The bare masts themselves functioned as sails in a wind like this. All the rigging that extended forward was tauter than bowstrings, straight as theoretical lines of geometry; they gave off a thrumming that could be heard inside the bridge. On the other hand many of the lines supporting spars from the stern were slack, whipped back and forth so rapidly that they blurred in the middle. The masts and yards flexed in bows that were visible to the eye.
Another wave buried the window and it was back to the aquarium view, the murky green-black light.
Up and down the ship rode. They felt more than saw the bow shouldering through hills of water. The noise was unbelievable, like several jets taking off at once. Up and down, up and down, up and down. Tom got used to the motion, he was no longer dizzy, even in the weightless sweeps downward. Time passed. He fell into a bit of a trance, induced by the weird submarine light, interspersed with sudden glimpses of night-in-day chaos, seen with a strange clarity broken by lightning lines of water streaming over the glass. He was not getting used to the storm so much as being overwhelmed by it—making a psychic retreat from the infinity of watery assaults. The mind had to retreat from such mindless intensity.
A long time passed that way, with only occasional snatches of a view, always the same: flying mix of wind and water, under a black sky. Tom’s hands and wrists were tired, weary from holding his chair arms. He needed to pee. Could he make it to the head?
Suddenly the noise dropped, the light grew. The motion of the ship eased, and when the window next cleared he saw white clouds scudding overhead. “The eye,” Sonam Singh said, passing through on his way to the captain.
“I’m going to go to our berth and lie down,” Nadezhda said. “I’m exhausted.”
“Be careful getting there.”
“I’ll be wrapped to the rail.”
“I’ll come down later and see how you are.”
“Fine.” Off she went, balancing skillfully.
Up on the bridge they were discussing damage to the rigging. Tom stood carefully, staggered to the head. Peed with his shoulders banging wall to wall. The water in the bowl surged up and down. He felt battered, as if the little balancing mechanisms in his ears were still rattling about. Better to be seated, to have something to look at.
He got back to his seat and clipped in gratefully. Captain Bahaguna was giving rapid orders. “When it hits again it’ll be from the southeast. We’ll come about now.” Crew members ran through. Pravi stopped to see how he was, said, “Don’t you think the water surface is higher, like we’re on a kind of hill? A kind of big, low waterspout under the low pressure, don’t you think?”
Tom saw nothing of the sort. Green swells covered with white foam, white clouds stuffed with green rain. Off to the south was a black island: “Is that land!” Tom cried, frightened.
“Other side of the storm,” she said. “We’ve got about twenty minutes.”
The captain shouted at Singh about the sail that wouldn’t furl. “It’ll break the yard off and probably the pole too!”
“Nothing we can do about it, sir.”
Then the explosive roar of the wind hit again. The ship heeled far to starboard; Tom thought they were going to turn turtle. It seemed a bomb was going off continuously. The window cleared and he saw the waves grown huge again, iron flecked with ivory, tops torn off, but still thirty, forty, perhaps fifty feet tall! When they were in a trough the next crest dwarfed the ship, it struggled up the side of the wave like a toy boat. “My God,” Tom said, appalled. A wave engulfed them, and the glass showed only rushing darkness. The roar was muffled. They were underwater.
The ship shouldered up, broke to the surface and the howling wind.
Before them another wave as big as the one before, or bigger. Extending off to left and right as far as he could see. He was holding his breath, willing the ship to rise faster. The bowsprit seemed bent at a higher angle than before. The wave, a liquid hillside, a ridge collapsing on them, was dotted with a flurry of black dots.
“What are those!” he shouted, but no one heard him. Then they were flying up like the bob on a fishing line yanked from the water, up the wave hillside to the avalanching crest, inundated as if the wave were a broken dam, and Tom felt it through the chair: whump.
The ship was struggling in a different way. Sluggishly. The bow slewed off to port. Shouts came from above. Long minutes passed. Sonam Singh staggered by on hands and knees. “We hit something!” he cried at Tom.
“I saw it!” Tom said. “Wreckage—lumber, maybe.”
He couldn’t tell if Singh had heard, he was shouting something about the sea anchor.
Then the room rolled onto its side. Tom found himself hanging by his seatbelt. Only his hipbones saved him from being cut in half. Muffled roar, underwater again. In the gloom people shouted. Singh was over on one wall. The ship shuddered violently, turned, righted itself. Some noise and light returned. Tom glanced through the window as he freed himself from the seat. Another white mountain smoking toward them, in the mind-numbing howl. Mainmast and second mast were both bent, held in a tangle of alloy and rope rigging. The deck around the foremast was twisted, perhaps buckled. The ship listed to port.
He got the seatbelt undone and hung from the chair back. Time passed. People behind him were shouting, but he couldn’t turn his head to see. Then Sonam Singh grabbed him. Captain Bahaguna was crawling down the ladder from the bridge, followed by Pravi and the helmsman.
They had a shouted conference: “—lifeboats!” Singh said into the captain’s ear. Then mouth collided with ear, hard, and they both cried out, held their heads.
“No lifeboat could survive in this!” Tom shouted loudly, suddenly afraid.
Singh shook his head. “They’re submarine, remember? We go under. Then wait.”
“The ship won’t sink,” Bahaguna said. He didn’t like the idea.
“No, but we don’t know what compartments might flood. The bows are breached, and the other masts might go. More dangerous here than in the boats. While the launch bay is still clear perhaps we should be getting out. We can come back when the storm has passed.”
Inundated again. The ship listed far to port. Slowly water washed away from the glass. White foam, a moving hill of water. Under again. There were red lights all over the panel. The glass cleared and was instantly covered with water again.
A few more swells, sluggish response of the ship. Getting worse. A few more.
Finally the captain nodded, looking grim. “Okay. Abandon ship.”
They all crawled to the passageway leading aft. Suddenly they were in the muffled dark again, crawling on the wall. Sonam Singh was cursing. “Damned lumber ships, they lose their deck loads—” He saw a group of tumbling bodies ahead, raised his voice to a bellow: “Slow down up there! Slow down! Everyone to launch bays!” But the bodies rushed on. The lifeboats were near the stern, Tom had remembered all about them. They would be fired out like ejection seats in an old jet fighter. He and Nadezhda had been given a tour—oh my God, he thought. Nadezhda!
Their cabin was just below and behind the second mast.
He turned down the steps to the tweendecks, ran forward on the meeting of wall and floor. He had been a sprinter most of his life, and now it all came back to him. A real scramble. He had done something to his left wrist, the hand wouldn’t move well and the wrist hurt with a stabbing pain that went up his arm. He came to the passageway that led to their cabin. Several inches of water slopped over deck or wall, whichever was down. Thrown down, and on that hand again. He yanked open their door. The cabin was empty. Good. Water sloshed at knee height. The ship was permanently on its port side, but he needed to get starboard and aft, where the launch bays were. Storm muffled, ship underwater, he could hear his breath surging in and out of him in big gasps. Nadezhda must already be back there. This intersection of passageways didn’t look familiar. Shit, he thought. Not a time to get lost! He held a railing, tried to recover his breath. Up steps, water sloshing, the compartment had been breached, or not sealed off from breached compartments further forward. Around a corner, down another passageway, up steps. Water followed him. Shocking to have water inside the ship. He cracked his forehead, a nice hard spot that, no harm done. Needed to get starboard, water at thigh level and his left hand didn’t work. He was tired, arms and legs like blocks of wood, they didn’t want to move. Okay, a long passageway fore and aft, hustle down it aft, almost there. Sonam Singh would be mad at him, but he had had to check.