Denver Is Missing

by D. F. Jones

  The way he put it, even I calmed down. He turned to Bette. “You go and powder your nose, my dear. Secure your own belongings and then come back here. Karen, you work systematically through the boat, securing everything that’s loose, and see the gas is turned off at the cylinder.” He gave her a gentle slap on her rump. “Off you go. Mitch, will you give her a hand, please?”

  I was glad of a job to do, especially as I could keep in earshot of the radio. Karen and I worked away. It was amazing the amount of stuff we had to stow. As we left the galley she said, “I hope that’s okay. Bill hates carelessness.” For all my fear, I felt a bit sour. “If all we get out of this is a few broken plates, I won’t grumble!”

  “He will! He can be a shocking old woman about some things.” She looked at me gravely with those large, dark eyes. “Don’t worry, Mitch—Bill knows what he’s doing. Truly, I’m more scared about forgetting to stow something than the tidal wave!”

  “Frightened he might beat you?” I said sarcastically.

  She took it seriously. “No, not really—but he’s the sort of man that might. It’s part of his charm, I guess.”

  I’ll never understand women.

  We finished down below and went on deck. There were thirty minutes left. The day looked no different, a beautiful morning…. Bette was steering, Bill was in the bows lashing down the anchor; he came aft, rigging a lifeline, then went below and emerged minutes later with an armful of canvas, rope, and leather straps.

  “Harness.” he explained. “Karen, you’ll have to restow that gear you’ve put in the head. We may ship a bit of water, and we’ll never work the pump with all that stuff in the way.” He turned his attention to me. “Mitch, nip up forrard and keep a lookout to the north northwest, just in case the damned thing’s early.”

  In passing I glanced at Bette. Her eyes were bright; she was enjoying it!

  A little later Visick visited me at my lookout post. “Look, Mitch, I know this is a bit rough on you, but I want you down in the cabin with Karen when it comes. We can’t all be up top, I’ve only harness for two, and I’d like Bette in the other set. You understand?”

  Sure I did! Worse still, I knew it was the right decision. “Yeah, okay.”

  “Good man! You can take better care of Karen, and she may need it. Her idea of yachting is loafing on a sundeck with a long drink while someone else handles about two thousand horsepower!” He grinned at the idea.

  It sounded pretty good to me, too.

  “One other thing,” he continued. “We’ll have the dinghy in the cabin, it might get washed overboard up here. If I tell you to get it out, for Christ’s sake don’t inflate it in the cabin!” He turned to go aft, grinned. “Most of this is just seamanlike precaution—we’re much safer out here than in the yacht harbor. God! They must be in a flat spin back there!”

  They were not the only ones. Desperately, I racked my brains, trying to recall what I knew of seismic sea waves. About all I recovered was the name in general use, “tsunami.” But, as I recalled, tsunami at sea were seldom a hazard. They might be ten or twenty feet high, but the rise was usually spread over miles of water. It was only when they reached shallow water or hit the shore that the trouble started. This must be very different….

  The minutes dragged by, and I tried not to look at my watch. The bright day, the sparkling water mocked us; there was a slight swell from the west, and the breeze was dying. We had bare steerage way. Bill, harness on, was checking the engine.

  My eyes ached with the glare. For the fiftieth time I scanned the sea, wishing we were not quite so alone. Ten-fifty. I looked away from the northern horizon, then back again. Then I saw it.

  An insignificant line, darker than the rest of the sea; that was all. I was not sure, but I had not noticed it before, “Bill!”

  Without appearing to hurry, he was beside me in no time flat, one arm around the mast, the other shielding his eyes against the glare.

  “Yes,” he said evenly, “that’s it. Okay, Karen, my dear, down you go—and hold on. Come on, Mitch.” Back aft he cranked the engine into life. It was a comforting sound, but I could have wished for something more powerful.

  “Bette, you tend the sheets—I’ll steer.” He took the tiller and handed his lifeline to Bette. “Clip us both on.” He looked at me, half in the hatchway, peering over the top. “Okay, Mitch—’way you go! I want to shut the hatch—I’ll leave the doors open.”

