The trawler plunged into the angry swells of the dark, furious sea like an awkward animal trying desperately to break out of an impenetrable swamp. The waves rose to Goliathan heights, crashing into the hull with the power of raw tonnage; the white spray caught in the night sky cascade down over the deck under the force of the night wind. Everywhere there were the sounds of inanimate pain, wood straining against wood, ropes twisting, stretched to the breaking point. The animal was dying.
Two adrupt explosions pierced the sounds of the sea and the wind and vessel's pain. They came from the dimly lit cabin that rose and fell with its host bod. A man lunged out of the door grasping the railing with one hand, holding his stomach with the other.
A second man followed, the pursuit cautious, his intent violent. He stood bracing himself in the cabin door; he raised a gun and fired again. And again.
The man at the railing whipped both his hands up to his head, arching backwards under the impact of the fourth bullet. The trawler's bow dipped suddenly into the valley of two giant waves lifting the wounded man off his feet; he twisted to his left unable to take his hands away from his head. The boat surged upwards, bow and midships more out of the water than in it, sweeping the figure in the doorway back into the cabin, a fifth gunshot fired wildly. The wounded man screamed, his hands now lashing out at anything he could grasp, his eyes blinded by blood and the unceasing spray of the sea. There was nothing he could grab, so he grabbed at nothing; his legs buckled as his body lurched forward. The boat rolled violently leeward and the man whose skull was ripped open plunged over the side into the madness of the darkness below.
He left rushing cold water envelop him, swallowing him, sucking him under, and twisting him in circles, then propeling him up to the surface -- only to gasp a single breath of air. A gasp and he was under again.
And there was heat, a strange moist heat at his temple that seared through the freezing water that kept swallowing him, a fire where no fire should burn. There was ice, too; and icelike throbbing in hios stomach and his legs and his chest, oddly warmed by the cold sea around him. He felt these things, acknowledging his own panic as he felt them. He could see his own body turning and twisting, arms and feet working frantically againstnthe pressures of the whirlpool. He could feel, think, see, perceive panic and struggle -- yet strangely there was peace. It was the calm of the observer, the uninvolved observer, separated from the events, knowing of them but not essentially involved.
Then another form of panic spread through him, surging through the heat and the ice and the uninvolved recognition. He could not submit to peace! Not yet! It would happen any second now; he was not sure what it was, but it would happen. He had to be there!
He kicked furiously , clawing at the heavy walls of water above, his cheat bursting. He broke surface, thrashing to stay on top of the black swells. He broke surface, thrashing to stay on top of the black swells. Climb up! Climb up!
A monstrous rolling wave accommodated; he was on the crest, surrounded NY pockets of foam and darkness. Nothing.
Turn! Turn!
It happened. The explosion was massive; he could hear it through the clashing waters and the wind, the sight and the sound somehow his doorway to peace. The sky lit up like a fiery diadem and within that crown of fire, objects of all shapes and sizes were blown through the light into the outer shadows.
He had won. Whatever it was, he had won.