NOVEMBER 21

I’ll try to write what I can. But why should I? I hardly know who I am. I haven’t eaten, washed, left this room for three days, except that first night when I opened the cabin door and found Mr. Head on the settee. I was angry. What are you doing here? I cried, and he sat up looking flustered. He explained that Mr. Richardson had the watch and he didn’t want Sophy and me to be left alone in the stern in case we might need something.

What could I possibly need? I said and closed the door. But the look on his face let me know they are afraid of me.

My poor Sophy. I frightened her as well, and she was terrified enough by the storm. The roar of the wind, the ship nearly vertical climbing each wave bow up, and then, the sea pouring over the deck, stern up, descending. We huddled in the bed together and I held her close to my heart singing the lullabies she likes, but her eyes were wild with terror and she sobbed until she fell asleep from exhaustion.

Benjamin said, Mr. Gilling is lashed to the helm.

And he was pulling on his boots to take the watch. He’d hardly slept at all.

And I said. What did I say?

Did I say, Be careful?

It didn’t matter. He couldn’t hear for the noise. We were sliding down a wave; the cabin floor was uphill.

He fell to his knees before he got to the door, then staggered to his feet and went out. He looked like a walking tent in his waterproofs.

I had Sophy tucked in the curve of my legs and I clung to the footboard as the bed rose up, pushing us steadily down, and then went down, driving us back up, like sands in an hourglass being turned over and over forever.

I heard the hatch open and close. No, what I heard was the bellow of the storm grow louder and then less. And I thought, He has gone out. I felt sick to my stomach and my head ached, but there was nothing to do but hold on.

I heard a shout. I couldn’t make it out. Mr. Richardson’s voice, his cabin door flung open, his rapid footsteps and again the hatch opening, the roar of the wind, and then the shout again, this time from him, and I heard it. I understood it. He had shouted – Man Overboard.

What did I do? My first thought was that it must be Mr. Gilling, because it couldn’t be Benjamin. But then I knew it must be. I leaped from the bed and fell headlong on the floor. Sophy plummeted out behind me and let out a wail. I gathered her in my arms and staggered through the cabin into the companionway, up the steps to the hatch. I struggled to open it.

The men were shouting. Where the sky should have been was a white cliff made of water, dark, yet strangely bright. From somewhere Mr. Richardson appeared, blocking me. Sophy was howling; his face was livid. “Go back down,” he shouted, “for God’s sake.”

“Who is it?” I said.

The stern dropped away and a great sea shipped over the bow, so that we both clung to the hatch rail while water surged over the deck and down the hatch around my legs.

“It’s the captain,” he shouted. “Please go back.”

“No!” I screamed. “Where is he? Let me out.” I tried to push past him but as the ship pitched, my feet went out from under me. I lost my grip on the rail and landed on my back in a foot of water with Sophy clinging to my neck. Mr. Richardson leaped down and lifted us up, counseling me as he helped me to my feet. “We’re trying to find him, Mrs. Sarah. You can help us best by staying below. I’ll come to you as soon as I can.” Then he rushed up the steps, closing the hatch behind him, and I found myself standing in water to my knees, clutching my terrified, wailing daughter in my arms.

I carried her back to the cabin. “We have to pray,” I said to her. “We have to pray so hard for Papa.” I remember saying that.

And I did pray. But God wasn’t listening.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 580