I came back up, gulped more air, desperately looked around for Garth, and finally spotted him. One of the cat's pontoons had cracked open and sunk below the surface, but the other was still afloat, and Garth, blood from a gash on his forehead streaming down over his face, was draped over it, feebly moving his arms in an effort to hang on. But he was losing the battle, slipping. Fifteen feet beyond him, the water at the stern of the ship was frothing and churning from the thrust of the mighty engines far below the surface. That's where the current was carrying us both.
I clawed at the sail, pulling it into me, and it finally caught on the tip of the floating pontoon. I pulled myself hand over hand to the pontoon, heaved myself up on it, straddling the tiny island of fiberglass. Garth's head was slipping below the surface. I grabbed the back of his polo shirt, gave a mighty heave, and managed to pull him back up. His head lolled back, and I could see that his eyes were out of focus.
"Garth!" I screamed. "Garth, you've got to hang on! I can't haul you up! I can't do it alone, Garth! Hang on! Get your arms up!"
His right arm slowly came up out of the water, dropped over the pontoon. I gave his shirt another tug, then let go, quickly reached down, lifted up his left arm, draped it over the pontoon. The roar of the powerboat was rising, behind me and slightly to my left, as the driver came at us once again. The sail was now billowing in the water all around us, and the rope I had pulled loose from the rigging was floating on its surface. I grabbed it and pulled it in, gathering it in loose coils around my waist, looking for an end. I found one, and quickly formed a loop around Garth's chest, under his arms, and tied it off with a bowline.
The airplane-engine scream of the cigarette boat swept past behind me, and I braced for the thunderous wake and spray, gripping Garth's shirt collar tightly with one hand while holding a coil of rope in the other. I twisted around on the pontoon and stuck out both feet to fend off as we were swept up once more against the tanker's hull. I knew the shock might very well break my legs, but it was better that my legs be broken than Garth's back. Where there was life, there was. . something, even if I couldn't quite recall at the moment what it was. I certainly preferred it to death.
The bow wave hit, lifting the catamaran, turning it, smashing its stern end into the steel hull, and saving my legs. The second wave turned us once again, and this time it was my head that smacked against the steel, barely a foot above a field of barnacles that would have scalped me. I felt the shock through my entire body, but, incredibly, there was no pain. For a moment everything went dark, but I managed to stay on the pontoon and maintain my grip on Garth's shirt collar. Knowing that to lose consciousness meant death for both of us, I screamed inwardly at myself, concentrating in the prickly, star-streaked darkness on the tactile feel of Garth's shirt, the fiberglass under me, the water pounding all around and over me; if those sensations went away, we went away.
Then my vision cleared, just in time for me to see that we were inside the frothing circle of water at the ship's stern, nudging up against the great steel rudder. I could feel us being sucked down.
As the shriek of the cigarette boat faded into the distance, heading back south, I looked around for something to grab hold of. There was nothing. With the water frothing all around us from the churning propeller blades below, I looked in a different direction-up. Throughout the attack by the powerboat, the tanker had apparently continued to off-load its cargo of oil, for the stern was now perhaps a foot higher in the water than it had been, exposing even more of the squared-off top of the massive rudder blade. It was the only angular surface in town, and it was the one I was going to have to reach if we were to keep breathing for more than another minute or two.
I checked to make certain that the loop around Garth's chest was secure. I had no idea where the other end of the line was, nor time to find it. What I did have was a coil of rope in my left hand, with the rest of the line floating in the white water around me. I stood up on the pontoon, flexing my knees for balance, then gathered in more rope and flung the coil over my head, trying to catch the edge of the rudder blade. I missed by an inch, and the rope fell back into the water. Swaying unsteadily on the slippery fiberglass surface of the sinking pontoon, I gathered up the rope, flung it aloft once again. This time a loop caught on the edge of the rudder. I began to draw in the slack, hoping with some fervor that I wasn't simply pulling up the loose end. Then, suddenly, the rope went taut. I pulled even harder, and Garth's torso rose a few inches out of the water. It would have to be enough, for I was running out of time and in imminent danger of losing consciousness. I tied off the rope in the loop I had already knotted around Garth's chest. As the ruined catamaran was sucked under the boiling water, I leaped onto Garth's back, wrapping one arm tightly around his neck below his windpipe and using my free hand to cup his chin and tilt it back in order to keep his head above water.
If we could just survive for another five or ten minutes, if the rope held, I thought there was a chance we could make it. The tanker was continuing to unload, and rising ever higher in the water as it did so, lifting us with it. The crew and captain of the tanker couldn't see us, but two men dangling on a rope off the rudder of their ship should certainly attract some attention from the crew of any other boat that passed close enough to see us.
I thought I felt the rope slip a little. I looked up to try to determine if the line was slipping over the edge of the rudder, and was amazed to find that I couldn't see that far. My field of vision was filled with sparkling red, blue, and green dots surrounded by a shiny black border that kept growing, swallowing up the dancing points of light. I tasted blood, but wasn't sure whether it was mine or Garth's, since I had my cheek pressed against his.
I tightened my grip around Garth's neck, closed my eyes. The rope was going to hold, I thought; I just had to make sure that I held. We weren't going to drown, we were going to be lifted clear of the water, I was going to be able to maintain my grip, somebody was going to see us dangling, and we were going to be rescued. I kept repeating those thoughts in my mind like a mantra, and I was a third of the way through the third rerun when I passed out.
Chapter Nine
It must have been a pretty decent mantra, because, sure enough, I woke up in a hospital bed; I had a blinding headache and a taste in my mouth like rotting fruit, but the evidence seemed incontrovertible that I was alive. Garth was in the bed next to me, his eyes closed and his head swathed in bandages. Mary, her chalky pallor accentuated by the dark rings around her eyes, was sitting between us in a straight-backed chair. She smiled wanly when she saw I was awake, leaned over, and kissed me on the cheek.
"Hello, Mongo," she said.
"Garth?" I asked anxiously.
Mary nodded. "He has a severe concussion, and he may not be awake for another day or two, but the doctors think he's going to be all right." She paused, shook her head. "Somebody on a sailboat saw the two of you hanging on a rope off the rudder of a tanker across the river, and they radioed the ship. A couple of crewmen went over the side on a rope ladder, rigged up a sling, and hauled you aboard. The Sheriffs Patrol brought you to the hospital. You saved Garth's life, didn't you, Mongo?"
"That's our hobby, saving each other's life." I sat up, groaned when a searing pain shot down through my skull, pushed Mary's hand away when she tried to get me to lie back down. "How long have we been here?"
"In the hospital? Two or three hours. What on earth happened, Mongo?" She paused, laughed nervously. "I can't leave the two of you alone together. When I do, you either end up becalmed miles from home, or unconscious and hanging off the rudder of a ship."