Shipwreck

by Gordon Korman

  The waves grew, slowly but steadily. At first, they weren’t any bigger than the seas that had turned the Phoenix into a roller coaster ride a day before. But Luke could see they were more dangerous. Yesterday the swells had been like mountains, forcing the schooner to climb and descend, climb and descend from peak to peak. These were more like a series of oncoming cliffs, vertical walls of water. A ship can’t climb a cliff. Instead, wave after wave broke over the bow, sending a constant knee-deep flood surging across the deck.

  Ian’s feet were swept out from under him — and down he went. Luke caught him and yanked him upright.

  Luke wasn’t sure whether or not to be alarmed. The storm was howling worse every minute, but the captain and mate were working calmly and efficiently in the battering wind and rain.

  “This is bad, right?” he shouted to Mr. Radford. “Shouldn’t we go below?”

  “Don’t panic, Archie!” ordered the mate. “Let’s batten everything down first.”

  “No!” J.J. protested “We don’t have to get blown around like this!”

  Radford shot him a fierce look. “You gonna ask your famous daddy to pay off the storm and make it go away?”

  “We can outrun it!” J.J. argued. “We’ve got more wind than we know what to do with! Just put up the sails and fly!”

  Radford shook his head in disgust and rushed away.

  J.J. threw up his arms. “What’d I say?”

  He got a faceful of spray for his answer.

  Great patches of foam blew in dense streaks. At one point, Luke looked over the gunwale and saw nothing but white water — not a speck of blue or green. Every minute or so, the Phoenix was lifted bodily and then flung contemptuously aside by a thirty-foot wave.

  The deck lurched violently. Unlike yesterday’s up and down, the tumbling of the sea was heavy and shocklike. Even athletic Charla couldn’t keep her balance. She sat down on the cabin top and tried to slide along on her behind. Will crawled across the deck on all fours, unable to trust his own feet. A rush of sea washed over him, leaving him flopping and sputtering.

  Lyssa was clamped onto the ratlines, her face green. “I’m gonna lose it!” she warned.

  “That’s so typical!” howled her brother, spitting salt water. “All day long you’re Sinbad the Sailor, and now you can’t hang on to your lunch!”

  Radford turned to the cockpit. “We’re secure, Skipper!”

  Harnessed to the wheel stand, Captain Cascadden was barely visible through the rain, foam, and spray. Out of the chaos came his order. “All hands below!”

  “You don’t have to ask me twice!” exclaimed Will, sprint-crawling for the companionway to the main cabin.

  Lyssa was hot on his heels, followed by Charla, high-stepping to keep her balance. Next came Luke, dragging Ian by the arm. At the last second, a huge wave broke over the bow, jolting the stern upward and pitching the two boys down the companionway.

  Radford hooted with laughter. “You guys should join the circus — the flying Archie brothers!” His brow clouded as he did a head count. “Where’s Richie Rich?”

  Luke froze as J.J.’s words came back to him: Just put up the sails and fly! “That maniac,” he muttered, clamboring up the companionway again.

  “Hey!” barked the mate. “Get back here, Archie!”

  At that moment, J.J. was clamped around the wrapped mainsail, hanging on with one hand and untying lines with the other.

  When the furled sail was free, he stood up. Instantly, he was thrown to the deck. His father had once gotten him a bit part in a movie — an earthquake scene. There had been thirty special effects guys underneath them, pitching the floor every which way. It was nothing compared with the Phoenix right now! They had to get out of here! They could beat this storm no matter what Radford said! All they needed was some sail….

  Crouching low, he dashed astern through the rain and spray, steadying himself with an arm on the cabin top. He peered around the corner and set his eyes on the instrument panel behind the wheel. Six, maybe seven feet away. He’d be seen, but by then it would be too late — if he could keep from falling flat on his face!

  Counting silently — one, two, three! — he launched himself past the captain and reached for the mechanism that raised the mainsail.

  Luke hit him at hip height, diving like a linebacker. The two of them fell hard to the slick deck.

  “What the — ?” The captain spun around to face them. “What are you doing here, crewmen? Get yourselves below!”

