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stern line at me and pointed aft where I saw the other Zodiac being hoisted into the air, its driver standing amid decks with a bosun’s chair hugging his rear. I’d seen this done many times before, but I’d never actually done it myself and was attempting to clamber out when one of the crewmen waved me off. I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say, but I didn’t have to. The loose bowline in his hands told all and I watched, fascinated, as he threw the line into the bottom of the boat. They obviously thought I was one of the new crew arriving with the tourists. I looked quickly at the engine, glad to see it was still going, and suddenly I was free of the ship, alone in the boat, and not sure what I was sup – posed to do other than get out of the way of the Zodiac coming behind me.
    I swung out, heading into the wind, watching as the Zodiac ahead of me was winched on board. It danced high above my head and my stomach, already churning itself into a sickening mess, lurched at the thought of going up there, so high, so far to fall, so cold a death, but at least it would be quick, thirty to sixty seconds before rescue was useless. As I moved down the ship to where the Zodiac ahead of me was already airborne I worried about controlling both my stomach and the Zodiac at the same time.
    I kept the Zodiac into the wind, the waves marching at me, slinging their crests into my eyes and blinding me, the icy water sluicing down my face and finding its way past my raingear to my skin. I was very cold; my hands almost blue and stiff like talons as they gripped the throt – tle. I looked up the side of the ship, which looked like a gigantic box perched on a hull, and saw Martha’s neon pink rain suit. She was waving down at me as if I was arriving in the calm of dusk for a cup of tea. Beside her I could see Duncan gripping the rails of the ship, as if by brute force he could lower it down to rescue me. Terry was there too and she looked as scared as I felt. This had not been the plan when we had talked and I guess she felt responsible for the predicament I found myself in.
    I looked back at the crane, its guts hidden from me by the height of the ship. It was stationed on a rear deck and its arm was now swinging back over the ship where it had just deposited the last Zodiac, back out over the water to get me. Slowly the rope with the hook and bosun’s chair attached was played out and I watched as it flayed in the wind like a wild thing. What it could do to my head I decided not to imagine. Where was the hook supposed to go? I looked down at the floorboard and saw a triangular series of ropes with a large, strong, con – fidence-boosting ring on it. The hook would go there first and then I would secure myself into the boson’s chair, in case the hook didn’t hold. I wouldn’t have much time to let go of the engine and secure the hook before the boat would be taken away by the wind and the waves.
    I made my first approach but when I let go of the engine to grab at the hook, rusty and lethal looking, it swung out of my reach and by the time it swung back the boat had drifted too far away. The next time I aimed the boat twenty feet in front of the hook, grateful that the ship’s leeward side sheltered me somewhat from the waves and the wind. I made a grab for the hook with one hand while hauling up the ring with the other and stag – gered as a wave nearly threw me off balance. My hands were so cold they had no feeling and seemed like clumsy hunks of meat, but I got the hook through the ring and waited for the rope to lift and hold firm. Then I lurched back to turn off the engine. I could feel the Zodiac groan – ing under me as the rope began to lift her and I struggled back to get into the bosun’s chair.
    It occurred to me that this was probably the limit of the captain’s ability to hoist up the Zodiacs and that any weather more severe would be out of the