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The Merlin Factor. Chapter Seven.
Topic Started: Dec 17 2015, 01:01 AM (82 Views)
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The Merlin Factor. Chapter Seven.

Storms and Spells.


South of the North Pacific High, 1990.


By degrees, I became aware of a change in motion.
After a certain amount of time at sea, one learns to ignore the usual, the expected, so that it is possible to sleep through surprisingly rough conditions. It is only when a change occurs - sometimes even a change for the better - that the idling brain wakes up and takes notice.
The motion I now awoke to, however, was most definitely not a change for the better. I crawled urgently from the rear cabin, cursing as I banged my lower-back for the umpteenth time against the rear box-beam, opening up the still only half-healed scar of my last encounter with the damned thing. Standing upright, I was immediately hurled into the navigation table, further enlarging my inventory of bruises and scrapes, as the trimaran lifted off the top of a wave and crashed recklessly into the trough.

Throwing open the hatch, I swallowed a high-pressure mouthful of ocean as I tried to call out to Jacques. He was sitting as before, slouched back against the coaming in his goggles and cap, reading my precious edition of `Heavy Weather Sailing'. I wondered vaguely how he could even see to read in the murky pre-dawn light; the very air was filled with wind-driven spray. At least he was all right. I had to get some sail down. Now.

We were broad-reaching at a dizzy pace, out-running the waves at around fifteen knots, often more, corkscrewing drunkenly as we first accelerated obliquely down the face of a wave until we were surfing, then with a swoop and a rush, up the back of the next one to lift off into mid-air over the foaming crest before diving down to start all over again.

It wasn't a comfortable sequence, and was made even less so by the quantities of wind-driven water that accompanied each successive Kamikaze-dive.
"Jacques! We've got to reef down! The main has to go!"
"No need to shout, old boy," he grinned up at me. "According to zis superb volume," he indicated the large book he had been reading, "we are not, as yet, in any great danger. Eet say to keep calm and to `and ze main', while at the same time readying ze trysail."

I stared at him. He was dry. I hadn't been on deck more than a moment or two, and rivers of salty water were cascading down my sleepy skin. I felt close to panic - his presence on board must have given me a false sense of security to have not awakened sooner to this awful weather - while he lounged around in his little impermeable bubble of grinning bonhomie, reading a likewise utterly dry book and informing me of what we should be doing. In his impossibly good English!

I felt rather angry. "I don't have a bloody trysail! Maybe you have a handy little trysail tucked away inside your pants? My pants, rather!"
I staggered under the assault of a wall of green water from the porpoising bows and fell to my knees gaping, in blank amazement, as the water seemed to bend around Jacques, bypassing him before regrouping behind and squirting around the cockpit sides to slosh around, looking for the drains.

He put down his book, yawned a wide yawn and said: "Alas, no, mon Capitaine. A trysail I lack. What then shall we do?"

I giggled hysterically. Wow! Was I still asleep perhaps? This character was really weird. Oh well. Asleep or not, we still had a problem and it had to be solved immediately. "All right. Now listen. Here's what we'll do. We have to lower the main. We can't do that unless we turn into the wind. If we turn into the wind, the windspeed will suddenly be much stronger. These waves are getting pretty damned big, if you've noticed, and for a moment or two, we're going to be in the trough. So we have to keep right on turning - no hesitation - and pull in the jib as we head up. We have to make a complete circle, Jacques. Throw a tack. As we pass through the wind, the main can be pulled down. You'll have to work the jib-sheets as we tack, falling off the other way until we're headed back in this direction again. You'll have to jibe the jib, probably; she won't want to sail by-the-lee in this much wind. Do you understand?"
"I think, yes, I see what you wish us to do. It is a good thing, no, that I learn ze better English? Bloody good thing!"
He was still grinning. Unperturbed. Bone-dry. I shivered in the foam-filled wind and wondered if he really understood just what it was that we were going to do. This was dangerous. At least he would be a hand on the tiller while I wrestled with the sails. Alone, I would be in deep water. So to speak.