  “You lunatic!” Luke rasped at J.J. “You’ll get us all killed!”

  “I know what I’m doing!” J.J. insisted frantically. He lunged for the panel, but Luke grabbed him once more.

  “Archie!” Radford struggled onto the scene. The beam of his flashlight captured Luke and J.J. locked in a wrestling match.

  “Break it up!” ordered Cascadden. He unhooked his safety harness and stepped between the two combatants, separating them with a heave of his powerful arms.

  The schooner lurched suddenly, and J.J. was tossed off his feet. The deck wash had him, was about to sweep him away. In a single motion, Captain Cascadden clamped his right hand onto J.J.’s wrist and reached back with the left, groping for something, anything, to hold on to. His fingers closed on the side of the instrument panel and gripped hard. His palm pressed against a small button.

  The roar of the waves covered the mechanical clunk as the mainsail began to rise automatically.

  Radford ran over, and he and the captain set J.J. back up on his feet.

  “Captain!” Luke spotted the white canvas flapping wildly as it rose from its boom. “The sail!”

  Captain and mate turned just as the fifty-knot wind filled the half-open mainsail with an overpowering force.

  It was as if the whole world suddenly tilted ninety degrees. The sixty-foot boat was blown all the way over on its side, its masts barely out of the water. Radford grabbed the mainsheet, which now extended over his head like monkey bars. The captain hung on to J.J. and the instrument panel.

  The next thing Luke knew, he was moving, falling parallel to the deck. Only the gunwale — eighteen inches of wood — stood between him and a violent ocean.

  Wham! He bounced off like a Ping-Pong ball, snatching wildly for the lifeline. He felt the wire in his hands and held on, his feet dragging in the water.

  “Archie!” Radford called. “Lock your harness on the lifeline!”

  “I can’t!” he tried to answer, but a torrent of sea and spray found his throat. He came up choking.

  Waves crashed over the twin masts. The automatic halyard winch ground to a halt.

  The captain secured J.J.’s safety belt around the wheel stand. Then he hit the button to lower the mainsail.

  Nothing happened.

  “No power to the winch!” howled Radford. “I’ll have to lower it manually!”

  Like Tarzan moving from vine to vine, the mate grabbed the halyard and swung over. He hung there, trying to use his full weight to pull the sail down. “Too much blow, skipper!” he called. “I can’t budge it!”

  “Take the helm, crewman!” the captain ordered J.J. He heaved himself up on the side of the cabin top to make his way over to the mate.

  Clinging to the wire at the starboard gunwale, Luke was the first to see the great wave. It was enormous — a forty-footer — curling over the high side of the Phoenix like a giant hand about to crush the small ship.

  He shouted, “Captain — !”

  And then the monster broke. To Luke it seemed like Niagara Falls raging down the upturned deck toward him.

  Crack!

  The mainmast snapped like a toothpick under the weight of the thundering sea. An avalanche of rope and canvas pelted down. As if in slow motion, the broken peak of the mast toppled over, striking Captain Cascadden across the shoulders.

  Fierce lightning backlit a terrifying scene. Luke watched in horror as the captain was pitched from the deck into the foaming ocean.

  “Man overbo
ard!” he tried to shout.

  But the force of the wave drove the gunwale of the Phoenix — and Luke with it — deep beneath the rampaging sea.

  Underwater.

  It was a strangely quiet and peaceful place. Luke was in a trance, experiencing a few seconds in a slow, almost lazy time warp of crystal-clear thought. He was going to drown — he was sure of that. The Phoenix was sinking, taking everybody with it. Even if he could make it back to the surface, then what? A lone swimmer — even one with a life jacket — had no chance against thirty-foot waves.

  It was almost funny. Luke Haggerty had avoided Williston. Instead he had chosen — a death sentence.

  The gunwale sprang back out of the sea as the Phoenix righted herself with heart-stopping suddenness. Luke lost his grip on the lifeline and sailed through the rain and spray. Flying again …

  The pitching deck swung up to meet him. There was a painful thud, and he saw stars. He looked around. He was right in front of the cockpit. There, a terrified J.J. clung to the wheel, wrapped in rigging and torn canvas.

