Max’s boat. Max was the captain—always had been and always would be—and Jeff was a contented mate.
There was a two-year difference in their ages, but they had always been more like friends than brothers, even when they were children. Wherever Max had gone he had taken Jeff with him, not because their parents made him do it, but because he liked Jeff. If Max’s friends objected to the “kid” tagging along, they were no longer his friends.
They had bought Osprey four years ago, when Max was twenty-five and Jeff twenty-three. Jeff had been very worried the first year, sure that the immense loan would sink them even if the sea didn’t. But the sea had been kind to them, and it looked as though the loan would be paid off by the end of the current season—all they really needed was four or five more really good catches, and Max seemed to have a nose for fish.
It was Max’s nose that had brought them here today. The rest of the fleet that worked out of Port Angeles had stayed safely in the Strait, but Max had gotten up that morning and announced that he “smelled” a school of tuna to the south. They would go after it and spend the night in Grays Harbor before heading back north the following day.
He had been right. The hold was filled with tuna, and all had gone according to plan. Except for the storm. It had come upon them suddenly, as if from nowhere, giving them no time to complete the run south.
Now they were moving steadily if sluggishly through the heaving sea. A constant stream of rain mixed with salt spray battered against the windows of the wheelhouse, but Max held his course by compass, only occasionally glancing out into the gathering darkness. After some twenty minutes had passed in silence, he spoke.
“I’m going to have to send you outside.”
Jeff checked the buttons on his slicker and put on his rain hat.
“What am I looking for?”
“Chart shows some rocks in the mouth of the harbor. They should be well off the port bow, but keep a lookout. No sense piling this thing up when it’s almost paid for.”
Jeff left the wheelhouse and felt the wind buffet him. He clung to the lifelines strung along the length of the boat and made his way slowly forward until he was in the bow pulpit. He strained to see through the fading afternoon light, and his stomach knotted as he thought of what might happen if he failed to see the rocks.
And then they were there, sticking jaggedly above the surface, fingers of granite reaching up to grasp the unwary. Jeff waved frantically, but even before he made the gesture, he felt Osprey swinging slightly to starboard: Max must have seen the rocks at almost the same instant he had. He watched the water swirling and eddying around the reef as they swept past; then, when the danger had disappeared beyond the stern, he returned to the wheelhouse.
Max was finishing his coffee, one hand relaxing on the wheel, grinning cheerfully.
“You could have given them a little more room,” Jeff commented.
“A miss is as good as a mile,” Max replied. “Want to take her in?”
“You’re doing fine. I’ll get ready to tie up.”
A few minutes later, as the trawler crept into a vacant slip, Jeff jumped from the deck to the wharf and began securing the lines. On board, Max cut the engines.
Jeff had just finished tying the boat up when he became conscious of someone standing nearby watching him. He straightened up and nodded a greeting. “Some storm,” he offered.
“You planning to spend the night here?” Mac Riley said.
“On board,” Jeff replied.
“Storm’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better,” Riley said dourly. “Don’t think you can do it.”
“Do it? Do what?”
“Spend the night on that boat. We got a regulation against that here. Too dangerous.”
Max came out of the wheelhouse in time to hear the last, and jumped from the deck to join Jeff on the wharf.
“What do you mean, too dangerous?” he challenged. “You’ve got a good harbor here.”
“Didn’t say you don’t,” Riley responded, unperturbed. “But in a storm like this anything can happen. So you won’t sleep on your boat.”
Max stared at the old man, annoyed. “I could take her out in the middle of the harbor and drop anchor.”
“You could just scuttle her right here too, but I don’t think you will.”
Max looked over his shoulder and saw the