Overfall Page 2

  Out of habit his mind calculated the odds of survival—his own and hers. This area was a wilderness with an occasional passing yacht or commercial boat. The instant she hit the fifty-five-degree water she would be swept away, probably dragged under by a whirlpool, and if by some miracle she did not drown in that fashion, she would be dead in three or four minutes when she was pulled into the overfall and then buried by the huge whirlpool underlying it, down thirty or forty feet under the sea with little hope of making it to the surface in time to breathe. And if somehow she did struggle to the surface, she’d probably die from cold shock before she could swim to shore. Her only real chance was climbing onto a dry rock or making it to a tiny pocket of beach.

  While he started the motor and ran down the channel he looked for some sign of her. Normally he’d have left himself a spot of mainsail to steady the boat. With the main down the boat set up a roll.

  He waited for the next piece of bad luck.

  His eye caught the white of her shirt against a rock. Glancing at the GPS, he realized he was being drawn toward the pass, but there was still time to escape the current. Quickly he looked with binoculars. Even with the boat’s motion he could tell that she clung to seaweed-covered granite. She was well away from the cliffs and the point from which she had fallen. From her location it was too far to swim to shore in this current.

  For just a second his eyes left the figure in the water to look for another boat—any boat. Nothing.

  The wind was increasing fast, blowing right at the overfall. He knew the result: It would push the wave up, perhaps making it half again as high.

  He pondered whether he could save her. He loved his yacht as much as a man could love a material thing and still possess a soul. He loved Harry. If he went much closer he would risk losing Harry and the boat, maybe dying, and for a stranger who would probably drown anyway.

  Then he saw the solitary figure on the trail from which the woman had fallen. He breathed a sigh of hope. There were two dogs running, noses down, barking their frustration at the cliff and the vanished track.

  Through the binoculars he managed to get a shaky view of a man standing, looking down into the water, and then turning to walk away.

  She was waving frantically, but at Sam, not the man on the cliff. The man didn’t run or even look agitated. Assuming that he saw her, he plainly didn’t care if she died. Perhaps he even wanted her to die. A moment later he had disappeared.

  “Unbelievable,” Sam said aloud.

  With the wind the sea was building fast and the waves were washing over her. She would be swept away in minutes. Glancing at the wind indicator he saw the wind at thirty-five knots and building. It was going to be a williwaw.

  He brought the boat around into the wind and furled the jib, then ran to the wheel and concentrated on positioning the boat. Because he was upstream from the woman, the current, the wind, and the breaking sea were sweeping him toward her. With the sails down the boat rolled even worse in the building chop. He added power.

  According to the GPS, the current was pushing him at seven knots over the bottom. Sam was accustomed to risking his life, but there was still an adrenaline surge.

  In the distance the roar of the overfall filled his ears. Even from his location he couldn’t escape the white wave that sat just ahead of the largest saltwater whirlpool and undertow in the world. The boat would be drawn into it and the treacherous rocks all around as surely as the moon pulls the oceans. He wondered if his boat could survive the water that might fill it or bash it against the green-tinged jaws of rock that guarded the Paradise Channels.

  The wind was rising fast under a black sky. Forty-one knots, the incandescent numbers blinked.

  “Harry, go to your bed.”

  The little dog jumped up on the bulkhead, then dived down the hole of the companionway hatch into the pilothouse. Sam pulled the hatch shut. There would be water everywhere once they hit the overfall. He could see the woman, still clinging to the rock, thrashing with her legs, obviously trying to get a better purchase. She couldn’t climb out of the water, and with everything but her shoulders and head immersed she would develop hypothermia in minutes. She was still looking in his direction, waving one arm.

  “I see you,” he muttered. “Just hang on.”

