Through the binoculars he managed to get a shaky view of a man standing, looking down into the water, and then turning to walk away.
She was waving frantically, but at Sam, not the man on the cliff. The man didn’t run or even look agitated. Assuming that he saw her, he plainly didn’t care if she died. Perhaps he even wanted her to die. A moment later he had disappeared.
“Unbelievable,” Sam said aloud.
With the wind the sea was building fast and the waves were washing over her. She would be swept away in minutes. Glancing at the wind indicator he saw the wind at thirty-five knots and building. It was going to be a williwaw.
He brought the boat around into the wind and furled the jib, then ran to the wheel and concentrated on positioning the boat. Because he was upstream from the woman, the current, the wind, and the breaking sea were sweeping him toward her. With the sails down the boat rolled even worse in the building chop. He added power.
According to the GPS, the current was pushing him at seven knots over the bottom. Sam was accustomed to risking his life, but there was still an adrenaline surge.
In the distance the roar of the overfall filled his ears. Even from his location he couldn’t escape the white wave that sat just ahead of the largest saltwater whirlpool and undertow in the world. The boat would be drawn into it and the treacherous rocks all around as surely as the moon pulls the oceans. He wondered if his boat could survive the water that might fill it or bash it against the green-tinged jaws of rock that guarded the Paradise Channels.
The wind was rising fast under a black sky. Forty-one knots, the incandescent numbers blinked.
“Harry, go to your bed.”
The little dog jumped up on the bulkhead, then dived down the hole of the companionway hatch into the pilothouse. Sam pulled the hatch shut. There would be water everywhere once they hit the overfall. He could see the woman, still clinging to the rock, thrashing with her legs, obviously trying to get a better purchase. She couldn’t climb out of the water, and with everything but her shoulders and head immersed she would develop hypothermia in minutes. She was still looking in his direction, waving one arm.
“I see you,” he muttered. “Just hang on.”
With less than two hundred feet to go he swung the boat into the wind and current, letting the rushing water push him backward against the full power of the diesel. It was like the middle of a river, and the force of swirling water jarred the boat, making it hard to hold the bow on a heading. Even with full power into the current he was going backward at about five knots over the bottom. He threw a strobe-lighted life ring with a safety line out the stern for her to grab if she missed the boat. The current was increasing-the fierce wind was doing the rest. Finding the lee of some islets that broke a little wind, twisted the water, and reduced the current, he was able to slow the boat’s backward movement. Silverwind’s stern was headed very near the rock to which she clung.
Soon the current would roar to seventeen knots and life on his boat might well come to an end.
“Let go after I pass,” he called out, over an electronic megaphone, hoping she wouldn’t hit a nasty whirlpool and disappear. It was a billion-ton washer with the water beaten frothy, the current swirling and eddying. The clouds looked worse, and at the heart of the gorge he suspected the wind would rise to more than forty-five knots. Ninety knots had been reported in winter gales. The land was shaped to multiply as much as twofold any normal wind.
Everything was rapidly becoming more difficult. The first whirlpool caught the hull and shoved the boat over on its side until the weight of the keel pulled it upright. The boat jerked, shuddered, and careened before straightening out. Less than fifty feet to go. She looked grimly determined. Worried about running aground and ripping a hole in the bottom, he swung the stern slightly outward and eased the throttle for just a second, letting the current push him a little farther off.
“Do I swim?” she screamed.
“Wait,” he blasted over the loudspeaker.
Twenty feet.
“Get ready.”
Going backward past the woman he shoved the nose behind her rock as if he were trying to drive the boat aground. The current created a massive eddy and a giant whirlpool just to the stern of the woman’s perch and of Silverwind that allowed the boat to move forward. With a swipe of his hand on the throttle he reduced power. There was an ugly crunching and he was slammed over the wheel as the lead keel hit the granite.
“Now?”
“Swim!” he screamed at the woman, not bothering with electronics. She began a powerful crawl stroke.
He heard her hit the hull and saw a hand trying to grab. He thrust a huge salmon net over the side, almost falling overboard himself. Her legs went into the net first as she slid down the side of the boat. Holding on to the net with all the strength he could muster, he watched helplessly as the bow swung from the rock and the boat turned broadside to the current, gaining speed. Her hand grabbed the gunwale.
“Hang on.” Desperately he hauled in the net. She got a foot hooked over the edge of the boat’s rail.
“Climb!” he said. Still grasping the handle of the net with one hand, he used the other to throw the transmission into forward and move the boat away from the rocks toward the center of the channel.
“Grab me,” she screamed.
“Just hold on,” he said as he continued his efforts to get clear of the downstream rocks. The overfall was around a slight bend and about two hundred yards distant. He decided to take it bow first and that meant turning the boat ninety degrees. Just as he hit another whirlpool he spun the wheel. Tipping far over, the starboard rail went under and the woman with it. Quickly he stepped above her, grabbed under her arms, and hauled her body half over the lifelines. Around them the water roared and the boat careened, but he kept pulling.
When he had her torso in the cockpit with her feet still over the lifelines, he pulled, deliberately falling to the side and using his weight to take her with him. Landing on a seat corner, he slammed his ribs into the fiberglass. Water was everywhere as the boat righted itself. Had it been anything other than an oceangoing sailboat it would have filled quickly.
He took the woman by the shoulders and moved her around the wheel to the bottom of the open cockpit, tossed a life jacket at her, and tightened down his own. Then in little more than the time it takes to sneeze, he recognized her as Anna Wade, actress, Oscar winner, two Golden Globes, $20 million a picture, and still a nice person. At least by reputation.
“Stay there.” He calculated the boat’s entry into the wave. It wasn’t the size of the wave that mattered but its steepness, and the down suction from the whirlpool. He could see that there’d be no climbing it. They would be buried.
Here the canyon created the venturi and the wind howled. The digital readout of the wind indicator was showing fifty-plus knots and still climbing. If Sam hadn’t seen it and heard the stories he wouldn’t have believed it. Lines were tangled in the cockpit. Some were wrapped around his leg.
“Haul this in,” he said, handing her the safety line. In a whirlpool it could catch in the propeller. She pulled like a seasoned deckhand. “It will be okay,” he said. Then a whirlpool spun them and he fought to keep the bow pointed at the wave. Unless he kept it straight the rocks would punch holes like an angry fist through tissue paper.
“A hundred feet,” he said, as the boat careened around the whirlpools. “Grab,” he said to Anna Wade while planting her hands on two chromed bars to either side of the steering column. Her grip was vice-tight.
The wave loomed, rising up thick and green with a dimpled belly and its head rolling white like a great ocean breaker. There was a slick on the surface and a steep dip just ahead of the wave. They shot through the slick like a toboggan on ice, the wave coming and going with a hiss, then a roar. The sounds shook in his head. Green water poured over the yacht’s nose as the current sucked it down so hard Sam could feel it in his gut. Rolling over the decks the water submerged the cockpit, and everything but the mast disappeared.
Green water, bitterly cold, hit him hard. His hands dug into the wheel as the water yanked him off his feet, his body nearly prone. When his feet were back under him he stood in water to his thighs.
Suddenly the yacht rolled almost completely over to the port side. There was a hard jolt as the keel bounced off a rock and then the frothing water was gone, leaving only a series of whirlpools more than two hundred feet in diameter.
