Snow as he mounted the ladder from the engine room. Snow appeared on deck, tapped Wysczknowski. “Relieve me on the board.”
Wysczknowski moved, light and shadow, disappearing through the hatch like a man swallowed, gulped beneath a surface of steel.
“Boat crew,” Dane bawled. “Get crackin’.” He swung from the wing and stormed toward the boat deck.
Snow tapped Fallon. “Let us have a submersible and an engine to the boat deck.”
“This is nuts,” said Howard.
“Naw. Sea’s high, but there ain’t no wind, much.” Conally hesitated, and it was certain that Conally did not know whether he spoke the truth or not. “Do me a favor. Get over there and fend off. Don’t leave it to some other guy.”
Fallon turned to Masters and McClean. “You heard the man.”
“I heard,” said Masters. “It’s Jensen all over again.”
McClean stepped forward, stepped back, finally got himself moving. “Lord, sweet Jesus. This one here’s a pickle. This one here’s a cob.”
Masters stood and watched him go.
“You want a busted head,” said Fallon.
“That’s how this ship gets run. Always bustin’ somebody.” Masters moved, just fast enough that he could not exactly be criticized.
The redheaded Rodgers and bosun striker Joyce stood beside the small boat like convicts about to be hanged. Dane worked on the boat, stripping the cover, and Conally, arriving, stripped the stays. “Take the deck,” he hollered at Joyce. “We’re taking along some snipes.”
Snow tapped Rodgers. “You stay aboard also, lad. The black gang must earn its living.”
Fallon stepped forward.
“You are presently the senior engineer,” Snow told him. “Stand down.”
Fallon mumbled, looked relieved, looked guilty. Glass tumbled into the boat. Fallon turned to see McClean and Masters struggling forward with the gear. The boat was ready, and Dane, Conally and Glass sat hunched, hands steadying against the falls. Snow turned to Joyce. He pointed at McClean and Masters. “Which man is the better oar?”
Bosun striker Joyce blinked, nearly cringed. It was the first time his professional judgment had ever been consulted.
“They ain’t neither of them amounts to a seaman, but I never saw Masters catch a crab.”
“Nor ever will,” said Masters. “Especially not tonight.” He stood above Snow, edging sideways and managing to cringe from Dane at the same time. He half raised his hands in either protest or defense. “It’s Jensen,” he said, helpless, a near whine. “Jensen.”
“I have no time to deal with you.”
“I’ll go.” Brace stepped toward the boat, and he did not step timidly. He turned to face Snow. “I’ve got nothing going for me aboard this pig iron, anyway. Have I?” He swung back, climbed into the boat. “Get the gear up here.” He leaned forward to hoist the pump, then the engine. “Later,” he told Masters. “Your boot down your throat.”
“If you girls is done gossiping,” said Dane, and he began roaring. If Dane spoke words, no one understood them in an exact way, but in a general way they could have been understood as far off as Boston. Men tended lines. The boat lowered as Howard ran to the main deck and fended off. As the boat reached the rail, Snow spoke mildly to Dane, as though they were not about to set down on swells that ran towering above the bridge.