  With less than two hundred feet to go he swung the boat into the wind and current, letting the rushing water push him backward against the full power of the diesel. It was like the middle of a river, and the force of swirling water jarred the boat, making it hard to hold the bow on a heading. Even with full power into the current he was going backward at about five knots over the bottom. He threw a strobe-lighted life ring with a safety line out the stern for her to grab if she missed the boat. The current was increasing—the fierce wind was doing the rest. Finding the lee of some islets that broke a little wind, twisted the water, and reduced the current, he was able to slow the boat’s backward movement. Silverwind’s stern was headed very near the rock to which she clung.

  Soon the current would roar to seventeen knots and life on his boat might well come to an end.

  “Let go after I pass,” he called out, over an electronic megaphone, hoping she wouldn’t hit a nasty whirlpool and disappear. It was a billion-ton washer with the water beaten frothy, the current swirling and eddying. The clouds looked worse, and at the heart of the gorge he suspected the wind would rise to more than forty-five knots. Ninety knots had been reported in winter gales. The land was shaped to multiply as much as twofold any normal wind.

  Everything was rapidly becoming more difficult. The first whirlpool caught the hull and shoved the boat over on its side until the weight of the keel pulled it upright. The boat jerked, shuddered, and careened before straightening out. Less than fifty feet to go. She looked grimly determined. Worried about running aground and ripping a hole in the bottom, he swung the stern slightly outward and eased the throttle for just a second, letting the current push him a little farther off.

  “Do I swim?” she screamed.

  “Wait,” he blasted over the loudspeaker.

  Twenty feet.

  “Get ready.”

  Going backward past the woman he shoved the nose behind her rock as if he were trying to drive the boat aground. The current created a massive eddy and a giant whirlpool just to the stern of the woman’s perch and of Silverwind that allowed the boat to move forward. With a swipe of his hand on the throttle he reduced power. There was an ugly crunching and he was slammed over the wheel as the lead keel hit the granite.

  “Now?”

  “Swim!” he screamed at the woman, not bothering with electronics. She began a powerful crawl stroke.

  He heard her hit the hull and saw a hand trying to grab. He thrust a huge salmon net over the side, almost falling overboard himself. Her legs went into the net first as she slid down the side of the boat. Holding on to the net with all the strength he could muster, he watched helplessly as the bow swung from the rock and the boat turned broadside to the current, gaining speed. Her hand grabbed the gunwale.

  “Hang on.” Desperately he hauled in the net. She got a foot hooked over the edge of the boat’s rail.

  “Climb!” he said. Still grasping the handle of the net with one hand, he used the other to throw the transmission into forward and move the boat away from the rocks toward the center of the channel.

  “Grab me,” she screamed.

  “Just hold on,” he said as he continued his efforts to get clear of the downstream rocks. The overfall was around a slight bend and about two hundred yards distant. He decided to take it bow first and that meant turning the boat ninety degrees. Just as he hit another whirlpool he spun the wheel. Tipping far over, the starboard rail went under and the woman with it. Quickly he stepped above her, grabbed under her arms, and hauled her body half over the lifelines. Around them the water roared and the boat careened, but he kept pulling.

  When he had her torso in the cockpit with her feet still over the lifelines, he pulled, delibe
rately falling to the side and using his weight to take her with him. Landing on a seat corner, he slammed his ribs into the fiberglass. Water was everywhere as the boat righted itself. Had it been anything other than an oceangoing sailboat it would have filled quickly.

  He took the woman by the shoulders and moved her around the wheel to the bottom of the open cockpit, tossed a life jacket at her, and tightened down his own. Then in little more than the time it takes to sneeze, he recognized her as Anna Wade, actress, Oscar winner, two Golden Globes, $20 million a picture, and still a nice person. At least by reputation.

  “Stay there.” He calculated the boat’s entry into the wave. It wasn’t the size of the wave that mattered but its steepness, and the down suction from the whirlpool. He could see that there’d be no climbing it. They would be buried.

  Here the canyon created the venturi and the wind howled. The digital readout of the wind indicator was showing fifty-plus knots and still climbing. If Sam hadn’t seen it and heard the stories he wouldn’t have believed it. Lines were tangled in the cockpit. Some were wrapped around his leg.

