Rembrandt's Ghost

by Paul Christopher

  Down below in the galley, Finn was helping Toshi shut down the stoves and make cold sandwiches for the upcoming festivities while the rest of the crew hurried around lashing down anything loose on deck or below. To them it was a familiar story. They’d weathered plenty of storms with the Queen before. As the day wore on, the swells grew broader and deeper, the crests tipped with long trails of dead-white spume that spun off the tops of the waves like froth from the jaws of some terrible rabid creature—not far from the truth in this case.

  Over time the water had turned from deep green to pewter and finally to black, unfathomable with nothing of life to be seen. Porpoises and flying fish sought their pleasures elsewhere and the seabirds had fled from the storm long before it even made its presence known.

  By late afternoon they were giving a wide berth to the roaring surf around the reefs of Pulau Tigaba and the sky overhead was dark as breaking dusk. Finn managed to make her way up the swaying companionway to the wheelhouse with mugs and a big thermos of steaming coffee, getting thoroughly soaked along the way even though she was tightly bundled into an old oilskin Toshi gave her.

  ‘‘That’s the last of anything hot for a while. Toshi says it’s too dangerous to even keep the pilot lights going on the stove.’’

  ‘‘He’s right.’’ Hanson nodded, taking a mug from her and sipping. ‘‘In weather like this the last thing you need is a fire to add to your problems.’’

  ‘‘At least it’s not raining,’’ said Billy. He stared out at the heaving sea and the darkening sky.

  ‘‘Give it time,’’ said Eli, struggling with the wheel.

  Hanson stepped to one side and looked down at the radar plot.

  ‘‘That doesn’t look healthy at all,’’ he said quietly, bending over the scope.

  ‘‘What are those little lines coming out of the center of the white thing?’’ Finn asked.

  ‘‘The rain your friend was asking about,’’ said Hanson. ‘‘Lots of it.’’

  ‘‘And the hole in the center?’’

  ‘‘The eye,’’ Hanson explained. ‘‘Very small, very tight, and very dangerous.’’

  ‘‘I thought the eye of a hurricane was supposed to be an area of calm,’’ said Billy, hanging on to the compass platform as the Queen began its long, slow climb up the face of the next oncoming wave.

  ‘‘It is, relatively,’’ explained Hanson. ‘‘But the ‘eyewall,’ the perimeter of the eye, has the fastest and most destructive winds of all. Going through the eyewall can tear a ship this size apart. Best to avoid it altogether.’’

  ‘‘How do we do that?’’ Finn asked. ‘‘That thing looks pretty big.’’

  ‘‘About two hundred kilometers from side to side. A hundred twenty-five miles. Still a baby.’’

  ‘‘Can’t we go around it?’’

  ‘‘Maybe,’’ said Hanson. ‘‘But it’s like that old story about the lady and the tiger. Which way, port or starboard?’’

  ‘‘Does it make a difference?’’

  ‘‘We’re below the equator, so the winds are rotating clockwise. In this case, that means east to west, relative to our position.’’

  ‘‘Okay, I’m with you.’’ All of a sudden, she wasn’t. The Queen reached the top of the crest and made a grotesque twisting motion, throwing Finn halfway across the wheelhouse and into Billy, who managed to grab her before she tumbled to the deck. He helped her upright as the Queen slid wretchedly across the crest and roared down into the trough like a freight train. Finn’s stomach dropped as though she were on a high-speed elevator and suddenly the sky was gone, the windscreen filled from horizon to horizon with the brick-wall mass of the next wave.

  ‘‘You all right?’’ Hanson asked.

  ‘‘Fine,’’ said Finn, glad she hadn’t eaten much for lunch. ‘‘Where were we?’’

  ‘‘Port or starboard, left or right,’’ said the captain, keeping a careful eye on Eli, who was struggling with the wheel as he tried to keep the old freighter sailing directly into the wind. ‘‘Think of a football player putting his shoulder forward to block an opponent. That’s the starboard side, the right. The other shoulder, the trailing edge, has lower wind speeds and less rain. That’s to the left, the portside.’’

