LITMIR.BIZ

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lurching, wiggly minutes in a boat with eight lolloping passengers and one driver, all perched on the pontoon shaped sides. And we were going to land on a bigger boat that was equally rolling and pitching. I certainly hadn’t thought I would get seasick or I never would have taken this trip. I groaned and wished there was something else to take my mind off my stomach as Martha crashed into me on the next wave.

      And that’s when it happened. Terry, who was now wearing a yellow Eddie Bauer Gore-Tex rain suit and sit–ting near the bow, suddenly lurched up and staggered towards the stern of the boat where I was sitting, her eyes boring into the space between me and the orange clad driver like a razor sharp drill. I heard the driver cursing. With one hand on the engine he used his other hand to madly wave Terry down while yelling words into the wind that she couldn’t hear.

      When the next wave hit, Terry seemed to leap straight at us in a slow motion blur. When the boat bucked side–ways on a wave she raised her arms in a futile effort to save herself, and instead of crashing into me she was thrown onto the driver. The two of them fell heavily against the bulwark, the driver’s head crashing against it with a sick–ening thud that I could hear above the wind.

      The Zodiac began to dance and slew sideways to the waves and a sickening accordion motion gripped the boat as an icy wave broke over the starboard side. The cold of the water felt like a burn, searing my face. I saw, as if in slow motion, the now bare handle of the engine jerking spasmodically, the heaving rubber and slat wood floorboards, the wildly slewing boat broach–ing the waves — I leaned over and grabbed the throttle with both hands, more to calm my roiling stomach than for any altruistic reasons. The thing felt alive, like a horse straining at the reins, full of power and poten–tial, but unable to choose a direction in which to go.

      I shoved it as far away from me as I could, feeling as though I was pushing the whole weight of Frobisher Bay before me. Agonizingly slowly, the boat began to turn back into the waves, to more ordered motion. I felt the handle bucking my commands, wanting to be free, jerking and straining for chaos. My back and shoulder muscles were taut with the effort of keeping the boat on the proper course.

      I glanced over at the driver, hoping for rescue, but he lay sprawled on the bottom of the boat, his head and shoulders draped over the round pontoon of the port side, his face unnervingly slack and grey, or what I could see of it through his heavy beard. The closest passenger to him was trying to stop the alarming flow of blood from a deep cut on his forehead and the other passengers were gripping the handrails of the boat, white knuckled, as another wave hit us and broke over the bow.

      I noticed Terry had somehow crawled her way back up to the bow to sit beside Arthur, the white haired man, and was clutching her stomach. The driver was still out cold. I was on my own. How the hell was I supposed to land the Zodiac?

      “Can you drive this thing?” The voice was high and shrill in the wind, almost weightless, and the disbelief that cascaded from the words was not a confidence booster. I glanced in the direction of the voice and saw Terry, her makeup smeared by the salt water and her attempts to keep it out of her eyes.

      She grabbed Arthur’s arm, yelling “Jesus, Arthur. Are you fuckin’ going to let her try to drive this thing? She’ll kill us all.”

      That was a funny thing for her to say, since she was the one who had just knocked out the only person on the boat who actually knew how to drive it! Still, I saw the passengers who had heard her words glance nervously at me as Arthur said something to her that no one could hear. She looked back at me and yelled, “You’d better know what you’re doing lady.”

      I was already wondering the same thing when Mar–tha, who looked completely unruffled by the series of events, screamed at the whole boat. “Course she can drive this thing. She’s been doing it for years. Trust me. She’s the best and she’s one of crew.”

      Neither of which was quite accurate. Martha con–veniently forgot to mention that my years of experience were with much smaller Zodiacs in much smaller and warmer seas, but what the heck, a boat is a boat. And technically I was one of the crew.

      I watched carefully as the Zodiac ahead of us nosed up to the side of the ship at a small metal platform and threw a rope to a crew member crouched on the wave drenched dock. I could make out metal stairs snaking up at a forty-five degree angle from the water to the deck of the ship. Passengers were drunkenly weaving their way up the stairs.

      Suddenly it was our turn. I kept the Zodiac pointed into the waves as we headed for the ship, aware that seven pairs of eyes anxiously watched my every move. Only Martha seemed unconcerned. What was it about her that made her so oblivious to potential danger?

      We were heading straight into the wind, parallel to the ship, which was lying at anchor. I kept the throt–tle at full bore until we were twenty yards away and then eased back as we shot toward the dock. At the last moment I throttled way back, and the lack of power and the strength of the wind allowed the boat to float toward the dock — theoretically. Instead, we rammed the dock from the crest of a wave and my passengers tumbled around like bingo balls. Terry crashed against Arthur, her head ramming his hard camera case. Arthur scowled as another man picked her up, just as a deckhand grabbed the bow rope of the bucking boat and secured it to the heaving metal dock.

      The boat, finally secured, was now tied to the energy of the ship, which was straining at its anchor and riding the waves differently from the little Zodiac hugging its side. The male passengers struggled to get the helmsman into the arms of the crewmen and to safety. He was start–ing to come to and was moaning as he was carried up the gangway. One by one the passengers slid their bottoms down the side of the pontoons to the two crewmen — their bright orange slickers like beacons of safety — who held out their hands to grip each passenger by the arm and swing them to safety between waves.

      When it was Terry’s turn she turned and smiled.

      “You’re one lucky, lady.”

      I had the unpleasant feeling that she could see into the quiet depths of my own mind where my fears roiled and laboured, and that she had known the extent of my inexperience just by watching me. But what else could I do? No one else could drive the thing. The coldness in her voice went red hot as she took the arm of a deck man and yelled, “Luke, you old bastard. How are the ladies?”

      I watched the man’s face break into a huge scowl and he almost threw her out of the boat as he grunted, “Welcome back, Terry,” in a voice that said just the oppo–site. Welcome back? She’d been here before? I looked at Martha, whose turn was next, but she obviously hadn’t heard the exchange.

      Martha tried to swing her leg over but the design of the Zodiac and the design of her round body didn’t mesh. She sat there, stranded, one leg going one way and the other leg going another, just as a wave hit and bounced her painfully on the spot. Duncan reached over and grabbed her trailing leg, hauling it over. Suddenly I was alone in the boat.

      As I started to move toward the starboard side to get out, one of the crewmen looked at me, a puzzled look on his face, and then glanced behind him at another crewmember on deck. I saw some communication pass between them, but before he could turn back the other guy threw the stern line at me and pointed aft where I saw the other Zodiac being hoisted into the air, its driver standing amid decks with a bosun’s chair hugging his rear. I’d seen this done many times before, but I’d never actually done it myself and was attempting to clamber out when one of the crewmen waved me off. I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say, but I didn’t have to. The loose bowline in his hands told all and I watched, fascinated, as he threw the line into the bottom of the boat. They obviously thought I was one of the new crew arriving with the tourists. I looked quickly at the engine, glad to see it was still going, and suddenly I was free of the ship, alone in the boat, and not sure what I was sup–posed to do other than get out of the way of the Zodiac coming behind me.

      I swung out, heading into the wind, watching as the Zodiac ahead of me was winched on board. It danced high above my head and my stomach, already churning itself into a sickening mess, lurched at the thought of going up there, so high, so far to fall, so cold a death, but at least it would be quick,

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