"Good. Thanks, Jacques. We'll run under jib alone for a while; see how the weather goes. I have a storm-jib in case it gets really bad. Let's hope we don't need it. Are you ready?"
"Naturellement, mon Capitaine. Go a'ead!"
"All right. Here we go. Head her up, Jacques, and winch in the jib as you go. Got to keep her moving!"

I scrambled up onto the cabin-top and crawled forwards to the mast as the trimaran heeled way over to the centrifugal force of a fifteen-knot turn, gaping at the walls of angry water as they changed direction and charged in from abeam. This was the dangerous part. The vessel was already slowing down, the main luffing and banging above my head as Jacques winched in the jib to keep us driving into the wind.
A trimaran cannot lie beam-on to heavy seas for long and survive the passage of waves like a monohull. She can capsize in an instant, or worse, simply break up. Jacques had timed it just right though, and we swung around upwind while in the trough, avoiding the next wave, climbing its slope at a steadily narrowing angle until the jib began to rattle and shake...

Now! I released the halyard clutch and tore at the mainsail, frantically pulling it down the mast-track as the boat hovered in the eye of the wind and slowly began to pay off on the other tack. The wind had been strong enough as we ran away from it, but as we lurched over the top of the wave, the full fury of it took my breath away. At least forty knots, I realized, blinking in the salt-spray. Would the yankee stand up to that much wind? At least the risk of a broach would be lessened now, with all the sail concentrated forwards. Anyway, the jib could be lowered while sailing in any direction, unlike the main, and we could run under the windage of the bare mast if need be.

The trimaran was accelerating now, her rudder coming alive after the mushiness of staggering through the eye of so much wind. The horizon rotated around the boat as if she, in her mad flight, was the focal point of space. Come on, come on!
Jacques had gauged it almost to perfection. We were almost around when the next wave booted the windward outrigger high into the air and the boat sailed off on its leeward float, the rudder almost out of the water, all but unable to hold its own, wanting to turn back broadside-on to the waves. The leeward float disappeared beneath the foaming water and I started slipping across the wildly canting deck as she began to capsize. I scrabbled frantically for a handhold, knowing that to be separated from the boat meant certain death, even though I might be trapped and drowned as she flipped over on top of me.

My mind was stretched past the point of fear. It was all too quick. I could only observe this foolishness through the detached eyes of the condemned man. He who has lost everything. He who is no longer able to exercise further control over the outcome of events...

With an impossible little flick, the trimaran seemed to shake her head like a soaked but happy dog, and lunge off downwind, an immense bone in her teeth. So fast. Just so fast. What on earth had happened there? Was this possible?

I looked back to the cockpit in time to see Jacques cleating off the sheet and nonchalantly returning to his comfortable position. I slithered back to join him, drenched and shivering, as much from the reaction to what had just happened as to any environmental nastiness. He was still dry. Still grinning. Damn him!

"Well done, Jacques," I managed. Well, I had to congratulate him, I suppose... "Nice timing, amigo. Scared the living shit out of me! You should have woken me sooner though. The main can get to be a real problem if you leave it up for too long."

I turned and gaped at our foaming, high-speed wake: "Geez! Will you look at us go?"

We had hardly lost any speed at all. Before, we had been racing along at fifteen knots with the rudder almost hard over to combat the immense weather-helm that results from carrying too much sail. Now, the boat was again almost in balance, the jib helping to turn the bows downwind against the inherent tendency of the vessel to round up at speed, and we were still making an easy twelve or thirteen knots. Still too fast for the seas, but only marginally so, and I decided to live with it for a while and see what developed.

The loss of a mere knot or two had dramatically reduced the amount of water coming aboard, and now we merely tipped over the crests of the waves as opposed to actually becoming airborne. Much safer. At least for now. It doesn't do to go chasing that last knot of performance from a trimaran thousands of miles offshore. Anything can happen. I didn't relish the thought of walking home.

Jacques had produced a worn and wrinkled copy of `Cruising World' from beneath the Expo 86 sweatshirt that he had recently commandeered, and now riffled through the pages before showing me the recipe-of-the-month. "Some `King Neptune Pancakes', per'aps? A little coffee, for the Capitaine? En veux-tu? I can 'ear your stomach from where I sit."

