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Date Posted: 13:33:39 01/22/08 Tue
Author: celtgirl
Subject: Okay Deb, here you go, I don't think you've seen this before>>>
In reply to: LadyDuBois 's message, "CG, speaking of his Lordship, is there anything you can share to help me get through? I'm feeling so out of sorts, I need to lose myself for a minute. Thanks" on 06:05:50 01/22/08 Tue

copyright 2008 Cindy Brandner

The sun fell that night like oranges tipped from the lip of a barrel, brilliant, quick and stinging. A soft breeze, neatly brined, danced small-footed across mizzen and mast, bilge and beam, tinkled the copper bell to the sound of fairy chimes and settled with an audible sigh upon the sweetly curving deck.

The captain, midshipman, navigator, purser, chief, cook, swabbie and bottlewasher sat on deck writing in a quick, fine pen. Had a mirror been close to hand he would have seen a face, deeply tanned and well fleeced with golden beard, eyes, jade and sharp, a body thinned by weeks at sea, a mind, if such things could be seen, preoccupied at present with such matters as the latitude and longitude of observable celestial bodies, the fact that his hands were shaking too badly to hold the sextant with reliable verticality and that it was, as unappealing as the prospect seemed, quite possible that he was somewhat lost. There were only two things he could say with any assurance, he was on earth and somewhere in the mid-Atlantic and perhaps, he looked up at the sails, snapping now with more vigour than they had only a moment before, perhaps he could positively say that there was going to be one hell of a storm before the night was through.

He’d given up the booze three days before. People had done so for reasons lesser than being visited by four literary ghosts. Even had he hallucinated it all, and three days later he still wasn’t certain he had, the lucidity of the hallucination itself was impetus enough to quit. However the reality of detoxing oneself on the high seas was much less grand than the vision of sobriety had been. His head was of the certain opinion it had been beaten by a large and remorseless stick, his innards parched and churning, each joint and cell protesting the withdrawal of their elixir, at first in turn and now in united cacophony. If there had been so much as a drop of alcohol on board he would have dropped to his knees in worship before consuming it as rapidly as possible. However there was not, he’d taken care of that the first morning after the visitation by dumping all there was overboard. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience, hungover and miserable as he’d been, but he’d gritted his teeth in a mouth that felt as if it were filled with sand and done it. Bottle by bottle it had all gone, in pretty, winking streams of amber oblivion. Gone but not forgotten.

The wind picked up sharply as the sun sank to its halfpoint on the horizon, still rolling spirals of blooded orange across the water. He went belowdeck into the cabin and grabbed an ancient and salty oil-skin coat off its hook. The temperature was dropping more rapidly than the sun’s descent should have allowed. Something was kicking up out there, he could smell the far edge of it, black and cold, sliding across the water with the ease of a lizard slipping its skin.

Re-emerging on deck minutes later he was alarmed to see that much of the light had been sucked from the sky by long, sharp-edged fingers of cloud racing in an alarming way across the western sky. The wind had picked up considerably, probably around 22 knots, the waves slapping against the leeward side of the boat and forming soft caps of white foam. It had taken the spinnaker hard in the belly, pushing its smoke blue edges to their limits, thrusting the cobalt starred centre tight against the blackening sky. A fine and intermittent spray glazed the railings and gunwale. He’d have to bring the sails in and fast.

The Protophos was a sturdy, reliable keelboat, oakhulled, built more for distance than speed, it sat long and firm in the water. Made to Jamie’s specifications years before, it had seen plenty of dirty Atlantic weather and sailed through it with ease. But as he eased the halyards and watched the spinnaker give slightly and then billow taut again, he felt a trickle of fear. Just the leading edge of this storm was ominous and coming up hard and fast, darkness puncturing the sky like a let balloon, wind taking on an eerie moan, cresting the waves with long vicious runnels of foam. He was swiftly losing time, he’d have to let the spinnaker collapse, so he could take care of the mainsail and set the storm jib before the boat capsized. The deck was slick with spray and his hands numb and stiff with cold.

He reviewed his options hastily as he let the spinnaker down hard, collapsing, snapping, the halyard hissing as it shot through the block. He could run with bare poles, not an inch of canvas slung to the wind or he could heave to, oil the water and pray like he hadn’t done in years. Both had their unique dangers, but for now, while he had a choice he’d go with the latter.

