The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel (14 page)

“There’s blood on your cheek. Did you know?”

“I got something in my eye.” It was starting to hurt in earnest now. Shit.

Madsen and Eddi climbed into the cockpit, stepping over and wriggling past. “Got to get the main back up,” the Dane explained. “Might be better if you went back below.”

When they let themselves down the companionway ladder, which heaved as if to buck them off, Quill was head-down in the bilge well. Its covers lay stacked against the table. His boots stuck up, kicking as he struggled.
Anemone
pitched and he grunted. His shoulders bunched as he heaved at something. Beside him the captain squatted on his heels, a prybar across his knees, scratching the back of his head. Sara wanted to ask what was going on, but Perrault didn’t look as if he wanted any interruptions.

A hand on her shoulder. “Let’s look at that cut,” Dorée said. “Come in the galley.”

“I’d rather have Mick do it.”

A pretty grimace, a roll of those tawny eyes. “Okay, whatever. I’ll go get him.”

She lay back against the oven, boots braced against a roll rail, as Bodine, shuffling awkwardly around on his artificial legs, got himself braced too. He sent Dorée for the first-aid kit. When she came back she started turning on lights, one after another, until Sara had to squint. “We actually just need that one right above her,” he said. “All the rest can go off. Okay, good. Sara, tilt your head back. Look up into that light.”

She winced and tensed as something metal grabbed her eyelid and turned it inside out. The light glared. She clutched her thighs with shaking hands, fighting the urge to freak out, jerk away, scream. “Follow my finger. Okay, keep your eyeball right there … see it?”

“That dark thing?” Dorée said.

“It’s ice,” Sara mumbled, trying with all her might not to blink. Each time she did, something cut her eyelid. She wanted it out,
out.

“It’s not ice. Looks like metal. It’s embedded in the eyeball. I’m going to have to pull it out.”

“Oh. This is really starting to hurt.…”

“Tehiyah, know what a hemostat looks like?”

A snort. “Didn’t you see me on
Crossing Jordan
?”

“Thanks.—Okay, Sara, now don’t blink and don’t move. I’ll try to make this quick—”

Before she could recoil or protest the instrument crossed her field of vision, gleamed, and twisted. Something stabbed her eyeball so sharply she cried out.

“Got it,” Bodine said.

“That
is
nasty looking.”

Something warm was running down her cheek. “We’ll let that bleed out,” he murmured. “I don’t want to put anything on it. There are natural antibiotics in the eye fluid.—Close your eye, Sara. I’m going to put this bandage on.” She forced trembling arms to relax as darkness descended over half of the world, and strong fingers sealed the edges of the bandage. “There, we’re done. Thanks, Tehiyah.”

“Thanks,” Sara murmured, exhaling in a shaky puff. Regaining her feet, but still trembling.

Perrault raised his voice in the salon, and she followed the others there. “She taken care of? Okay. Here’s what we’ve got.

“We don’t know what we hit. Something pretty massive. Not ice, I don’t think, but we have no idea what it was.

“The damage. No hole in the hull, which is good. But the keel pins are bent. Jamie inspected them. You all know we have a canting keel, not a fixed one?”

Sara said, “It’s leaking?”

“Well, not much,” Quill said, sitting down in the bilge well again. “Maybe a couple gallons a minute. The designer left keyways, slots we can wedge dunnage into. They probably originally worked loose in the knockdown. But then we hit this thing, whatever it was, and that really fooked it up.”

Bodine said, “So the leak’s not actually the problem?”

“Not so much. No.”

“But if these pins—?”

Quill shook his head. “This is a heavy piece of merchandise. More like a three-inch-diameter bolt than a pin. It’s probably not
bent
. Begging your pardon, Captain. But it’s working its way out of the composite. Each time we pitch, it tears out a little more.”

“And when it tears free?” Bodine bored in.

Perrault said quietly, “The keel will most likely drop off. We will capsize and probably sink.”

They stood around the salon, digesting that. Finally Dorée said, “So what’s the plan? Turn back?”

Mate and captain traded glances. “Others have kept sailing with problems like this,” Perrault said.

Dorée said, “What did they do? Just sit around and hope it didn’t tear off?”

