Arrow's Rest by Joel Scott (best books to read all time .TXT) 📗

A rap at the door and the steward entered bearing a tray with a bottle of Champagne and two glasses. He announced dinner would be served in an hour and left, locking the door behind him. Jared glanced over at Cat.

Cat shrugged. “Well, why not?” she said. “I’m sure it’s the very best.”

Jared poured drinks for them both and then they showered and changed for dinner.

Chapter 48

It was just past noon when Danny saw the blip come up on his radar six miles out from the entrance to Desolation Sound. At first he thought it was a ghost image as it immediately disappeared again. Then it came back a minute later and stayed for a couple more sweeps before vanishing once more. But now he knew it was something. Not giving off a strong signal so probably not a fishing boat or any type of commercial vessel. But something for sure. Probably just another tangled mass of logs, kelp, and deadheads that had been gathered up by the high tides and driven before the storms the last two days. White-flecked tidal currents and eddies whirled and spun and herded the refuse together like border collies working sheep. The blip was only a couple of points off his course, and Danny decided to go over and have a closer look.

He picked up the binoculars and scanned as he approached and confirmed it was just another confused jumble of logs and kelp, this one close to twice the size of the other ones he’d seen. And then, oddly, at the very centre of it, something higher was profiled above the tangled mess. Danny had seen it before, jammed logs pushed up by the pressure or, sometimes, even whole trees, roots, trunk, branches, and all, washed off a slope by heavy rain, caught up and floating. Sometimes they stood almost vertical so that it appeared they were growing straight out of the ocean.

Only this time it wasn’t an upright tree or some pressured logs jammed up tall. It was Arrow. Even from a distance it was evident that she was derelict. Her mizzenmast was gone and her main mast broken off halfway up with the top section lying on deck among the tattered remnants of her sails. She was listing badly, and Danny wondered if Arrow was trapped by the logs or held up and kept from sinking by them. He held the glasses on her as he approached and saw no signs of life on board.

For a moment he considered tying the Annie J off on the edge of the mess and crossing the logs on foot to reach Arrow but decided against it. It would be risky bordering on foolhardy. Everything was in constant motion, rising and falling, the logs rubbing and chafing and groaning and gaps opening and closing as they flexed to the impetus of wind and waves. If he lost his footing and fell between them, he was dead. Crushed or drowned and probably both. Whatever had happened to Arrow had occurred much earlier, and an hour or two either way wasn’t going to change anything.

He circled the cluttered tangle and found a narrow channel that started in towards the centre and nudged the bow of the troller into the opening, shut off the engine, and went to the bow with a pike pole. By alternately pushing logs aside and pulling the troller forward with the hooked pole, it took Danny three long hours of hard labour to clear a path to the boat, and for part of that time he was working down among the logs, forcing their ends off to the side so he could get the Annie J’s bow worked in another few feet before she was blocked once more. During that time he came across two sections of wooden dock with blue styrene floats, three faded red buoys lashed together, an inverted aluminum rowboat, two broken teak chairs along with a teak table and bookcase, a drowned cat, and a three-hole outhouse with its door missing piloted by rats.

As he worked his way closer to Arrow, more damage was visible. A log had ridden up on the aft railing and taken out the wind vane and remained wedged there, protruding ten feet out beyond her stern. Her bow pulpit was hanging loose over the side and tangled up in the remnants of her forestay and bowsprit. When the mizzenmast went, its shrouds had pulled out along with chunks of the teak decking they had been fastened to. Three of the portlights were smashed, the cabin doors were gone, and the handrails either broken or missing altogether. Judging by how low Arrow sat, her pronounced list, and the sluggish way she slow-rolled to the waves and wind, she was taking on water and her engine would be submerged and a total loss. Any insurance company would write off the shattered hulk that had once been Arrow in a heartbeat, the cost of her repairs far more than she had been worth in her best days. It was a moot question, as Arrow had no insurance coverage apart from the two million in third-party liability that was a necessary requirement for moorage.

Danny pushed a final log and a beat-up old dugout canoe out of his path and brought the Annie J alongside Arrow. The canoe slid away and then slowly drifted back and he saw that she was tied off with a line to one of the few remaining stanchions. He took down the shotgun fastened over the chart table in the troller and stepped down over the rail onto Arrow. At that moment a large wet dog leaped out from behind the house at him, its forepaws on his chest shoving him sideways just in time for Danny to be doused by a bucket of greasy water thrown out the companionway. He fell back in shock as a ghost emerged from the saloon after it.

Joseph