Stormy Destination
Volume 3 of the Book Series
Born in the Sea
By Nick Niels Sanders
Published by Exotica Indica
Publication as of April 2021
Work
Maria awoke when George Fuller pounded on the door and heard James leaving the bed. After many years of having him get out of bed at night for the telephone or to go to the hospital to take care of someone in need, she knew that it was best for her to seem to sleep through the whole thing. James left quietly, and Maria went right back to sleep.
James was waking her up. She was needed right away to help him. Her bathrobe was near at hand and would be plenty of clothing in the warm night. She made her way to the Fullers’ cabin, received instructions, and sat with Joan Fuller while George was setting out with Jim and Ron to see how to get help. Joan was clearly dying, but was still alert. Maria stroked her and held her hand, doing what she could to provide comfort for someone whose paralysis was going to cause her breathing to fail before her mind ceased to work. It was not comfortable work to do, but it was better than running around trying to make radios work, or drive ships at night, or going from cabin to cabin trying to find out who was alive and who was dead. Most of the time, Maria was exceedingly proud of her doctor-husband, but occasionally she wished, for his sake, that he could have a different role in life, one that carried fewer burdens. Not that he didn’t bear the burdens well, but going door to door up and down the hall trying to figure out who was alive and who was dead was not a job she envied anyone.
Time passed and gradually, Joan faded away. It took Maria some time to be sure that she was no longer breathing. Then she went in search of James. Finding him in the cabin 5, where the Taylors were both quite ill, she received instructions to get Michelle from her cabin and come back to help with the Taylors. She did. She and Michelle worked well together, even though there was little they could do. John was very weak, lying on the bed, looking as if he was at about the stage Joan Fuller had been when Maria had arrived there. Melodie Taylor was not nearly so sick yet, but it was hard to tell what might come. Michelle helped Melodie to and from the bathroom, trips which became gradually less frequent, until she, too, was lying exhausted on the bed.
The ship gave a lurch and Maria grabbed the wooden edge of the bed. Michelle was also holding on, and managing to block Melodie from moving as her weak hands tried to find some way to stabilize herself. John was, by this time, unconsciousness, a limp presence continuing to move even as the ship rapidly slowed. Maria grabbed for him to stop his motion, but she was not strong enough to make any significant difference, as he careened through her grasp and into the wall in the corner of the room. There was more lurching and a loud metallic screaming. Then silence.
James was there, checking to be sure she was OK. She and Michelle were fine. Michelle seemed to have kept Melodie safe. James checked John, who appeared to have avoided death by botulism by dying of a broken neck. James gave words of encouragement and left the cabin, to return a moment later with Ron Haskell in tow. The ship was aground and taking water – it would sink soon and there was much to do.
James put Maria in charge of the evacuation. They put Valerie in charge of the nursing chores. There were still some sick people alive – the Kirkpatricks, Jim Hawthorne, Melodie and perhaps Marilyn Jones; and George Fuller and Roger Applebee would need some help too. Maria was to coordinate all of the efforts; she had Michelle to help her, and the men – Ron, Mark, Ralph and Paul.
The first task was to get the lifeboats launched. Then Valerie and her nursing crew would get the sick and disabled to land. There were enough lifeboats that the rest of them could stay on board to scavenge for the things they would need for survival – water, shelter, food, and maybe some other stuff if they were lucky.
Maria sent Mark and Ralph to launch as many life rafts as they could, keeping them tied loosely to the ship. She reinforced Valerie’s role as being in charge of caring for the ill, including moving victims out to the lifeboats and to land as quickly as possible. Ron Haskell and Paul got to work on helping Jim Hawthorne and Roger Applebee out to the lifeboats, finding one of the motorized ones available to them right outside of the gangway. It took a good bit of doing to get the Kirkpatricks moved, but Maria was not involved or concerned with that. She was working with Michelle to locate and mobilize as much water and food as she could.
She had noticed large coolers on the island the previous evening for storing cool drinks for the passengers. She found four such coolers, and she and Michelle filled the bottoms with frozen food and the top half of each with refrigerator food and fresh produce.
Mark and Ralph finished launching the life rafts. Two of the ones with outboard motors had proved not to be seaworthy, but the other two were, and Paul and Ron were piloting them to shore with the nursing crew and the five invalids on board. Six life rafts had been available in the canisters, and they had launched all six of them. They started carting the stuff that Maria and Michelle were loading over to the life rafts and putting it into them.
There were other boxes available. She put Michelle to work putting canned goods into cardboard boxes. She found a several plastic containers and traded them to Michelle for cardboard boxes that she loaded with dishes, cups, plastic tumblers, flatware and cooking utensils. She took the liner (and the garbage it contained) out of a garbage can and refilled it with pots and pans, a few dishcloths and some napkins, then looked around for what else might be usable. She tossed a large box of matches in with the pots and pans.
