Captain Bahaguna was on the other side of the deck, helping a couple of crew members secure metal boxes over the rigging reels. It was tricky crossing the deck in such a swell. “What’s up, Captain?”
“Storm coming.” He looked disgruntled. “I’ve been trying to get around to the north of it for two days now, but it’s swerving like a drunk.”
Tom toed the box. “We’ll need these?”
“Never can tell. I do it if we have the time. Ever been in a big storm?”
“That one off Baja.”
Bahanguna looked up at Tom, smiled.
Below decks Sonam Singh was showing a group of sailors how to secure bulkheads. “Tom, go check out the bridge, you’re in the way.” The young sailors laughed as they worked, excited. Immersion in the world’s violence, Tom thought, the primal thrill of being out in the wind. In the tempest of the world’s great spin through space.
In the comm room Pravi was studying a satellite photo of the mid-Pacific. Pressure isobars overlaid on it contoured the mishmash of cloud patterns, drew attention to a small classic whirlpool shape. “Is it a hurricane?” Tom asked.
“Only a tropical storm,” Pravi said. “It might get upgraded, though.”
“Where are we?”
She jabbed at the map. Not far away from the storm.
“And which direction is it moving?”
“Depends on when you ask. It’s coming our way now.”
“Uh oh.”
She laughed. “I love these storms.”
“How many have you seen?”
“Two so far. But it’s going to be three in a couple of hours.”
Another thrill seeker. Revolution of the elements.
Tom returned to the deck, holding on to every rail. Things had changed in his brief stay below; the sea was running larger, and the horizon seemed to have extended away, as if they were now on a larger planet. Ganesh seemed smaller. It sledded down the long backs of the swells like a toboggan, shouldering deep into the trough and then rising like a cork to crash through the crest and hang in space. Then a free fall, until the bow crashed down onto the water, and they began another exuberant run on the back of the next swell. Except for this moment of skating, it felt like the ship’s whole motion was up and down.
The wind still drove spray to the side in fanned white torrents, but the rainbows were gone, the sun too high and obscured by a high white film, which dulled the color of the sea. Off to the south the horizon was a black bar.
A bit dizzy, and fearful of seasickness, Tom found he felt best when he was facing the wind, and looking at the horizon. Seeing was important. He went to the mizzenmast halyards, wrapped his arms around a thick cable, and watched the sea get torn to tatters.
The wind picked up. Spray struck his face like needle pricks. It was loud. The swells had crest-to-trough whitecaps, which hissed and roared. The wind keened in the rigging at a score of pitches, across several octaves, from the bass thrum of the mast stays to the screaming of the bunting. Behind these noises was a kind of background rumble, which seemed to be the sound of the storm itself, disconnected from any source in wind or water: a dull low roar, like an immense submarine locomotive. Perhaps it was the wind in his ears, but it sounded more like the entire atmosphere, trying to leave the vicinity all at once.
Nadezhda appeared at his side, holding an orange rain jacket. “Put this on. Aren’t you going below?”
“It made me dizzy!” They were shouting.
“We had one of these on the way over from Tokyo,” Nadezhda said, looking at the long hog-backed hills of water surging by. “Lasted three days! You’ll have to get used to being below.”
“Not yet.” He pointed to the black line on the southern horizon. “I’ll have to when that arrives.”
Nadezhda nodded. “Big squall.”
“Pravi said it was almost a hurricane.”
“I believe it.” She laughed, licked salt off her upper lip. Face flushed and wet, eyes bright and watering. Fingers digging into his upper arm. “So wild, the sea! The place we can never ever tame.”
Above them narrow rectangles of sail got even narrower. Most of the ship’s sails were furled, and the ones out were down to their last reef. Still the ship was pushing well onto its side. They hung from the halyards as the ship plunged up and down. “Can you imagine having to go aloft!” Tom cried.
“No.”
The ship shuddered through a thick crest. White water coursed down the lee rail of the deck. “We’d better get below,” Nadezhda said. And indeed Sonam Singh was in the hatchway gesturing fiercely at them. As the ship skated down a swell they dashed for the hatchway, were pulled roughly down it.
“Keep inside,” Singh ordered. “Go to the bridge if you want to see, but stay out of the way.”
Crew members rushed by, dripping wet and bright with exhilaration. “They’re going on deck?” Tom asked.
“Setting the sea anchor,” Singh replied, and followed them out.
The passageways seemed narrower. You had to use the wall for support, or be banged against it. Up broad steps to the bridge, which was split into two rooms, one above the other. The top room was the cockpit of action; Captain Bahaguna and the helmsman were standing before the window watching the ship and waves through crazy patterns of water dashed against the glass. The fourth mast stood before them like a white tree. The lee railing, to starboard, was running just above the water, and crests boiled right over it and coursed back to the stern. That gave Tom a shock—the ship, buoyant as it was, still shouldered through the water like a submarine coming to the surface. The sky was a very dark gray now, and the broken white sea glowed strangely under it.
The captain watched the control terminal. It had a red light blinking among the greens. “We’ll probably lose that sail,” Bahaguna said, then saw Tom. “That block is stuck again. Here, get into the room below and get strapped into a seat. The real squall is about to hit.”
The horizon had disappeared, replaced by a gray wall. They got to the room below holding onto rails with both hands, sat in empty chairs and fastened the seat belts.
They were headed straight into the waves. The bowsprit spiked an onrushing white hill of boiling water, lifted up a big mess of it that rushed down the deck, sluicing off both sides, until a wave some four feet high smashed into their window and erased the view. The light had a greenish cast in these blinded intervals. The ship moved sluggishly under the weight. Then the wave fell to the sides, and they could see gray clouds flying by just over the mast. Irregular thickets of water flew by, rain or spray, it was impossible to tell.
“The sea anchor’s out,” Nadezhda said. “That’s what got us head on.”
Soon Sonam Singh and part of the sea anchor detail came through, utterly drenched, moving as if in an acrobat’s game. “We did it. Glad the storm lines are rigged on deck, I’ll tell you.”
So they were moving backwards in the storm, pulling a sea anchor. It was a tube of thick fabric, shaped like a wind sock, with its larger end connected to a cable that ran back to the ship’s bow. As waves thrust the ship sternwards the sea anchor dragged before them, insuring that the bow faced into every wave, which was the only safe angle in seas like this. It was an ancient method, and still the most reliable.
The squall struck. The roar redoubled, the glass blurred completely. Nothing but patterns of gray on white. The sailors left the bridge like dancers on trampolines.
Bursts of wind stripped the water from the glass like a squeegee, and Tom saw a world transformed, no longer a place of air over water, atmosphere over ocean. Now the two were mixed in a bubbling white mass, and whole swells of foamy salt water were torn off the ocean surface and dashed through the air. The wind was trying to tear the surface of the ocean flat.