“Not at all. As sailors do, we fashion a rig.” The captain looked at Quill again. “We brace the keel with a spare stay. Heavy wire, from the bowsprit down to circle the keel. Another brace aft, to circle the keel as it comes through the hull.”

Sara fingered her eyepatch, not sure she understood. Perrault seized a tissue box and clicked a pen. As he drew, it became clear. The wire would keep the keel from moving either forward or back. But Bodine frowned. “How do we get this cable around the keel?”

“We will need to work from the inflatable. Lead the end aft, then around, then back forward.” Perrault illustrated with gestures. “Attach it to a turnbuckle, then winch it tight. Lapatine did this three years ago. Sailed eight thousand miles after hitting an unmarked reef off Auckland Island.” He looked around, then nodded stiffly. “Jamie, get the wire ready. I’ll help the girls with the dinghy.”

Sara looked from face to face. Would a wire, even a heavy one, keep the keel from working out of its mountings? Wouldn’t it just slip through the loops, and plunge to the bottom? She had confidence in Perrault, but no clue whether what he was proposing was risky or routine. Dorée was frowning. Their eyes met; perhaps the same thoughts were running through her mind. Madsen looked blank; Eddi, agreeable as usual. Georgita seemed to have retreated into apathy again.

Then Quill was climbing out of the bilge well, water dripping from his pants, brusquely barking orders, and the moment of doubt was past.

*   *   *

The next few hours had to count as the hardest physical toil she’d done since clamming with her grandfather, as a kid. Even when they’d lifted the latches holding the restraining straps, the raft had refused to budge. Finally Edwige had realized it was frozen to the slipway. After nearly an hour of (extremely careful) chipping of ice and pouring of hot water, they’d gotten it free, flipped over, and bobbing at the end of its tow. Then the outboard had to be lowered into it while both dinghy and
Anemone
were going up and down, a nerve-racking feat of strength and balance that nearly pulled a red-faced, cursing Madsen over the side after a footloose motor. Finally Quill had reached up, grabbed the engine, and pulled it down onto himself as he collapsed into the deck boards of the dink.

They’d passed down gas tank, paddles, and a bag with radio and strobes, just in case they got separated in the snow, which came down all this time, millions of tiny flakes driving horizontally along the tops of the shark-gray waves before they met and melted into them. The heavily reefed main kept their nose into the wind, but did little to steady the bronco-like plunging.

At each rear and plummet, Sara could hear the keel pins grinding in their sockets like loose teeth. The cracking during the storm: that had been them working loose. The recurrent crunching lent the whole exercise the air of a ticking bomb. Would they get it secured before it dropped free, and the next wave turned them turtle? Meanwhile Perrault, apparently with that contingency in mind, had moved their abandon-ship gear to the foot of the companionway, along with emergency beacons, spare batteries, food, and water. Bodine sent a shortwave message to the home office in Monaco via an amateur radio operator in South Africa. He promised to forward their position to Greenpeace, the International Maritime Authority, and the Argentine navy if they suddenly stopped transmitting. Bodine was sending updates every fifteen minutes, to reassure the ham operator they were still afloat.

“Start, you motherfucker!” Quill reared, baring teeth amid a snow-crusted tangle of beard, and gave the starter cord a yank that would have curbed a mammoth. To everyone’s astonishment, it fired. Madsen straightened in the Zodiac’s bow, giving those at the lifeline a wide-eyed jaw-dropped silent-film mimicry of astonishment. No one laughed, though. Perrault, at the wheel, spun his hand over his head and pointed forward. The mate twisted the throttle, and the dink buzzed out from behind
Anemone
and began fighting its way into the waves.

Sara paid out the already ice-coated wire hand over hand as the dinghy slowly forged ahead, tossing and surging, the tops of the seas blowing off over the two men in showers of icy spray. Both had safety harnesses, but she couldn’t help remembering what Quill had told them over and over.
Dead in five minutes
. The spray froze as it hit the deck, the winches, forming crystal carapaces. She shuddered. So much extra weight. If the keel went, it would throw everyone topside into the water. The cable ran through her gloves and then there was no more wire, only rope. Perrault shouted, “Not so fast. Keep tension on it. Don’t let it all go,” and she closed her gloves and the dinghy hit a wave and the pull would have yanked her through the lifelines if Eddi and Tehiyah hadn’t tackled her and dragged her back.