  I took a last look. The dark line, much closer now. The hatch top slid shut over my head, now all I could see were Bill’s and Bette’s legs. He bent down and his cheerful face, a trifle red, appeared in the opening. “All right down there? Don’t fret, this boat wasn’t built for trips round the harbor.” A final broad grin. “Don’t get up to anything you wouldn’t like us to know about!”

  God! Why did I always get stuck with heroes? I sat down beside Karen. Bill shouted, “Below there! About a minute to go!”

  The engine revved to its full four-cat power. I cast around for something to get a hold on and grabbed the brass wing nut on a scuttle. Karen did the same. I put an arm around her; we were face to face. Her expression was solemn, her eyes wide. I hoped I looked half as composed.

  “Here we go!”

  For an eternity nothing happened, then the cabin tilted downward steeply. Karen and I slid along the settee, she put her free arm around me, I was aware of her soft breasts on my chest. There was an enormous jarring thump, the boat staggered, lurched sideways horribly, unnaturally. Karen lost her grip on the scuttle, we sprawled full length, half on, half off the settee, Karen with both arms around me, all depending on my grip. I let go of her, groped for a drawer handle below the settee, and got it.

  The cabin began to tilt the other way, the forward end going up, up … the angle was impossible. There was a tearing, rushing sound of water overhead, and Karen and I were sliding again. The motion changed to a corkscrew, the boat laid over on one side, and we were pressed against the backrest, and then the bow dipped again … it seemed to last forever. Karen clung to me, her head deep in my shoulder, her thighs clamped around my left leg.

  “Don’t let go, but the worst is over!”

  We continued to corkscrew, but as he said, the worst was over. Cautiously I let go of the drawer handle, and dragged the rest of Karen on to the settee. Almost reluctantly, I allowed myself to realize that we were through, we were clear! With relief, something else flooded through me. Relief from severe tension and the fear of death can liberate basic instincts—ask any veteran. I was on top of, entangled with a girl, and I was alive.

  And Karen knew it too. I still don’t know if she made some slight, significant move, I only know that in an instant I was kissing her with all the passion I had, which, just then, was quite considerable. She made slight resistance, then yielded….

  “You all right down there?”

  Bill’s voice came from a long way away. Slowly, reluctantly, I joined his world, breathing hard, still holding Karen, malleable, or at the very least, acquiescent.

  “Yeah—is that it?”

  “Yes, you can come up for air now!”

  He wasn’t kidding. Karen slowly, gently disengaged and looked at me in a questioning sort of way. If you have my sort of disposition, there is only one thing to say in that sort of circumstance.

  “Wow!”

  She smiled uncertainly, relieved at the level I had chosen to put it.

  I tried not to look too elated at our survival when I got on deck. Bill was getting out of his harness. “Karen okay?”

  “Sure. We played sardines a while, and she may have an odd bruise here and there, which I hope won’t give you any ideas.” I meant it. I looked around me; both Bill’s and Bette’s pants were wet and her face was glistening with spray, and it suited her. “You okay, Bette, honey?”

  She gave me a brief smile. She might have time for me later, but just then she was deeply in love with Mayfly. The yacht looked much the same, the deck was wet, and a little water was sloshi
ng around the cockpit.

  Bill looked up from spreading the harness to dry. “You don’t have to worry about Bette in a boat—she was bloody marvelous!” He went on, “And that goes for you two down there—took more guts than I have to be cooped up below.” He called down the hatch. “Karen darling, dig out the brandy, there’s a good girl. We all deserve a tot.”

  So we sat in the sun and drank a little brandy and unwound—or at least I did. The sun still shone, the sea still glittered, life was very good.

  Karen was very much on the ball. She reported that all was well below apart from one row of books that had jumped free of the locking bar, that the gas cylinder had moved, but the joints were okay, and that there was no measurable amount of water in the bilges. I revised my opinion of her; she was not dumb.

  Bill eyed her affectionately. “Jolly good!” He went on, “But we’ll check the bilges—there was one moment when she was balanced on the top of that damned wave, just possible that she was strained—Mitch, will you check every half-hour?”