It was early dawn. The sun about to rise over a clear but windswept horizon. I was almost ready to go back to sleep again, done-in after all this early-morning activity, but breakfast? Damn good idea. I realized I was starving!

"You can cook too? I should keep you on permanently as crew, Jacques Merlin. You handled that bit of excitement like a true pro."
"And am I not a pro? I would remind you that I am a pilot of La Marine, and as such, am fairly competent to crew aboard this bizarre vessel."
"No offence, Jacques. Although you have not sailed with the French Navy for almost two-hundred years, I cannot doubt your skill. And whatever the hell `King Neptune's Pancakes' are, I could probably eat a plateful. Thank-you, Jacques. Think you can manage to light the stove?"
He withdrew the original long-lost instructions for the `Patria' diesel burner from their hiding place inside the magazine and winked, disappearing below and leaving me to helm my soggy way into the dawn.

How he managed to cook on an un-gimballed stove in those seas, I will never know, but then there were a lot of things that Jacques Merlin did that I will never be able to figure out. It was like suddenly being cast into a sorcerer's apprenticeship, without having being formally introduced to the sorcerer. He was a living, breathing paradox. So utterly human, yet so chillingly alien. It was quite a while, though, before I really began to consciously notice just how strange he was...

He could do things that no mere mortal should even be able to conceive of doing. And do them well. Not only was it what he did, as much as the way he did it. As if it were perfectly natural and no big deal. It wasn't simple modesty, you see, as much as it was merely perfectly natural for a nineteenth-century sailor to be able to do things that to a twentieth-century sailor were absolutely impossible.

In spite of all this, his pancakes were pure dynamite. Weird, mind you: imagine eating fish pancakes! I savored the last mouthful, reflecting that I had never tasted better. Even the coffee, the same awful coffee I always used, tasted infinitely better than usual. How could this be? I asked him...

"You 'ave think you are in great danger, mon Capitaine. An' so living 'ave a sweeter taste. This sweetness will fade in time. Until you find once more the danger you seek."
"You don't think we were in danger back there? Holy cow, man! We almost capsized!" He obviously knew nothing about the temperamental stability of hard-pressed trimarans.
"Almost? Per'aps. We almost came close to almost thinking we almost capsized. Almost. But we did not. You see?"

I didn't, really, and although I nodded as if I did, he went on to enlighten me:
"Ze world is a magic place. A place of mirrors. Zis is so. What appears to be, is not always what is. Almost never, in fact. Take, for example, my ship. She was filled whiz men 'oo were filled whiz fear. Zey 'ave decide to believe zat zey were all in great danger, for zis is what appeared to zem to be true. All were lost. All but myself. I alone, it seem, 'ave decide zat zis was - interesting. A complex problem to be solved in an easy way, no? Dangerous? No! Me, I did not die. I am saddened by men's decision to die under ze illusion of danger. It is so foolish."

I stared at him, aware of my still damp clothing. Who was this guy?

"How is it, Jacques, that you don't get wet? I got thoroughly soaked out there. Why didn't you?"
"I will tell you, Dave, if you tell me zis. When you go outside into ze storm, what 'appen to you? What effect does water 'ave upon you?"
I laughed, entertained if nothing else. "I get wet! What do you think!"
"Do you like to be wet? Tout mouille‚?"
"No! I hate it! I think I used to be a cat. Yuk!"
"But me. I do not get wet. Why should I? I choose not to. I get wet only if I wish to bathe, or to swim. If you 'ate it, as you claim, why do you choose it to be so?"

I prepared several sarcastic and witty replies, but was unable to fire them at him because, when you got right down to it, he didn't get wet! It wasn't possible. Maybe I was dead. Maybe when you die, you wind up in this state where nothing makes sense anymore. No more dependable laws of physics. No more comfortable realities. No straight answers. It shook me.
"Am I dead, Jacques?" I had to know, and here was a man who ought to have that kind of knowledge.
"Yes. You are dead."

Oh! Oh wow! Oh shit! Unfair! How had it happened? Is it really possible to miss a thing like that? Can you really die and not even notice? He laughed amiably as my jaw dropped.

