Voyage of the Dreadnaught: Four Stella Madison Capers

by Lilly Maytree

  Stella sat down next to him, and rubbed a comforting hand across his broad shoulder. “I think he knows that. You're the one he responds most to. The one who doesn't patronize, and tells him the absolute truth. If you ask me, I'd say he feels the same way about you.”

  “Well, you can bet I'm going to take care of him for the rest of his life. Because what he did for me? I don't take that light. Lou and I talked about it, and we both feel the same—”

  There was a loud, resounding blast, a startled yelp from Lou Edna, and the baby started to cry.

  “Holy—crud!” He leaped to his feet. “She better either missed it—or killed it!”

  Stella didn't even try to keep up with him, as he took off down the hill. But if it had been anything serious, there would have been a lot more hollering and screaming by now. Instead, Mason's voice boomed over the water from the after-deck where he was working, “Mildred—what did I tell you about that thing!”

  “I thought I saw something in that tall grass up there, Mase! False alarm.”

  Stella breathed a sigh of relief as she picked her way down the incline at her own careful pace. It was a lot easier going up than down. All at once, she saw someone stick their head up out of the grassy meadow, a short distance away, and their eyes met, with the same identical expression. Who on earth? Before she realized it was the head and shoulders of a bear. Her first thought was that it had such intelligent eyes. Almost like a person's. What a shame it would be to kill such a creature!

  “Go! Go that way!” she whispered, pointing in the opposite direction before continuing on her own way down the hill. Oddly enough, the bear—almost as if it understood—moved off toward the trees just as quickly. It wasn't until later that she realized she hadn't felt even a flutter of fear.

  Another miracle!

  7

  The weather front hung in place, pouring a deluge of rain down on top of the castaways for an entire week. During that time they discovered more accurately how long it would take to get the boat operational, again, and then off the rocks. If no help came, it could take weeks. And though they had plenty of resources aboard for repairs—knowing the lodge would most likely be in terrible shape from having been vacant for so many years—they didn't know exactly what kind of place that was, or if it even still existed. For all they knew, it could be nothing more than a tumble-down shack sitting in the middle of some swamp.

  So, they had some decisions to make.

  The majority of which really belonged to Stuart. They had dragged the man from one end of the ship to the other, lowering him over the side in a “bo'sun's chair” to see the damage, or even bundled into his rain gear to get a look at the work area they had set up on shore.

  A make-shift bridge had been constructed, early on, by felling two trees, and then hammering short pieces of wood across the top for a boardwalk. Something that saved a considerable amount of time and effort in hauling things back and forth between the boat and the shore.

  On the occasions Stuart needed to come across, Cole simply hoisted him onto his back in a “Fireman's Carry,” and hustled him over the bridge to his supervisor chair. It was one of the deck chairs tucked under a tarp-covered area where Mason had set up the portable sawmill he brought along for making lumber.

  They had been making lumber ever since they got there.

  It soon became evident that the Captain's mind was as sharp as ever. He had simply lost the ability to speak, or move around easily. A situation that still occasionally threw him into a rage of frustration. One that almost always simmered down somewhat with a reassuring clap on the shoulder from the colonel, and the remark, “It's only temporary, sir—only temporary!”

  However, it was Stella, and her many years of having to deal with mentally deranged people, who had come up with the ingenious system of communication that worked best for him. She did it by keeping several washable markers at the table. The ones Millie used for the little white-board tacked up in the pantry to keep track of stores. A different color for each member of the family.

  The large wooden dining table was lacquered so smooth that it made the perfect surface for him to write or draw on, then erase with a damp cloth. And even though it often turned into a game of Charades, trying to figure out what he meant (his right hand was not usable, so he had to struggle with his left), it was at least immediately apparent by which color he picked up, who that particular message was for. That and a few gestures, such as a nod or shake of the head for yes, or no. Thus, he was reinstated as the top-ranking voting member of the party.

