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Spray drummed on the cockpit tarp. The seas continued to mount and the wind rose. Every few minutes, the boat plowed into a wave markedly bigger than the rest and slowed dramatically.
Bell ordered a watch schedule in which each would steer for two hours, the limit before they lost focus and concentration. Asa brewed coffee in the galley tucked under the foredeck, then helped Pauline steer when it was her turn. Tobin passed around sandwiches of foie gras that Fern’s chef had contributed. In the dark, the compass cast a red glow on faces growing weary of the constant motion and the ceaseless thunder of the Libertys.
Bell caught catnaps, sitting near the helm, but only when Tobin was steering.
He awakened with cold water dripping on his face. The tarpaulin was soaked and it was beginning to leak. He rescued the chart, which was getting wet. The boat was laboring. Reluctantly, Bell cut their speed to thirty-five knots—still a phenomenal pace for any vessel in any seas—and reduced it again in a few hours to thirty knots as the waves grew taller and chaotic.
He decided that, at that rate, they could stop the forward Liberty to conserve it. Asa wrestled on canvas as soon as the pipes cooled. Soon after, they stopped the sternmost motor, as the boat would make her speed on two having burned off the weight of the extra gasoline.
The wind, which had blown from the south and then gradually east, backed suddenly north. Bell pictured the storm whirling, its counterclockwise winds moving sharply to the east as if it had crossed their wake and was heading toward Bermuda.
This was good news if it was traveling away from them rather than overtaking them but bad news if the powerful north wind set up counter- and crosscurrents. Worse, it suggested a storm that was growing in diameter, flinging ever-more-powerful winds hundreds of miles from its eye.
“Getting bad,” Tobin said quietly when they exchanged tricks at the wheel.
“She’s a big boat,” said Bell.
Ed’s lopsided, scarred face formed a tired grin. “I never met a captain who didn’t love his vessel.”
They were twenty-three hours beyond The Bahamas when the western horizon, which looked darker than a coal mine, began to cast an intermittent glow. Bell steered toward it and in a few miles it appeared to be the pulsing beam of a distant lighthouse.
“Cape Hatteras?”
Pauline pored over the chart, careful not to tear the wet paper.
“How is it blinking?” she asked.
Bell timed the flashes. “Fifteen seconds.”
“Cape Hatteras flashes every seven and a half seconds.”
“What flashes fifteen?”
“Cape May, New Jersey?”
“We could not have gotten that far north already.”
“To the south of Hatteras is Cape Lookout. Fifteen seconds.”
“Ed, check the sailing directions. How bright is that light?”
“In these clouds? Less than twelve.”
“Too close.”
Bell powered away from the coast and steered east of north. Three hours later, they spotted the seven-and-a-half-second flash of Cape Hatteras.
“I read that Hatteras is called the Graveyard of the Atlantic,” said Asa Somers. “Ships run aground by the thousands.”
Pauline said, “Thank you for that information.”
One of the Liberty motors coughed and quit.
Moments later, the second fell silent.
40
THE BOAT LOST WAY in an instant and turned her flank to the seas, which rolled her mercilessly.
