On the deserted road into town, an old black couple they passed looked enviously at the food and seemed to conclude that Philip was a rich man being pulled by a servant.
As they entered the outskirts of the city they began to hear gunfire, but the streets were still mostly empty; they saw only an occasional bicycle or motorcycle racing away from the violence. When they came to within a few hundred yards of the docks, the smoke from the explosions both masked and impeded their progress. Jeanne’s wound finally had brought her near to collapse, and Neil carried her on his back the last hundred feet.
When he arrived coughing, sweat-soaked, exhausted, but unhurt by shell or shrapnel, he was disoriented, unaware of the conflict aboard Mollycoddle. Frank and Jim took Jeanne as she slid semiconscious from Neil’s back, assuring her that Lisa had been found safe on Scorpio. Sheila and Tony carried Philip aboard; the others brought the food. Five minutes later they motored Mollycoddle away from the docks with Scorpio rafted to her side, then took her in tow with Olly, Jim, and Lisa aboard her to help Oscar.
Events were now out of control. Mollycoddle plunged and plowed against the wind and waves, which careered toward them as if pushed by white demons. Spray exploded aft against the windows, cutting off visibility. Philip and Jeanne were placed on the long settee in back of Mollycoddle’s lower steering controls and Macklin was trying to examine their wounds. Fifty yards away water burst high in the air, making Neil fear that waves were smashing against some wreck or uncharted rock—until he realized it was an explosion. A quarter-mile off to port the gigantic white Norway lay placidly at anchor, surrounded by a dozen small boats all scrambling to come alongside and unload passengers. The Norway’s wide boarding ladder was packed with people shoving their way upward. Waterspouts burst in the sea around her. When Neil looked back across a hundred yards of water to the dock, he saw an explosion rock the boat that had been moored behind them, sending its mast toppling over into the sea.
They motored out against the swells to the mouth of the harbor and there cut Scorpio loose to sail off to Anguilla, where they hoped to rendezvous the next day. Tony warned Neil that Mollycoddle’s fuel gauge registered empty, but this seemed trivial. As they continued on back to pick up Vagabond, the Norway gave four blasts of its horn and began hauling anchor. A fire was burning on the afterdeck, smoke streaming out horizontally shoreward on the fierce wind.
Vagabond, lying to two anchors veed out at about sixty degrees from her bow, tore and plunged like a maddened horse at her tether. When Mollycoddle came alongside Katya and Tony put fenders in place and got the mooring lines tight. Everyone began unloading the new food and transferring the wounded to Vagabond, and Neil had to force himself to consider the next steps. He felt weary, worried about Jeanne’s wound, and burdened with the same nagging sense of foreboding that had been with him since the capture of the Mollycoddle. The seas were building too high; the civil war was too unpredictable. The sun would be gone in half an hour. Four more blasts from the Norway’s horn sent a chill through him.
“We can’t get either of the anchors up,” Frank reported to Neil between gasps.
“Cut one,” said Neil. “Cut it now, and let’s not waste time. If Tony can’t pull the other out, cut it too if you have to.”
Ten minutes later Mollycoddle, with Vagabond in tow, plunged toward the mouth of the harbor. Macklin had finished cleaning Jeanne’s and Philip’s bullet wounds. He couldn’t tell how seriously Philip had been torn up inside, but with Vagabond bucking and rolling as she was, they agreed it was useless to poke around to see. Neil realized for the first time that leaving land might mean sentencing Philip to death, yet neither Philip nor Sheila had suggested they stay to look for a doctor. And now they were committed to the sea: ashore Michael and his men would be waiting for them.
When he stood up and peered forward into the wind and spray, Neil felt frightened again. At any moment a towline might snap, an anchor drag, an engine fail, someone might fall overboard. As Mollycoddle crashed forward he watched the Norway moving seaward off their port beam; she was still hauling anchor, and smoke was still billowing out astern. Her decks were packed. When Macklin finished checking Jeanne, Neil carried her down to her cabin and lifted her up onto her berth. As he was tying Jeanne and Skip into the berth so they couldn’t roll out, he felt a strange new motion and a new sound that at first he couldn’t place. As he hurried back up on deck he suddenly knew: The engine had stopped. Mollycoddle had run out of fuel.
“Get aboard!” Neil shouted to Tony as Mollycoddle drifted rapidly back toward Vagabond. “Frank, get ready to cut the towline!”
He himself ran toward the mainmast, stumbling when Mollycoddle crashed into them, then getting up again to loose the halyard and begin hauling up the already triple-reefed mainsail. He was dimly concerned that no one had been assigned to Vagabond’s helm, but someone… The triple-reefed main, flogging loudly, went up, and he winched it up tight, tied it down, and began raising the storm jib. With a loud twang the towline flew past his leg, and Vagabond lurched away from Mollycoddle, which was drifting more slowly now. Neil quickly tied down the jib halyard and raced aft.
Sheila was at the helm, but as he approached she let go of the wheel to help Katya sheet in the storm jib, which was loose and flogging. They were drifting off on a starboard tack, and it seemed they were being pushed almost sideways downwind. The dagger board was up.
“Dagger board!” he shouted forward to Frank, pointing.
Frank nodded and staggered to the place just aft of the mast to begin forcing down the twelve-foot-long central dagger board, five feet of which should have been under the boat cutting down leeway. In the two minutes it took to get it down—Macklin had gone forward to lend his strength—Vagabond had plowed and plunged forward, sliding sideways, too, toward Smith Point on the left side of the harbor. Land was less than a quarter mile away. The docks behind them were about three-quarters of a mile off. With the dagger board finally down, the ship gained speed and began to point better up into the wind.
“Will she come about in this?” Sheila asked him.
“She’d better,” Neil said, knowing their lives depended on it. “We’ll make it.” “Prepare to come about!” he added. Frank was already at the port jib sheet, Katya and Tony ready to release the jib in the opposite cockpit.
“Don’t release the jib till I yell!” Neil shouted.
“You’re backwinding the jib?” Sheila asked.
“Coming about!” he shouted and swung the wheel full to starboard. Vagabond labored slowly up into the wind, the five-foot seas smashing into her three hulls with loud cracks, spray flying aft.