Inishraam

The First Week

Sunday

When we set off it was a brilliant morning of April... yet as
we drew nearer... a sudden thunderstorm broke out behind
the rocks we were approaching, and lent a momentary tumult to this
still vein of the Atlantic.

All afternoon the storm had been threatening and now it finally broke. The darkness gathered on the horizon was upon us and fury fell like vengeance on the boat. The wind roared, and the waves smashed down, towering and falling as if to smash the little vessel. Great laces of spray flew onto the deck, and were caught up and hurled into the wind. Rain lashed down, biblical and angry, as if the world had turned to water and was drowning everything in cold, bitter, torrents. The boat climbed the huge waves, and crashed back down, a toy of the gods.
I sat on the bridge, white with fear. All around me the horrible noise of the storm. It sounded like the end of the world. I didn’t think we had a chance. If the boat sank, what would we do?
The noise was getting louder. The howling wind and driving rain, the tumult, reached a crescendo, and I heard a loud crack. A voice from the deck called out,
-We’re going to have to abandon ship! The mast is broken ! Everybody into the life-rafts!
I rushed out into the storm, the little boat climbing and bucking the huge waves.
But it was too late.
There was another loud crack! and the boat lurched onto her side. I was flung against the rail of the deck and clung to it as hard as I could.
-She’s going ! shouted the same voice.
The boat was sinking, lurching and dead now, surrendered to the fury of the elements.
The storm was raging. Lightning bolts rent the sky, the curtain of the world torn in two. Great slices of light and huge booming thunder, like war in the sky, split the heavens.
I was soaked to the skin, the rain whipping my face and hair. Another wave would bury us. Where were the life-rafts? But it was too late for life-rafts now. The boat was cracking and splintering, breaking to bits in the storm. It was every man for himself. No place to run, no place to hide: I was going to have to jump into those deep, deadly, Irish waters.