Run Before the Wind Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Other Books By

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

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  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  A TECHNICAL NOTE

  Copyright

  BOOKS BY STUART WOODS

  memoir

  BLUE WATER, GREEN SKIPPER

  travel

  A ROMANTIC’S GUIDE TO THE COUNTRY INNS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND

  novels

  CHIEFS

  RUN BEFORE THE WIND

  Run Before the Wind

  by

  Stuart Woods

  This book is for my friend and editor, Eric Swenson, who seems always to have just the right proportions of faith and skepticism. (Well, nearly always.)

  PROLOGUE

  THE THIRD OFFICER was the first to see the sail. He had been looking for it.

  He had seen mention of the race in Notices to Mariners, and he had been hearing reports of its progress on the BBC World Service. An Englishman—what was his name?—had been reported leading two days before. The third officer, whose name was Martin-dale and who, himself, was English, had hoped he might catch sight of some of the competitors, and now he had a moment of excitement in an otherwise uneventful crossing. He walked to the ship’s wheel, which was making small movements under the command of the autopilot, sighted across the main compass, and took a bearing on the sail, which was no more than a dot of white on the horizon. He noted the time and the bearing in the ship’s log. Six minutes later, with the dot now plainly recognizable as a boat, he took a second bearing. It was unchanged. The 400,000-ton supertanker, Byzantium, was on a collision course with an unknown yacht in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean.

  It was bizarre, Martindale thought. They might be the only two vessels within an area of some hundreds of square miles, and they were going to strike each other unless one of them changed speed or course. He thought of slowing the ship, but he knew that even with the engines reversed the giant tanker might not slow enough from her thirty-knot speed before running the smaller craft down. He half turned to the seaman standing, daydreaming, a few feet away but did not take his eyes from the yacht. “Switch off autopilot. Hard right rudder.”

  The man, who had been lost in reverie, looked at him, surprised. “Sir?”

  “I said, switch off autopilot, hard right rudder.”

  “Sir, the captain …”

  “Do it, now.” The seaman stepped to a console, turned a knob, then took the wheel and spun it to the right. “Autopilot switched off, hard right rudder, sir.” He looked worried.

  Martindale was worried, too. He reckoned they were two, two and a half miles from the yacht. It might take the supertanker two miles to answer the helm. “When she answers come onto course two eight oh.” He noted the time carefully and logged the change in course.

  “Course two eight oh, sir. When she answers.” Now the seaman saw the yacht, too. “Jesus, Mr. Martindale, it’s gonna be close.”

  A few feet down a corridor from the bridge, the captain stirred from his sleep. Something had waked him; it took him a moment to realize what. A bright beam of sunlight was shining on his face; as he squinted into the light, it began slowly moving away from him. God help Martindale; the little Limey bastard was turning his ship! He sat up and reached for a robe, then was propelled to his feet and across the cabin by a long blast on the ship’s horn.

  The captain burst onto the bridge, his skinny legs projecting from the terrycloth robe. “Let’s have it, Mr. Martindale, and it better be good, it better be bloody good.”

  The third officer half turned again, still not taking his eyes from the yacht. “Sir, I judged us to be on a collision course with a sailing vessel.” He pointed and handed the captain his binoculars. “I ordered hard right rudder to go astern of her.”

  The captain squinted through the binoculars. The yacht was only half a mile away. “Speed?” he asked, taking the binoculars from his eyes. They were not necessary, now.

  “Still thirty knots, sir; I judged she would answer faster at speed.”

  “Oh, you did, did you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well you’re right, Mr. Martindale, she will. She’s answering. Now we’ll see if you judged that boat’s course correctly. We’re going to hit her or miss her in about thirty seconds. Hit the horn again.”

  Martindale gave another long blast. “He must be asleep or dead, sir.”

  “He’ll be dead, I reckon. Nobody could sleep through that.”

  The second officer came onto the bridge in his pajamas and quickly assessed the situation. Other men could be seen on deck, now, watching the yacht as the tanker rapidly closed on her. The captain strode quickly out onto the port wing of the bridge. Martindale followed on his heels. The wind, made mostly by the tanker’s speed, tore at their clothes. Martindale’s cap went overboard.

  The two men watched as the Byzantium inched into her turn. Suddenly the yacht shot across her bows with less than thirty feet to spare. Then, in the lee of the big ship, she stopped sailing and drifted quickly toward the tanker.

  “We’re sucking her into us, sir,” Martindale shouted over the wind. He watched in horror as the boat came closer and closer, then, suddenly, they were past her. Martindale got a good look down into the boat’s cockpit as she went by.

  “What the hell is the matter with her crew?” demanded the captain.

  “She’s a singlehander, sir,” Martindale replied, pointing at her stern. “See the wind vane self-steering gear? There’s a number on her hull, too, sir. She’s part of the singlehanded transatlantic race that started from England last week. Shall I order all stop, sir?”

