"Stranger things than stories become real at sea." With a full hold and a quiet autumn evening we'd turned for home and the skipper was in a pensive mood again. I added the Irish to our coffees and joined him looking out over the rail at the setting sun.
"What like-" He cut me off before I could continue.
"Don't say that name here. Sea's always listening."
"Haunted waters," I said brashly, trying to sound older than my years. I'd never heard of a sea story that brought anything good to sailors. "There's nowt good for sailors in ghosts." He smirked, looking out at the calm sea. I thought I'd put a foot wrong again, but then he spoke.
"Clouds come in faster than you think. The first thing the storm smashed was the electrics, but they'd been bust already. The Sandy never let me down, but the engineers, oh they bloody did. Two hours out of port and the lot just packed up. No electrics, no radio, no distress call. Drifting for hours, watching the storm close. It hit hard, snapped the little diesel motor off the back and took the rudder right with it. On that heaving deck my legs couldn't hold, the hail raised bruises on skin. I'd furled the sails so no control at all, just the mercy of the sea.
It had none, drove me out of the cabin as fastenings came loose and furnishings became missiles, threw the anchor I released back through the deck to the bilge. As I grabbed for the liferaft, the storm snapped her back across the waves like I'd break a branch across my knee. She threw me clear then, a last convulsive flex as she died. Last I saw of her was a white shape on dark water before the waves swallowed her whole..."
###
I thanked god I'd had no crew aboard, knew I'd not long survive her.
The liferaft was gone, and my inflatable lifejacket wasn't going to last in this. I grabbed for anything, caught the square shape of a floatation block and clung on. My fingers were numb, too numb to hold on as I scrabbled to get a grip, adhering to the rough red paint of the text. Skin stuck against the plastic in the cold, but I couldn't hold on. The storm tore the support away as I screamed, choking on salted water. They say that right before you die, all the things you haven't done flash through your head. All I could think of was my next breath. Then the block was back, thrown into me hard enough to smash my teeth, crack the casing, but my fingers hooked in a metal securing, breaking as the block twisted and I didn't care. I could breathe, for an instant before the wave threw me skywards, and then I and my support smashed into the trough as it followed.
The storm had me, pulled me with it. There wasn't going to be an escape, either it died or I would, and with my fingers that felt blue with cold, the sea too dark to see them, I knew it would be me. There was no help coming - no signal sent and I'd been driven so far from the sinking, drifted so far before that, that they'd never find me. I just had to hold on, to focus on the air and pray for help, for anyone anything, that could find the Sandy's orphan adrift in the storm.
The spray cut slices in my skin, the hail had teeth. Did I pray? Prayers take words, and I had not the breath or thought for them. The sky and sea were one darkness, stars and moon as drowned as I, the only light the flashes that brought thunder; the lightning that jumped from cloud to cloud, from cloud to sea and my little floating aid was metal-bound. To cling was to tempt the lightning, to cast it free to die in the waves. I clung.
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Time fled, existence narrowed to the breath I had snatched and the one I wanted to, and the painful gap between. No rescue, no hope. My mind began to play tricks, old hymns, those in peril on the sea, but I was in the water and no hand calmed these waves. And now a dark ship was coming for me as I tumbled helpless, the floatation block a weight that pulled me down before it buoyed me up. I rubbed my eyes against a sleeve as I snatched a breath, smeared crusted salt with blood as the wave smacked my head playfully into the float, but it was still there.
Tall, a black shape even among the peaks of the storm, limping in the waves like a ship stricken. She wept with spray, sails hanging limp and tattered in the storm, water trailing from every surface. Framed by the lightning I saw her clear, a far older vessel than the Sandy. Star of India? She'd never be this far north, but for an instant I felt hope. They'd never let her sink, they'd scramble everything - and then guilt more crushing than the wave broke me. They'd scramble everything because she'd not survive this punishment.
As hail shredded the sails, limp despite the gale, and ice coated the spars, she limped onwards, resolute as the waves broke over the decks. Too heavily laden to pitch, the water smashed into her, round her, and yet she did not founder. In this storm, she could run me right over, never notice me until I'd been ground beneath her keel, and yet I'd take that over the storm beating me to death by inches. I tried to hail her, my voice taken by the storm, couldn't have been heard in calm waters, nor by these thunder-deafened ears. Yet she turned.
I saw her, bow on towards the waves, before another peak threw me to the heavens and cast me down to hell, limbs flailing against nothing but air for the instant before impact snapped my leg against water like concrete and then there was no air at all. My head popped clear of the surface, and I gasped air and spray as I lifted again, saw that she was on course for me, and lost sight of her as the wave passed and I plummeted, water breaking over my head. As the next peak rose, I saw her no more. Then I saw the lights, bright, close, searing. Searching.
...
The inshore lifeboat.
...
In the next peak I was right on top of her. Wave damn near put me through the side, cracked a fair few ribs. Mine, not hers. Then there were hands and I was over the gunnels and in the cabin and she turned her bow for home. It wasn't fair sailing, or safe, and not her home harbour we put into, but two hours later we were on land, with the beaten storm beating against the windows and the gale shut outside.
###
He stared out at the horizon, at the flat sea his words had painted with the storm. The last rays of sun turned sky and water red, and we stood in silence as the sun sank.
"Turned out they'd had reports of a ship in trouble and launched, launched into the teeth of a force twelve at night. They'd figured Sandy for the victim, checked the charts, and found me on my pathetic little float. Extra masts were put down to the storm playing tricks, my report of another vessel to the concussion. No sign of the four-master was ever found, and it is shallow enough there to see to the bottom in summer. There's no wreck."
He downed his beer, looking out over the waters and strolled back into the cabin. I paused at the door, looked at the little scrimshawed brass in the cabin window more closely. The ship was a four master, old school, a whaling vessel perhaps. It's sails were full-rigged, but they hung limp as though in mourning, as though the wind itself would not touch her. And the small inscription beneath it one word, a name. The old line came to me unbidden.
"It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan."