“First give me a hand with Cal,” Sandy said. “We’ll put him up on the bunk before he drowns down here.”
“I doubt if he’d do the same for us,” Ken muttered. But he helped hoist Cal’s heavy body up to the lower bunk Sandy had recently occupied.
“Put on his oilskins,” Ken said then. “There ought to be another suit around here too.”
He found another rubber coat, sou’wester, and boots in one of the still-unopened cupboards while Sandy was getting into Cal’s storm clothes.
Sandy listened intently for a moment before they opened the door. “Wind’s coming from our rear,” he said. “We’ll be in the thick of it out there on the aft deck. So watch out for a big wave—and hang on to something if you see one coming. Ready?”
“Ready.”
They stepped quickly out onto the heaving aft deck and slammed the door shut behind them.
Outside, they found themselves in an angry world. All around them rose huge combers that seemed to be racing toward the barge or away from it with express-train speed. The foam-flecked water reflected the dirty gray of the sky. There was no land in sight, and no other craft. There was nothing but water—steep vicious mountains of it that seemed at every moment in danger of tumbling down upon the wallowing barge.
“Hang on! Here comes one!” The wind ripped Sandy’s shout out of his mouth. He linked one arm through Ken’s as he spoke and threw the other arm around a massive iron bitt bolted to the deck.
A ponderous wall of water was coming toward them from the port quarter. The barge fought to rise with it, her timbers groaning at every joint. But the creaking craft, laden with stone and water, was too heavy to climb to the top.