Superior Storm (Lake Superior Mysteries) (28 page)

I felt a smooth flat surface, like a fish finder. My hopes began to rise. I pulled it out of the bench and shut the cover, and knelt over it. My hands were quite numb, but I pushed and prodded it until I hit some kind of a power button. As the backlight came on, I felt a bitter taste in the back of my mouth. It was another
portable
GPS unit, not
the
radio
I had staked all
of
my hopes on finding
.

I began to despair
.
There was no real reason
to carry a portable marine radio in a runabout.
It was just the only thing I could think of that might save our lives.
I opened the lid
, replacing the GPS unit,
and almost immediately
felt something long and thick and flat, like a big walkie-talkie
.
I pulled it out, and crouching behind the seat-locker, I flicked on the flashlight. It was a radio. We were saved.

Only we weren’t saved.

The radio didn’t work. I twisted knobs and pushed buttons and slapped and banged, but I could not get that radio to do anything more than a doorstop would do. I risked the flashlight again, and examined it carefully, and tried all the right buttons, according to their labels, but it wouldn’t turn on. I tried all the buttons in other combinations, but still nothing happened.

I snapped the light off and sat back on my haunches. Almost immediately, I fell backwards against rear seat, as a wave tossed the little boat around. Pushing myself back up, I wondered what I could do now. It had to
be
the batteries. Most likely
,
someone had left it there and not bothered to check batteries at the end of the season.
I could bring the radio back to the boat, store it in the cockpit, and try and sneak some batteries from the cabin back up to the radio. Except that I would have to submerge the radio to get back to the boat, and though it was probably water resistant, I doubt it was made to actually go
under
water.

For a few moments, I felt no cold, no wind, not wet, nothing except blank despair. There was simply no way out. I held on
to the bench beside me and stared out at the lights, wondering what I could possibly do.

I stared out at the lights
. With ridiculous slowness it dawned on me that I was looking at lights in the middle of
Lake
Superior. There was a ship! Far off to starboard were the clear
ly visible
fog
-
lights of a vessel, probably a large one. Immediately, I thought of the flare gun. But almost as quickly, I dismissed it. The bright flare would almost certainly shine through
even
the small windows of
Tiny Dancer’s
cabin on this dark night. Ange
la would come up to the cockpit
and find me gone. Once she realized I was in the
dinghy
, she would cut the rope and leave me to drift while
Tiny Dancer
escaped into the night.
I could probably use the two remaining flares to make sure the ship picked me up, but Leyla and Stone would be out of luck.

From somewhere in the back of my numbed mind, a voice was screaming at me. Dully, I tried to pa
y
attention to the buried thoughts. When I finally realized the idea that was clamoring for attention, I
was horrified. But now that I had opened my conscious mind to it, the thought wouldn’t go away. I didn’t have much time.

Quickly, I located the GPS and turned it on. Desperately holding on to figures in my head, I punched in a destination. Then, w
ith trembling hands, I loosened the knot of my right shoe, and slipped
Stone’s
knife into my hand. I slid my upper body across the port-side pontoon near the bow and grasped the rope that formed the left side of the towing harness. Before I could think of any more reasons not to, I cut the rope.

Immediately
,
the dinghy jerked to starboard, as all the weight was transferred to the rope on that side. The force of our movement through the water pulled the starboard
bow
down,
dragging the dinghy underwater. Gallons of icy liquid began pouring over the pontoon.
I leaped for the rope, but before I got there, I felt a sudden jerk, and we were sliding backwards down a wave. The
rope had snapped, and my decision was irreversible. Far more quickly than I anticipated, the ghostly form of the
Tiny Dancer
faded into the nothingness of the wild
,
black night.

Immediately
, I located the bailer and scooped a great deal of
L
ake Superior out of the dinghy. Then I turned to the outboard. One cannot live in
northern
Minnesota without coming into regular contact with outboard motors. They are a fact of life whether you like it or not, kind of like mosquitoes and people claiming to
enjoy lutefisk.

The gas tank had a rubber hose running to the motor, which looked to be about ten horsepower. I opened the valve on the motor, pumped the bulb on the gas-line and then fumbled for the pull-start rope. I found it, braced myself and pulled. Unsurprisingly, the motor did not start.
The little boat was riding up the sides of the giant waves, but often, just before we reached the top, part
of
a wave would break over us. I bailed for a few more minutes,
and then
fiddled around in the dark
on the outboard
until I found what I hoped was the choke. I put it
on
and then pulled again. Nothing.
So far, I was
not
discouraged. This was how it went with outboard motors, chain-saws and weed-eaters. I pulled again, and then again, with no results. I began jerking the rope like a mad-man
,
putting all my strength into it, over and over again. Nothing, except that for the first time
in
what felt like my entire life, I began to feel a little bit warm.
Now I began to get worried.

We slip
ped up
another wave, only this one was bit steeper, and I felt us starting to roll. Flinging myself on the up-wave side, my face inches from the wall of water, I prayed my weight would hold us. The
edge of the
boat
climbed
to more than forty
-
five degrees, and then I quickly slid back into the middle, to prevent us flipping the other wa
y
as we
rushed
down the
back
side of the wave.

