She was really scared.
The waves kept hammering at them. The storm roared and rushed around them while Hank cursed and swore. The goat cried out and tried to stand up. Lydia and Theodore pulled it back down and clung to the animal’s neck.
Margaret buried her head under the oilskins and tried to logically think the situation through. Don’t panic, she told herself.
Hank was shouting. Then he kicked her hard in the backside. “Woman! Are you deaf?”
She turned around just as he shouted her name again.
“Come here, dammit!”
She turned to the frightened children. “Lydia! Theodore! Here!” She put Annabelle between them. “Hang on to each other and stay down under this seat!” She slid along under the tarp. “I’m coming!”
He grunted something.
She had to poke her head up in between his splayed knees. The rain pelted her cheeks, stinging. The wind howled and whipped her wet hair against her face.
She heard a roar that seemed unreal. She turned and looked around them. She didn’t know if the sound was from the ocean or the storm, but it was loud and doubly frightening. She could see swell after cresting swell coming toward them and little else.
Hank bellowed her name again, and she whipped her head back around. “We’re close to land! I need you to watch for rocks ahead!”
Still kneeling, she turned back and scanned the horizon but couldn’t see much, only the rising sea and sheeting rain. Another swell hit and sent the boat into the air again.
Her stomach rose. Sea spray washed over her, and rain stung her cheeks and neck.
She heard Hank curse. He shoved the handle of one oar beneath his hip and grabbed her by the shoulder. “Hang on to my leg!”
She clasped one of his thighs in both arms and held on. He locked the other oar. The boat slammed back into the trough of the wave. Saltwater slapped her hard in the face, burning into her nose and eyes. Momentum sent both of them upward.
The rope that anchored his hips to the seat held, and they slammed back down. She clung onto his leg with all her strength, then she felt him grip her shoulders with one hand. He shoved her down. Her knees hit the boat bottom so hard she cried out.
“Sit!” he yelled, forcing her down lower until her backside hit and she was sitting on the boat bottom.
She could hear Lydia and Annabelle crying underneath the tarp. “The children!” she screamed and tried to move toward them.
“No!” he shouted and held her down.
Another swell hit. An angry squall. Harder and higher and stronger than the last time.
Above the roar of the sea and storm she could hear the crash of water. She spun around, bracing her hands for another swell. More water doused her and foamed into the boat. She swiped it from her eyes, and for a second, the driving rain let up. She stared ahead for a frozen moment.
“The rocks!” she screamed. “Oh, God...”
The boat shot across the curl of a huge wave straight at a sheer wall of black, jagged rocks.
6
Smitty screamed at him, then buried her head in her knees.
Hank looked up and saw the rocks.
This was it. Good-bye.
He closed his eyes and waited for the impact.
A wall of water smacked the boat so hard it snapped his neck back as if he’d been punched by God. He shook the water from his head and looked where that last wave had come from. It had ripped in from the opposite direction.
Before he could think, another wave hit, its foam spilling over the tarp. The rocks were still ahead, but the cross waves had shoved them back. The boat rose with the upswell of a new wave, then jerked back as if a giant hand had just grabbed it.
