Jonah Watch (17 page)

Dane did not die in the tunnel of ice aboard Islander, he died
because of that tunnel; in a hospital, and he died with dry feet—perhaps the only surprise life ever presented him for which he was not fully prepared.

Ice—be it ever so humble, and as those few know who have raised their eyes beyond the horizons of cocktail glasses—is worth talking about by sailors and poets. While fire at sea is spectacular and fast, ice gives a man time to think. Ice is not whimsical, as fire is sometimes whimsical. Ice is occult, abstract, yet persevering. It requires only the smallest amount of commitment from the sufferer. It is generous in its reward to that commitment.

Dying in company with ice is almost as nice as dying of morphine. A man gets to lie down, give away his busyness, and forget in that permanent haze of fading mortality all of those pranks and sideshows of a world where dealers in death appear as regularly as rows of cabbages at the greengrocer's. Death, dealing a pat hand of ice, seems to understand such calms. If death did not understand, death would not be so certain, so banal.

Cutter
Adrian
punched its screws into the sea and pressed north. On the bridge, Levere and Chappel and Dane planned the best way to accomplish the impossible.

—Three hundred feet—yes, chum, but draft like a ping pong ball—think of the freeboard, that thing's like a sail—have to harness—towing yoke—only way to go—I seen them things, bitts are offset—yoke it then, chief, yoke it. We'll get on radio, try to get a set up—

Howard, summoned to the bridge, stood silent and waited. Dane turned to him, and Dane was imitating Gibraltar. He hunched his shoulders in a clear effort to loosen them, or else in anticipation of finding that handle he needed to pick up and hoist the world. "Fix your watch list. I want Conally, Joyce, Glass and the punk to the bridge. I want them now."

"Technically," said Howard, who engaged in a courageous act, "the kid is still with Lamp."

"Don't give me no technically." Dane's chief's hat was pushed to the back of his head. His forehead seemed to bulge, and it was covered with sweat although the bridge was chilled. His forehead glistened in imitation of an ornamental light bulb. White strands of hair poked from beneath the hat. He flexed his hands. Salt water stains on his foul weather jacket were white pools on the green fabric, like an abstraction of surf.

"I'm not the world's best seaman." Howard persisted with near desperate courage. "I'm better than Brace."

"Yeah, but you ain't Brace, short timer." Then Dane relented, as though the echo of his own words offended his ears. "The punk has to learn," he said quietly. "I know that you're lots better."

And Howard, fatalistic before a knowledge that he did not understand, and possibly having received a compliment, laid below to carry his errand.

Ice hung in dull circles as condensation froze on the ports. The brass dogs on hatches were covered with frost, brittle looking, like calcimine. As Howard crossed the fiddley, the hot air rising through the grates warmed his legs, but his shoulders felt the chill that radiated through the hull. Chief engineman Snow ascended the ladder from the engine room.

"These double-enders have two drive lines," said Snow. "What is the problem, exactly?"

"I'm no engineman. I think the thing only has one transmission."

Islander
, certified in all respects ready for sea, had suffered a burned clutch. It was drifting toward the sharp waters near Bibb Rock, and it was an odds-on chance that the ferry was going to fetch the rock. The inshore wind was at twenty knots.
Islander
, streamed to a jury-rigged sea anchor, was drifting at half a knot.

"I must speak with their engineman." Snow flitted from the fiddley, toward the bridge.

On the steaming messdeck, men waited for news. Brace sat and stared at the accomplished fact of a vat of peeled apples.
Adrian
rose and fell with slight and distant shocks as the increased speed pressed it against the easy sea.

"Come to the office," Howard told Conally, and Howard's voice was small and strained with his fear.

Conally stepped into the office. His swarthy Indian face, which was usually a mask of reserve, wrinkled with omen. He attempted to readjust his face, resume his mask. Failed.

"You're supposed to take Glass and Joyce to the bridge," said Howard. "You're supposed to take the kid, too."

"What's goin' on? What?"

"I don't know what's going on. Don't know."