  “The captain — !” Luke gasped, choking and spitting.

  J.J. was sobbing out of control. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! — ”

  “Did you find the captain?!”

  J.J. shook his head. “He told me to hang on to the wheel!”

  “You picked a heck of a time to start following orders!”

  Mr. Radford waited for a break in the wave action to roll like a landing parachutist to the starboard deck. He clamped his harness onto a bulwark and began hurling life preservers into the water.

  “Skipper! Skipper!” He panned the waves with his flashlight.

  “The mast hit him!” Luke shouted, tethering his belt to the base of the instrument panel. “He could be unconscious!”

  The mate leaped for the cockpit, shoving J.J. aside with a football straight-arm that left the boy swinging like a pendulum in his harness. Radford grabbed the throttle and thrust it forward. “We’re circling back!”

  With a cough and a sputter, the engine died. Cursing, the mate tried to restart it. It turned over but wouldn’t catch. Then it stopped turning over. “Check the engine room, Archie!”

  “We can’t unhook our belts!” Luke protested.

  “Right below you!”

  Luke knelt down and threw open the hatch. There was the engine, half submerged in three feet of water. He turned to the mate, but his mouth couldn’t form words. Fear had frozen his jaw.

  “Well?” Radford prompted angrily.

  J.J. supplied the answer in the form of a question. “If we’re flooded here, does that mean the whole boat’s flooded?”

  Charla’s upper body emerged from the main cabin. “We’ve got water down here!” she cried.

  “How much?” called the mate.

  “A couple of feet at least!”

  “Son of a — ” The mate switched on the electric bilge pump. It was as dead as the engine.

  “Get on the manual pumps!” he roared.

  “What about the captain?” Luke insisted.

  “We’re looking for him!”

  J.J. pointed frantically astern. “But he’s back there somewhere!”

  “We can’t get back there without engine power!” Radford snarled. “He has to find us! Get all hands on deck to man the pumps!”

  Luke saw Captain Cascadden in every wave, heard a call for help in every gust of wind. His eyes searched the backwash of each breaker that rocked the deck, half-expecting the ocean to return the old sailor to his ship.

  J.J. never stopped yelling, “Captain! Captain!” He got no answer.

  The feeling of hope on the schooner was so strong that Luke could almost reach out and touch it, could taste it in the salt spray. But it was only a feeling, trumped by the reality: pumping — hard work, simple, repeating, exhausting. No one dared unhook the safety harness for fear of being pitched overboard as the Phoenix was brutalized by the killer storm.

  It was hours and it felt like years before the wind began to subside. The rain kept coming, but it weakened — a soaking shower rather than a driving attack. The terrible lightning ceased. Finally, the waves rounded off.

  When Mr. Radford ordered them all to bed, nobody asked about the captain.

  They already knew.

  Luke awoke with blond hair in his face. He tried to sit up and couldn’t budge an inch.

  “Man overboard … man overboard …” murmured a voice beside him, very close.

  J.J.

  Luke started to complain and then remembered. The captain …

  He shut his eyes tightly and shook his head, but the awful image wouldn’t go away — the six-foot-five Cascadden, disappearing into the foam.

  When Radford had finally ordered them to bed, the lower bunks were underwater. They were sharing the uppers, packed like sardines, two to a berth, strapped in with lee canvases.

  Luke leaned over to unfasten the hook, elbowing J.J. awake in the process.

  “I had a nightmare,” J.J. mumbled.

  “No, you didn’t,” Luke told him soberly.

  Will peered out from the bunk he shared with Ian. “Is it just me, or is the water getting higher?”

  J.J. jumped down with a splash. “Feel that? Calm. And look.” He pointed outside. “Sun’s back.”

  The four sloshed out of bed and climbed up the companionway. On deck, crusted sea salt crunched under their feet. In the light of day, the Phoenix was a floating plate of spaghetti — rope and rigging lay tangled everywhere. The mainmast looked like giant hands had snapped it in two. Equipment, most of it smashed, was deposited in clumps all over the deck. The radio antenna was gone, and the bowsprit was cracked and off-center. The ship’s dinghy, which was usually stowed upside down in the rigging, was now pointed straight up, as if it were a rocket about to be launched at the moon.