"Dead people get wet, mon Capitaine. Dead people are afraid. Dead people are always at ze mercy of - 'ow do you say it - at ze mercy of ze Random Factair."

"But dead? Really dead? What... I mean..."

"Relax, hein? My dead, it is not ze same as your dead. Although ze two are related. Maybe more zan you theenk. Let me pose you a kestion, Dave. Why are you 'ere? After all, you do not 'ave to be. And why is she called `Random Factair', zis astonishingly strange boat?"
I thought hard, the trimaran sleeting across wavetops at high speed in the middle of eternity. Hmmm...
"I guess I'm looking for something," I replied, scratching behind my damp ears. "Twentieth century life is a bit much to take, you know. Men aren't men any more. Women aren't women. Life is getting too complicated - too crazy. Shore-life is regulated by bits of paper and officials in uniform. More rules and regulations than you can shake a stick at. I didn't like it - had to leave. See what else was out there - here - oh, it's difficult to explain. You think war was bad news in the eighteen-hundreds! It's much worse now. The whole world is being held to ransom by a handful of clowns who can push buttons and wipe out entire cities without even leaving the room. They say it is necessary to build and maintain the capability to destroy the entire planet. So they do it. The population doesn't want these weapons. Everybody hates this situation, but somehow it continues. The whole world is nuts, man. Crazy as loons. I just couldn't deal with it anymore. So here I am. I'd rather risk a natural death than face random incineration at any moment. At least I'll die like a man, not like some stupid sheep in a slaughterhouse."

"Your world, it is really like this?" Jacques looked incredibly sad for a moment.
"That's right, mon vieux. Worse in fact. The whole works is so out to lunch, you just wouldn't believe it. We have this thing called television. A screen in every home that shows news from around the world. Only the really bad news is shown. Nothing good. Greed, violence and corruption; in full color. You're watching all this horror when suddenly, with no warning, you see a commercial about sanitary napkins or hamburgers. It's obscene."
"Sanitary napkins? What are zese?"

I laughed and felt better immediately. Nothing like a good laugh to put things in their proper perspective.
"Sanitary napkins are very, very important, Jacques. Without them, twentieth-century women would be indistinguishable from prehistoric savages. The suicide rate would soar. Modern society is very concerned with personal hygiene. You wouldn't believe the number of products available to make you squeaky-clean, nice-smelling, good-looking and generally acceptable. People actually buy them too. Even me, sometimes."

Jacques was trying to make sense of all of this, riffling through the pages of Webster's. He looked puzzled.
"And `Random Factor'," I continued, "is just a name for something that can not be named. An idea. Adventure, I suppose. I just like the sound of it."

The boat was picking up speed again. Obviously the wind was still rising, and I thought about the storm-jib buried under the more frequently used light-weather sails, somewhere up forward.

"So you are running away, are you not?" I looked at him, analyzing his intent. This was a delicate point with me. Others had asked me the same question as if the act of running away was something weak and puny. Something only a coward of no account might do. I was defensive:

"So? So what? Wouldn't you? When something is intolerable, and you can walk away from it, do you stick around and suffer? If you sit down on a hedgehog, do you keep sitting on it? Does the pain of its quills poking you in the ass build character?"

"I 'ave meant no offense, Dave. Eet was a simple kestion." He looked sincere. Jacques Merlin was not the sarcastic type.


"Well, yes. Sure I'm running away. And I think it's a damned good idea. If more people did it, those dolts who govern wouldn't have any power at all. Nobody to govern, eh! All those millions of fools who sit at home and consume, and believe that this is all there is to life, get exactly what they deserve. They even vote, for heaven's sake! They bitch and complain about the government while telling me that I am irresponsible for not voting for the government that they choose! There's no damn choice anyway. Anybody that even wants to govern is basically warped to begin with!"

"You evidently feel very strongly, mon Capitaine. It is wise for you to 'ave run away from such an unsatisfactory situation."
"Damned right!" I was hot now. Consumed with the need to slam everything about society that angered and humiliated me.
"I can not live in a society where a man is no longer allowed to be a man. It's come to the point where you have to passively accept insults from whoever wants to insult you, instead of belting them over the head for their rudeness. To react in any violent manner at all is illegal. Society treats any kind of violent behaviour as a disease, and yet it is called heroic when you go out and murder the enemies of the government. Duty! It's perfectly acceptable to kill the right people. It sucks! All of it!"

