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Tobin and Somers ripped the shrouds off the reserve motors, and Isaac Bell pulled his chokes and hit the starters. One ground with the anemic wheeze of a weak battery. The other churned its motor over and over, but it wouldn’t fire.
The stern drifted around into the wind. A gust filled the cockpit tarp, lifted it like a kite, and blew it off. Rain and spray drenched the cockpit. Bell tried the starter again, hoping there was enough juice left in the battery. The motor fired, coughed, died, and caught again, cylinder by cylinder, until it was hitting on all twelve. As the propeller dug in and the cruiser got under way again, he steered back on their northerly course. Pauline and Somers dragged the tarp back over the cockpit and tied it down. Tobin jumped electricity to the dead battery with Mueller clips. Bell coaxed a second engine to life.
He was concerned that the heavy spray would drown them, so he engaged the mufflers, shunting the exhaust into underwater ports and effectively sealing the manifolds from the vertical pipes. But protection was bought at the cost of power, and their speed dropped. With the engines muted, they could hear the full roar of wind and tumbling seas, which grew louder as the day wore on.
Pauline took the helm, with Asa watching over her. Bell and Tobin went to work on the engines that had quit. Water in the gas seemed to be the cause. Spray could have entered as they pumped from the barrels purchased at Harbour Island. Or one of the barrels could have been contaminated. They jettisoned the contents of the day tank that fed those engines and pumped in fresh gas from their main tanks.
Both engines started. They shut them down again and shrouded their pipes to keep them in reserve. Bell feared they’d be needed soon enough. The two engines currently pushing the boat were exhausting blue smoke, and their valves were clattering like a bowling alley. They clattered through the night, and when one of the engines began to sound as if it were approaching the end, Bell switched them both off after starting the reserves.
Bell was on watch hours past dawn the next morning, driving through heavy squalls, with Pauline huddled against him fast asleep and Tobin and Asa sleeping under the foredeck, when he heard a rumble like thunder. A flash to his left could be the lightning that caused it. Fifteen seconds later, it flashed again, and then again in another fifteen, and he saw a white flashing pinprick of light.
Cape May Light could be seen up to twenty-four nautical miles. But not in these conditions. To see the light from the low boat through the wind-whipped rain, they had to be almost on top of it. What he had thought was thunder might be surf pounding land. Then he saw enormous waves breaking on a sandbar. He could feel them gathering behind him, lifting the boat to drive them onto the beach. He swung the wheel, hit his throttles, and fled the shore.
Fighting to maintain twenty knots, he ran east for an hour, then swung north again. Two hours passed. Tobin was at the helm. Bell saw a steady white light that did not blink.
“Absecon Light,” Pauline read.
“Atlantic City,” said Tobin. “Getting close, Mr. Bell. Barnegat next.”
Asa Somers spotted the red-and-white painted Barnegat Lighthouse itself, and again the cruiser peeled away from the shore. Two hours later, limping on one engine, holding the other that was still running in reserve, they saw the squalls race away and suddenly found themselves in sunlight on a patch of riled blue sea completely surrounded by heavy banks of cloud.
“What is going on?” asked Tobin, turning on his heel. “It’s like a miniature eye of a miniature hurricane.”
“Any idea where we are?” asked Bell.
“None.”
Pauline dragged her heavy canvas bag out of the foredeck cubby and handed it to Tobin.
“What’s this?”
“What you forgot to pack. A sextant and a Nautical Almanac. It’s noon. I recall Isaac knows how to use it. He can shoot the sun and tell us where we are.”
Bell said, “You drive, Ed. Keep her as steady as you can. On the jump. This won’t last.”
Indeed, the cloud banks were closing quickly around the strange clear patch. Bell swung the sextant to the sky and lowered the mirrored image of the sun to the horizon. From the scale, he called the angle to Pauline. She noted the time and ran her finger down the columns pertaining to the Greenwich mean angle. Asa held the chart.
“Approximately twenty miles from New York,” said Pauline. “Steer three hundred ten degrees to Ambrose Light.”
“Who taught you how to do that?” Tobin asked her.
“The captain of the Aquitania.”
Clouds and mist closed in abruptly. The visibility dropped to a quarter mile, then increased, then dropped again as squalls blew through fitfully. With twelve miles to go, they spotted a dismasted schooner. The storm-battered ship was tossing at anchor while its crew cut away ruined rigging. A bedsheet flapped from its bowsprit. An advertisement was painted on it in red:
CC
$55 CASE
“Rum Row,” said Isaac Bell.
• • •
THEY SPED PAST island schooners and rusty steamers battened down for the storm.
“Look at that,” said Asa. “There’s some lunatic driving a taxi.”
“The price of booze goes up in bad weather,” Tobin explained. “They’ll get rich if they don’t drown.”