  Finn shrugged. ‘‘Sounds like a no-brainer.’’ They reached the top of another wave and this time she grabbed the chart table for support as they went hurtling down into the trough again. She swallowed hard and regained her footing. ‘‘We should steer to port.’’

  ‘‘Except that wind changes direction all the time,’’ put in Billy, lurching against the bulkhead behind him. The Queen groaned and heaved, crashing through the crest of the next wave, a huge fountain of spray bursting over her bow.

  ‘‘He’s right,’’ said Hanson grimly. ‘‘Typhoons don’t follow a regular path. They have a life of their own.’’

  ‘‘In other words it’s a crap shoot,’’ said Eli Santoro, gripping the wheel.

  ‘‘Not quite,’’ said Hanson. ‘‘That’s why we’re trying for sea room—give us a lot of open water to maneuver, just in case. We’ll keep an eye on the storm for another couple of hours, then decide.’’

  The Batavia Queen battered its way into the night, the world contracting to an endless series of twisting, lurching roller-coaster rides up the boiling, spume-topped face of one wave and down the smooth, ugly back of the next. The speed of the wind increased, the rigging snapping and whirring with a never-ending shriek that made any conversation almost impossible.

  Even with everything battened down and the hatches and companionways sealed, water seemed to get into everything. Finn’s cabin in the stern section of the lower deck was awash, the toilet backed up from the heaving accumulation of water in the bilges. Every seam, weld, pipe, and ventilator dripped steadily.

  As the barometer dropped, so did the temperature, and even wrapped in one of Run-Run McSeveney’s ancient, moth-eaten Shetland sweaters and her oilskins Finn was shivering with cold. Worst of all was the repeated hammering shudder as the hull smashed down off each crest, a tooth-rattling, bludgeoning jar as though a giant fist were trying to pound the old ship apart and send them all to the bottom of the sea.

  Finn spent most of her time in the wardroom, simply sitting gloomily, living each plunge and climb like a frightened airplane passenger experiencing every ghastly buck and thump of turbulence. She willed the ancient hull plates to stay together, almost seeing the groaning, creaking underbelly of the ship as it rose barnacle-encrusted out of the water before crashing down again.

  Toshi tried to tempt her with a soggy sandwich from the galley, but the egg salad she’d chopped, whipped, and assembled in daylight set her stomach churning and heaving in the darkness. She was hungry, waterlogged, and more than a little frightened, and all she really wanted was for it to end, one way or the other. Long after midnight she made her way up the twisting, lurching companionways to the bridge again, looking for company in her misery.

  Hanson had relieved Eli Santoro at the wheel, and the only other person on the bridge was Billy. If anything the rain-streaked view out the windscreen was worse than the last time. The winds were blowing with so much force that the lashing downpour was smeared into a single shimmering sheet across the glass and the top-mounted heavy-dutywipers had no effect at all. The thunder of the waves crashing into the Queen’s bow and flanks was like the sounding of some gigantic bell.

  ‘‘We can’t steer this way for much longer!’’ Hanson screamed, turning slightly as Finn came onto the bridge. ‘‘The waves are too big and too close together! We’ll founder or break our back unless we turn!’’

  ‘‘You’re going to put her beam on?’’ Billy said, horrified, his jaw dropping.

  ‘‘No choice!’’ Hanson responded. ‘‘We can’t keep on driving into it! Grab something!’’ He spun the wheel around to the left as hard as he could.

  ‘‘What does beam on mean?’’ Finn yelled, startled at the suddenness of his movement.

&nbs
p; Billy opened his mouth but before he could answer Finn was thrown halfway across the small bridge house and fell into a heap as the ship made a long slaloming turn down the side of an enormous wave that seemed to entirely fill the night sky. The great wave directly in front of them loomed like a curled fist, acres of blinding spray flying off the dark knuckles of furious water.

  The Batavia Queen threw herself up the side of the new wave like a surfer trying to make it to deeper water. She began to turn along the crest, then fell back on herself as she pivoted across it. Before Finn could even begin to get to her feet the crest broke across the Queen’s deck, slamming the bridge doors open and filling the chamber with a rush of icy water. It was flushed away almost instantly, leaving Finn coughing and choking on the deck, spitting out harsh-tasting salt water.