"Do you think Lamp's right?"

"Yeah," said Howard. "Lamp's right. So is Dane." He paused, and he was as helpless as Conally. "Maybe the crazy part isn't over," he said. "Maybe Dane is nuts."

"There's six guys on that thing."

"I don't know what that means. We'll do our best. What does that mean?"

"I dunno," said Conally. "Maybe I'm nuts, too." He turned to leave, turned back like a clipped apology. "I'll do what I can," he said. "I'll try to stay between them." He stepped to the messdeck and began hollering, swearing. Glass and Joyce stood, grabbed their gear, ran. Brace picked up the vat of apples, carried them to the galley, moving with approximately the grace and speed of a cow en route to a barbecue. Howard, rushing, brushed past—stopped.

"Get moving."

"I'm moving," Brace told him. "Just as fast as I promised to move, when people lie to me." Brace refused to look at Howard, but Brace's face was shamed, and it was clear that Brace was lying. He sat the vat of apples on the deck of the galley, looked up, and saw the awesome figure of Lamp standing above him and looking down.

"You're lying, sonny. Get truthful and get moving."

"It's an emergency," Howard said. "It has nothing to do with what we talked about. It has nothing to do with whether you go to engine room or deck."

"It does have to do with what we talked about, but not the engine room. It's worse than that." Brace's eyes showed a hint of unreasonable fear.

"Get moving, sonny." Lamp bent, picked up an apple, tossed it, caught it. "We mostly serve these in a pig's mouth. After we roast him."

Brace moved.

"Yellow?" Howard stood in momentary disbelief.

"Naw," said Lamp. "He ain't yellow, but he sure is trembly, ain't he?"

The small bridge, when Howard returned, seemed packed with
Adrian
's entire crew. The increased speed caused spray to rise at the bow. In the sunshine, the light spray became pale feathers of blown ice; like a sown blessing from an apostolic hand creating parables of seed on rocky ground. The ice fell to the decks in hoar flakes and pebbles.

"I want crash mats on the bow," Levere told Dane. "Rig them while we still have daylight."

"Phil—Cap—" Dane faltered as he displayed a familiarity with Levere that the crew had never before heard. "The plates won't take it."

"Will the line?"

Dane slumped, and he momentarily looked like a stubbed cigar butt. Then he straightened, stomped a foot. "If we don't get more wind. If we can get it head to wind, let the wind blow through it instead of agin it." He stomped his foot again, either to shock his rheumatism into obedience, or in a display of anger. Howard, who in later years would have more than several occasions to wonder if he had ever done anything correctly would—in those later years—recall one thing.

"I want to be in on this," he told Dane. "I don't care what you think."

"You'll be on the helm," said Chappel.

"Use Rodgers."

"You are the best helm after Glass."

"Glass is going to be on deck," said Glass, "and if you don't like it, you can book Glass, later."

"You will be on the helm," Chappel told Howard.

Men stood, sweated with compacted closeness, with tension. They jammed together on the bridge—Conally, Dane, Snow, Joyce, Chappel, Brace, Glass, Levere, Howard—shuffled, sweated. Quartermaster designate Rodgers over-corrected on the helm, spun it back, was silent and attentive to the compass as he chewed on Chappel's estimate of helmsmen. Rodgers began to speak, thought better of it, remained silent. Brace looked toward Howard, and Brace had his back to Dane.

"I suppose," Brace whispered in a voice of absolute despair, "if you've seen one engine room you've seen 'em." The trace of fear was still in his eyes.

Snow, standing across the bridge and with the radio transmitter in one hand, was turned sideways to Brace. He did not see Brace's eyes, but he heard Brace's words. He turned to Brace. Snow's eyes showed contempt, but his voice was level and implied nothing to any other man on the bridge. "Have you something to say?"

Brace flushed, pawed helplessly at the pocket of his dungaree shirt as if he searched for his heart. The flush rose from his neck, made his ears glow as certainly as neon. The flush ran across his cheeks and forehead. He began to speak, stuttered, became silent.

