Voyage of the Dreadnaught: Four Stella Madison Capers (17 page)

“You know, Oliver...(twenty-one,
twenty-three, twenty-four...), as I've been reading along each day,
I didn't get the feeling they were that old. Thirteen, or fourteen,
is what I thought. That's how I've been picturing them, anyway.
Twenty-five, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty!” She flopped over
from the waist, arched her back, and then slowly raised up, again,
with a whisper of, “two, three!”

“Yes, they're in their early teens. I
believe I even mentioned as much back at the beginning,
somewhere.”

“I think young people are a lot more
immature than we used to be, at their age, don't you?”

“Definitely. That's part of the problem, of
course. Being capable of so much more than they are actually
allowed to do.”

Stella flopped back down and began to come
up slowly, again. “I couldn't agree more. Six, seven, eight!”

The colonel suddenly stopped and turned
before he got to the opposite rail, this time. “Do you realize how
many numbers you're skipping?”

“What?”

“Your counting, dearest. It's all over the
place.”

“Oh, that. Well, it doesn't matter so much.
As long as I do six of each.”

“Is there some reason why you don't just
count to six and start over, again?”

“Not really. Except it wouldn't be half as
encouraging as the higher numbers.”

She knew by the way his silver eyebrows
squeezed toward each other, and his lower lip jutted out, that he
didn't get the connection. But instead of arguing, or even trying
to convince her to see things, his way, he said, “Where were
we?”

“In the cave.” She began to run in place.
Light, quick, bouncy steps. How wonderful it was to be married to a
man who wasn't forever insisting she explain everything. “For three
whole days!”

At which point there was a tremendous crash.
The deck tipped at a crazy angle for a few seconds, followed by a
resounding thud, and the two of them suddenly found themselves
sliding on their backsides toward the lower rail. Without a thing
they could do about it.

Stella screamed (she couldn't help it) at
the same time she felt the colonel reach out and grab hold enough
to keep her from tumbling over the side. Not that she hadn't always
considered herself a fairly good swimmer. But this was Alaska!
Where it was rumored one couldn't last much more than fifteen
minutes in such cold water without slipping into something called
hypothermia.

“Mason—Jeffries!” Millie bawled from the
galley. “You just dropped my applesauce bread flatter than a
pancake!” Stella saw her friend's auburn head come poking through a
nearby porthole just as the colonel was helping her to her feet.
“You're supposed to warn us before you do that kind of stuff!”

“I didn't do anything,” the carpenter called
back from across the little bridge that connected the
Dreadnaught
to the shore. “Been over here making lumber all
morning.” Then he came closer to look at the lopsided angle their
ship was now tilted at. “What the... devil!”

A few minutes later, the door to the port
companionway flung open and Millie's cousin, Gerald, staggered out
with his orange life-jacket only hanging around his neck, and not
tied. “Are we sinking?” He flung a look over the rail. “I
say—there's a hole bigger than a garage door down below!”

“By the hoagie!” Mason hurried across the
bridge, and Stella saw him automatically skip the three places
where the slats were uneven, that tended to trip people. “How fast
we got water coming in?”

“Well, that's the thing,” Gerald pulled his
black watch-cap off his head and ran a hand through his thin brown
hair. “It isn't coming in at all, really. Just... pffft!” He
demonstrated with a fist dangling over the rail. “Punched a big
hole when we fell down onto the rocks. But we're still high and dry
in that section. Pffft! Just like that.” He demonstrated, again.
“The two-foot lake we had down there, already, doesn't seem to be
rising. Not sure we couldn't go slipping off the rocks, though, at
this angle.”

All at once, the ship's bell began to tap
out two beats and a pause, two beats and a pause, from up in the
wheelhouse, where the Captain had been enjoying his morning
coffee.

“Oh, my word—Captain Stuart—” Stella was
still hanging onto the colonel's strong arm to steady herself. “I
can't imagine how he could even stand up on this slant.”