  The captain brushed past him, clutching at his robe in the wind, heading for the bridge. “What the hell for? We missed her. Log it and report her to Lloyds. I’m going back to bed.”

  Martindale raced to catch up with him. “Excuse me, sir, but our high frequency radio telephone is still down, so we can’t report her until Sparks sorts that out. If the yacht’s skipper were able, he’d have responded to our horn. He could be ill, and …” He stopped himself short of gratuitously telling his captain that his first duty was to render assistance to another vessel in an emergency at sea.

  The captain stopped and scratched his backside angrily. He shot a look at Martindale. “If I stop this ship unnecessarily the Greek gentleman will have my balls for breakfast.”

  “I’m sure you’d be protected in the circumstances, sir. And anyway, there
’s the possibility of salvage. I reckon she’s close to sixty feet. She’d be worth a lot.”

  “You know bloody well we don’t have a crane that could put her on deck, Mr. Martindale.” The captain’s eyebrows went up. “Ah, now I get the picture. You’re a yachtsman. That’s it, isn’t it? You’re looking for a pleasant sail home in a rich man’s yacht. We take aboard her skipper, who’s probably got all of a case of the trots, and you sail off into the sunset.”

  Martindale flushed. “Sir, we don’t really have a choice, do we?” He waited anxiously while the captain stared at the deck and worked his jaw.

  “Shit,” the captain said, finally. “All right. Come onto a parallel course with her and stop; she’ll catch up to us. As soon as I get my pants on I’ll take the con, and you take two men and get the motor launch over the side. She’s wearing a VHF antenna. Call me on channel 16 when you’re aboard her.” The captain turned toward his cabin. “Thank God there’s not much of a sea running,” he could be heard to say from down the corridor.

  Martindale’s heart leapt. “Hard left rudder!” he shouted at the seaman. “All back!”

  Martindale sat at the yacht’s chart table, suddenly exhausted, and stared about him. She was beautiful, a dream of oiled teak and polished brass; of able design and perfect proportion; of the finest gear for every task on deck and below. The ship’s log lay before him, open to the last completed page. He read for a few minutes, feeling sick and angry, then reached up and switched on the VHF radio, set it to channel 16, and pressed the transmit button.

  “Byzantium, Byzantium, Byzantium; this is Martindale, Martindale, Martindale. Do you read?” He released the button.

  The captain’s voice shot back over the crackle of static. “I read you, Martindale. Never mind the fucking procedure, what the hell’s going on on that boat?”

  Martindale took a deep breath and pressed the transmit button again. “Everything seems to be in perfect order, captain, as far as I can tell.” He paused. “Except there’s nobody aboard.”

  1

  I AM twenty-four years old, and everyone I love is dead.

  I see the land. The land is green. It invites me, but I must sail past it to my destination. What is my destination? It must be more than a port, a berth, a hot shower. What is my true destination?

  I put the unlabeled cassette into the player expecting to hear a lost Count Basie album, and instead my own voice booms from the speakers. It is a profound shock. Those words were the last I spoke into the tape recorder, and now they speak back at me in a curious, mid-Atlantic accent (midway between Savannah and the British Isles), and they are full of self-pity. Granted, I had been through a lot, but I was possessed, at the very least, of parents whom I loved and who loved me, and perhaps even a girl, though I had reason to be uncertain, at that moment and for a little while longer, whether that thing was love on her part.

  I see the land. The land is green.

  My style has improved since then, I hope. It has been a long time, after all, and I have had a lot of practice. But even through the filter of those words something in that young voice, like a scent that instantly, vividly reconstructs a moment in time, rushes at me, and those two extraordinary years of my extreme and careless youth rise up and demand, at whatever price, to be lived again.

  On a Friday morning in May of 1970 I finished the last of my final examinations for my junior year at the University of Georgia Law School. I left the lecture hall and was immediately stopped in the hallway by the woman who was secretary to the dean. “Oh, Will,” she said, breathlessly, “I’m glad I caught you. Dean Henry would like to see you in his office right away.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said to her. “I’d just like to get a drink of water, then I’ll be right there.”

  She hurried back toward her desk while I dawdled over the drinking fountain, trying to compose myself. I had spent most of the day trying to forget that the night before had happened, and I had not been able to manage it. I had more than one kind of hangover, too, and my performance on the exam I had just finished had not improved my day. Now, this summons from on high, on top of everything else, had me just about coming unglued. I splashed some cold water on my face, wiped it with my handkerchief, took a few deep breaths, and strode purposefully toward the administrative offices. I would just have to fake it.

  Dean Wallace Henry was an aloof, dry, nearly expressionless man in his sixties who had been an assistant attorney general in the Johnson administration and had come to his position in the law school on the election of Richard Nixon to the Presidency. It was said that Johnson, given the opportunity, would have appointed him to fill the next vacancy on the Supreme Court. He was very formal, very southern, and held fixed opinions on what constituted proper behavior and scholarship in a student in his charge. I was afraid of him, as was nearly every other law student, and I had avoided contact with him as much as possible. We had held one or two cramped conversations at teas, when he would arrange his thin mouth in something resembling a smile and try, not very hard, to be avuncular. It never worked.