Dane looked at Levere, and Levere was looking forward into the rapidly icing bow. Light spray rose, sparkled, dimmed into white flakes of ice. Sunlight bleached the bow, and the hooded three-inch-fifty gun looked like a schoolteacherly white finger, admonishing the sea.

"There ain't nothing else we can do." Dane turned to Conally. "You think of anything, Jim?" He turned to Snow. "Ed?"

"I think," said Snow, "that we are capable of repairing the clutch. If you can keep it from the beach for two hours, I believe I may promise power on one drive line."

"They haven't got any hawser," said Levere. "You'll have to rig the yoke."

If Dane had ever been disconcerted, no man could recall having seen the event. Dane stood, squat, compact as a stump, and like a stump, at least temporarily immobile. Then he shifted his weight, flipped at the underside of his nose with the back of his hand—for the enjoyment. He looked at Brace, and Brace was ablush and silent. Dane's voice was thick with scorn. "I was on an icebreaker, once. Convoy to Murmansk."

Dane turned toward Conally. Glass stepped back to tread heavy on Howard's feet. Dane began to bulge, swell, prepare his blast. Joyce faltered. Joyce stepped backward, trod heavily on Howard's feet.

"You are a bunch of punks," Dane said kindly. "You are ladies at a garden party ... and now, ladies, if you have finished sippin' at your tea ... " The blast arrived:

Tuck up your skirts—ladies—tuck ‘em up and get crackin'.

Dane wheeled, like a man trying to take first advantage in some dark contest. He was first off the bridge, first onto the main deck, and he moved aft as certainly as an army tank. He did not bother to slam his feet into the angle formed by house and deck.

"Stand by for a moment," Snow said to Brace, as Conally, Joyce and Glass fled as if pulled by strings. Snow's small face, in the light shadow of the sunlit bridge, was not elfish. It looked not exactly old, yet it was creased, weathered, strangely and suddenly thin-lipped. "I do not break promises," said Snow, "and I do not value your silly accusations."

Brace seemed ready to faint. He no longer blushed. His face was pale.

"Your apology will not be accepted this time," Snow told him. "Acceptance must be earned. As Chief Dane has just remarked, I suggest that you get cracking."

Snow turned back to the radio, preparatory to seeking more information from
Islander
. Brace stood, puffed, panted, zipped at his foul weather jacket. He staggered from the bridge, and he rocked from blows that were clearly delivered by the heavy hammers of shame.

Levere turned to Howard. "Stand by." He walked to the hatch, undogged it, and he stood on the wing looking aft. Ice swelled and built in the bow, and the spray was extending the ice further along the decks. The fantail was slick with a thin layer of it, but the fantail was not deadly, as the bow was deadly. Levere watched the action as men began laying out hawser to form a yoke. Levere's face, slightly swollen, dark, hawklike, French, Yankee; seemed for a moment ready to mutate into a mask of tears. Then he muttered something incomprehensible. From the bow, spray rose. Light feathers of ice hit Levere's jacket and lodged in his hair. He turned to enter the bridge.

"The eighty-three boat from Kennebunkport is underway," he told Howard. "It won't arrive in time, but it may arrive in time to do something."

"If we only had
Abner
—"

"We don't," Levere said. "We have towing line and alternatives. I want to give you instructions." Levere paused, watching Howard critically, wondering, no doubt, if he had the right man for the job.

"Sometimes," said Levere, "if you can't pull, you can still push. Now, that is not a tugboat helm. It will seem to react a good deal more quickly. The hull will skid."

Howard, suppressing thoughts of those whispering bow plates, creaking, strung weak with age, listened to instructions on how to steer a tugboat.

Two vessels dancing. A slow dance between ill-matched partners
;
Islander
, thick, fat, hollow.
Adrian
a wisp, a sliver, like a small, objecting white blade prancing before the loud mouth of the land; before the white line of frozen water marking the high point where white surf ran, rumbled, threw ice and ice-coated debris toward the land.
Adrian
circled the iceberg hulk of
Islander
, which in the darkness of early evening was aglow with light. The car deck glistened, a sheet of ice, across which ran thinly etched lines, the shadows of lifelines.