  Ian summed up everybody’s feelings when he said, “Wow.”

  Lyssa and Charla worked one of the pumps, trying to clear the water out of the engine room. Mr. Radford manned the other, which was draining the main cabin and galley.

  All activity ceased when they saw the boys on deck.

  J.J. spoke first. “Shouldn’t we still try looking for the captain?”

  Radford stood up. If looks could kill, J.J. would have been fried to a crisp. “To look for the captain, you don’t use a boat; you use a submarine.”

  “Hey!” Luke said angrily. “You’re talking about a real guy who died. It’s not a joke.”

  “No, it’s not,” the mate agreed unpleasantly. “Someday I want to sit down with you and your friend Richie Rich and find out why you needed to play WWF in a full gale. You damn near got us all killed. And you did get one of us killed.”

  Dan Rapaport’s words at the Guam airport echoed in J.J.’s ears: You’re going to kill somebody one of these days….

  “Well, don’t blame me!” Luke exclaimed hotly. “I was trying to keep this maniac from raising the sails just to show you he knew how!”

  “Not true,” said J.J. in a hollow tone. “I thought I could help — ”

  “Next time,” snarled Radford, “help somebody else.”

  Lyssa stepped forward. “Let’s forget about who did what and concentrate on how we’re going to get out of this.”

  Calmly, the mate went over their situation. According to the GPS, they were four hundred eighty miles east-northeast of Guam. Nearest landfall: Guam. No SOS had been sent, and the radio was out. Even if the radio could be fixed, the call couldn’t travel much more than fifteen or twenty miles without an antenna. Their only chance of being spotted depended on the schooner’s Emergency Position Indicating Radio-beacon — EPIRB. This was unlikely to reach other ships but might be detected by passing airplanes.

  “How many air routes fly over this part of the Pacific?” asked Luke.

  “None,” Radford replied.

  The engine was dead and full of seawater, which pretty much guaranteed that it would never work again. The mainsail was gon
e, and the staysail and jibs couldn’t be used because of the damage to the bowsprit. That left just the foresail. It was fine — if they could ever get past the thousands of pounds of tangled ropes and fallen rigging.

  The drinking-water tanks were okay. But there was no electricity and no refrigeration. The food stores and medical supplies were at least partly damaged by salt water.

  Worst of all, the Phoenix wasn’t expected in for three weeks. That meant no one was looking for them.

  “Are we going to die?” asked Will in a small voice.

  “I won’t lie to you,” said Radford. “We’re in big, big trouble. To get through this we’re going to have to work twenty-hour days, ration our supplies, and — ” he glared at Luke and J.J. “ — no more crazy stunts! We’ve lost a man already, and we’re all going to have to live with that — if we live.”

  * * *

  According to the mate, there were three main jobs that needed to be done to ensure their survival.

  1. Pumping. “Pump like your life depends on it … because it does.”

  2. Clearing the foresail. “If we go anywhere, that’s how we’ll get there.”

  3. Lightening the ship. “If we can’t eat it, wear it, or sail it, we pitch it.”

  That included luggage, books, all pots, pans, and dishes except the bare minimum, and the waterlogged mattresses off the lower bunks. The drawers from the built-in dressers went over the side next, along with any cartons of spoiled food from the galley.

  “Are you sure we should be doing this?” Charla asked nervously. She watched a load of instant mashed potatoes swell up like a swamp creature before sinking out of sight. “It can’t be good for the environment to just throw garbage in the ocean.”

  “Are you kidding?” Lyssa managed to manufacture a smile as she pumped. “These fish never had it so good. They’re probably going to ask us for gravy.”

  Mr. Radford clung to the mainmast, chopping at the splintered wood with an ax. Will and Ian worked at the tangle of rigging with hacksaws. It took until noon, but all hands paused to watch the top of the mast and hundreds of pounds of ropes and shredded canvas slide over the side and disappear under the waves. It brought up a halfhearted cheer. Even Mr. Radford added a grunt of approval.