Jacques was laughing softly, amused at my vehement outburst. He probably hadn't a clue about most of what I was saying, being from another time and place, but he couldn't help but notice my intensity. I felt a wave of affection for the old rogue. He'd make a truly first-class Hollywood pirate. Perfect.

"So you want to be a man? Are you not zat already?" He asked the most difficult-to-answer questions.
"What are you? A psychiatrist? Sure I'm a man. Out here, anyway. Out here it doesn't even seem necessary to think about it. Only when your every thought and action has to be contrived so that it is acceptable to society does it become necessary to think about it. Out here, every action, or non-action has a direct result. I continue living or not-living as a direct result of my decisions. No words, no intentions, no explanations have any meaning whatsoever. If I don't act, I don't survive. That's the way I like it."
"I begin to understand," he mused. "Your society is very protected, I presume. No matter 'ow badly you run your life, no matter 'ow many mistakes you make, you are assured of a continuing existence? Until zese mighty weapons of which you speak, randomly fall from ze sky an' end every-sing?"
"More or less. My society is a society of paper. The many official papers have become more important than the people. Mistakes are penalized only by the receipt of ever more forms to fill in. As long as you can obey the millions of rules, no harm can come to you. But you drown in a sea of questionnaires and signed declarations. Imagine! I do not even exist as a free man without official identification. I cannot expect freedom if I cannot prove who I am. I am not trusted to simply BE who I am. I have to PROVE it. Jesus! My identification number means more than the flesh and blood. I am not a human being. Just a random formula of information. So fuck it! Here I am!"

"Zen I bid you welcome, Dave! 'ere am I, too. Ze kestion now is: whaire are we?"
"Does it matter?"
We laughed at this declaration of nonchalant disorientation and shared a roll-your-own, blue smoke twisting and turning like the path of this adventure into the farthest reaches of the unlikely.

"Freedom is a difficult sing to define," he said.
I still had great difficulty adjusting to his almost instant conquest of the English language. I kept mis-hearing him, expecting to have to work at understanding his words... "Freedom is as slippery as a feesh. Now you 'ave it, now you don'. But you were free to leave your society - nobody 'ave tried to stop you..."
"Are you kidding? The pressure was enormous to make me reconsider. Those whom I once counted as my friends - not that I had very many - spoke loudest against the very idea. Said I was crazy! Stupid! That I could be killed!"
"As you very well could be. What I mean is zat no official tried to prevent your escape..."
"Wrong again! Though no-one actually physically tried to stop me, the psychological attacks were incredibly intense. First, it was necessary to register the boat. Officially. This is to ensure that I can prove this boat is actually mine. I am assumed - of course - to be a thief who just went out and stole it. It costs money for this absurd registration. And then it costs much more money when the government discovers, through the official registration, that I have bought, or built a boat. They claim the right to extract a purchase tax. Consequently, I am without safety-equipment that I could no longer afford to buy. I was led to believe that I needed expensive inoculations, electronic equipment, visas, and all kinds of other stuff that no self-respecting adventurer would give a damn about. The adventure almost ceased to be an adventure right there. If nothing can ever happen to you, why bother going at all?"
"Ah! It is the idea of danger again, you see! Me, I was required to join La Marine. I did not wish it, but zere were many to whom ze idea of fighting the English was reason enough. Still, zey had no choice. Zey were not free to choose."
"Maybe you're right. I am reasonably free, I suppose. But to me, there is no such thing as `reasonably free'. Either I am free, or I am not. A mere taste is not enough."
"Zen I congratulate you on your decision to leave what is of no use to you. Are you free now?"
"Feels like it!"
"Zen it mus' be so. Are you 'appy?"
"Getting there, I guess. Bit worried about the wind..."
"Yes. I sink we should per'aps lower ze jib, no?"