Islander
pivoted broadside to the surf at
Adrian
's approach. Figures of men on the car deck hauled the thin line of the sea anchor, and from the crossing stern of
Adrian
the etching of a heaving line curved flatly into the wind. It hit a man in his raised hands, and he looked like an outfielder shagging a fly.

"I did it," Brace yelled. "Me."

"Get it down next time, you cow milker. Get it lower." Yeoman Howard, running like a skein of snoopiness through memory, conversation, and through the log, would someday "get the picture."

Both vessels straightened. They angled directly seaward as hawser came taut on short tow; the hawser with its tons shaking flakes of ice as
Adrian
sat its stern into the sea. The stern rose slowly, the ship clawed toward the sea. The engines churned at three-quarters, then rose nearly to full.

"If we can get a little sea room."

"We're getting some."

"Where's that rock?"

"Ain't your business, chummy. Let the cap worry."

"I reckon it's my business."

On the glazed fantail, beneath floodlights that turned the iced decks into wan sheets of treachery, men stood, retreated backward; waited to lengthen the tow. Men crouched behind iced gear lockers, and wind pebbled the lockers with an increasing assault of ice as inshore water smacked the hull, rose, was blown across the fantail.

"I hate this part. I hate this worst of all."

"Maybe it'll hold."

"Stand back, there, clowns, stand back. The line is goin' thin."

Adrian
dashed forward, hesitated, ran quickly seaward as the hawser parted; one length rising in a whipping, arcing, snake-like, boldly-moving line above the fantail. The other length fell atrail of
Islander
and sagged toward the surf where it indifferently streamed like a web waiting to foul the propellers of anybody's ship.

"You hurt, chum?"

"It's moving. I can move it. I don't think it's broke." Gunner Majors rose, fell back toward the scupper, rose slowly. He grabbed a chain, fell forward, twisting, like a man tackled.

"Help him below."

"Get Lamp."

"Get hauling on that line, get haulin'."

"My gut hurts. That's mostly what it is."

"Get him below."

"I do it," said Majors. "I do it by myself." He once more hauled himself erect. He stood trembling. He bent sideways, on a slaunch, panting as he accommodated a couple of broken ribs. He moved slow and crablike from the deck, and he braced himself against stanchions and chains.

The short line came in, hauled by hands that came away sticky from the hawser as ice rapidly formed and seemed attempting to steal mittens. The line was short and did not need to be walked. Across the fantail men skidded, to ride, to slide to their knees as they attempted to set up a new rig.
Adrian
crashed forward in the building inshore water. Blown ice, no larger than mist, was like a thin cloud about the ship. Dane stood above the men, watched them scrabble and claw, watched
Islander
.

"Belay that. They're dropping line."

Aboard
Islander
, men hung desperately to lifelines, tied themselves to lifelines, and attempted to recover the broken hawser.

"Not a chance. They don't have a winch. Offshore without a winch."

"They got nothing," said Dane, and he was disgusted. "No winch, no hawser, no spare parts. Nothin'."

Aboard
Islander
one side of the yoke was freed, then, moments later, the other side. The towline slid toward the surf like a dying snake.

"It's all they could do. I reckon it is."

"Where's that rock?"

"If we double up on one bitt ... "

"Can't tow that way, can't tow on a slaunch."

"Dear Jesus, Jesus dear, it's cold."

On those northern shores, when the wind sets north-north-east above that line where land and water meet, the surf holds claws, steeples of rock, the discarded tops of mountains—and to be spit onto those shores through that rocky surf is a certain warrant that a man has misplaced his faith in something—towline, perhaps.

