by Lynn D'urso
Michael’s navigation has been impeccable; just ahead, converging rivers of ice come together behind a high ridgeline that is gapped to the water line just at the place where they imagine Lituya Bay must be. Tara sails closer, all hands scanning the foaming coast for a break in the line of white surf, and then pounds ashore with a baritone rumble. The beach appears to be burning; salt mist flung from the backs of the breakers hangs like smoke in the morning light, drifting and rising in amber-colored clouds of spray. Beyond lies a strand of beach studded with black boulders; behind that lies a bench of dark forest, a tangle of black and green trees that spreads to the crown of steep hills guarding the feet of the mountains, which in turn shelter rivers and plains of blue ice. The scene is a palette of cold colors; blues and greens lie in great swaths below the stone and snow of the mountains, underscored by a band of pale sand along the shore. The curve and decline of dragon-scaled ridges implies the hidden shape of a fjord.
It is Harky who spots the entrance, pointing at a cloud of seabirds that rises and hovers over a point where the line of the sand dips out of sight behind the arching breakers.
“There!” he shouts, waving a forefinger. The gulls, plum-aged in various combinations of gray, black, and white, appear to be taking turns folding their wings and dropping headfirst out of sight behind the wall of green surf, wheeling and plunging into the water in pursuit of small fish being flushed from the bay by the tide.
Michael and Hans leap to the rail, shading their eyes against the sun. Beneath the birds, a spreading plume of sediment forms an undulating, milky green fan.
“He’s right,” says Michael. “The birds are feeding in a current. That light color is silt flowing out of the bay.”
“Damn,” mutters Hans. The mouth is narrow, pitched at an oblique angle to the sea. No more than a stone’s throw across, it is anchored on the south by a jumble of bedrock that rises into a steep wall; a shoulder of cobblestones and boulders bullied by storms of unimaginable ferocity guards the north. Across the width of the channel, wild, tumbling surf staggers against the outflowing current, exploding into spray.
Hans yells above the surf, “We can’t make it through that.” Everyone looks to Michael, who shakes his head in agreement, pulls at the tiller, and rounds Tara up to tack away offshore. Looking away to the west, toward the horizon from which powerful gray humps of water advance with increasing speed, he says, “Tide’s still ebbing. And this swell is growing. I’m afraid we’re in for another blow soon, worse than the last.
“When the tide turns, maybe this entrance will open up. The surf might lie down a bit when the current reverses and starts running back in. If it doesn’t, and the weather gets rough, we’ll be caught on a lee shore.” His tone implies it is every sailor’s nightmare to be trapped between the hammer of the wind and a surf-pummeled shore, struggling to claw off under sail. If driven into the surf and broken on the rocks, their bones will litter the sand.
Hans yells at the Dutchman, who sits yellow and wretched in the cockpit. “Is that what’s going to happen? Will the surf ease on the flood?”
Dutch’s wild eye roams between Hans and the sky, the other stares hopelessly at nothing. As he struggles for an answer, his mouth opens and closes, slack as a dying carp’s. His shoulders lift and squeeze, contracting in a motion Hannah recognizes as a full-bodied shrug born of fear and ignorance.
Hannah grasps the implications of Dutch’s confused silence immediately. Dutch does not know. He knows nothing of Lituya Bay or the dangers they face. The instigator of the expedition has no knowledge at all of this place.
Tara pitches to an oncoming sea, and Hans’s roar is matched by a detonation of spray being flung across the deck into the cockpit. Hannah tastes salt in her mouth and wipes her eyes. When she opens them again, she sees Hans grabbing Dutch by the arm, angry alarm rising in his voice.
“You’ve never been here before, have you, you bastard?” Hans is livid. A purple vein writhes beneath his forehead. “You’ve led us here with lies!”
A wail breaks from the Dutchman’s mouth, a weak sobbing whine cut short by the slap of Hans’s palm. Harky rises from his perch atop the cabin and pulls himself aft.
Michael stands openmouthed, staring at Dutch. The bow of the cutter swings in the wind. “What’s this?”