Michelle came to tell her the cans were all in boxes. She had found soft drinks, wine and liquor, should they bring that? Maria thought not, but wondered again about drinking water. A brief search located a stash of 10 4-liter containers of drinking water. Mark and Ralph lost no time in loading these up.
They had filled two of the life rafts with provisions. One of the motorized life rafts was back, bringing Ron and Paul back with it. With four working, they rapidly caught up to Maria and Michelle. Mark and Ralph went scavenging for things that might do for shelter. They found several large tarpaulins and some small ones, which they loaded into another of the life rafts. In a locker that had life vests in it, they found snorkeling equipment, including several spears. They began untying ropes everywhere they found them.
Ron and Paul loaded the last of the water. Ron continued to ferry boxes from the galley. Paul climbed into the motorized life raft and maneuvered it from one to another of the ones loaded with supplies, tying them bow to stern to make them into a series of cars following behind the motorized engine.
The ship lurched heavily and tipped farther back. The generator noise ceased and the lights flickered. The five workers grabbed what was at hand and moved to join Paul. His scheme worked almost perfectly. The last of the “freight cars” was just reaching the reef when they heard a loud screeching sound and watched the prow of the ship disappear into the water. A substantial wave of water reached the outer edge of the reef, bouncing the last “freight car” against sharp coral. In an instant, it was gone, its cargo gone with it. Much reduced wavelets rippled across the reef, disturbing the glassy surface of the otherwise-calm lagoon.
They reached land and Maria instructed them to bring all the provisions high onto the beach for safety. She went over to the nursing area to see how James was.
She found Valerie. “Hi Valerie. Where is James?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s with Marcella and Julia, who’re taking care of the Kirkpatricks.”
“Thanks.”
“You bet.”
Maria found Marcella and Julia tending the Kirkpatricks, who were still not feeling at all well, but were not progress
ing nearly as rapidly as Joan Fuller had.
“Hey, Julia. Have you seen James?”
“No, not since on the ship. I was watching over Melodie Taylor. He came to relieve me. Said I should go with the others. So here I am. Why, isn’t he with you?”
“No.”
Maria felt a sudden hollowness, her head was spinning, her breath hardly moved. Where was James? Apparently, he had not come over with the least sick of the still living passengers; it would only make sense that he had stayed on board with the sickest. And he did not come over with the supplies. Did that mean he was still on the ship? At the bottom of the ocean? The roaring in her ears told her it was time to sit down, and she did.
“Help!” A loud cry came from across the lagoon. It was James! Maria rose and rushed to the shore. Paul was pushing one of the two motored rafts into the water. Maria jumped in and they rode out to the reef together, Maria shining a flashlight as Paul maneuvered the raft. Maria spotted a single figure standing on the reef and they motored slowly in that direction.
James Frederick was standing in knee-deep water, shivering. Maria was afraid he would not move. Dropping the flashlight, she took the bow line, stepping into the water and taking the several steps to where James was standing like a shivering statue. Maria untied his wet dressing gown and eased it off of his shoulders, then removed her own dry bathrobe and got him into it. His shivering got better almost immediately. She helped him into the raft, and followed, clutching his dressing gown awkwardly to the front of her torso to cover her nakedness. James sat, silent, on one of the wooden plank seats in the raft, while Paul revved the motor and they started moving back toward the beach. Maria sat beside her husband, and embraced him, feeling his head on her shoulder, his muscles relaxing in the warmth of the dry terry cloth.
When they reached the beach, she helped James out of the raft, then reached back into it for the dressing gown and the flashlight. Modesty seemed of little value at this moment. “Paul, would you bring us a couple blankets, just down the beach that way?”
“Sure”
She was able to get James to take about 20 slow steps before he wouldn’t move any farther. Paul came with blankets and a couple tent poles. He took the dressing gown from Maria and hung it on one of the tent poles.
“Don’t worry; we’ll set up the camp for you. You take care of Doc.”
She spread out a blanket and got him lying down. The second blanket was really not necessary, but she pulled it over them anyway. James lay on his side, nestled his head on her shoulder and was asleep. It did not take her long to join him.
23
September 23
Where are we?
Maria awoke to find light around her and a tarp stretched over the patch of sand on which she and James lay. James was still asleep somehow having shrugged off her bathrobe during the night, leaving it lying on the sand nearby. James’ dressing gown was still hanging on a tent post, almost dry. Looking around, seeing no one watching, Maria crawled naked from between the blankets, out from under the tarp, picked up her bathrobe, shook the sand out of it and put it on.