We climbed out onto the heaving decks and took stock. The sun was well up now, and the clear blue skies had given way to scudding streaks of leaden cloud, racing overhead and plunging our tiny world into alternating deep shadow and glaring sunlight. Our speed was, once again, approaching the danger level, the rudder vibrating with a wailing little song of apprehension, the boat leaping from crest to trough, boiling along at an average of fourteen knots, rising in breathtaking little leaps to over seventeen, before the stern squatted in rapid deceleration until the next breaker lifted us into full flight again. I dug out the tiny storm jib and prepared it for hoisting, while Jacques disconnected the autohelm and made ready to hand steer during the sail change.

All right, I thought. Here goes! With a terrifying, clattering shudder, the sail thrashed and hammered as I released the halyard and clawed at the unyielding dacron, trying to stuff it into the bow pulpit before it dragged me overboard. The trimaran lurched and staggered, decelerating and trying to turn upwind, all but overpowered by the force of the waves. I stole a quick look back at Jacques, struggling with the tiller, and thanked God for his presence. A surer crew would be hard to find. Totally unafraid. And as a result, my own fear was easier to control. How much easier it is to fall prey to terror when all around you are terrified!

We were still moving at eight to nine knots under the windage of the bare mast and rigging, and I yelled out to Jacques, needing to know how hard it was to steer. He grimaced and drew his finger across his throat, shaking his head from side to side. Oh well. Another little idiosyncrasy of the boat. She kept wanting to broach without any sail up forward.

The wind was becoming threatening by now, and even the storm-jib would have overpowered us. Time for the drogue. Making my way carefully back to the cockpit, I hefted the old car tire from its nesting-place on the outside of the coaming and attached its bridle to a two-hundred foot nylon warp. With a quick check of the snatch-blocks that led the bridle over the stern from the ends of the two outriggers, I jettisoned the whole mess overboard and hoped it would not tangle in the frightful seas that were rushing down on us.

I wondered if I ought to be afraid, aware that I was not, and wondering why. I felt proud and masculine as the boat seemed to surge backwards to a standstill, and flutter there, like a hummingbird before a flower, as the drogue took hold. It felt like all way was lost, but a quick glance at the knotmeter showed an almost steady five knots as the nylon warp stretched and contracted, compensating for the rowdy seas.

The motion was eerily smooth, compared with the earlier plunging flight, and we were taking almost no water in the cockpit. Not that it mattered to Jacques - he was still as dry as a martini - while I dripped and ran with chilled deep-ocean water.

This was my doing. Through my own lack of panic, and my own good sea-sense, we were still safe. Through my own actions, we were still a going concern. It felt about as sweet as anything ever could. This was easily the worst weather I had ever encountered, and here we were, none the worse; at least not yet. Good boat. Good company. Good!

"Think we'll leave the storm-jib off her, Jacques. The drogue seems to be keeping her from broaching. How's the steering?"
"Light as... 'ow do you say it? A feather?"
"That's it. Good! Put the pilot back to work and lets have some tea. See how smooth the motion is now? Damn good boat!"

We rode like that for the rest of the day and all through the night, rising and falling, rolling only slightly amid the tumult of the raging seas, a gull upon the waters.

*****

As I was preparing breakfast next morning, hot oats and cornmeal, I playfully threw some water at the back of Jacques' head and stared, incredulous, as the liquid bounced an inch or so away from his hair and fell to either side of him. He turned, grinning as always:
"Okay! A guy like you needs to know 'ow to keep dry. I will show you 'ow it is done!"

I blinked. Impossible. This character changed by the minute. You couldn't make him wet. No way. Now he was speaking in a fair approximation of colloquial North-American English. And...

I was all ears...

"Okay man..." He grinned at my guffawing laughter. Hearing someone like him talking like some barely out-of-date hippy was really too much. Oh he just killed me... "Okay man," he tried again. "Water is not wet. This is a fact. Do you agree?"
"Should I?"
"It is necessary if you wish to remain dry."
"Fine. Water isn't wet. Now what?"
"Now you will not get wet."
"How do I get clean?"
"Water is only wet when you want it to be."
"That's it? That's the great secret?"
"C'est ca!"
"Pretty basic, huh? What now?"

