Tropical Knights (Jack Steven's Adventures) by John Beckman

Author:John Beckman [Beckman, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-06-22T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

A storm at sea is like nothing on land. You feel like you are riding high on a roller coaster that is skidding across a field of Jell-O. Or maybe balanced on the point of a needle over a pit of rattlesnakes. Fall off, and you are dead. Amy and I were being humbled by what the marine forecaster had casually called “a tropical disturbance.” He was just reading words, he had never been in a Tropical Disturbance. I wished I had that idiot tied to the mast. He’d be puking and drowning at the same time.

“We’ve got to keep the helm up,” I shouted over the roar. “Gotta keep her pointed right into the wind.” We struggled, grasping the wheel with slick hands and the wheel fought back, jerking out of our fingers.

“Hold on, hold on!” I yelled as the boat took a sickening yaw and the deck dropped beneath our feet like an elevator going down too fast.

“Don’t let her turn!” Moon Maiden is a fighter, but not a heavyweight champion. She was trying to run away from this monster.

“I’m trying. Dear God, I’m trying.” Amy’s eyes were like wide lenses reflecting the possibility of death. We could die out here and it could come quickly.

Flashes of lightning gave snapshots of the ocean surrounding us. It seemed alive and evil and hungry for our destruction. I wanted to hold my hand over my face as I did as a child at the horror movies, and just peek at this demon through my fingers. As it was, we were fighting the storm almost blinded. The deck lights mounted high on the mast were feeble rays seen weakly through rain so solid it felt like shotgun blasts. Rain that burned our faces, driven by a wind that stuffed itself down our throats choking us.

“Watch it! She’s gonna broach, pull, pull!” The boat strained around to align itself again to the wind now shrieking through the rigging. “Hold her, Hold her!”

We rocketed off the top of a mountain of water dropping almost straight down into a black valley. Another flash, and we wallowed in a murky basin enveloped by towering water on every side. And for a moment we were isolated from the howling wind that sheared off the peaks of the swells and dropped spumes of foam down upon us like globs of wet green snow. The reefed main and tiny storm jib just fluttered in this valley of calm It was almost as if the storm was taking a breath, and giving us the same opportunity before another violent battle. Then, slowly the bow of the boat began to rise as it met the next mountain of water and my heartbeat rose with it. And now it was pointing almost straight up. Straining my eyes I could see the sheer face of a watery cliff looming over us, slowly curving overhead, awaiting some diabolic signal to crush us with tons of water.

“I’m going forward,” I yelled. Moon Maiden was carrying just a scrap of sail, but even that was too much for this attack.

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