The inflatable buzzed into the snow until it was only a shadow. It angled left to cross their bow, then headed back. Circled, coming down their port side. She anticipated another heart-stopping moment, but Madsen had the cable lashed to a boat hook and handed it over smooth as glass as they passed the cockpit.

Perrault said, “Take the wheel, Sara. Keep her into the wind.” He looped braided metal over one of the winches, and it ratcheted like the tin rattlers kids spun on Halloween.

He straightened, bearded face flushed. “That is one completed,” he told her, and went forward to take a second bundle of wire Bodine heaved up from below through the forward hatch.

*   *   *

After four hours of struggling with the wire, then more fighting to get the dinghy back aboard and lashed down, they staggered below like zombies. She leaned against a reeling bulkhead, disoriented, nauseated. It seemed like it should be night, but the same dim no-light half lit the salon. She gagged but only a teaspoon of acid came up, which she spat into her glove. Bodine sat at the table, dispensing hot tea with dollops of rum, but she couldn’t even think about drinking anything. Every muscle ached except for dead-numb fingers and feet. Under the bandage her eye felt as if someone were probing it with an ice pick. She got her top unzipped, then sagged back against the bulkhead.

Someone bumped her and she opened one eye to see Perrault beside her. “Sorry,” she said.

He didn’t move aside, though. “The eye. It will be all right?”

“Mick says so.”

“He sewed it up for you?”

“I didn’t need stitches. Just to take out a metal splinter. I guess from one of the winch handles we were beating the ice off with.”

He smiled. “So now you are a pirate. With the eyepatch.”

As she forced a twitch of the lips he added, “It was good to have someone on the wheel I could depend on.”

“I just kept her into the wind. Like you said.”

“But you don’t fear. Like some of the others.”

“Oh really?” That was rich. “I’m as afraid as anyone here, Dru.”

“Then you don’t show it.” He put an arm up beside her. Leaned in so close she could scent him. Wet wool, perspiration … tobacco? She’d never seen him smoke. And he could smell her too, of course. Which might not be so pleasant right now.

“In fact, I am becoming quite an admirer of yours,” he murmured, evading her gaze, as if not quite proud of what he was saying.

If this was a pass, and she was growing uncomfortably aware it probably was, at least it was a low-key, gentlemanly one. She couldn’t back away, since he had her against the bulkhead, but she tilted her head away. Said as politely as nausea would permit, “Um, Dru, if you’re heading where I think you are, I need to make something clear. I’m not really interested in getting involved with anyone on this … cruise.”

“I understand. I am the older man.”

She shook her head, uneasily admitting that if they were ashore, and guaranteed to never see each other again, she might well lock her fingers in that coarse black hair and pull that beaky nose and those taut wind-chapped lips down to hers, cracked and painful though they were. “You’re not
that
much older. And it’s not you, believe me. I have a lot of—a lot of baggage that comes along with me. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

He still looked hopeful. “Often, what happens at sea stays there.”

“Thank you,” she said firmly. “But if you need it in words of one syllable, the answer’s no.” She lifted his arm and slipped under it, and he stepped back and let her go.

*   *   *

The settee was crammed with wet, tired bodies. The air stank of mildew and diesel and old brine and moldy rubber. She was heading for her bunk, but faded halfway across the salon and just sagged to the damp carpet. No one said anything. Just sat swaying, heads nodding with the motion. “Bring her back to base course,” Perrault told Madsen, who’d climbed back up into the steering station. Then no one said anything else for quite a long time.

At last Tehiyah cleared her throat. “How long will this repair hold, Dru?”

The Frenchman raised an eyebrow where he sat at the table, cupping a mug. “We’ll keep an eye on it, Miss Dorée.”

“Will it be calmer? Once this storm passes?”

“Storm? This is no storm. Just a low. We might see a high-pressure cell behind it. But just as likely, another blow. In these latitudes.”

“Jamie?” she asked Quill.

“Captain’s right,” the mate said. “You know what they used to say: Below fifty degrees latitude, there’s no law. Below sixty, there’s no God.”

“Where are we now?” Eddi said, kicking her boots so the heels thumped against the hollow base of the settee.

“Sixty-seven thirty south, nineteen degrees, fifty-two west,” Madsen called down. Following the conversation from his perch, and reading off the GPS.