He collapsed the mizzen mast, struggling with fingers that in the cold and wet had turned to thumbs and set the storm jib, fighting the halyard and locks through eyes half-blinded by spume whipping across the deck. The wind was increasing rapidly, the howling eye of the storm couldn’t be far off, he could hear below the primary roar to the banshee wail as he fought his way updeck to the mainsail. He needed to pay it out carefully or risk the wind taking up the slack too quickly and capsizing the boat. He unlashed the rope and leaning back his full weight into the deck, fed the rope out an inch at a time, hands slicked with sweat and strain, the spray in his face constant now. He was only inches from having the sail properly reefed when an especially vicious gust punched the sail out and sent the rope snapping through his hands like a demented snake. Blind, half-frozen and thoroughly mad he managed to grasp the tailend of the rope before it shot his hands. It burned like fury, grating the palms raw, the whipend coming round hard and biting deep into his left wrist just as the sail came to an abrupt stop. But stop it did. He managed then, wrist disturbingly numb, to wrap the halyard hard around its shackle.

Grabbing ropes and rails, he alternatively slid and crawled across the heaving deck. A thin, brindled ice was forming in the wake of the spray, the water freezing as it touched cold metal. He stumbled down into the cockpit, lashed the spoked helm down as hard as he dared, leaving enough give for Protophos to take her head and roll with the waves.

Back on deck, clinging to the cockpit rail like a flea on the back of a maddened bull, Jamie punctured small holes in the bag he’d hastily filled with linseed oil, fastened it to one of the short stern lines and threw it over the back. It didn’t noticeably decrease the breaking waters but at least he’d done what he could. He turned back just in time to see Protophos go nose down into the trough of a breaking wave that stood twenty feet above the bow and seemed to hang there menacingly for an eternity before beginning the long rippling, roaring run down its own face. Jamie, horrified at the cant of the boat and knowing it was too late to do anything about it, grabbed hard to the stern railing and crouched down. Green, grey and black, the water broke over the bow with a scream that seemed torn from the very bowels of hell. Protophos lurched leeward, tilting at a sickening angle into the roiling maw of the Atlantic and then at the last second righted herself just in time to take the next wave hard over her bow. The stern shot up and sent Jamie sprawling hard down the length of the slippery deck, over rope and canvas, slamming into the vee of the bow rail back first, taking a crushing blow to his kidneys and ripping the air from his lungs.

Coming up from the latest assualt, Protophos yawed drunkenly and the sluggish nauseating roll told Jamie that she was taking on water belowdecks. He was going to have to collapse the mainsail, throw anchor off the stern to pull her nose out of the water and go belowdecks to find out why the bilge pumps weren’t doing their work. All these things were, at this point, desperate measures and quite likely futile ones. More than anything it was up to Protophos now to roll with the punches and come up for more. He would do these last few things and leave the rest to her.

He waited out one more wave, closed his eyes and held his breath while the boat took its precipitious dive into the trough, heard the Godless roar all around him as the wave started to fall. It broke like thunder, pounding the deck and himself mercilessly, sluicing the length of Protophos in a three-foot deep frenzy, pouring through the open hatchway and rushing back to rejoin the next furious attack.

In the lull that followed he crawled updeck, slipped the knots that secured the mainsail and watched the halyard tear free, arcing through the rain-lashed air in great heaving s’s. He held to the base of the mast as the next wave shuddered Protophos’ strained timbers. She was lumbering sloppily now, canting crazily into the waves, taking on water like a sponge.

He tumbled down the stairs, sliding sideways on the ice that seemed to be forming everywhere, catching his head hard on a cupboard door that had swung open in the violence. ‘Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink,’ he thought crazily as cups, forks and candles bobbled merrily past him, the water bubbling and spouting through the floorboards of the cabin.

The bilge pump was a good one, pumping at a rate of twenty gallons per minute, so unless he had a hole the size of New Delhi in his hull he couldn’t understand where all the water was coming from.

But the pump was not working, or at least not enough to make any difference when you had water pouring in at an impressive rate and the smell of gasoline so strong in the bilge that it almost choked him.

He knew a moment of pure, freefalling terror and then the brain, trained as it was turned and exerted a calm hand over the proceedings. He knew he couldn’t think his way out of this one, instinct, relied upon before, though not in quite so desperate circumstances, would have to find the way out. If there was one.
***

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