Hans grips the sagging Dutchman by the collar and glares at Severts. “He’s never been here before, never at all. He doesn’t know shit about this entrance, he can’t tell us … shit … anything about this place.” His words stumble over his outrage. Dutch claws weakly at his hands.
Hans spits. “All lies, isn’t it? The gold, everything.”
Dutch finds his voice and whines, “No. The gold, it’s here. I swear it.”
Harky pushes aft, breaks Nelson’s grip with an easy twist, and shoves Dutch to a sitting position. His voice is low and steady as he holds Hans back with one hand.
“You never was here, Dutch? Is that true?”
Dutch shakes his head once, then again.
“How come?” asks Harky. “Ain’t there no gold here?”
Hans snorts, “Of course there’s no gold here,” then screams, “Lying bastard!” and lunges.
Harky shoulders Hans away again, looking stunned. Dutch begins to babble, frightened by the murder in Nelson’s face.
“I never did say I was here. I just say there’s gold to be had here. And there is.”
Harky, looking puzzled, cocks his head in question.
“The gold in my pocket, it’s from Lituya Bay, I swear. I know it for a fact.”
Michael steers Tara back to her course, shakes his head, and asks, “What the hell, Dutch? You mean you’ve really never been here? Never run placer anywhere around here? Where’s the gold from, then? And why are we here?” He looks in unbelieving wonder at the surf barricading them from the shelter of the bay.
Hannah, like everyone, is stunned. All of the work, the voyage, the money spent on supplies and tools. All for a lie? For a fantasy?
“I’m tellin’ ya. There’s gold here, alright. I got that poke from the miner that dug it, a fellow that prospected up here last year and tol’ me of it.” Dutch hunches into his coat, his head sagging toward his knees.
A look of repugnance breaks across Michael’s face as he understands what Dutch is saying. “Mother of God, idiot, you think the man would tell you where he found gold? He could have found it anywhere! He could have won it in a card game, or stolen it, like you did, you bastard.”
“I didn’t steal it!” shouts Dutch, indignant. “He left it there, he was that drunk. I just took it so’s it wouldn’t be stole by someone else. I was gonna give it back, but never seen ’im again.”
“Sweet mother of God.” Michael leans to the rail and stares at the oncoming seas, eyes growing dark, as if in dire contemplation of a message written on the heaving gray faces.
When he looks again to the shoddy Dutchman, the transformation of his countenance is frightening. Anger contorts the muscles of his face, straining the cords of his neck, and his lips are drawn tight and bloodless. When he glances at Hannah, she has the sickening impression it is someone else behind his eyes, someone she has never seen before and who does not know her.
Looking wildly around the cockpit as if seeking a weapon with which to brain Dutch, Michael turns aft to stare openmouthed at the shore, then ahead again at the seas that continue to grow steeper and grayer with every passing minute.
“It’s a pretty goddamn mess you’ve put us in, you lying shit.” There is flint in Michael’s voice. He stares at Dutch without blinking.
“If we don’t get into that harbor, I promise you this,” he says, pointing. “I’ll wrap you in chain before we’re driven ashore. I’ll make damn sure you drown, cause there won’t be any way we’ll ever get off when that weather hits.”
Hannah feels her stomach coil into a knot at the horrible image of such an execution. Dutch breaks into a sobbing moan, tears stream from his eyes, and he begins to snot and
blubber.
Harky sits down beside him, lays a hand on his neck, and sighs, “I ought to break your damn neck, Dutch. Just pitch you over.” There is no real threat in the words. His grip on the miserable Dutchman’s neck is somehow both protective and punishing, his hulking proximity a shield against attack.
The Texan looks around at Hans and Michael and makes a sound like a groaning bull. He glances at Hannah, who has neither spoken nor moved.
Harky wipes a meaty hand across his mouth and blows out his lips. “Ain’t nothing else for it. We’re here now. Might as well get on with it.”
He squeezes the back of Dutch’s neck until the miscreant gasps in pain.
“I reckon gold’s as liable to be in this place as anywhere, and we’re already here.”
Hannah hears her own voice concurring with Harky’s fatalism, but it sounds far away. “We’ve nowhere else to go. And perhaps Dutch—or rather the miner whose gold he took—was not lying.” She looks from Michael to Hans, then for a moment at the gravity of the mountains.
