I smuggled into the down covers and sipped., Outside there was wrack and ruin all about me: gale-force winds, pelting rain, and angry tide. Two feet from me was cold water, dark with endless murky bottoms and slimy things. I was alone, floating in a howling gale. But inside, the gimballed lamps shone brightly, the coal stove sent. forth its warm radiance. The whiskey had tugged lovingly at my brain now, so it was a wee bit soft at the edges. It was like the filmy curl of a breaker-that leading edge of a breaking wave that foams and tumbles leaping onward, that fizzes outward slightly in delicious anticipation of the Great Going On.
I shook the tiny grate and closed the damper cover halfway. The coals, now diminished, glowed merrily. Temporarily braving the storm's ferocity, I opened the hatch shutters and stuck my head out under the gizmo canopy. The rain sound shifted from a drum roll to a rattlesnake hiss. The anchor light was fine. I plunged back down below, leaving the shutters open. It would get cold in the cabin now. I blew out the gimballed lights, tossed off the last of the Scotch, and fell back on the pillow, listening. I was propelled down a roaring musical tunnel of sound and motion to sleep.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I awoke at six A.M., hungry as a tiger. I emerged from my rabbit hole and poked my head out under the gizmo and looked around. It was bad.
Now in most places in the world, an all-night rainstorm means that the morn will dawn bright, sparkly clear, with blue skies and sun. In most places, yes.
In New England, an all-night rain means that Mother Nature is getting warmed up. She's doing her sitting-up exercises for the real bad stuff. The violent storm had given way to a thin drizzle. These spells of Heavenly Displeasure may last for two or three days. The sky is overcast, and changes from dark to less dark. What remains constant is the near-invisible rain of tiny threads of water droplets which, over an extended period of time, make everything damp: all your clothes, your socks especially, your skin, your carpets and bedsheets, curtains, and your spirits.
I could hear the faint patter of the drizzle on the tarp that formed the gizmo. I was depressed. I wanted a big hot meal with lots and lots of coffee. I looked at the tiny alcohol stove in the cramped galley. I shook my head. The last thing I wanted to do in my hungry and depressed state was to sit kneeling down in front of a small stove-you have to kneel down in a catboat; there isn't enough up-and-down room to do anything e1se-and cook my breakfast. I'd have to pump up the stove and clean up everything afterward. No, I deserved better after what I'd been through the previous night. I deserved to sit in a booth and order heaps of everything. I returned to the cabin and got dressed. Almost as an afterthought, I took my dark glasses to help hide the black eye, which was hanging on like a summer cold. I peeked out from under the canvas again and wished it weren't so.
The tide had receded, leaving a lot of muddy, dusky banks of purple mud and slime. The water was quiet. Even in the drizzle it reflected the dank earth and dull brick buildings of North Plymouth. It didn't even look like water. It looked like used motor oil. I heard a creak like an old rusty hinge. Birds. Two gulls were gliding over the slick, as if afraid to land on it. They glided motionless, wings steady, about two feet off the water, rasping and churring. They wheeled and pumped air with their long wings, settling on what looked like a giant cowpie in the middle of the still shine. Even the birds were depressed.
"This is awful," I murmured. I sat down on one of the cockpit cushions, which I dredged up out of the lazaret. If you wanna see ugly, I'll show you ugly: North Plymouth in a slow morning drizzle at low tide. There was a tall smokestack across from me near Gray's Beach. It marked the commercial pier built by the Plymouth Cordage Company, which (I later discovered) used to make hempen ropes, twine, and that grisly stuff you see in lumber yards called sisal. Anyway, the Plymouth Cordage Company was doing about as well as the Acme Buggywhip Corporation, which was not very. The cordage company was in a state representative of many older New England industries: like a punk poker hand, it had folded.
I heard a low growl off to my left, and saw a dragger bravely making its way through the muck out into the main channel. A bit later came the high whine of an outboard, and a skiff darted out from Duxbury Harbor and made a neat lazy crescent around past me and followed the dragger. The wake came at me in dark troughs on the shiny water.
I got the marine glasses out of the bosun's box and glassed the pier. Nothing. I could see only one side of it. But there were four draggers tied up there… no restaurant. I was getting hungrier. The dock was dingy. It was a series of abandoned warehouses and old pilings.
Everything was still and putrid. The water didn't move; it sat. The still air hovered in thick dampness. The herring gulls sat in long lines on the mudflats. They were all fluffed up and pouty, and didn't say a thing. No shoreside sounds reached me… not a screech of brakes, a pile driver, or a jet plane. Nothing.
I was seriously contemplating returning to the bunk with a book and a bottle when I spotted an American flag hung limp on a masthead at the end of a small pier near Gray's Beach. I grabbed the binoculars and was delighted to see a gilded sign with a lobster on it. Further inspection revealed a sign in the window that said OPEN. Faint shapes bustled about within. Soon I had the dory whining along on the slick straight toward the old stone dock. It was apparently an old quay that had been furbished and graced with a small restaurant. The big commercial pier was off to my left, and as I proceeded toward breakfast I noticed that the boat dock curved around the other side of the big brick warehouse, and was full of all kinds of vessels. Several draggers were moored off the pier in the gray water. The boats sat immobile, lapping up the waves of my tiny wake that struck their big, blunt bows. I passed them and headed on to the old stone quay. Arriving there I took the dory around and moored it next to a slanting foot ramp that was, at low tide, about 45 degrees to the water.
As I was making fast, I looked at the Hatton riding far off in the mist. She slightly resembled a Gypsy caravan because of the big gizmo tent that covered her boom.
I trudged along the big pier, clad in a waterproof parka, thick woolen sweater, and my droopy canvas rain hat that just about covered my face. Despite the clouds and rain I wore my sunglasses to hide my black eye. My pants were getting slowly soaked. But I didn't care; the wind was warm, and I would linger over breakfast and coffee, and the Globe.
I followed a group of patrons into the place. The varnished pine door was warm and sticky. The inside smelled a bit too much of cooking oil. But it was crowded. At seven o'clock that had to be some kind of recommendation. There were big booths separated from one another by pine partitions that rose up a foot and a half above the heads of the seated customers.
I sank into one of the booths at the far end of the restaurant. Nearby was a window that looked out into the harbor and the grim silent shapes of the big draggers that swung in a line into the current of the incoming tide. Was one of them the boat that awakened me in the wee hours? A waitress appeared and poured me coffee. It was actually pretty good (and I'm fussy-if you haven't already guessed). I ordered two poached eggs on toast, hash browns, bacon, and a side plate of kippers with extra lemon. I removed my dripping canvas hat and placed it on the seat next to me. I drank the coffee and gobbled the breakfast. I had been sitting for perhaps half an hour with the paper when a sound-or rather certain sounds in sequence-sent my blood cold.