Six hours later he emerged, his heart soaring with victory. The squall had blown through, carving a pocket of blue air behind it. He had no idea where he was; he had been thrown far off course. The only thing to do was head due west and see where he made landfall.
Two hours later, a long gray line of sand appeared. He approached it on a rising tide. Galveston Island: he could tell from the wreckage of the old seawall. The sun was high, the winds fair. Should he turn south for Freeport—home, dinner, a real bed, and all the rest—or something else? But the events of the morning made this prospect seem depressingly tame, a too-meager conclusion to the day.
He decided to scout the Houston Ship Channel. He could anchor the night there, then proceed to Freeport in the morning. He examined his chart. A narrow wedge of water separated the north end of the island from the Bolivar Peninsula; on the far side lay Galveston Bay, a roughly circular basin, twenty miles wide, leading at its northeastern edge to a deep estuary, lined with the wreckage of shipyards and chemical plants.
Running before the wind, he made his way into the bay. Unlike the brown-tinged surf of the coastline, the water was clear, almost translucent, with a greenish cast. Michael could even see fish, dark shapes running below the surface. In places the shoreline was clotted with huge masses of debris, but elsewhere it seemed scrubbed clean.
The afternoon had begun to fade as he approached the estuary’s mouth. A large, dark shape stood in the channel. As he neared, the image came into focus: a massive ship, hundreds of feet long. It had come to rest midway between two stanchions of a suspension bridge that traversed the channel. He guided his craft closer. The ship was listing slightly to port, bow-down, the tops of its massive propellers just visible above the waterline. Was it aground? How had it gotten there? Probably the same way he had, pulled by the tides through Bolivar Pass. Across the stern, dripping with rust, was written the vessel’s name and registry:
BERGENSFJORD
OSLO, NORWAY
He drew the Nautilus alongside the closest stanchion. Yes, a ladder. He tied off, dropped his sails, then went below to fetch a pry bar, a lantern, an assortment of tools, and two one-hundred-yard lengths of heavy rope. He put his supplies in a backpack, returned to the deck, took a steadying breath, and began to climb.
Michael didn’t care for heights. Not much else got to him, except for that. At the refinery, circumstances often placed him somewhere far above the ground—swinging from a harness on the towers, chipping off the rust—and over time he’d become more brave about it, insofar as his crew could tell. But exposure went only so far in its curative effects. The ladder, steel rungs set into the concrete of the stanchion, was not, on close inspection, anywhere near as sturdy as it had appeared from below. Some of the rungs seemed barely attached. By the time he reached the top, his heart felt like it was stuffed against the back of his throat. He lay on his back on the suspension bridge’s roadway, just breathing, then peered over the edge. He guessed it was hundred and fifty feet down to the ship’s deck, maybe more. Jesus.
He tied the rope to the railing and watched it fall. The trick would be using his feet to control his descent. Taking the rope in his hands, he leaned backward over the edge, swallowed hard, and stepped off.
For half a second he believed he had made the biggest mistake of his life. What a stupid idea! He was going to plummet like a rock to the deck. But then his feet found the rope, wrapping it in a death grip. Hand over hand, he made his way down.
Michael guessed the boat had been some kind of freight vessel. He headed for the stern, where an open metal staircase led to the pilot house. At the top of the stairs he came to a heavy door with a handle that refused to move. He popped the handle loose with the pry bar and inserted the tip of a screwdriver into the mechanism. A bit of jiggling, tumblers clacking, and with a second pop of the pry bar the door swung free.
An eye-watering ammoniac funk filled the air—air that nobody had breathed for a century. Beneath the broad windshield, with its view of the channel, was the ship’s control panel: rows of switches and dials, flat-panel displays, computer keyboards. In one of the three high-backed chairs that faced the panel was a body. Time had turned it into little more than a shrunken brown stain encased by the moldy tatters of its clothing. Military-style epaulets with three stripes decorated the shoulders of its shirt. An officer, Michael thought, perhaps the captain himself. The cause of death was apparent: a hole in his skull, no bigger than the tip of Michael’s pinkie, marked the spot of the bullet’s entry. On the floor, beneath the man’s outstretched right hand, lay a revolver.