After about ten minutes,
splitting the time equally between bailing and pulling on the starter cord,
and occasionally abandoning both to keep the boat from flipping,
I gave up. I looked to starboard. The lights of the big vessel were nearer. The wind and the waves were pushing me toward the ship. But before long it would cross my path, and then I would be behind it.
It was now or never, and I prayed that the
Tiny Dancer
was far enough
a
way so that they wouldn’t see the flares.
After a moment’s though
t
, I prayed that the ship was close enough.

Fumbling around in the seat-locker, I found the flares and the gun. I pulled out the flashlight again too, and carefully
loaded
the gun. Then
,
pointing it at
an
angle that I hope
d
would get the attention of the ship, I fired.

The bang of the gun was much louder than I expected. A barely visible trail of smoke streaked into the sky, and then a red light flamed high in the air. It slowly descended, burning for about seven seconds, and then it
wa
s swallowed in sudden darkness.

The ship continued on its course, apparently unaware of me. I loaded a second flare, and fired that one as well.
Then I loaded the third and waited.

The ship continued on. Now it was close enough for me to see that it was a big freighter, probably
carrying a load of
iron ore from the North Shore
back east
, or perhaps carrying
western coal from Duluth to New York.
I could hear the throb of its giant engines.
It was maybe
half
a mile away. I fired the third and final flare like I was trying to hit the bridge. It arced into the air toward the ship, but because of the shallow angle, it quickly descended and hit the water a
few
hundred yards short.

My mind leaping at all the survival tips I’d ever heard, I pulled out the flashlight and flashed it at the freighter. Three short flashes, then three long, then three short again. I hoped that was right. I kept it up. I intended to keep on until the battery died.

At last
,
I heard a change in the rumble of the great engines. The ship heaved a little to
its port
, toward me. It slowed more noticeably and turned a little more too. Then
,
out of the darkness
,
a blinding light pierced the storm, stabbing into the wild waves in front of me and to my left.
The
light jumped around erratically, and I continued flashing my light, to help them find me.

The searchlight passed over me quickly, and I yelled in frustration. But it immediately returned, carving a small circle around me until suddenly I was in the middle
of the light
, blinded as St. Paul
,
by my salvation.

The ship seemed to continue on past me, but the searchlight stayed on me, though with occasional jerks and jumps, caused, no doubt, by the waves. I assumed one didn’t stop a six-hundred foot freighter on a dime. Dimly, I heard bells clanging. It seemed like I waited there forever in the blinding white light. I couldn’t see much outside of my shining circle.
The great shadow of the freighter seemed to loom closer, and the rumble of the engine grew.
Twice more, I had to fling myself to the side of the boat to keep from capsizing. Just to keep busy, I bailed constantly.
For a moment, I paused my bailing and slipped the portable GPS unit into the zippered pocket of my jacket.

At last
,
over the thin howl of the wind and the deep rumble of the ship, I thought I heard the high growl of an outboard motor. After a few seconds, I was sure of it.
Finally, a large open boat roared up and stopped about twenty feet away.

“Ho there!” said someone whom I could not see through the blinding glare of the spotlight. It seemed like a stupid thing to say, in the circumstances, so I parroted it back. “Ho there!”

“We’re throwing you a rope!” shouted the voice, more business
-
like now.

“OK,” I shouted back. So I didn’t have the best lines for the moment either.

I slid down
the
side
of
a wave, and the other boat disappeared for
a
moment. A second later
,
they were high above me
,
while I was in the valley. Something big and circular came flying out of the light, and I ducked instinctively. Almost in the same moment, I cursed myself and looked up again just as a round life-preserver smacked against the outside of the dinghy. I dove forward, grasping for it, but it had already floated out of reach.

I waited. “Again,” I heard dimly through the storm. This time I didn’t duck. The ring smacked into the water next the boat, but I was ready
now
. I scooped it up. There was a strong-looking rope securely fastened to it.
Someone shouted something, but I couldn’t hear it.
With some difficulty, I
slid the ring under the back seat and around the bench twice. Then I gave the thumbs-up.
I heard more shouting. Then the rope tightened. I held on to the life-ring, just in case the bench pulled loose or something.

Carefully, they pulled my dinghy close to the lifeboat. When we were about ten feet apart, a man shouted. “We’re going to grab you, OK?”

“OK,” I shouted back.

The waves threw us at each other. The little dinghy slammed into the side of the freighter’s life boat, and then several hands were grasping my life-vest and I was hauled like a big pike into their
vessel
.
Someone cut the rope to the dinghy, then t
he outboard
roared and
we swept up the side of a wave toward the ship.
The vessel
was enormous. We motored around to the lee side. The waves were maybe a little smaller here
,
and the wind was broken by the vast
bulk
of the ship.
The long
,
flat hull of the freighter had
a superstructure – something that looked almost like a small three or four story building – at the very bow of the ship, and another, slightly smaller one at the stern.
The helmsman brought us in close to the
stern superstructure.
Lights glowed everywhere, like some giant Christmas-decorated mansion. The waves lifted us to within five or eight feet of the railings on the ship, and then dropped us into troughs twenty feet or more below them. If my rescuers didn’t know their business, we would be thrown against the steel hull, capsized and rubbed out of existence.