At first light, Captain Barker met the carpenter by the portside pump, or at least where the portside pump had been. Perhaps one of the boats had hit it on its way over the side. Whatever had happened, the bolts that had held the pump to the deck had sheared off. The pump shaft was bent and broken. What was left of the twelve-man pump lay crumpled against the bulwark.
“How's the starboard pump?" Barker asked.
“Better'n this one to be sure," said Gronberg. "I think she's OK. She's just not pumping.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think the suction be jammed with coal dust. Have to send somebody down to clear it maybe, if things calm down. Be crazy to try it now, with this sea running.”
“Thank you, mister," the captain replied, turned and walked aft, holding tightly to the lifeline. Spume flew over the rail and struck him in the side of his face. As he walked, he tallied the damage he had seen this morning. One pump destroyed and the other not pumping. The foremast ready to topple and the main t'gallantmast shattered. And the westerlies showed no sign of abating. Maybe Mr. Rand was right. As soon as he allowed himself to think the thought, he swore out loud, "No, Goddamn it. We are not beaten yet. Not by a long shot.”
With daylight, Captain Barker and Mate Atkinson surveyed the damage to the rig. When they worked their way forward, they saw the jib-boom, the spar forward of the bowsprit, skewed oddly upward. "Fractured at the gammoning band," the captain said, and the mate noted it in his notebook.
At the foremast, Barker mumbled to himself. "Bloody Christ." A riveted strap over a butt in two sections of the mast had ripped off. Both the rivets and the strap were gone, leaving a gaping space between the sections of steel pipe. In the running seas the mast sections flexed, opening and closing like angry jaws. He was surprised that they hadn't lost the entire mast and the rest of the top-hamper. "Clew up the topsail and get crew aloft to furl it. We can't afford any load on this mast until we reinforce it.”
Captain Barker climbed the weather ratlines on the mainmast. He caught a look of surprise from several sailors. A lot they don't know about me yet, he thought. Still a few tricks up my sleeve.
As he climbed, he looked for problems. The mainmast looked fine, as did the topmast. The t'gallantmast, however, was bent slightly sideways, a six-inch crack at the base. Could it be repaired? He had a few ideas but it couldn't be done in these seas.
When he returned to the poop deck, he turned to Mr. Rand. "Set a course nor'-nor'east. Square away for Staten Island. We'll make repairs in the lee.”
“Aye, sir, nor'-nor'east it is. Turning back to Staten Island." Rand smiled smugly.
Barker scowled. "No, sir. We are not turning back. We will make repairs in the lee of Staten Island and then stand on. We are bound for Chile. No place else.”
11. In the Lee of Staten Island
The world had become quiet and still. In the lee of Staten Island, the endless howl of the wind and the roar of breaking seas were gone. The deck no longer rose and twisted beneath Mary Barker's feet. For the first time in a month, she prepared to venture out from the damp and gloomy cabin that had been both her refuge and prison for so many days and nights. She still felt shaken by the massive wave that had nearly drowned her and the children. The skylight had suddenly burst in a wall of dark water, flying glass and splintered wood. It was boarded over now, making the cabin all that much darker, even with the lanterns lit.
She paused for a moment in front of the mirror. She looked such a mess. She put her hand on her hairbrush and almost laughed. Had they not sailed far beyond the world where such things mattered?
Her hand drew away and then, in an instant of resolve, she grabbed the handle and roughly brushed her hair. A few strokes forced it back into a semblance of order, and perhaps that was enough. Even in this godforsaken watery waste, she would maintain certain standards.
She wrapped a blanket about her shoulders, climbed the stairs to the deck and slowly opened the door. There was no wind. Just a gentle breeze, cold but bracing. She stepped tentatively out on the deck, closing the door behind her.
The sky was overcast but she still squinted, even in the cloud-shrouded daylight. The ship was in a shallow cove. The island stretched out on both sides of them, disappearing in the mists on either hand. It was mountainous, with dark green trees clinging to the darker slopes, rising up to snow-capped peaks that seemed not unlike the scudding clouds moving above them, except that the peaks were still—frozen, literally and figuratively, in space and time.
She wondered if the wave that had so nearly sunk them looked like this island. She had heard the steward call the wave a mountain. High and dark with a foaming crest towering over them, even as the white-crested island peaks towered over them now.
She had only heard the wave, waking a few seconds before it struck. She had cried out involuntarily at the deafening roar and the freezing flood of water that exploded through the shattered skylight. It was all so impossibly loud that she couldn't even hear her own scream.
Now, she could hear the breeze softly humming through the upper rigging, and forward, the gruff voice of the mate urging the men to greater exertion. Now, even the shades of blue, gray and green on the island seemed impossibly vivid. She breathed in the cold but clean dark smell of the shore. She could see, smell and hear again—senses she was not even aware that she had relinquished within the confines of the cabin until now that they had returned to her.
James came up the poop deck ladder. His pace quickened when he saw her.
“Mary, dear. How are you? Are you well?”
“James, I am quite well. Thank you. It feels good to get out of the cabin. I feel as if I have spent a lifetime strapped into that bed. Aren't the mountains beautiful?”
He turned his head and nodded his agreement, and then looked back at her.
“And the children?”
“Sound asleep. First quiet time they have had to sleep in days.”
James smiled.
“I see that repairs are under way.”
“Yes, a few more days and we will be back at it.”
Mary's brow furrowed. "Not back to Port Stanley?”
“No," he replied, more vehemently than he intended. "Where did you get such an idea?”
“I heard Mr. Rand speaking to the steward. He said that he expected us to put into the Falklands for repairs.”
“That bastard. He lacks the courage to stand up to me, but is still trying to turn the crew against me. If he wasn't a good seaman I would have had him in irons by now.”
For an instant Mary felt a crushing weight on her shoulders. Without admitting it to herself, she held out the faintest hope that she and the children might leave the ship in Port Stanley. But that was not to be. She was as trapped on this ship as all the rest of the officers and crew, bound for Chile, come what may.
“So it is back out into the gales once again?”
He smiled at her. "Don't worry, my dear. All we need is a favorable slant of wind. That is all and we will slip in the Pacific, into warm water and warm weather. The winds can't stand against us forever.”
She smiled back at him, not necessarily convinced by his words but admiring his determination. She would pray that he was right.
“If I have learned only one thing in all my years at sea, dear, it is that only way to prosper is to keep to the sea. And so we shall. As long as we are able we shall sail on to Chile. To that I am committed.”