Yeoman Howard climbed across the small helm like a tortured prisoner on a wheel, as
Adrian
came about, while
Islander
again swung broadside the surf. Close to land, the swells began to build. The water seemed to move closer together in a gesture of frozen companionship.
Adrian
rose, fell, jolted, jolted again. As Levere brought his vessel into the lee of
Islander
,
Adrian
rattled like an empty freight car on rough track. A white sheet of ice fell from the flying bridge, dropped before Howard's eyes; a slate on which might be written the names of men. Defrosters on the bridge chuffed, whirled, blew. The glass panes between helmsman and sea were streaked, running with icy glaze through which the icy bow appeared. The caked ice in the bow blanked the dead eyes. The anchor chain was buried beneath ice. Ice rose from the mats of woven hawser that hung over the bow, the ice rising above the mats like small walls of ice.

"I have the eighty-three boat on the horn," said Chappel. "I'm sure it is the contact."

"Distance."

"An hour."

"Lay us alongside," said Levere. "Our engineers have no luck." He paused. "I hope they have some."

Chappel droned, was calculating as he droned. "Bibb Rock bears two-two-zero, range eighteen hundred." Levere did easy sums, as did Howard and radioman James.

"Chief Dane to the bridge. The faster we get alongside ... "

"Cap, if we can clear that rock, we'll have the time."

"We'll clear."

Radioman James laid aft like a wisp, a quick moving spirit, to fetch Dane.
Adrian
lay rolling in
Islander
's lee.
Islander
's crew grasped lifelines, passed lines, leaned forward to grasp the hands of Snow and McClean. A canvas tied to bursting with asbestos and shims and springs was drawn aboard with a line.

Dane appeared on the bridge, followed by James, and Dane stomped up the ladder in spite of feet that were surely almost frozen. His foul weather jacket was wet with melting ice. His mouth was clamped tight, thin, froglike, in control; and Dane was cold and clearly on the raw edge of control. He huffed as he stomped. The fathometer went click-whickety-whickety.

"We'll tow from the starboard cleat," Levere told Dane. "Try to get sea room. At least we can swing it sharp down wind."

"Short tow. Double the line."

"Take some men." Levere looked forward, into the bow which carried a burden of ice that canted
Adrian
heavily forward into the sea. The bow shook, shed ice, added more. The buildup on deck was so great that it was impossible to tell where the deck ended and the rails began. A faint sound flashed from aft as ice in hundred-pound hunks crashed to the boat deck.

"If I have to shove the thing," Levere said, "I'll take it on the starboard quarter, turn it end for end to spin it."

"You want fenders. Crash mats. They don't have ‘em."

Levere looked at Dane, and in the red lights of the bridge Levere's face was shadowed, stern. "All they have is you," he said. "As a matter of fact, all
we
have is you."

"That Conally," said Dane. "Now he's a good kid, and he has the deck. That punk Joyce, now he just ain't so bad." Dane wiped the back of his hand across his thin mouth, then flipped water from his hand. "Phil ... bust this thing one more time, and they'll hang you."

"With a short drop," Levere told him. "Ops is already telling me that I'm a shipkiller."

"This iron's been dead for twenty years."

"You know it," said Levere, "and I know it."

"Key to the arms locker," said Dane by way of a request. "I got a notion, and gunner Majors caught hisself a little trouble."

"Now that should be logged," said Chappel. "What is the nature of the trouble?" He turned, horse-headed, from the radar.

"He got some clothesline across his gut," said Dane. "What's the range, quartermaster?"

Chappel, wordless, stepped back to the radar. Levere fished for his keys.

"Lamp is tapin' him," said Dane. "Don't worry."

"I wish I didn't hear all this." James spoke, but he did not take his eyes, his face, his stance, his effort from the fathometer. "Seven-eight," he said, "and take me with you, Chief. We got water 'til near all the way in."

Dane stomped, opened his frog mouth, looked at the puniest, weakest man aboard. He began to say no. He stared at the deck like a philosopher immersed in a grand platitude. "Get your clump aft the minute you get relief. I'll send Rodgers to relieve." To Levere, Dane said, "A guy could take the helm and still give engine orders." He spun from the bridge, stomping down the ladder like a troll that walks where and when it wills.