“We've stopped moving, at least,” said the
colonel. “I better go check on him.”

It was at that moment they saw Cole, their
dark-haired First Mate, sprinting down the hillside path from the
waterfall, in response to his personal signal from the bell. His
wife, Lou Edna, appeared a few minutes later, picking her way more
carefully, since she had the Senator (not quite a year old) packed
into the shoulder carrier she was wearing. By the time a close
inspection had been made by all aboard (the Captain had been hefted
onto Cole's back in a fireman's carry, in order to avoid all the
steps down through the companionways), the true culprit responsible
for the morning's incident had been discovered.

“Dry rot!” Mason slogged back through the
knee-deep water, to the little group that was gathered where the
deck was still high enough to be dry. He held out a chunk of the
spongy wood to prove his point. “If we got it here, we got it in
other places, too. Collapsed right where we hammered in the braces,
when we first got here. Couldn't hold up under the pressure.”

There was a long sobering silence as they
all thought about this for awhile.

“So, our original plan of firing up the
engine and getting ourselves off these rocks in the spring,” said
the colonel, “is now no longer possible.”

“Not without rebuilding most of the hull, it
isn't,” Mason agreed.

“How long would that take?” Gerald asked. He
still had the orange life-jacket hanging around his neck. In case
he should happen to slip down that steep incline and out through
the hole, as he had whispered aside to Stella.

“Better part of a year, at least.” Mason
rubbed a hand over his stubble of salt-and-pepper whiskers. “That's
if we all pitched in. Full time. Maybe even more.”

“I can't do a whole year!” Lou Edna objected
as she subconsciously reached back to disentangle her blonde
ponytail from her little son's inquisitive fingers. “This baby's
due in February, and I gotta have drugs! I am not—repeat—not—going
through what I did last time!”

“Not to mention the state old Stuart could
be in,” Gerald reminded everyone, “if he doesn't get some serious
medical. As soon as possible, too, because—”

The gray-haired captain thumped him with his
wooden walking stick, but it only bounced off the life-jacket and
didn't hit home. Gerald flinched and stepped out of range, taking
care not to slip down the incline. The old man was sitting on one
of the many boxes that made up the mountain of supplies they had
brought along, to move into Mason's lodge in Alaska. The one he had
won in a card game, over ten years ago, and never seen. But there
was no doubt it was still there, since he had faithfully been
keeping up on the tax bills that were sent to him every year.
Should he ever want to trade it off, again. Except nobody ever
seemed to want it. Which was a good thing. The economy being what
it was, his own family needed it, now.

Seeing the captain seated so comfortably in
that particular spot, Stella thought how much he had improved since
his “episode” (as they called it). He spent quite a bit of time
fishing down here in their “Two Foot Lake,” once Cole got him
situated every afternoon. Ever since he discovered the inside pond
was an attraction for several varieties of fish that came in with
the tide. Particularly during storms. With Millie keeping him in
good supply of coffee and sandwiches, it was a kind of therapy all
by itself. At least his outbursts of frustration (at not being able
to speak) were fewer and farther between. However, she did agree
with Gerald, that one should never allow themselves to resort to
blows, just because others couldn't understand them. Even more so,
if they had temper.

Now, he reached into his shirt pocket, where
he had several colored marking pens, and took out the black one. It
was the First Mate's color, who—being ever attentive to his captain
when they were in close proximity to each other—stepped up beside
the older man and waited as he began to spell something out on the
little whiteboard he carried around. The one that used to hang in
the pantry so Millie could keep track of supplies.

“E...N...in what? S...” The captain swung
the whiteboard at him, but the young man had long since stopped
standing too close while Stuart was painstakingly trying to spell
out letters with an inadequate left hand. “Forget that one. What's
next? I...D... inside?” Another swipe. “I mean, N... E...that's it?
Cripes, Cap, that doesn't spell anything.”

The captain smeared off the bottom of the S
with the end of his finger, and added a tail. Then underlined
it.

