The Bootlegger

“Going home a hero of the revolution,” said Pauline.

“But first finish Yuri’s job? What job?”

Bell smelled tobacco burning. The dockworkers had hunkered down behind the gasoline barrels to share a smoke.

“Douse that cigarette! You’ll blow my boat to kingdom come!”

The smoker took a last drag, passed it to his friend, who inhaled another. A third man grabbed a quick puff and flicked the butt in the water.

The man Bell was talking to chuckled. “Just like de boss man. Every day he always say, ‘No smoke by ship. Big explosion.’”

Isaac Bell plunged his hand in his pocket and pulled out his bankroll. Twelve tons of pure alcohol would make a very big explosion. “I want that gasoline.”

Tobin said, “We’ve got plenty in the tanks, Mr. Bell. It’ll only weigh us down.”

“We’ll burn it soon enough. It’s twelve hundred miles to New York.”

They had stowed the last barrel they could fit, and Bell had tipped the dockworkers lavishly, when a church bell began to toll. The islanders’ smiles faded at the urgent clamor. Their eyes shot to the government building. The Union Jack was descending the flagpole. A red flag with yellow stripes jumped up in its place.

“What’s that?” asked Bell.

“Red flag with black square say hurricane.”

“I know that. What do those yellow stripes mean?”

“Hurricane come straight here.”

Marion thundered through South Bar Passage. The tide was strong, the ocean swell steep and destructive in the narrow cut and breaking on the sandbar. Bell aimed at what looked deepest and drove her through in a welter of foam and headed for the open sea.

Beyond the reef, the seas were big but orderly. He set a course north and was glad to see that Marion could maintain forty knots without straining. His crew, he could see, were apprehensive, and he tried to raise their spirits.

“Between a cashiered Coastie, a Staten Island pirate, and a yachtsman, we ought to be able to find Cape Hatteras Light. From there, it’ll be an easy run up the coast.”

“How far is Cape Hatteras?” asked Pauline.

Bell shrugged. “Less than eight hundred miles.” He showed her the chart. “We’ll steer a course just west of north.”

Pauline’s brow furrowed as she studied the chart in the murky light that penetrated the windshield and the isinglass side curtains. “It appears we have to get around Abaco, first.”

“We should see Hope Town Light in a couple of hours,” said Bell.

“If we can make forty knots in these seas, we’ll take a full day and night to Cape Hatteras.”

“We’re burning a lot of gas at forty,” said Tobin.

“There’s a hurricane chasing behind,” said Bell. “I want room between it and us.”

Spray drummed on the cockpit tarp. The seas continued to mount and the wind rose. Every few minutes, the boat plowed into a wave markedly bigger than the rest and slowed dramatically.

Bell ordered a watch schedule in which each would steer for two hours, the limit before they lost focus and concentration. Asa brewed coffee in the galley tucked under the foredeck, then helped Pauline steer when it was her turn. Tobin passed around sandwiches of foie gras that Fern’s chef had contributed. In the dark, the compass cast a red glow on faces growing weary of the constant motion and the ceaseless thunder of the Libertys.

Bell caught catnaps, sitting near the helm, but only when Tobin was steering.

He awakened with cold water dripping on his face. The tarpaulin was soaked and it was begi

He decided that, at that rate, they could stop the forward Liberty to conserve it. Asa wrestled on canvas as soon as the pipes cooled. Soon after, they stopped the sternmost motor, as the boat would make her speed on two having burned off the weight of the extra gasoline.

The wind, which had blown from the south and then gradually east, backed suddenly north. Bell pictured the storm whirling, its counterclockwise winds moving sharply to the east as if it had crossed their wake and was heading toward Bermuda.

This was good news if it was traveling away from them rather than overtaking them but bad news if the powerful north wind set up counter- and crosscurrents. Worse, it suggested a storm that was growing in diameter, flinging ever-more-powerful winds hundreds of miles from its eye.

“Getting bad,” Tobin said quietly when they exchanged tricks at the wheel.

“She’s a big boat,” said Bell.

Ed’s lopsided, scarred face formed a tired grin. “I never met a captain who didn’t love his vessel.”

They were twenty-three hours beyond The Bahamas when the western horizon, which looked darker than a coal mine, began to cast an intermittent glow. Bell steered toward it and in a few miles it appeared to be the pulsing beam of a distant lighthouse.

“Cape Hatteras?”

Pauline pored over the chart, careful not to tear the wet paper.

“How is it blinking?” she asked.

Bell timed the flashes. “Fifteen seconds.”

“Cape Hatteras flashes every seven and a half seconds.”

“What flashes fifteen?”

“Cape May, New Jersey?”

“We could not have gotten that far north already.”

“To the south of Hatteras is Cape Lookout. Fifteen seconds.”

“Ed, check the sailing directions. How bright is that light?”

“In these clouds? Less than twelve.”

“Too close.”

Bell powered away from the coast and steered east of north. Three hours later, they spotted the seven-and-a-half-second flash of Cape Hatteras.

“I read that Hatteras is called the Graveyard of the Atlantic,” said Asa Somers. “Ships run aground by the thousands.”

Pauline said, “Thank you for that information.”

One of the Liberty motors coughed and quit.

Moments later, the second fell silent.

40

The boat lost way in an instant and turned her flank to the seas, which rolled her mercilessly.

Tobin and Somers ripped the shrouds off the reserve motors, and Isaac Bell pulled his chokes and hit the starters. One ground with the anemic wheeze of a weak battery. The other churned its motor over and over, but it wouldn’t fire.

The stern drifted around into the wind. A gust filled the cockpit tarp, lifted it like a kite, and blew it off. Rain and spray drenched the cockpit. Bell tried the starter again, hoping there was enough juice left in the battery. The motor fired, coughed, died, and caught again, cylinder by cylinder, until it was hitting on all twelve. As the propeller dug in and the cruiser got under way again, he steered back on their northerly course. Pauline and Somers dragged the tarp back over the cockpit and tied it down. Tobin jumped electricity to the dead battery with Mueller clips. Bell coaxed a second engine to life.

He was concerned that the heavy spray would drown them, so he engaged the mufflers, shunting the exhaust into underwater ports and effectively sealing the manifolds from the vertical pipes. But protection was bought at the cost of power, and their speed dropped. With the engines muted, they could hear the full roar of wind and tumbling seas, which grew louder as the day wore on.

Pauline took the helm, with Asa watching over her. Bell and Tobin went to work on the engines that had quit. Water in the gas seemed to be the cause. Spray could have entered as they pumped from the barrels purchased at Harbour Island. Or one of the barrels could have been contaminated. They jettisoned the contents of the day tank that fed those engines and pumped in fresh gas from their main tanks.