  Somehow Hanson had managed to hang on to the wheel and he took the Queen fully around, stern to the driving force of the wind, as they began to run away with the roaring storm, hard on her heels, but almost bearable now. The ship was flotsam on the surface of the boiling sea now, no longer fighting the direction of the raging typhoon.

  ‘‘Beam on means to turn sideways. It’s a little tricky sometimes!’’ Hanson called out, still struggling with the wheel as he finally answered her question.

  Laughing wearily and still gasping for air, Finn dragged herself upright with Billy’s help. ‘‘Now you tell me!’’

  They drove forward, letting the howling winds push them on, no longer fighting the incredible grinding power of the massive cyclone. The storm moved forward at a steadily increasing speed, gaining on the battered old ship and inevitably overtaking and swallowing it, the eyewall and the eye rushing up behind them like a surging hungry throat.

  The Batavia Queen slid on through the darkness that was engulfing her in a whirling inferno of sound. The great swell of the waves carried her up, then sucked her down, rolling over her bows and crushing against her sides. Finn huddled on the bridge, watching as the sky began to lighten, soaking wet, her mind numb, wondering how on earth she’d managed in such a brief period of time to go from the boring, relatively civilized environment of a London auction house to the fury of a Pacific typhoon.

  She thought about Columbus and home and growing up and wondered if danger hadn’t haunted her every step ever since she’d left Ohio. Most of all she wondered if she was going to die out here, swallowed up by an unforgiving and cruel sea.

  There was a terrible sound like a shotgun going off and Finn screamed, the sound swallowed up by the roar of the wind. A following wave smashed against the side of the ship, carrying away the splintered remains of the old launch on its davits just behind the bridge the way a fist crushes a matchbox.

  By six, with dawn coming up fast, they were almost against the eyewall and there was no longer any sense to the sea. Waves crashed against each other, breaking and roaring and sending fountains of whirling spray into the sheeted curtains of rain that surrounded them. The windscreen of the bridge gave them no visibility at all; they were sailing blindly through the terrible storm.

  The dawn finally broke, wild and furious, sky and sea meeting in a single rolling, terrible line. Waves rolled down on the Queen, and a strange, wet mist came in rags and sheets, spray and sky mixing into a wind-driven fog that roared around them at a hundred miles an hour. The radio antenna and the cables on the winches and windlasses had parted long ago like the snapped strings of a guitar. Once, staring out across the undulating sea, Finn was almost sure that she saw another ship with them, riding through the madness of the wild ocean, but before she could say anything to Hanson or to Billy, it had disappeared into the tearing fog.

  Then, suddenly, the rain stopped and the silence was almost worse than the storm. They were being tossed across the waves of a frothing horror, but directly overhead were blue sky and sun.

  ‘‘The eye!’’

  Finn stared. All around them now was the black towering mass of the eyewall. All of a sudden the doorway behind them crashed open and Eli Santoro staggered onto the bridge, his dark hair plastered across his forehead.

  ‘‘What?’’ Hanson bellowed, struggling with the wheel.

  ‘‘I’ve been down below in the nav room! Bottom’s coming up fast!’’

  ‘‘How fast?’’

  ‘‘We’re at eighty fathoms.’’

  ‘‘Continuous soundings,’’ Hanson ordered. ‘‘Let me know if it gets much shallower.’’

  ‘‘Aye, aye!’’ Santoro turned and left the bridge.

  ‘‘What was all that about?’’ Billy asked.

  ‘‘We’re supposed to be in the middle of the Sulu Sea. Limitless bottom. Eighty fathoms is crazy! A shoal or an island in the middle of nowhere.’’

  ‘‘There’s nothing on the charts?’’ Billy asked.

  ‘‘Charts!’’ Hanson bellowed. ‘‘What charts? I don’t have the faintest idea where we are!’’

  ‘‘GPS?’’ Billy called out.

  ‘‘Try getting a satellite fix in weather like this! Not a chance!’’ Hanson responded, clinging to the wheel.