He went to the sink and pumped some water into a cup, turned around and threw it at me. I got soaked.
"I'm wet! It doesn't work!"
"You are not wet."
"Look at this! I'm soaked!"
"You are dry."
"I feel wet!"
"But you are dry. Imagine yourself dry. Go ahead. Try it."

Suddenly the wetness was gone. I jumped right off the floor. Immediately, I was soaked again. I felt the hairs rising on the back of my neck.

"It may take a little practice, but you see? It is possible. Even for you." Grinning his big grin.
"Even for me? What am I? A dope? A heathen?"
"Of course you are not. You are simply accustomed to thinking in a certain way. You were told, long ago, by someone, zat water is wet. You believed it zen. You 'ave never stopped believing it. Zat is all."
"You're telling me that water isn't really wet?"
"I am telling you zat water is not always wet. In fact I am telling you zat almost everything is not always anything. Things are as zey are perceived to be. You do ze perceiving. You were amazed at ze way I 'ave caught ze feesh. You said zat feesh are almost impossible to catch, offshore. Zerefore your feesh probably are. My feesh are easy to catch. Zey come to me to be caught. Zey understand zat I need zem, and is zere any creature, anywhere, zat dislike to be needed? You catch no feesh because you do not need zem. An' even if you did, you would persuade zem not to come to you because you believe zey are not zere. It is a mystery to me why you act zis way, when you do not 'ave to."

He picked up a spoon and held it up to the light. It drooped and ran down his forearm like mercury, puddling on the tabletop. This was my spoon! Solid stainless steel. Made in Sheffield. I stared, reached forwards and touched it - a spoon! Solid stainless steel. Made in Sheffield.

"How did you do that!?" I spluttered and goggled at this utter impossibility.
"Simple. I do zese things because you are not afraid. You know zat I am not an agent of the devil, zerefore I can show you what is real. An' what is not. You 'ave seen ze spoon as it really is. Free. Un'indered by form or process. We men 'ave chosen to see our artifacts as permanent constructions. Art. Tools. Clothing. 'ave you ever wondered why your egg falls so often from your spoon, when ze spoon's very shape seems to indicate zat it should not? It is because it is not spoon-shaped at all. You only theenk it is!"

I shrank back from the possibilities of this. Staggered.

"Come now!" Jacques reached out and patted my shoulder. "Grasp ze truth! Zis is ze real reason you are 'ere, no? You 'ave run from ze phoniness of ze condition you call civilization, an' you seek reality. Admit it. Our paths 'ave finally crossed as zey always 'ad to. Time is not ze barriere zat you imagine it to be. Zere are zose 'oo exist outside of ze world of men. You are one of zose, as am I, an' again, I bid you welcome!"
"Well, thanks a lot. Really! Do you imagine I am ready to just casually accept this sort of thing?" I stopped, aware that I really did want to. He was right. All along the way. I knew what he was telling me; had known it all along. It was somewhat intimidating though, to discover someone who thought as I did, but who was so much further advanced than me in his thinking.

Kilo suddenly appeared, leaping up to demand Jacques' attention and turning the conversation from its headlong flight into the unknown. Where she had been hiding was anybody's guess, but neither of us had seen her all day. It was with a pang of guilt that I realized that I hadn't even thought about her, and that she might easily have fallen overboard to be lost forever.

"Did you say, mon Capitaine, zat you were a cat in a previous life?"
"Oh, yeah, I guess I did. Seems to me I get pretty cat-like sometimes."
"No wonder zen, zat of all ze people and animals you might 'ave undertaken zis trip whiz, it should turn out to be Kilo."

There was a loud BANG. The boat suddenly jerked, as if it had been rammed by a runaway truck. My eyes sprang wide open, brain whirling, clicking, trying to imagine what had happened...
"Quick!" I shouted. "Get on deck!"

I shoved Jacques out the hatch and followed at his heels, terror once again scrabbling at my mind, trying to get inside. The trimaran was wallowing around, turning broadside to the waves. The death position. The ring-bolts on the outrigger transoms had torn completely out and the drogue, along with its great length of nylon warp had vanished into the distance.
Ring bolts! I had always intended to replace them with through-bolted chainplates, but like so many other things in my life, it had simply never got done. This was trouble! Deep, deep shit!

