Free The Fire Ship by Peter Tonkin Page A

away.
    He fell into the cockpit clutching the radio just as the other three arrived. “Jesus Christ!” yelled Hood, staring at the fast-approaching waterspout. “Where did that come from?” Then Weary grabbed him, pointing to the lifeboat scudding broadside-on to the wind away from them. The fierceness of the storm swept over it at once and turned it turtle. Then no one was watching it any longer: they all had too much else to do.
    The black storm cloud that had spawned the waterspout covered half of the sky; the sun was somewhere behind it. Out of the sinister overcast came a huge white funnel. It fell vertically at first but after a hundred feet or so it twisted off line and writhed increasingly wildlyout of shape until it planted its foot firmly on the sea in the midst of a thick column of gyrating mist, dangerously close, dead ahead. The eternal mist was being sucked in, spewed up, and replaced at once in an incredible process by the wind. Such was the power of the thing that the sea dead ahead sloped up quite steeply. The spout sat on its own great hill of water, which appeared and disappeared as the first stinging downpour swept across their line of sight.
    Richard had been in storms before but he had never experienced anything like this. The wind was solid around him as he finished stowing the lifeboat’s radio. He faced the storm briefly—and it nearly drowned him. He turned his back, choking, and was lucky enough to catch a breath before the air in front of him was sucked away. There was no gusting to it, no variation except for its gradual intensification. And it had all the power of a fire hose. And as the air was sucked in toward the spout, so everything seemed to stream along with it. The sea was steep-sided, dark, and vicious. Spray from the wave tops spewed back in solid chunks of water and the rain was abruptly torrential. Richard staggered forward and clung on. The wind pressed wet clothing to chilled skin so forcefully that the pattern of the material marked it. He suddenly realized there were bruises on his chest caused by his buttons.
    Weary, his mind now clear, took charge. Obviously, Katapult ’s engine was not going to be powerful enough to help much. No. If they were going to get out of this then Weary would have to sail them out of it. Hood had no problem with this. Richard was a man of action and would have preferred to be in charge; but he was also a fairweather yachtsman and knew a master when he saw one.
    Robin, however, had serious reservations. Less thanfive minutes had elapsed since the man now wrestling with the helm, the man in whose enormous hands their lives now rested, had been mindless, screaming, apparently insane. Hood knew this, and when she came toward him, he fell in beside her and as they worked, he talked. It was hardly an idle chat. Some of it was formless, almost meaningless, a series of disjointed phrases and half-sentences projected just a little louder than the screaming wind. Sam Hood was no fool. He knew Robin needed an explanation before she would trust Weary and obey him again—and he was acutely aware that any hesitation by anyone might easily prove lethal.
    So, as Weary punched in the manual override and the systems belowdecks prepared to answer his dictates on heading, sail angle, outrigger angle, and all the rest, the others began to batten down everything, and to check every single line, strut, and joint that might fail fatally in the near future. Silently the telescopic booms moved out and the tall sails filled to bursting with the wind.
    Richard started at the far stern. Hood and Robin started at the bow. All of them worked back toward the relative safety of the cockpit as fast as they could, for Weary wasted no time. Within thirty seconds of his arrival on deck. Katapult heeled to starboard, took the hurricane blast under her solid, experimental skirts—and was off on a wild roller-coaster ride toward the very heart of the thing.
    “You know anything