  That was typical. He might have said “often” or “frequently” and left me to sort out what that meant; instead he said exactly what he wanted. He bent down and cut the engine. “Must save fuel, and the wind’s freshening.” The engine died. “Now we’ve got to think.”

  This was something I had not been keen on. To this point I had only been interested in our survival.

  Bill went on. “We’re all right for food, water, and fuel, could stay out for days—”

  “You think it’s that bad?”

  “Oh come, face it, chum! You, more than any of us! Either some comedian has dropped an H-bomb, or that damn volcano has erupted—more, whatever has happened, it hasn’t stopped!”

  “Why?”

  “Use your eyes!” He pointed to the north. “We’ve got a regular swell from up there—the natural one is from the southwest. Luckily, that one is negligible just now, but it won’t be so funny if the wind gets up. I don’t pretend to explain it, a train of lesser waves is not unusual after a disturbance, but this is going on, and regularly too, I make it every fifteen to twenty seconds!”

  What with one thing and another I had not grappled with the situation. He was right; a low swell was set from the north. I suppose I had thought that this wave signaled the end of SARAH. That regular, menacing swell proved I was wrong….

  Visick’s gaze was on me.

  “I do not pry,” he said flatly, “but you, Mitch, know something of all this. I do not want to embarrass you, but if you have any information that affects our situation, I think you should say so.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, what are the chances of another wave?”

  That was a new thought; it shouldn’t have been, but it was. “Frankly,” I said at last, “I don’t know. I agree, this was most likely a major earth movement associated with this submarine volcano. I’d guess, and it is only a guess, that another movement of that order was unlikely. Is that why you aren’t keen on going back now?”

  “Partly. That wave was a good twenty feet, it’ll have made a hell of a mess ashore—” He stopped and pointed. “Thought I heard something.”

  A helicopter was approaching from the coast, fifty yards off it hovered, the crewman waved through the open door. Visick waved back and made the “thumbs up” sign. The crewman repeated it, waved again, and the chopper went off in search of others.

  “Nice to know the Navy cares,” observed Bette. “Bill, you were saying?”

  “I think we should stay out until midday tomorrow. It’ll give them time to get sorted out a bit ashore, and if there should be another, we’ll be in a better position to meet it. It must be chaos back there.”

  “How bad, Bill?” asked Karen.

  “Who knows? Pretty bad. Let’s hope the death toll is not too grim. They had time, I’d say, to evacuate the waterfront, but the damage will be horrible.” Visick knew the girls were looking to him, but he was sensitive enough to drag me in. “What d’you think, Mitch? You’re the expert.”

  “Not in my line, but I estimate that wave was traveling at sixty miles an hour: it must have hit the shore like a runaway freight train.” It was only as I said it that it really meant anything to me. It seemed impossible: wonderful day, cloudless sky, warm, yet still that ominous, measured swell….

  Visick broke the silence. “Well, come on, vote! Either we go in or we stay out for the night.”

  We agreed to stay out.

  “Right, that’s settled. Karen, I think we might have lunch, don’t you?”

  “Okay to try the radio, Bill?” It was fair enough to ask him, it was his radio, but I had a sneaky feeling I’d have asked him even if it had been mine.

  He sounded a fraction over-enthusiastic. “Good idea!” Lunch was no festive occasion. Bill and Bette had their cold chicken and fruit on deck. Karen and I ate in the cabin, with me fooling around with the radio. That gave no uplift either. Several ships were called, but I didn’t hear anyone answer…. I swung around the dial, and fell over a newscast. There had been a major earth movement, near enough to SARAH’s position. The tidal wave had done considerable damage, especially on the northern end of the West Coast where there had been little time for a warning. A Coast Guard cutter, the Tuscarora, known to be in the area at the time, had not answered signals, an air search was in progress, but it was feared she was lost….

  The Tuscarora! I’d forgotten her. Already that seemed a long, long time back….

  I took the helm in the afternoon, glad Visick did not try his life-buoy gag with me.