  So it was, that he sat at the head of the table (it was their first Sunday afternoon since the disaster), armed with his markers, and a cup of tea poured into one of the Senator's “sippy cups” (most liquid he drank tended to leak out the slack side of his mouth, otherwise), and—on this occasion—a notebook and pencil. Signifying he was going to attempt to communicate something important.

  The meeting was called to order.

  “What a blessing we've brought our own little world into the wilderness with us,” observed the colonel, as he finished off the last bit of Millie's Huckleberry Betty. “To be in a situation like this, and still have the sort of comforts we enjoy aboard the Dreadnaught. Light, warmth, superb food, and the coziest of homes...mmm! Must be a sermon in that, somewhere.”

  “Speaking of such,” said Mason, helping himself to another cup of coffee, “you being the most educated on that subject, I was thinking how it would do us all good, under the circumstances, to share some of what you been talking to Shortcake about. I'm ashamed every time I have to agree she's right, lately.”

  “It's just I have a lot of questions, Pop. I've been doing things wrong my whole life. And Mr. Colonel says—”

  The baby, who was standing on the upholstered bench between her and Cole, suddenly stopped playing with the Jello boxes Millie had given him, and leaned against her to jabber into her ear.

  “The colonel says,” she repeated as she automatically stacked the boxes into a tower for him, again, “the only way you can change your wrong thinking is by learning what's right. Then practicing that until God miraculously changes your mind.”

  “I believe that's a Lou Edna paraphrase for Romans 12:2,” the colonel interjected. “Where it states we can actually be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Once again, it's a decision we all, individually, have to make.”

  “All I know is it took a miracle to change me.” The toddler knocked his boxes down, again, and she reached under the table to pick two off the floor.

  “Like I always said,” replied Mason. “Didn't think you'd ever change, since I thought it couldn't be done. Anyway, a little Bible reading on Sundays wouldn't hurt any of us. Right, Stuart?”

  The Captain shrugged, but only one shoulder went up.

  “He doesn't mind,” interpreted Gerald.

  “Then it would be an honor,” the colonel agreed.

  “All right, then.” Mason took a folded piece of paper out of the pocket of his red and black flannel shirt. “Now for the items up for a vote.”

  Millie stopped wiping off the stove and came to sit down next to him. Stella linked her arm through the colonel's and sighed with contentment as she looked at the whole family seated around the table.

  “First up, we have to decide whether we should just stay right here for the winter. Point being we don't know when, or if, we're going to get help. If so, there's things we can do before the cold weather comes to make it more comfortable around here. Such as blocking the back end of the boat up, so we can get rid of this cock-eyed slant we been walking around on. Thing is, it would take some time away from repairs to do it.”

  “If we do get help,” said Gerald, “I volunteer to go with Stuart, so he can get some medical. Or, at least, some therapy on...” His hand involuntarily felt for his throat. “How to deal with all this.”

  The Captain tossed the green marker at him with his left hand, and bounced it off his head.

  “Oh, I say!
” Gerald replaced it in the pile.

  “We'll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Mason. “Any opinions up for discussion?”

  “Well,” Millie spoke first. “Considering our original plan—before E.J. let us off—was to disappear somewhere in Alaska, it's not like we didn't come prepared to do something like this. The only hard thing is being totally cut off from the rest of the world. Which is something we can't do anything about right now, anyway. So... I vote, yes.”

  “Me, too,” agreed Stella. “We came to experience Alaska, and this is about Alaska as it can get.”

  “It would definitely give me enough time to finish my novel,” the colonel put it. “Might be rather freeing, not writing to a deadline for once. I couldn't accept a contract on speculation, now, even if I wanted to. No Internet, not telephone, no post office. I vote, yes, as well.”

  “So, it's down to the DeForio family, then,” said Mason.

  “This is the best I ever had it,” Cole admitted.

  “I don't care what we do,” Lou Edna added. “If I didn't have this family, I'd have killed myself by now.”

