better know what you’re doing lady.”
I was already wondering the same thing when Mar–tha, who looked completely unruffled by the series of events, screamed at the whole boat. “Course she can drive this thing. She’s been doing it for years. Trust me. She’s the best and she’s one of crew.”
Neither of which was quite accurate. Martha con–veniently forgot to mention that my years of experience were with much smaller Zodiacs in much smaller and warmer seas, but what the heck, a boat is a boat. And technically I was one of the crew.
I watched carefully as the Zodiac ahead of us nosed up to the side of the ship at a small metal platform and threw a rope to a crew member crouched on the wave drenched dock. I could make out metal stairs snaking up at a forty-five degree angle from the water to the deck of the ship. Passengers were drunkenly weaving their way up the stairs.
Suddenly it was our turn. I kept the Zodiac pointed into the waves as we headed for the ship, aware that seven pairs of eyes anxiously watched my every move. Only Martha seemed unconcerned. What was it about her that made her so oblivious to potential danger?
We were heading straight into the wind, parallel to the ship, which was lying at anchor. I kept the throt–tle at full bore until we were twenty yards away and then eased back as we shot toward the dock. At the last moment I throttled way back, and the lack of power and the strength of the wind allowed the boat to float toward the dock — theoretically. Instead, we rammed the dock from the crest of a wave and my passengers tumbled around like bingo balls. Terry crashed against Arthur, her head ramming his hard camera case. Arthur scowled as another man picked her up, just as a deckhand grabbed the bow rope of the bucking boat and secured it to the heaving metal dock.
The boat, finally secured, was now tied to the energy of the ship, which was straining at its anchor and riding the waves differently from the little Zodiac hugging its side. The male passengers struggled to get the helmsman into the arms of the crewmen and to safety. He was start–ing to come to and was moaning as he was carried up the gangway. One by one the passengers slid their bottoms down the side of the pontoons to the two crewmen — their bright orange slickers like beacons of safety — who held out their hands to grip each passenger by the arm and swing them to safety between waves.
When it was Terry’s turn she turned and smiled.
“You’re one lucky, lady.”
I had the unpleasant feeling that she could see into the quiet depths of my own mind where my fears roiled and laboured, and that she had known the extent of my inexperience just by watching me. But what else could I do? No one else could drive the thing. The coldness in her voice went red hot as she took the arm of a deck man and yelled, “Luke, you old bastard. How are the ladies?”
I watched the man’s face break into a huge scowl and he almost threw her out of the boat as he grunted, “Welcome back, Terry,” in a voice that said just the oppo–site. Welcome back? She’d been here before? I looked at Martha, whose turn was next, but she obviously hadn’t heard the exchange.
Martha tried to swing her leg over but the design of the Zodiac and the design of her round body didn’t mesh. She sat there, stranded, one leg going one way and the other leg going another, just as a wave hit and bounced her painfully on the spot. Duncan reached over and grabbed her trailing leg, hauling it over. Suddenly I was alone in the boat.
As I started to move toward the starboard side to get out, one of the crewmen looked at me, a puzzled look on his face, and then glanced behind him at another crewmember on deck. I saw some communication pass between them, but before he could turn back the other guy threw the stern line at me and pointed aft where I saw the other Zodiac being hoisted into the air, its driver standing amid decks with a bosun’s chair hugging his rear. I’d seen this done many times before, but I’d never actually done it myself and was attempting to clamber out when one of the crewmen waved me off. I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say, but I didn’t have to. The loose bowline in his hands told all and I watched, fascinated, as he threw the line into the bottom of the boat. They obviously thought I was one of the new crew arriving with the tourists. I looked quickly at the engine, glad to see it was still going, and suddenly I was free of the ship, alone in the boat, and not sure what I was sup–posed to do other than get out of the way of the Zodiac coming behind me.
I swung out, heading into the wind, watching as the Zodiac ahead of me was winched on board. It danced high above my head and my stomach, already churning itself into a sickening mess, lurched at the thought of going up there, so high, so far to fall, so cold a death, but at least it would be quick, thirty to sixty seconds before rescue was useless. As I moved down the ship to where the Zodiac ahead of me was already airborne I worried about controlling both my stomach and the Zodiac at the same time.
I kept the Zodiac into the wind, the waves marching at me, slinging their crests into my eyes and blinding me, the icy water sluicing down my face and finding its way past my raingear to my skin. I was very cold; my hands almost blue and stiff like talons as they gripped the throt–tle. I looked up the side of the ship, which looked like a gigantic box perched on a hull, and saw Martha’s neon pink rain suit. She was waving down at me as if I was arriving in the calm of dusk for a cup of tea. Beside her I could see Duncan gripping the rails of the ship, as if by brute force he could lower it down to rescue me. Terry was there too and she looked as scared as I felt. This had not been the plan when we had talked and I guess she felt responsible for the predicament I found myself in.
I looked back at the crane, its guts hidden from me by the height of the ship. It was stationed on a rear deck and its arm was now swinging back over the ship where it had just deposited the last Zodiac, back out over the water to get me. Slowly the rope with the hook and bosun’s chair attached was played out and I watched as it flayed in the wind like a wild thing. What it could do to my head I decided not to imagine. Where was the hook supposed to go? I looked down at the floorboard and saw a triangular series of ropes with a large, strong, con–fidence-boosting ring on it. The hook would go there first and then I would secure myself into the boson’s chair, in case the hook didn’t hold. I wouldn’t have much time to let go of the engine and secure the hook before the boat would be taken away by the wind and the waves.
I made my first approach but when I let go of the engine to grab at the hook, rusty and lethal looking, it swung out of my reach and by the time it swung back the boat had drifted too far away. The next time I aimed the boat twenty feet in front of the hook, grateful that the ship’s leeward side sheltered me somewhat from the waves and the wind. I made a grab for the hook with one hand while hauling up the ring with the other and stag–gered as a wave nearly threw me off balance. My hands were so cold they had no feeling and seemed like clumsy hunks of meat, but I got the hook through the ring and waited for the rope to lift and hold firm. Then I lurched back to turn off the engine. I could feel the Zodiac groan–ing under me as the rope began to lift her and I struggled back to get into the bosun’s chair.
It occurred to me that this was probably the limit of the captain’s ability to hoist up the Zodiacs and that any weather more severe would be out of the question. They didn’t want to lose any tourists after all, and I wondered who would bear the brunt for what was happening to me.
I tried to keep my mind off the fact that I was slowly ris–ing in the air but I kept seeing myself that first horrifying time, years ago, standing frozen on the side of a moun–tain pass unable to go up or down as I stared hypnotized at the wide expanse of mountain dropping away beneath me on both sides. It had happened so fast. One moment perfectly comfortable, the next a raging agoraphobic par–alyzed by fear; and it had never gone away. Now I was swinging wildly in the air, attached to a ship that was rolling and pitching like a drunk in search of the can.
The
