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Pneuma Springs Publishing - Mccarthy James

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134 pages

English

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Caught in an Atlantic storm the 'Annie L.' is sinking. With its motley crew the trawler is an accident waiting to happen. They are hundreds of miles from their homeport on the picturesque Achill Island on the west coast of Ireland and there may be no chance of rescue. The crew; the Skipper, his sensible nephew Pat and deck hand Coleman seem to have a death wish. Life had failed each of them in its own way. The exception is the beautiful red haired marine biologist from Finland who is with them for this one trip. She wants to live. With an impending storm, they are the only boat to leave the remote Achill Island on the west coast of Ireland. Their position in the north Atlantic is near the porcupine shelf, about one hundred miles from their home port. The engine has blown and the trawler is holed and taking in water. This is the account of the three-man crew and female passenger of the trawler 'Annie L.' in a raging Atlantic rainstorm. Their story needs to be told. Author James McCarthy brings this voyage to life with a cast of unforgettable characters in a rousing sea-faring tale of courage and determination, love and loss, fear and faith.Book reviews online @ www.publishedbestsellers.com

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Thriller

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Publié par	Pneuma Springs Publishing
Date de parution	30 juillet 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781782282020
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0195€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Me
and the
Foreign Girl

James McCarthy
Copyright
First Published in 2010 by: Pneuma Springs Publishing
Me and the Foreign Girl Copyright © 2010 James McCarthy
Kindle eISBN: 9781782280262 ePub eISBN 9781782282020 PDF eBook eISBN 9781782281108 ISBN: 9781905809981
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, save those clearly in the public domain, is purely coincidental.
Pneuma Springs Publishing E: admin@pneumasprings.co.uk W: www.pneumasprings.co.uk
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Published in the United Kingdom. All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written consent of the publisher .
Dedication

