Peering through his rain-splashed windows, the skipper sought a glimpse of some other vessel. But his visibility had been greatly reduced by the sheets of rain and the darkening skies. The unearthly light that had greeted him when he came on deck had been slowly subsiding. Now, as the clock raced on toward noon and the storm raged on in unabated fury, he could see only the clashing seas around him and hear that high-pitched wailing of the wind.
He shook himself.
“This is bad, very bad,” he said to Sam, who had taken over as wheelsman.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Sam said. “I’ve been through some bad ones on the Lakes—but I’ve not seen any worse than this one. And it’s just starting, if I read the signals right.”
The captain bobbed his head in unhappy assent. The James Kennedy staggered and seemed to shake herself as she drove forward into a wall of lake water, and he embraced a stanchion to keep his feet. He waited until the vessel had steadied herself, and then he lurched across the pilothouse to the rear windows to stare with dismay at the spectacle below him.
Grayish seas were swamping the decks of the James Kennedy, and the crewmen were frantically at work trying to secure the hatch of one of the holds. Wind and water had torn at a corner of the steel hatch and had peeled it back as though a giant can opener had been at work. Each time the Kennedy dug into one of the heavy seas swinging toward it, the crewmen would seize the rails and hang on for dear life while the water swept down on them.
Then, while the vessel rose high again and the waters ran off the sides, they would resume the battle against the hatch—battering away at it with sledge hammers in an attempt to seal the hold.
One look at this scene was enough for Captain West. He could see at a glance that more men were needed.
“Mr. Briggs!” he shouted at his mate through the speaking tube. “Get every available man up on deck to Number Four hatch!”
The mate’s voice wailed hollowly in reply: “They’re all up there already, sir—every man that can be spared.”