Spray hammered the wheelhouse glass like gravel.
Harbor Tugboat Marrow-09 tilted ten degrees to port, her heavy oak timbers groaning as the black vortex spun beneath her hull. Thirty feet to the stern, the jagged black teeth of the basalt cliffs rose out of the boiling foam, waiting to crush her keel.
“Cut the cable, Clara!” Dr. Beatrice Hahn shouted over the scream of the diesel engines.
The seventy-one-year-old chief actuary had both hands clamped onto the twin bronze throttles, holding the levers all the way forward against the stops. Her knuckles were white, her grey hair plastered against her forehead with sweat and spray.
“The generator is pulling two hundred horsepower off the main shaft!” Dr. Hahn yelled, her voice hoarse from the fumes.
“If the cable snags the rocks, it’ll drag the stern down! We’ll capsize in thirty seconds!”
Nineteen-year-old Clara Vance stood braced between the brass-spoke helm and the steel dashboard.
Her small work boots were wedged firmly against the iron base of the steering column. Her hands held the spokes with steady, unyielding pressure, feeling every shudder of the twin bronze screws churning through the foaming brine.