This book is dedicated to Carmel and Richard
The Novel
1
An explosion rocked the trawler from stem to stern, and threw Pat O’Malley forward on to the spokes of the steering wheel. His chest took the brunt of it. He couldn’t be sure but he thought he heard a scream before he landed on the floor with a thump. He couldn’t breathe properly because of the pain in his chest. As this eased he looked around for Tarja; she was sitting on the wheelhouse floor behind him sobbing. Propelled off the bench she must have hit the floor hard.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, while checking his ribs for fractures. They were sore to touch but none had broken.
‘I’m OK. Did we hit something?’ She was now sitting up and rubbing her right shoulder.
‘We’ll soon find out.’ He got painfully to his feet and headed down the companionway to the engine room. Before the explosion he had felt a vibration coming from the stern of the trawler. He had thought that seaweed was caught in the propeller, and had expected the spiral blades to mash it up and throw out the mulch behind them.
His guess now was that he had let the engine overheat, and that it had blown up. Would he ever get it right? He should have stopped the engine ages ago when it first started overheating; but he didn’t want to worry Tarja. If anything happened to her, his decision to take her onboard would haunt him for the rest of his life. Water was getting in somewhere; it was a foot deep on the cabin floor. His uncle the skipper and the deckhand Coleman, held securely in their bunks by the guard rail, had their eyes open, but they were out of it - a tribute to alcohol and sleeping tablets. Just as well. He knew what the skipper would call him: ‘A bloody eejit!’
When he got to the engine room it was in shambles, full of smoke and steam with water gushing in through a hole in the hull. The propeller drive shaft had snapped and gone through the side of the trawler, and the engine was a write-off. It was an accident waiting to happen. The boards in the hull had been worn paper thin from rubbing against the shark-skins, as the trawler towed them along. That was in the trawler’s previous incarnation. Hitting the pier wouldn’t have helped either. It had been a bad decision to continue with the fishing trip.
‘Oh, we’re sinking,’ said Tarja with her hands clasped together so tightly that her knuckles were white.
‘We’ll be ok.’ He switched on the pumps. Who was he kidding?
They were in serious trouble, stranded in the Atlantic Ocean miles from anywhere, with a dead engine, and water gushing in through a hole in the hull. With Tarja’s help, and lathered in sweat, he nailed planks over the hole. The water was as high as his knees, and despite their best efforts, there was still a lot pouring in. The noise of the incoming water combined with the slopping sound of the pumps was creating a crescendo of sound in the confined space of the engine room. There was nothing more he could do and with Tarja splashing behind him, they made their way back to the wheelhouse.
Half doped, the skipper and Coleman were there before them.
‘We need to get ready in case we have to abandon ship,’ said Pat. He took off his shoes and emptied the water out of them. His socks would have to do; he didn’t have a dry pair to change into. It was no time to shilly-shally. Their situation was grim; and he would need inspiration if he was going to save the trawler from sinking. His beard tasted salty.
‘Rubbish…rubbish…rubbish,’ growled the skipper, trying to steer the trawler. ‘The pumps will hold. This is no place for a yellowed livered good-for-nothing little shit.’ The usual insult, thought Pat drying his beard with a towel. ‘Gimp makes the best poteen in the country,’ yelled the skipper as he gulped from a bottle sitting in front of him on the instrument panel.
Pat was angry. ‘Look at the state you’re in, you bloody dipso, you’re a danger to yourself and everyone else onboard.’
The skipper was a stubborn hellion who made his own rules as he went along.
‘I think we shouldn’t fight with him,’ said Tarja.
He felt that being busy probably helped her to cope, as he watched her start to label specimen jars of fish livers, in preparation for a detailed examination back in the laboratory. The dolphins had thrown these fish out of the ocean and on to the deck of the trawler. Given their present state, it was nearly an impossible task, but she struggled on with it.
‘People have gone blind or mad, drinking that stuff,’ said Pat, angrily throwing the towel into a drawer reserved for dirty washing.
‘He’s paralytic,’ said Coleman, ‘it’s criminal to have anything to do with that stuff.’
‘What did the cripple say,’ roared the skipper, turning around in the swivel seat and letting the trawler steer itself.
‘None of your business, you bloody eejit,’ snarled Coleman, quickly hiding his withered left hand inside his coat. His usual poker - faced expression changed to rage, hurt by the skipper’s insult.
‘That man could insult for Ireland, he makes enemies as fast as other people make friends,’ said Pat in a low voice, trying to appease Coleman.
Coleman didn’t answer but went down the narrow companionway to the cabin. His mood was bad and he could be like that for hours or even days, awkward and uncooperative. Well, that was one constant on this trip.
‘Right!’ Take the wheel, little shit. I’m going for a kip,’ yelled the skipper, letting go of the wheel and staggering across the wheelhouse.
Pat grabbed the steering wheel, steadied the trawler and checked the compass heading to see where they were going.
Pat knew what the skipper and Coleman were thinking; he would get on the radio and call up the other island boats for help. Normally fishing close together they would get alongside in a half hour or so and tow them back to port. It was a regular occurrence for a trawler to get into trouble and call for help. Knowing that other boats were close by gave them a great sense of security. This was different: because of the storm warning they were the only boat to leave port. They were on their own.
‘Damn and blast it,’ howled the skipper as he stepped from the companionway into the water on the cabin floor. It was leaking from the engine bay through the bulkhead into the cabin. Eventually, the cursing stopped and snoring replaced it. Pat knew that he shouldn’t let them take sleeping tablets with alcohol; but for God’s sake as grown men it was their choice to do so. Nevertheless he sometimes worried that they wouldn’t wake up.
He could see Tarja at the rear of the wheelhouse, trembling with her mouth moving silently, while trying to pack specimen jars into a cardboard box.
‘Are you OK?’ He adjusted the steering to hold the trawler on course.
‘I’m praying. It’s a hymn I learnt at Sunday school.’ He went over to her, and she came into his arms. She was so slight, and so vulnerable he wanted to look after her. He’d have to tell her a lie about their situation. There was no other way to protect her.
‘We’ll be okay,’ he said, trying to sound positive. It wasn’t his style anymore - he had too many misfortunes in his life already; and this looked like another one.
He needed to get away from her for a little while, to think about how to keep the trawler from sinking. He tied down the steering wheel and stepped on to the deck to look at the weather, as he had done hundreds of times before. This time the trawler was dead in the water and the storm was coming in fast. Trapped in a dome of mist and fog, visibility was down to a hundred yards; and torrential rain was turning the decks into a skidpan.
Tarja joined him on deck. He didn’t want that - what he needed was space to think about how to keep the trawler from sinking. He couldn’t tell her to get back inside and stop bothering him. That wasn’t him - gutless as usual, he would opt to say nothing. That was how he was; and there was no sense in beating himself up about it.
‘We need to be careful,’ he said, rubbing the toe of his boot back and forth on the deck.
‘Yes, it’s slippery.’ She was holding tightly to his arm.
‘This will hold us.’ He attached them to the rail with safety lines. Something caught her attention and she loosened her grip on his arm.
‘What’s that all about?’ She pointed to the small nameplate L.O.V.E over the wheelhouse door. Women were something else! Even at the height of their life-threatening situation she was thinking of love.
‘It’s broken love at this stage. It was between the skipper and his wife. Before she returned to England, she renamed the trawler L.O.V.E and re-re-registered it. After she left, he changed the name back again. That’s one sign he missed although our call sign is still L.O.V.E. Let’s get back inside.’ He turned and ushered her into the wheelhouse. Love wouldn’t help much in keeping them afloat.
The cooker on the trawler used bottled gas and on cold nights, a gas heater warmed the wheelhouse. They stored the spare cylinders below decks in the engine room. He often wo