“If we return, we will still be denied entry to Canada. All of us will. But we are victualed and ready to prospect.”
Nodding to Harky, she continues. “As you say, we are here. Let us get on with it. If it happens that there is no gold here, we will be no worse for having sought it than if we return to Sitka before having even begun to search.”
There is a long silence, broken only by the sound of the surf and birds, as each member of the party inventories the options and comes to the only available conclusion: The oncoming weather has decided for them.
Michael trims a sail and scans the horizon. Hans glares in turn at each of his companions, chews at his cheek, and shakes his head. Harky slouches into place beside Dutch as if sharing a bench with a friend.
The silence is broken when Michael speaks softly, as if to himself. “It’s all we can do anyway. There’s a gale coming. We have to get inside that bay. We can’t ride it out. There’s no time to get sea room for that.” He nods to the west, where the conjunction of sea and sky has grown dark. “Couple of hours, no more. Then it’s going to blow like hell.”
Asking Hans to take the helm, he starts below to coax the engine to life. “We’ll need it for this. Slack water won’t last long, and going in under sail would be too chancy.”
As Hans steps to the tiller, he lashes out with a booted foot. Dutch screams in pain and grabs at his shin. Harky scowls, squirming in his seat, but says nothing. Hannah closes her eyes, appalled by her husband’s violence.
The engine hisses and pok-pok-poks to life. The thrust of the propeller changes the rhythm of the hull through the waves to an unkindly wallow, a surge and spiral that sets Dutch moaning. His lips are caked in dried, gummy flakes, his eyes rheumy in a countenance of utter dejection and misery. Hannah sees his hand steal into the pocket of his coat, the cloth squirming as he fondles the shotgun shell of gold. Eyes closed, his lips move as if mouthing a litany of excuses for his fabrications.
For an hour Tara Keane jogs back and forth within sight of the entrance. The wind begins to tear at the waves. The surf across the narrow mouth seems at first to be the same, until Michael points and says, “It’s dropping,” waving at the plume of silt, which appears to be diminishing perceptibly as the tide approaches its lowest point. The seas rolling in from the west no longer break with such ardent ferocity across the small section of the mouth, but surge forward, crumbling into sloughs of foam as they go, rippling into the channel as bands of smaller waves that pulse helter-skelter into the bay. The wind bites at the back of Hannah’s neck and worms its cold fingers beneath her collar.
When Michael spots a seagull sitting placidly among the tumbling water of the channel, he watches carefully. The gull’s head jerks and bobs with the effort of paddling forward, but it is being pulled backward into the bay; the tide has turned, the current is flowing inland. If they are going, it is now or never.
He pushes the tiller hard over, and Tara comes round in a surge, idling slowly ahead as he aligns the bow with the narrow entrance, counting the seconds between the crests of the successive swells.
“It’s dead low tide,” he calls out. “I have no idea how much water we’ll have under our keel in the channel. We may strike bottom between surges, so keep a firm grip. If we broach in that surf, we may be swept over.”
Dutch crawls forward, intent on sheltering inside the cabin. Michael shoves him roughly back into his seat. Hans puts his hand on Hannah’s shoulder and says, “Go below. Get into a bunk and brace yourself.”
“No,” says Michael, “stay topside, Mrs. Nelson. If Tara is swept and rolled, better to be washed clear than trapped below.”
Hans looks as if he intends to argue, then nods for Hannah to keep her seat.
Michael instructs Hans and Harky to loosen the lines that hold the skiff in its chocks and place floats close at hand. Should Tara be capsized, these will serve as life supports on which some of them might survive the surf and be washed ashore. He orders all loose lines coiled and tied to avoid entangling unwilling swimmers.
Harky moves slowly and carefully, focusing with great deliberation on each task. Hans rushes about, securing lines and lashing loose objects on the rolling deck.