  “Haul this in,” he said, handing her the safety line. In a whirlpool it could catch in the propeller. She pulled like a seasoned deckhand. “It will be okay,” he said. Then a whirlpool spun them and he fought to keep the bow pointed at the wave. Unless he kept it straight the rocks would punch holes like an angry fist through tissue paper.

  “A hundred feet,” he said, as the boat careened around the whirlpools. “Grab,” he said to Anna Wade while planting her hands on two chromed bars to either side of the steering column. Her grip was vice-tight.

  The wave loomed, rising up thick and green with a dimpled belly and its head rolling white like a great ocean breaker. There was a slick on the surface and a steep dip just ahead of the wave. They shot through the slick like a toboggan on ice, the wave coming and going with a hiss, then a roar. The sounds shook in his head. Green water poured over the yacht’s nose as the current sucked it down so hard Sam could feel it in his gut. Rolling over the decks the water submerged the cockpit, and everything but the mast disappeared.

  Green water, bitterly cold, hit him hard. His hands dug into the wheel as the water yanked him off his feet, his body nearly prone. When his feet were back under him he stood in water to his thighs.

  Suddenly the yacht rolled almost completely over to the port side. There was a hard jolt as the keel bounced off a rock and then the frothing water was gone, leaving only a series of whirlpools more than two hundred feet in diameter.

  With water pouring from the scuppers and the boat weighted down at the stern, it began to spin. As if on ice the boat glided stern first to the center of the whirlpool. In seconds he realized that the transmission was in neutral, the lever knocked back by the force of the water.

  Feeling the yacht slowly sink below the horizon, he knew they’d been caught in a whirlpool’s vortex. They were falling backward down a watery shaft. With his boat in a bewildering spin, Sam shoved the transmission into forward, grateful that the motor was still running. With full power the boat clawed over the funnel’s lip, careening out of the first whirlpool only to be knocked in a circle by the next. Using the power again and again, he managed to escape each whirling eddy until their strength diminished.

  They were inside the Okisolo Channel, one of several watery fingers penetrating fern-covered granite walls whose patches of moss, lichen, and grasses made natural corridors of pristine beauty. They passed through to Heron Bay a couple hundred yards distant as the current slowed to a mere two knots. The wind had been cut by half by the bluffs around the bay but still moaned in the rigging and thrashed the sails. Lines ran everywhere, even streaming down the boat’s sides, and the mainsail still lay across the deck, draped over the rail.

  Sam put a hand on her shoulder and studied her face. She was shaking badly. “I’m okay, let me help,” she said in response to his silent concern. Then she struggled to pull in sails and every line that could reach his prop as if she were regular crew. He let it go on maybe three minutes, then ushered her down below.

  His inflatable raft was gone, ripped from its tie-downs on the front deck. The diesel was still running and sounded good. In the relative calm came the discovery that the Silverwind had a broken rudder. And a broken weather vane—an automatic steering device that held the boat to a preset angle to the wind. The aft solar panel was a shambles.

  “What a mess, I’m sorry,” she said as they went through the pilothouse and down into the cabin.

  Although the diminishing wind was still pushing them, he kept the engine in forward with the auto pilot on so they would be certain not to drift past the bay down to the Gordon Rapids. Using the remnant of the rudder, the boat held a heading after a fashion. Quickly he showed her how to work the sumps in the head and got her in the shower with her clothes on.

  “Don’t undress yet,” he said as he left her for topside. Soon they were motoring into Heron Bay and turning in eddies as they went.

  The islands’ steep terrain appeared only as imposing textured blackness against the night sky. The clouds were mostly gone, the wind reduced to gusts of twenty miles per hour.

  Down below, Anna could only take in the mood of the bay through the porthole, but was more probably lost in thoughts of death and the sweetness of life. He thought about her with her wet hair hung in her face, the borrowed life jacket draped with seaweed. Before he got her under the shower she had to have been on the verge of serious hypothermia.