"Steer her, Jacques!" I cried, heart hammering. "Try to point her downwind! Hurry!"
He heaved at the tiller, bending it ominously, trying to persuade the boat to reconsider this impending suicide, while I dove back below and staggered up into the forepeak. Damned sails everywhere! I clawed at them, burrowing down. Where was the bloody thing? A blinding flash! I saw flaring stars and great blobs of light as my head smashed into the front crossbeam. I shook them away. No time. No time for that! There. Jesus! Why did I never learn to be prepared? I heaved the bulky parachute pack out into the main cabin and went back to separate the anchor from its long nylon line. This was the last long line I had on the boat. Heaven help us if it went overboard too.
My skittering brain observed in fascination as my fingers tore away at the hardware, tying special sailor's knots, unscrewing snaps and shackles. Expert fingers. Frantic fingers. There. Quick! I heaved the whole works up through the hatch and into the cockpit, leaping out after it while Jacques leaned into the tiller, calm as ever, looking curiously at me as if wondering how I might cope with this situation. I wanted to say something, but couldn't. No time!
The line would have to be secured right to the transom. Not a good idea really, I knew, remembering the dry-rot that I had always intended to repair, but hadn't. But it was the best I could do. I saw to it, amazed at the speed at which I was working. With a final check to see if everything was free to run, I threw the parachute pack overboard and tugged at the pilot-line as it disappeared aft, into the tumbling foam. The nylon line snaked out over the transom at high speed, smoking as it burned an instant groove down through the fiberglass and deep into the wood. I jumped backwards, terrified that I might get a loop caught around my ankle and be instantly dismembered.
Both Jacques and I were hurled violently forwards into the cabin bulkhead as the chute snapped open and practically stopped the boat dead. I couldn't breathe. Waiting, rapt, expecting the line to part under the strain. It held.
I sank to the cockpit sole, trembling at the exertion. God almighty! Ohhh!
I slumped there, panting, recovering, the boat much less endangered, while I struggled with my mind, beating it into obedience, planning the next move...

Jacques was still having trouble keeping the bows pointed downwind, the very beam of the vessel unbalanced by this huge brake attached to its center. I dug a snatch block from the tangle of equipment beneath the cockpit seats and hacked a length of jib-sheet into a suitable length. I gulped down another lung-full of salty air and crawled out onto the wing-deck. The snatch-block was hastily secured over the parachute line and the short length of jib-sheet led back to the chainplate that held the starboard running-backstay. Shackle. Quick!

"Jacques! Turn her to starboard!" Screamed into the wind. The boat slewed instantly as he gave it a degree or two of rudder, allowing me to take up the slack in the line and tie it off with a fisherman's bend.
"Okay! Head her back downwind!" I scurried back out of the way as the strain came on the line. It thrummed like a guitar string, singing in anguish at the awful weight. But...

It worked! The boat straightened out, almost serene, while Jacques stared in surprise at the tiller, now easy to manage, just port of amidships. I stepped back into the cockpit, yelling at the wind and laughing like a madman. Oh it felt good! Success! We staggered back below, slamming the hatch against the fury of what had by now become a force-eleven storm, and congratulated each other on yet another job well done.

"Bravo, mon Capitaine! I take my 'at off to you!" He was still grinning. Nothing ever seemed to stop him for more than a moment or two. He looked around. "Where is my 'at?"

I laughed again and again. Ah. Back under control. We were a couple of experts, so we were. Nothing could mess up a team like ours. Nothing. I checked the bilges after supper, and was amazed to find them only slightly damp. There was always water in the bilges. After all this heavy weather, there should have been gallons of seawater sloshing around down there, but here was proof to the contrary. Saved me a lot of battery power though, not needing to pump a flooded bilge, and I felt almost euphoric as I slithered into bed that night, leaving Jacques poring over a year-old copy of Multihulls Magazine, learning all he could about trimarans, catamarans and proas.

*****

Edited by crow, Jun 2 2018, 01:29 AM.
"Squawk!" said the crow, and then made space.
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