When Hannah looks at Michael, his long curly hair covers and uncovers his face in the wind, and a small smile tugs at his lips. His rage now evaporated and his grip firm upon the haft of the tiller, it is as if the murderous, reptilian spirit that had so vehemently expressed itself in his promise to drown Dutch has been swept away. In its place is character Hannah finds enticing but even more mysterious: That of a man exultant in danger. Wondering to herself at his fierce intensity, she takes a firmer grip on her seat.
As the vessel closes with the entrance, the color of the waves seems to darken and the spray becomes colder. Hannah gazes around at the absolute, shining beauty of the mountains, the sharp, clear light that heaves in gray and green patches on the water, the utter white of the surf that runs away as far as she can see in both directions, and she is struck by how strange, unpredictable, and wonderful life is, that she could find herself so far from home, on the edge of death, surrounded by such beauty. She has never felt so intensely alive, and she understands in a flash why Michael is smiling. Laughing out loud, she draws a worried look from Hans and shakes her head to reassure him she is not hysterical.
A series of higher and longer swells rolls beneath the cutter. First one, then another and another, until a final giant wave runs roaring ahead, blocking all sight of the beach with its broad, smooth back. Behind the mountain of water runs a sweeping hollow that seems to suck the boat backward. Michael throws a quick look astern; the coming swells are small, as if the rush of the passing giant has absorbed all energy from the train of waves. The engine stalls, pops, and roars as he leans on the throttle; Tara seems to shudder, vibrating as the spinning propeller chews its way through the water and surges ahead.
Gradually the cutter builds speed, climbing onto the back of a small swell and clinging there, riding forward in the grip of the tide. The stern slews, Michael strains at the tiller, yelling, “Hang on!” and there is a moment of weightlessness as Tara drops. There is a dreadful noise, like the sound of a large bone being crushed as the keel strikes bottom.
The shock drops Harky to his knees. Dutch shrieks and claws at the air. Hannah is thrown to the side, Hans stumbles, grabbing at the rail. Before she can right herself, a wall of water breaks over Hannah from astern, and she is submerged in a welter of foam so cold she gasps and breathes in, swallowing a mouthful of salty grit.
The world dissolves in an icy green roar. Pummeled and tumbled, she coughs, gagging at the saltwater in her lungs, and realizes she is once again in the air. As Tara rolls and swings, Hannah sees Harky grab on to Dutch, who was swept out of the cockpit by the wave, then feels a hand twisted into the collar of her coat drag her upright to a sitting position. Michael has saved her from being swept away.
Hans alone remains on hi
s feet, standing upright with both arms twined about the mast. Michael staggers to his feet, still gripping the tiller and Hannah’s coat, and lets out a wordless yell of triumph as the stern lifts into the next breaking wave. Tara heaves forward on the swell and begins moving, the inrushing tide shoving them urgently forward.
There is a choking pop like a gunshot followed by a sizzling sound from below. A gout of steam rises from the companionway. The onslaught of water has driven away the hatch and poured below onto the engine, which now revolts against the frigid flood by quitting. As the engine dies, the cutter swerves, drives, and twists in the current, and the lack of its roar inserts a quietness into the mad rumble of the water.
Michael shoves the tiller into Hannah’s hands with a single command—“Steer!”—and leaps forward, whipping a knife from his belt and slicing at the lines that bind the jib into a bundle. As the shore rushes toward them, Hannah jerks the helm hard over, and Tara swerves broadside to the current, which grabs the cutter and shoves it toward the boiling center of the channel.
Michael clears the jib halyard from its pin and throws it to Harky. “Pull! Haul for all you’re worth!” he shouts, and yells to Hans to lend a hand as he leaps back across the cabin to the cockpit.
The jib rattles aloft, cracking like gunfire, snapping in the wind. Before Harky and Hans finish raising the sail, Michael is snatching in the sheet hand over hand. Together they imprison the wind in the canvas, and Hannah feels the rudder come alive. The sail billows, lifts, and hauls; Tara follows, swinging from imminent collision with the shore.
With an almost casual grace, the ship emerges from the boiling inrush of current and is thrust smoothly into the placid shelter of the bay, where the emancipation from danger and noise is as complete and stunning as if a battling host had suddenly laid down its arms.
Tara glides into the calm. The surf murmurs at their escape.
EIGHT