  “For heaven sake, Lou,” Millie admonished. “Don't give me such a start this early in the discussion.”

  “Well, it's true.”

  “Stuart?” Mason looked over in time to see another one-shouldered shrug.

  “He doesn't mind,” said Gerald.

  “Passed. Point number two. It occurred to me we should establish a signal fire. Could be we got ourselves farther off than we thought, and ended up buried into some national wilderness area no one ever goes to much.”

  Stuart gave out with a bellow and reached for Mason's red marker. But instead of writing anything, he merely jabbed at the air over the top of the carpenter's head with it.

  “Oh, right.” Mason raised up in his seat enough to get the last chart they had been navigating by, that was rolled up and stashed behind the back of the bench. “Stu thinks we're somewhere around...” He slid the rubber band off and unrolled it for everyone to see. “Here.”

  He pointed to a cluster of little islands off the southwest tip of the Alexander Archipelago, that lay between the Pacific Ocean, the West Dixon Entrance, and the South Prince of Wales Wilderness. Ketchikan was at least sixty miles to the northeast, and the nearest other town was... they all stared silently at the vast amount of space... the closest seemed to be a logging camp, situated on the largest island. But that was even farther away than Ketchikan.

  “That being the case,” Mason went on, “a continuously burning fire might be the only thing that would catch anyone's attention this far out. At least by some passing plane that could report it to the Forest Service, maybe. So...” He looked up at the group, again. “We got to set fire watches throughout the day to man it. Two at a time is best, in case of...” He rubbed a hand over his three-day growth of salt-and-pepper whiskers. “Something happens.”

  “Lou and I will do the early watch,” said Cole. That way I can take the skiff out the inlet before the tide changes, and look for any boats out there.”

  “I hate early mornings,” complained Lou.

  “You just haven't seen enough of them,” Cole replied.

  “OK. Cole and Lou on the first one, then.” Mason wrote it down on the back of his list. “Who's next?”

  After they had each chosen their times for the fire watch, the third order of the day was the announcement of their need to conserve diesel.

  “But, why?” Millie asked. “We're not even going anywhere.”

  “Because the generator that makes your electricity runs off diesel,” he answered. “And—in case you haven't noticed—there wasn't a lick of sun, this week, to use Stuart's solar-powered system. Not to mention we're in the middle of a rainforest, here. So, it could be like this most of the time from now on.”

  “Oh.”

  “I imagine we're running close to empty, anyway,” the colonel pointed out, “since we haven't added any since we left California. Thought it better to have a bit of a money cushion for an emergency fund when we got here, as I recall.”

  “We've definitely got ourselves an emergency,” said Gerald. “But who'd have thought it would end up being gas?”

  It was at that point the Captain began growling and fussing, until he was fairly spitting with frustration, in an effort to find something in his notebook. “Mah—Bo!” he finally sputtered out. “Mah—Bo!”

  “Of course, it's your boat, my good man,” the colonel replied, though he was too far across the table to clap him on the shoulder. “It will always be your boat, sir!”

  “Mah—Bo—” He repeated louder and slower, reaching at the same time for his black marker.

  Cole jumped to his feet (black being his color) and moved behind him to look over his shoulder. One, two, three vertical lines, and... an upside down M. Or, maybe it was a W. Then came an A, and eventually a T.”

  “Wah...watt...” Cole ran a hand through his wavy hair and concentrated harder. “Maybe he wants us to conserve water.”

  At which point the older man pulled his Captain's hat off and smacked his First Mate over the head with it.

  “Cripes, Cap—give me another hint, then!”

  “We could be getting low on water.” Stella was thinking how much she enjoyed her evening shower. “Seems we haven't topped off since we were half-way through Canada.”

  “Not a problem,” said Mason, “since we have the waterfall so close by.”

  “Wah—Fah!” the Captain thundered, with a resounding crash of his fist against the table that shook all their dishes.