  Once safe in the bay, Sam put the boat in neutral and went below. “You all right?” he asked outside the door.

  “I’m okay. Thank you so much.”

  “You still decent?”

  “Yeah.” He opened the door and found her seated on a bench in the small shower looking much warmer in the steamy little compartment.

  Harry barked and wagged his tail ferociously.

  “This is Harry,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, reaching down, even in her drenched condition, to pat him. Sam ran into the galley for a plastic bag and some gauze to wrap a cut on her hand. Now he was starting to chill pretty badly despite all his high-tech underwear and outer garments. For the first time he noticed blood on his own hand and a modest cut that had been dripping red about the teak floor. He made a makeshift bandage with gauze wrap and tied it off.

  “And, Harry, this is Anna Wade,” he said when he returned.

  “That’s pretty good,” she said. “I must look like a drowned rat. You’re turning blue around the lips.”

  He grabbed towels, blue jeans, and a shirt. Sam had a thirty-two-inch waist, so the pants could be cinched up with a belt even for a woman who probably measured only twenty-six.

  “When you’re warmed up you can dry off and put on these,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  She was looking better already. “I’m fine. Especially with the warm water.”

  “One-handed shower,” he said, wrapping her hand and pulling the bag over it.

  Getting out of her clothes might be awkward, but he thought better of offering assistance.

  After satisfying himself that she knew how the toilet worked—always problematic on a yacht—he closed the door and went topside. Normally it would have taken him ten minutes to drop and set the anchor, but with the cold wind making it nearly unbearable, he just loosened the windlass and let it go. Making its usual whine, the anchor chain payed out some forty feet until the anchor hit bottom.

  Belowdecks, he stood outside her shower door. Harry was perched on the settee, watching.

  “You okay in there?”

  “Great,” she said.

  “I’m going to take a shower myself.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Not in here, I hope.”

  Sense of humor’s intact.

  When he finished warming himself, which took a good ten minutes, he dried off, pulled on his pants, and opened the door to his stateroom. He saw her with the door of the forward stateroom ajar, wearing jeans but noth
ing else. Her beautifully tapered back was covered by her long curly dark hair. Seeming to have eyes in the back of her head, she closed the door with her foot A couple of minutes later she emerged in his shirt.

  “Is the boat going to float?”

  “Oh, yeah. But the rudder is mostly gone—God knows what else. I’m ready to call it a night.”

  “Look,” she put her hand on his arm. “You risked your life to save me. No one has ever done that for me. So, I hate to bring this up but I really need to get off this boat. So do you.”

  He pulled a large first-aid kit from under the seat at the navigation station. After washing her cut, he went right to work using the cotton, gauze, and cream.

  He didn’t respond to her comment. There was no practical way to leave the yacht.

  “I will never be able to thank you enough for what you did. I’ll pay to fix your boat.” She shivered just a bit, the chill obviously still inside her.

  “The clothes don’t quite fit but they work. There’s a down coat over there on the couch.” He stopped for a moment while he grabbed the parka and she slipped into it.

  She pulled back her hair from her face and smiled. “When did you recognize me?”

  “When I pulled you in.”

  “You weren’t the least bit uncertain?”

  “Why would I be uncertain? I see you on the magazine racks several times a year in every grocery store. What’s to be uncertain about?”

  She raised a brow. “Do you watch many movies?”

  “I’ve seen a few of yours.”

  She had her eyes on his hands. “I think you hit a punching bag with your knuckles. I couldn’t help but notice a scrapbook in the stateroom. Articles about celebrities, a lot of them in film.”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged.

  “What picture won Peter Malkey an Oscar?”

  “Sandals.”

  “He won it for?”

  “Best Director.”

  “Who produced the movie?”

  “Hey, I’m neither Siskel nor Ebert.”