“G,” Cole murmured. “Engine! Engine? The
engine's good. Didn't even come close to the the engine.”

At which point Stuart threw the whiteboard
at him.

Cole caught it in midair and handed it back
to him. “Give me something else, then. Geeze. I'm not a mind
reader. “B...A...C...back? We'd sink if I backed her up. You know
that. What next—Y...A ...R...backyard! Man, we don't have a
backyard.”

“Mah—Bo!” They were the only two words the
man could articulate, and—up to that point—had always referred to
the waterwheel they built up at the falls to make their
electricity. Which was the ultimate in frustration considering the
fact the man was an amateur inventor, who used to take great
delight in explaining the inner workings of all things mechanical
to anyone who would listen. Something he and his First Mate had
passed many hours doing, before the episode (some sort of stroke)
robbed him of the use of half his body, including his tongue. But
his mind was still sharp as ever.

Ten minutes and many charades later, Cole
was headed to the workshop area beside the engine room to rummage
through a shelf of books and manuals for one called,
Backyard
Boats Book
. And considering the last time he did this had
resulted in building the waterwheel, they were fairly certain their
captain was trying to direct them in the most practical way to make
necessary repairs to the
Dreadnaught
. Which was only partly
right.

He wanted them to build another boat,
entirely.

It was a small, squat-looking thing that
resembled more of a tugboat than a motor-cruiser. However, the
plans (included in the
Backyard Boats Book
) were amazingly
simple. Something about being built from the “chine” method, which
required no complicated bending of the wood. Anywhere. In fact,
Mason calculated they could actually have such a project
completed—and ready to launch—before Christmas.

In spite of its looks, it would be
well-balanced and seaworthy. The one drawback was that all working
systems would have to be scavenged from the
Dreadnaught
,
making it fairly probable that the old ship would never get off the
rocks, again. At least, not without investing much more than she
was worth to make it happen. A thought that sent a wave of remorse
through the family, since it had been their only home for so many
months, now.

That, and the fact the new boat would only
be large enough for three.

Of course, there was no question about who
would go. The two who needed medical attention, and the only
able-bodied seaman among them who could handle a boat in the rough
coastal waters of winter. The rest would have to stay with the
Dreadnaught.
At least long enough for their “forward group”
to get whatever medical help they needed, then locate the abandoned
lodge they had been headed for in the first place. Who knew if it
was even livable enough to move into? It was a mission that could
take anywhere from a week, to a month, or even longer. Depending on
where the group landed.

It was a dangerous undertaking, no matter
how Stella looked at it, but no one was talking about that part.
Although she was certain everyone was thinking about it. Even more
since Lou Edna had declared her intentions to take the Senator (the
name she had given her son, so he would have some advantage in
life) along with them. The young woman's reasoning being that she
trusted Cole enough to paddle them to safety on a surfboard, if he
had to. So, that was that. It was a point the others might have
argued against, and prevailed. Except those left behind might even
be worse off, should there be some reason they were never rescued,
at all.

A fact which rested heavier on Millie, each
day, as she watched the
Mah-Bo II
taking shape, right before
her eyes. Once they had set up another covered work area (so large
it blocked out their former view of the waterfall from the galley
porthole), the men had been working feverishly on the new project,
every day. Almost as if they knew something the women didn't. At
least, that's what Stella was thinking, as she and Millie were
having a cup of tea, while they were on fire-watch, some five weeks
after construction began.

“Funny we're almost through October, and it
doesn't seem half as cold as when we first got here.” Stella
stirred a squirt of lemon juice into her tea, along with a spoon of
brown sugar. “You think we're getting used to the weather? Or it's
maybe just another sign of global warming.”

“Definitely global warming.” Millie held her
cup between her hands and blew gently on it before taking a sip.
“Wouldn't surprise me if the whole northwest didn't feel the same
as California in the next ten years. If they don't blow up the
planet before then.”