  ‘‘I’ve got to get into something dry!’’ Finn called out. She knew she was just getting in the way by staying on the bridge. Maybe she could make herself useful, see about something to eat for everyone. She dragged herself to the doorway of the bridge, ducked her head into her already dripping oilskin, and pushed out into the storm. Hanging on for dear life, she struggled down to the main deck, waited for the Queen to roll down the slope of yet another wave, and then, at just the moment, when she began to rise again, she stumbled down the deck and threw herself inside the main corridor. She eventually made her way back to her tiny cabin.

  She stripped off her soaking clothes and changed yet again, cramming herself into her last pair of jeans and one of the pipe-tobacco-smelling heavy roll-neck sweaters Run-Run had let her borrow. Dry socks finished off the ensemble and after struggling back into her rubber boots she stumbled back along the corridor and into the galley.

  Toshi, the cook, and Bazooki, the huge Samoan steward, were filling thermos jugs with hot soup made from dry mix and water heated with an electric kettle. Both the tiny Japanese cook and his hulking companion seemed completely at ease in the wildly tossing little galley cabin as pots and pans hanging from their spring hooks in the ceiling smashed and clanged together and six inches of water streamed back and forth across the deck at their feet.

  Toshi handed Finn one of the jugs and four tin mugs on a bungee cord that he looped around her neck. He pulled an industrial-sized Hershey’s Special Dark bar down from a shelf and stuffed it into the zip pocket of her slicker with a wink and grinned. She tried to smile back, pecked both men on the cheek, then stepped out into the storm again.

  Squinting against the raging spray blowing up all around her, Finn made it back along the deck to the bridge companionway and started up, manhandling the jug as best she could, the tin mugs clattering around her neck in the tearing wind. As she reached the bridge itself, she heard an unimaginablesound of tearing metal like the terrible grinding of an enormous dragon’s teeth. The dragon lashed its tail and an earthquake seemed to shake the ship, then grab it and shake a second time.

  The horrible grinding sound came again, booming throughout the entire hull as the Queen lurched, groaned terribly again, then heaved up and rolled onto her side. The soup thermos flew out of Finn’s hands, her booted feet slipped on the slick metal of the bridge decking, and the massive pummeling grip of the huge wave that broke over the suddenly grounded ship tossed her back and out into the air. Flailing she had a brief glimpse of the heeling rusty hull of the Queen and then she was in the sea, the weight of her heavy boots and the crashing surf pulling her inexorably downward into the cruel and unforgiving belly of the ocean.

  19

  Finn woke the following morning from a dreamless sleep as deep as death. The typhoon had passed, leaving the skies a brilliant blue, with high, pure white clouds like strips of ragged cloth and the early sun like a bright go
ld coin. She crawled a little farther up the wide white beach, realizing that her heavy Wellington rubber boots were gone, probably in the rogue wave that had swept her off the Batavia Queen. She turned her head and felt a burning pain in her neck.

  She probed the spot with her fingers and felt a long splinter of wood embedded deep in the tissue just below her jaw. She pulled it with one swift movement and almost fainted with the pain as the jagged sliver came out, followed by a brief spill of blood. She felt the coppery taste of it in her mouth and realized the splinter had penetrated her throat, although the wound didn’t seem terribly serious. But what was serious on an island like this? A simple cut or fever could kill you here. No drugstores just beyond the next coconut tree. She blinked hard and tried to clear her head. She couldn’t remember getting the splinter wound. Didn’t remember anything at all after the sudden, thunderous impact of the wave.

  Finn coughed once, spit blood, and climbed slowly to her feet. She began to survey her surroundings. The storm had passed, but heavy waves still pounded, foaming onto the sand. Torn clouds raced by in the brilliant blue sky and a strong wind still shook the line of palm trees on the foreshore.

  Finn turned and looked out toward the sea. The surf was rolling in angrily in hard-packed heavy waves, dark and still heavy with the passing power of the storm. There was no sign of the Queen, no huge wreck hanging on the teeth of whatever hidden shoal she’d hit so forcefully.

  The hurricane was gone and so was the Batavia Queen, but the evidence of her was scattered everywhere along the beach in both directions— crates from the hold, some stove in and others intact, pieces of wood from the shattered ship’s boats, the shredded remains of a rubber boat, supplies from the galley.