“Every man below the decks!” I could hear voices mumbling dissent, and Father’s voice rose above the crew’s as though he were beating them with his voice: “Get the hell below, you goddamned fools, or you won’t have a Chinaman’s chance!”
I brought up the rifle and handed it to him. He had lashed the wheel. “Throw a canvas over McLean,” said Father through his teeth, “and then you get below!” Nelson had already got a big piece of canvas and he completely covered McLean with it. I ducked below without hesitation; I didn’t know what was going to happen. I wondered if Father was going to use the rifle to kill McLean and mercifully end his suffering. I hadn’t been below two minutes before I heard the report of his rifle! Then several reports followed in rapid succession and Father came running down the cabin himself, first closing the hatchdoor on the companionway.
“The shot busted it,” he said simply.
We went to the lee portholes and looked out. Father said the shots from his rifle had started new currents in the air that broke the rhythm of the waterspout. Like a wounded beast the spout seemed to stagger and then collapse, dropping tons on tons of water, fish, and driftwood back to the sea. The spout when it collapsed was nearly half a mile away but the low heavy black clouds it came from were already over us and now they opened and emptied themselves just above the ship.
Did you ever see a cork under a waterfall? That was our ship beneath that downpour. Father had known what was coming and had saved the crew by forcing them below, for not one could have kept on the deck under the force of that bombardment with the ship pitching and wallowing in the conflicting currents and undertows like some blinded thing.
McLean covered with canvas and held fast by his crushed arm was the only living thing exposed.
I felt trapped down there below. The air was suffocating. The pressure of the humidity was so great that my pulses beat rapidly and I broke out in a cold sweat. Then in less than fifteen minutes the rain stopped abruptly, the clouds disappeared, the sun burst forth and the sea calmed as though nothing had happened.
“There won’t be a whiff of wind now,” Father said with disgust. With typical sailor fatalism he had dismissed the horror of the waterspout but he hadn’t forgotten the trapped man above.
“We got to get that poor beggar out of that trap,” he said, referring to McLean. I went on deck with Father to help him. We lifted the canvas off McLean’s body. He lay cramped over in a doubled position, softly moaning.
“Can you stand it for another few minutes, old man?” Father asked.