  “Waterfall!” Cole called it out as if it had been just before the buzzer in the game of Charades. “OK, waterfall. Geeze. What about it?”

  Stuart flipped through his notebook then, until he came to a very sketchy sketch that he shoved out into the center of the table for all of them to see.

  “Reminds me of one of A.J.'s first wife's preliminary modern art sketches,” Gerald mused, as they all stared at it. “The ones Lou got so much money for.”

  The Captain pointed at three parallel lines which looked similar to the three he had drawn on the table. He pulled Cole closer by the sleeve of his denim shirt, then thumped a spot on the paper that could have been a child's rendition of a sunshine face. The kind teacher's put on their papers for good work. “Mah—Bo,” he insisted. Then smacked him on the shoulder, thumped the paper, again, and raised his voice. “Mah—Bo!”

  They started building the “Mah-Bo,” as it came to be called, the very next day.

  8

  After a great deal more deliberation, the night before, Cole had suddenly recalled the Captain talking to him about alternative power systems, and showing him a folder that was fairly bursting with articles cut out of magazines, that he had been collecting for years. At the time, they had been discussing alternative fuels, and the different modifications one would have to make to engines in order to even use them. However, a light went on when he remembered that incident, and he went down below to rifle through one of the shelves above Stuart's workbench to get the folder.

  True to his guess, the Captain's face lit up, and it wasn't long before they found the blueprints for a homemade, electricity-producing, waterwheel. Something similar to what used to be seen on old mills. The way Stuart laughed (it was the first time since his episode) and kept repeating, “Mah-Bo!” and slapping Cole on the back half a dozen times, it was only natural that they should end up calling the contraption a Mah-Bo.

  Once they knew what they were doing, everybody chipped in to help, and it was only a little over a week before the huge wheel was built, and the thing was operational. Mason had brought enough tools along to build a city. Of course, there were a few modifications that had to be made to run the wiring in and out of nearby trees, and over the fifty-foot span of water. But they now had their own power station that could produce all the electricity they would ever need. Including outside lights along the handrails of the bridge, that made it look like
the entrance to a ride at Disneyland.

  It was something that put even more of a cushion between them and the wild outside that surrounded them. In fact, very little had changed about their basic lifestyle since they had left Villa Nofre, the old Hollywood director's mansion in the beautiful Santa Ynez Mountains, back in California. The little group was actually discovering more opportunities in the unexpected situation, rather than setbacks.

  Because of the increasing rain, any work area was fitted with a canopy of brown tarps. Soon, the side of the boat where damaged planks were being replaced, the after-deck, and the sawmill were crowned with them. Combined with the rope handrails that had been added to the boardwalk bridge (ever since Gerald had fallen halfway in when a foot slipped), the place was beginning to look like a movie set instead of a work area. Especially with the Dreadnaught, grounded on top of the rocks, like a shipwrecked pirate's vessel, rather than than the family's rambling home. Shipboard duties had long since given way to building improvements, and even the bell that had called all hands on deck, rang out primarily only at mealtimes.

  They had even put together a three-sided wooden shelter (with a tarp on top) that faced their huge signal fire. Where those on fire watch could sit comfortably in deck chairs and stay dry. Stella found it amazing how a fire could be kept going in the rain. But as long as the wood was dry and it was burning hot enough, they could at least keep smoke going up in all but the heaviest downpours. Which was the important thing. Because once they got into the latter part of August, there seemed to be more rainy days than sunny ones.

  Cole had ventured out a few times in the skiff, but so far he had never seen a single fishing boat. Too many small islands and rock outcroppings at the end of the cape that made working anywhere close to the area hazardous. But he still continued to try. He did come back with a beautiful forty-five pound halibut, the last time, though. Which, after a meal fit for royalty, Millie had packed the rest into the freezer, to be doled out through the coming weeks. It was after this feast that Stella and the colonel found themselves seated in the “fire hut” for the final watch of the day, that would last until sunset. An event that took place around eight-thirty, these days.