The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [170]
“Be careful,” Horen said. “The deck will be slippery.”
No sooner had Kanai turned the handle than the wind tore the door from his grip and slammed it back on its hinges. Kanai kicked off his sandals and left them in the wheelhouse. Then he went to deal with the door. He had to step around and put his shoulder behind it, to push it shut against the wind. Step by step, keeping his back against the bulwark, he began to move toward the ladder that led to the deck below. The ladder was exposed to the wind and he felt the gusts clawing at him as he put his foot on the first rung — had he been wearing sandals, they would have been torn from his feet. The wind was pulling at him so hard that he knew it would take only a slight slackening in his grip for a gust to tear him from the ladder and send him into the churning water below.
When he stepped off the last rung and entered the cavernous galley, his foot sank immediately into ankle-deep water. He spotted Nogen deep in the deck’s unlit interior, standing beside the casing that housed the diesel engine, grimly baling water with a plastic bucket.
Kanai waded through the ankle-deep water. “Is there another bucket?”
Nogen answered by pointing to a tin container afloat in a slick of oily water. Kanai took hold of its handle, but when he reached for the water he was all but knocked off his feet by a sudden lurch of the bhotbhoti’s hull. Righting himself, he found that to fill the bucket was far more difficult than it might seem, for the Megha’s pitching kept the water moving in such a way that it seemed almost to be toying with them, making them lunge ineffectually from side to side. In a while Nogen broke off to point to the shore. “We’re close to Lusibari now,” he said. “Is that where you’re going?”
“Yes. Aren’t you?”
“Not us,” said Nogen. “We have to go to the next island: it’s the only sheltered place in this area. You’d better go and ask my grandfather how we’re going to drop you off. It won’t be easy in this wind.”
“All right.” Kanai clawed his way back up the ladder and went step by step along the slippery gangway to the wheelhouse.
“How is it down there?” Horen said.
“It was bad when we were in the middle of the mohona,” said Kanai. “But it’s better now.”
Horen flicked a thumb at the windshield. “Look, there’s Lusibari. Do you want to get off there, or do you want to come with us?”
Kanai had thought this over already. “I’ll get off at Lusibari,” he said. “Mashima is alone. I should be with her.”
“I’ll take the bhotbhoti as close to the bank as I can,” Horen said. “But after that you’ll have to wade across.”
“What about my suitcase?”
“You’d better leave it behind. I’ll bring it to you later.”
Kanai cared about only one thing in the suitcase. “I’ll leave everything but the notebook,” he said. “I’ll wrap it in plastic so it won’t get wet. I want to take it with me.”
“Here, take this.” Horen reached under the wheel and handed him a plastic bag. “But be quick now. We’re almost there.”
Kanai let himself out of the wheelhouse and stepped into the gangway. A couple of steps brought him to the cabin, and he opened the door just wide enough to slip inside. In the half-light he unlocked his suitcase, took out Nirmal’s notebook and wrapped it carefully in plastic. The engine went dead just as he was stepping out again.
Horen was waiting for him in the gangway. “You don’t have far to go,” he said, pointing to Lusibari’s embankment, some hundred feet away. Along the base of the earthworks, where the waves of the mohona crashed against the island, there was a fringe of foaming white surf. “The water isn’t deep,” Horen said. “But be careful.” As an afterthought he added, “And if you see Moyna, tell her that I’ll go back to get Fokir as soon as the storm lets up.”
“I want to go too,” Kanai said. “Be sure to stop at Lusibari.”
“I’ll pick you up when the time’s right.” Horen held up a hand to wave him off. “But be sure to let Moyna know.”
“I will.”
Kanai went aft to the stern, where Nogen had already pushed out the gangplank. “Step onto