  Sailing Mayfly under those conditions was easy, and gave me time to think about tsunami again. Clearly, this had not been a tsunami wave. I remembered they were spread over a considerable distance; SARAH’s had been a steep, intense wave. Tsunami were very fast, moving at more than three hundred miles an hour; SARAH’s were a lot slower. I decided that the difference must He in the depth of the earth’s movement. Most earthquakes originate fairly well down—from forty to four hundred miles, or more, SARAH’s must have been less than five miles. That would, I felt sure, account for this vicious wave.

  We ran some distance to the north, then turned and headed south until it got dark, then turned again. Bill wanted to be on a northerly course throughout the night, ready if another wave came. We divided into two watches, Bill and Karen, Bette and I. As the darkness grew, so did the sense of tension.

  We ate supper in silence and after a final radio check, Bette and I went and lay down, fully dressed, on the double bunk. I was mentally and physically dead.

  Karen shook us at four-thirty, and sleepily we fumbled our way on deck. A fine night, fresh breeze, stars—and that steady, northerly swell….

  “Okay, Mitch. Hold this base course until five-thirty, then come about. Nothing in sight, visibility good. Wind’s veered a fraction. I’ll be on the cushions if you want me. I’ve cut the speaker on the radio-—there’s a headset on a long lead on the cabin top; take distress periods only.”

  I liked the way he addressed his remarks to me, although we all knew who he was talking to.

  “Thanks, Bill. Will you take her, Bette?”

  Who else?

  Bill knocked his pipe out over the stern. “There’s a flask of coffee in the locker. Call me if the ship falls overboard!” As he had calculated, we turned just when there was enough light to see anything unpleasant. I had seldom been so pleased to see anything as that dawn.

  Three and a half hours later we were chugging up to the Golden Gate. The wind had died, and a pall of smoke hung over the city; there was a sickly smell of fuel oil and burned rubber. The bridge looked the same, but San Francisco had changed.

  Chapter 8

  The north side waterfront was quite unrecognizable. Two or three crushed and mangled tugboats were ashore, lying on what may have been a road or a warehouse, it was impossible to say which. The swell, generated by distant SARAH, damped down by thick brown-black oil, broke sullenly on the shattered, scattered deb
ris which was the foreshore.

  We stared in utter silence; there was nothing remotely adequate to say. Close inshore a firefloat was arching sparkling jets into some shapeless burning mess on shore.

  We puttered on, Bill at the helm, unlit pipe clamped in his teeth, Karen on the bow, watching for dangerous wreckage.

  Bette and I, the San Franciscans, stood side by side, reviewing in unbelieving horror our hard-hit city. Out in the bay, Alcatraz, with a freighter broadside on, crushed against that famous wall. Round the bend the damage appeared to be less, but another large ship had been smashed against Bay Bridge near Treasure Island. One span sagged down, resting on the ship…. Bette clung to my arm, shivering.

  Boats, yachts, and other small craft were scattered on the shore like the discarded broken toys of some ill-tempered giant child.

  Bill throttled back; there were plenty of masts sticking out of the water. We were in deep water, but there were no guarantees. One of three Navy boats inshore headed out and came alongside, her light gray hull streaked with oil. We were a few feet apart, rolling in the swell. A tired lieutenant (j.g.) leaned over the bridge.

  “What ship?”

  “Mayfly of London, England!”

  Two bodies, thick with oil, lay on the foredeck of the patrol boat. One rolled slightly with the ship, in obscene parody of life.

  “Sorry, sir, this port is closed. Head for the Navy shipyard. You can get through Bay Bridge. Take it easy, especially up to Hunter’s Point. Watch out for wrecks.” He shrugged hopelessly. “You name it, we’ve got it!”

  “Thanks, Lieutenant. I’ve got a doctor on board—can we help?”

  “Not here, thank you. Ask our office ashore.”

  We went our separate ways; ours was a nightmare journey through oil, wrecks, and ominous amorphous bundles that might be bodies. Bill did not comment—none of us spoke—and made no attempt to investigate. Anything we might do would be pitifully inadequate, and for sure they were dead.