She took a more careful look around. Occupying the higher portion of the beach and extending into a grove of palms was a small community of makeshift shelters, most of which had been erected since she and James had lain down to sleep. There was a large tent lashed between some palm trees with most of the provisions under it. Here and there were some shelters like the one she had awoken in – a tarp staked to the sand on the eastern edge and held up by tent posts or sticks or tied to palm trees on the western edge. Five life rafts were among the shelters, upside down, their western edges lashed to oars that were implanted in the sand, making makeshift lean-tos.
Near the provision tent Maria saw Paul tending a fire. As she walked toward him, the aromas of coffee and bacon filled her nose with effects on her stomach. Maria was surprised to discover how hungry she was. She accepted a cup of coffee and started to eat bacon. Paul offered her a seat on a packing crate.
“How’s Doc doing?”
“Sleeping.”
“He deserves it, poor guy.”
“I’ve never seen him as exhausted as he was out on the reef last night.”
“I can’t imagine what it must have been like for him.”
“In what way?”
“All those people. Dying. I could tell how much he cared. Nothing to do.”
“Yes. Botulin antitoxin would’ve helped most of them. It’s too bad we were so far away from help.”
“I can imagine. It must be hard to lose one patient. But five or six or seven in a matter of an hour or so?”
“I don’t think he’s ever been through something like this before.”
“Well. The two of you kept us all going last night.”
“Did we?”
“Oh, yes. Without your calm, we’d have fallen apart. You and Doc. Cool as a cucumber he was, announcing plans and priorities. Then you started giving orders. For the rest of us it was easy. Obey. Don’t think, just do. And we did.”
“Yes, and a pretty good job of it too. Look at all that you did here!”
“We put up a couple tents.”
“Or ten! Have you slept?”
“No, not yet. Everyone else is sleeping. You’re the first to wake up.”
“Am I really….”
“Yes. I figured to stay awake until someone else was up. Now it’s my time to turn in.”
“Paul. Thank you. You’ve worked very hard on all this.”
“Thank you for showing us the way.” He put down his cup and walked away to a life raft lean-to and disappeared into it.
Maria sat for a time, staring at the ocean, drinking coffee and eating bacon. She was looking south, across the glassy water of what she called a lagoon to where wavelets were breaking on the barely submerged coral. The water beyond was too smooth to be open ocean, but there was no other land in sight. She had almost a 180 degree view and all she could see was absolutely flat water bordered by a thin rim of very small foaming waves and then only slightly choppy water as far as her eye could see. Gradually, as the coffee and bacon settled in her stomach, she finished waking up and began to move. She turned and looked in the other direction.
Behind her was the rest of the supply tent she had been standing in. There were coconut palms up the beach, obscuring the view of what was beyond them. Crunching bacon carried in her right hand, sipping coffee carried in her left hand, she walked around the supply tent, looking in all directions. To the east, the water continued to be calm outside of the coral ring, but the ring was closer to the island. As she continued to rotate, the coral seemed to come all the way in to shore, and the waves were larger coming from the north and east. She thought her view of the ocean was complete except where the island rose and the palm trees blocked her view. What she saw was mostly sand and palm trees and ocean.
The sleeping lean-tos were all arrayed out to the west of the supply tent, so what pointed toward her was the edge of the lean-to that touched the ground. Other than the one she had emerged from, closest to the water, and the one Paul had disappeared into, she had no idea who was in which one. But just now, that really didn’t matter.
She began to take stock of what they had rescued from the ship before it sank. There were several ice chests with blocks of frozen food in them, helping to keep meat, milk and eggs cool. She wondered how long those supplies would last. There was bread. The butter was in plastic tubs weighing about a kilo each – and thank goodness for the tubs because the butter would be melted before noon. There were a lot of vegetables – but they too were perishable. Then there were canned and dried goods. She started sorting the cans. Well, at least there were plenty of them, and they wouldn’t go bad in a day or two. There were many bags of dried beans and peas, flour, sugar and a lot of spices. She found some twine and began hanging bags of dried goods from the beams of the tent.
“Good morning,” came the voice behind her, star
tling her. She turned. It was Julia Winters. She was in pajamas, arms wrapped tightly around her as if she were cold – as warm as it was; Maria doubted that she really was cold.
Maria poured her a cup of coffee; she accepted it.
“Bacon?”
“No, thanks. Just coffee right now.”
“Sleep well?”
“No. Nightmares of sinking ships.”
“Oh my. I’m sorry.”
“Valerie sent me to sleep almost as soon as there was a lean-to available. She said someone would need to be awake in the morning to look after the sick folks.”
“Oh. Where did you put them?”
“In the far group of shelters, over there.” She pointed vaguely westward.
“Are you cold?”
“No, I just feel a mess.”
“Oh. Aren’t we all?”
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