"Stay on the helm," said Levere. "Chief Dane has a lot on his mind."

Howard, who in later years would have cause to wonder if he had ever done anything correctly, thankfully stayed on the helm.

Opening the arms locker with Levere's keys, Dane ignored the line-throwing gun which was the only weapon that
Adrian
had ever earnestly used. He climbed aboard
Islander
, and he was packing a .45 pistol. Dane looked like a top sergeant leading an attack uphill. Behind him Glass, Brace, and James followed like hooded monks in attendance on one crusade or another. The men rigged a doubled line to the starboard cleat of
Islander
, then disappeared from the iced deck as
Adrian
once more turned into the sea.

When the line parted the second time, men fell along icy decks, attempted to recover line, and they banged against stanchions, sprawled like squashed spiders. They braced their feet against the stanchions, against piles of backup hawser, against lockers. They lay on their backs, braced, rose to grab line, fell backward as it came aboard. The line shook drops of water that laid a funnel of ice along the deck over which the line ran. The line was like a frayed end of failure, and the men heaped it on deck with contempt, with fear, with hatred.

Above the crash of surf, and distant on the car deck of
Islander
, Dane's pistol popped like a small and unimportant theory, as Dane—knowing that he did not have time for sophisticated equipment like marlinspikes—blew holes through every mattress he could find in
Islander
's cabins. Brace and James, with Glass as a desperate and cooperating overseer, ran line through the holes and tied the mattresses into bulky lumps, overlays of padding that would have to serve for crash mats. The mats looked like overstuffed, cartoon pillows as
Adrian
, with the port searchlight flaring, closed slowly onto
Islander
's starboard quarter. In the sharp, glaring light, Dane's face seemed two dimensional, white and blanched and worried; as only a face can look when it views what it considers will be disaster. Glass, Brace and James stood beside Dane, attending the lines, ready to adjust the crash mats.

Somehow, and Howard would never know if Levere had made the correct command decision, nor would Levere, the plates held.
Adrian
dug in with its screws. Ice cracked from the bow in shatters, chunks, massive sheets. The great bulk of
Islander
moved in a slow spin to seaward, shoved turning in a pirouette of slow motion so that it slid past the rock with something under a hundred yards to spare. Conally rigged towline. The 83 boat arrived. What one vessel could not do, two vessels could.
Islander
was pulled seaward as Snow and McClean repaired the clutch.
Islander
proceeded to Boston under its own power.

In the last minutes, as lights flared and every man on both vessels held his breath, perhaps prayed, and certainly talked to steel plates, the best seaman in the world lost his title.

Dane backed from the scene, away from the flashing ice that still splintered from
Adrian
's bow which hovered like a crazily dressed spectre above
Islander
's open-ended deck. Dane turned toward the inner recess of the car deck, headed for the bridge and the radio. He walked aft as a sheet of ice rattled loose from
Islander
's superstructure.

The ice crashed about Dane. In the brilliant light the ice turned into an explosion of sparkles, cold fire, prisms; and Dane momentarily stood in the explosion like a figure of myth consumed by flames. Then he fell, slid, flailed across the open end of the car deck, and he grasped for lifelines and did not find them; a squat form with short, waving arms, and he was followed by Brace, who, like a football lineman faked into a wrong move, recovers only in time to get one hand on a runner's arm. Brace skidded beside Dane, struggling, missing the life lines too; then Brace had a streak of beginner's luck. He skidded hard into a steel pole on the lip of the deck—the pole designed to hold a guard line to restrain future commuters from simplemindedness, from premature advances on their busy and important rounds. Brace hit the pole with one arm, and that arm went limp. He spun, hooked his knees on the pole like an acrobat on a swing, and he kept his grip on Dane's arm. Dane spun forward, over the lip of the low deck, and into the sea. For moments in the flaring lights all that could be seen was Dane's hand rising above the deck and held in Brace's failing grasp, as white water framed the background, as white water rose and thickly turned to ice.