Danielle Steel: Miracle

He flew back to Cape Town, and it was late that night when he joined the boat again. It was a great relief to be there. Vol de Nuit was home now.

They sat in port for another three days provisioning, and Quinn spent hours with the captain charting their route. They were going to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, and travel up the east side of Africa. There were places where it seemed unwise to go with a yacht the size of Vol de Nuit . He didn't want to enter hostile areas, or expose the crew to unnecessary danger. And by the time they set sail again, Quinn was happy to be sailing and heading for new locations.

The weather began getting worse after the holidays, and in the second week of January, it began raining. They had three days of heavy rains and rough seas, and Quinn couldn't help remembering the storm of a year before in San Francisco. It was in the aftermath of it, on New Year's Day, that he had first seen Maggie, standing in the pouring rain, with everything she was wearing soaking wet. And as he thought of it, he was tempted to call her, but resisted. Hearing her now, and talking to her, would just be painful for both of them. He was determined to let her go. He wanted her to have a better life than he felt he could give her.

They changed their course after a week of rain, and by the second week, the entire crew was tired of it, and so was Quinn. They got out their charts and began mapping a new course, hoping to find better weather, but it was worse instead. Vol de Nuit was pitching and rolling in heavy seas. Everyone but Quinn and the captain was sick, and Quinn jokingly said they'd have to lash the crew to their beds if the weather didn't get better. He was in his bed that night when he heard a crash. The seas were so rough that a piece of furniture had broken loose and fallen over. He looked at the gauges next to his bed, and saw that the winds had reached gale force. He put on his clothes and made his way to the bridge to talk to the captain. Their new course seemed to have taken them into the worst of the storm. Quinn was startled by the size of the waves breaking over the deck when he met the first mate, the engineer, and the captain in the wheelhouse. They were looking over the weather reports and watching the radar. There was green water sweeping over the deck, and the waves were crashing over the wheelhouse. And each time the bow dove down and came up again, it felt as though the masts would break, but Quinn was sure that they wouldn't.

“Looks like we're rock and rolling,” Quinn said cheerfully, but he was shocked to see that the captain looked worried. “How're we doing?” Quinn didn't expect to have any problems. Vol de Nuit was sound and able to withstand almost any weather, and conditions, and rough seas had never frightened him. They just had to get through it. And Quinn was never seasick.

“There are some nasty reefs out there,” the captain said, after carefully examining their radar and sonar. “And there's a tanker in trouble. The navy responded to them a while ago, but it looks like things are going to get worse before they get better.”

“Looks like a hurricane, doesn't it?” Quinn said, as though it wasn't happening to them. And then a moment later, he turned to the captain. “I want the men in harnesses. Have we got the safety lines up yet?”

“We put them up an hour ago,” he said reassuringly. They wore harnesses with lights on them, and clipped the safety lines to their harnesses in case they got swept overboard, but Quinn knew that if anyone went over the side in waves like this, it would be almost impossible to retrieve them.

“Tell them to be careful,” Quinn said to the first mate, and started out on deck to see how the crew were doing. Everyone had yellow foul weather gear on, including Quinn, and the captain told him sternly to put a harness on before he left the wheelhouse. “Yes, sir.” Quinn smiled at him, and was glad that Sean was being careful.

Quinn put the harness on and went outside to join the other men. And as he did, there were some nasty crashing sounds in the galley. The boat was shuddering by then, and the only thing Quinn was worried about was breaking a mast. There was nothing they could do at this point, but ride through it. But it was unsettling for everyone, and as Quinn watched the waves, he was genuinely concerned for the first time. They were the roughest seas he'd ever seen. The waves were as tall as skyscrapers, towering seventy or eighty feet above them. It would have been a challenge to any ship, and was to Vol de Nuit , and as he stood looking into the darkness, he heard a shout a few feet away from him. One of the younger crew members had nearly gone over the side, and two of the other men had grabbed him. They were clinging to the safety lines, and all three of them looked like they were going to be swept off the boat as the sailboat dropped straight down into a giant trough. It was an eternity before they rose again and the mammoth waves crashed over them.

“Get everyone inside!” Quinn shouted and gesticulated at them through the wind, and the men began slowly crawling back up the boat, the deck was at a nearly-ninety-degree angle, and it seemed a lifetime before the crew were crowded into the wheelhouse, dripping water. It was the first time in his life that Quinn had been truly worried on a boat, but he'd never seen a storm like this one, except in movies. They had tied down everything they could, but things all over the boat were crashing and breaking. He wasn't worried about the damage now, but only their survival, and most of the men looked genuinely frightened. “Well, this will be one to talk about,” Quinn said to ease the tension, and the entire boat seemed to groan and shudder as they headed down into the trough of the next wave. Quinn didn't want to let on to them that even he was frightened, and he bitterly regretted the course they'd taken. It had been a calculated guess on his part, but clearly it had been the wrong one. There was nothing they could do now but ride it out, and pray they'd make it.

Morning dawned grim and gray again, and the waves only seemed to get bigger, the wind worse. The two stewardesses had joined them in the wheelhouse by then, and reluctantly the captain told everyone to put life vests on. There seemed to be a distinct possibility that they might not make it.

They radioed to the nearest ship, and were told that the tanker had gone down, and no one had made it into the lifeboats. There would have been no point anyway. No one could have survived this. Shortly after nine o'clock there was another distress call on the emergency frequency. A fleet of fishing boats had gone down. Quinn and the captain exchanged a long look, and somewhere in the wheelhouse, a crew member was praying out loud. Quinn suspected that silently, they all were. He would have offered them something to fortify them and keep their spirits up, as they'd been up all night, but they needed to keep their wits about them.

He stood at the windows watching the waves again, and as he stared into the driving rain, he could have sworn he saw a woman's face, and it was Maggie. And as he thought of her, and the time they had spent together, he had an overwhelming urge to call her, and promised himself he would, if they survived the storm, which was beginning to seem less and less likely. Vol de Nuit could only stand so much abuse, and the waves seemed to be getting bigger instead of smaller. There was a deafening silence in the wheelhouse, and the only sounds were those of furniture falling below, and another series of crashes in the galley.

“Well, guys,” Quinn said quietly, “we're in it this time. But I'd like to keep the boat. I spent a hell of a lot of money on her.” The engineer laughed a hollow sound, and a few minutes later, the rest of the crew started talking. They were telling war stories about storms they'd been in, and Quinn did the best he could to keep the conversation going, but you could smell terror on their skins, and the sight of all of them in life vests was anything but reassuring. Some of the men had lit cigarettes, and a few were still not talking. Quinn was sure that they were praying, and through it all, as he talked to them, he kept thinking of Maggie. This seemed a hell of a way to die, but in a way this was what he had wanted, to end his life at sea one day. It was just happening sooner than he had expected. He was glad she wasn't there, the last thing he would have wanted to do was kill her. And both of the stewardesses were crying.