  The door to his office was open (he maintained an “open door” policy, he said, but as far as I knew nobody had ever taken him up on it); he saw me approach his secretary and beckoned me into his paneled and carpeted presence. I approached his desk with my hand outstretched and as much of a smile as I could muster. “How are you, sir?” I began hopefully.

  He ignored my hand, pushed back from his desk, and swiveled his chair so that he faced the windows. A shaft of sunlight reflected off his shiny, black head of hair, which hosted no gray. Rumor was he dyed it.

  “Close the door,” he said, “and sit.” So much for the open door policy. I closed it and sat quickly, like a terrier on command. I felt it would be an affront if I should cross my legs. He swiveled back to face me and, to my astonishment, placed a large, Cordovan, wing-tipped shoe against his desk top. Such uncharacteristic informality. I crossed my legs. “You are a very fortunate young man,” he said. For a brief moment I thought I had mistaken his reason for summoning me, and a tiny ray of hope pierced my anxious gloom. Dean Henry quickly extinguished it. “Had that been the Athens City Police last night instead of the campus cop, you would have missed your examination today and been out of law school, never to return. I would be bailing you out just about now instead of inviting you in for a chat, and with the subsequent criminal proceedings you would have forfeited a career in the law.” I uncrossed my legs.

  “Sir—”

  “Mr. Lee, in spite of your apparent intelligence and even quite reasonable grades, you are not a shining scholar. And grades notwithstanding, your work—if I may laughingly call it that—[he was not laughing] has been such as to barely keep you in my good graces. Cramming for examinations and getting Bs is not enough to make you a decent lawyer, and that is what I try, given the material disgorged by the undergraduate schools, to produce.”

  “Sir—”

  “You seem to have a minimalist view of the educational process; you apply your intellect to determining the smallest effort necessary to remain in the University of Georgia Law School and out of the United States Army.” The Vietnam War was, you will remember, still raging in 1970.

  “Sir---”

  “You shine on your feet, Mr. Lee; you perform impressively in Moot Court, if someone has read the relevant law for you; you answer well in class—well, that is, for someone with so little knowledge of your subject. You are a talented politician—you managed, I recall, to be elected president of your freshman law class, in defiance of your peers’ usual insistence on accomplishment in their leadership instead of charm. You are a charming young man, Mr. Lee, I will give you that. You are a remarkable tapdancer.”

  “Sir—”

  “Well, you have just stubbed your toe rather badly, Mr. Lee. Those few whiffs of that… controlled substance … last evening have ruined your little tight-rope act, and you are falling, falling.” He leaned forward, placed his elbows on the leather desk top,
and rested his chin in both hands. “Did you wish to say something, Mr. Lee?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I should think not. I have very little more to say, myself.” He leaned back in his chair and placed the foot back on the desk. “You will not be rejoining us in the autumn, Mr. Lee. Oh, I’m not going to expel you, nor even make it impossible for you to return. You see, I am an optimist; I still believe that you might possibly make a decent attorney, even a fine one, should you gather your wits about you. I also have a high regard for your father, although I do not know him well. I admired his conduct during his term as governor, and, who knows? he might even serve his state well in the United States Senate one day, should his efforts in that direction not be unreasonably handicapped by the actions of an unthinking son.”

  I stared at my shoes on that one.

  “Take a sabbatical, Mr. Lee. Think. I suspect you’ve never done much of that. Go forth and serve your country, should it call, and I expect it will, things being what they are on the Asian continent these days. This won’t go on your record, and I won’t speak to your father. Tell him what you like but don’t come back here unless you are willing to exhibit to me a veritable transmogrification.” He opened a file on his desk and began to study it. I sat, frozen with relief. “Goodbye, Mr. Lee,” he said, without looking up.

  I rose and propelled myself toward the door.

  “Oh, Mr. Lee,” his voice from behind me halted me in my tracks.

  I half turned. “Yes, sir?”

  “Don’t get your ass shot off.”

  “No, sir.” I fled the office, pausing at the building’s entrance to press my brow against the cool marble. My relief at not being publicly humiliated was rapidly giving way to anxiety over what I would tell my parents. Shortly, I composed myself and started toward my dormitory. At least I wouldn’t get my ass shot off. The old bastard. Apparently, he had not known that I was 4-F in the draft.

  The following afternoon I entered my father’s study and confronted him and my mother with my plan, or rather, my lack of one. He was silent for a moment after I had finally stumbled through what I had to say. It was a habit of his to pause a bit before addressing any serious matter. It got him the undivided attention of his listener and, I suppose, gave him time to think. It was a habit that had served him well in the Georgia State Senate, as lieutenant governor and as governor, and might one day, as Dean Henry had noted, serve him well in the United States Senate.