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like a toothpick under the weight of the thundering sea. An avalanche of rope and canvas pelted down. As if in slow motion, the broken peak of the mast toppled over, striking Captain Cascadden across the shoulders.
    Fierce lightning backlit a terrifying scene. Luke watched in horror as the captain was pitched from the deck into the foaming ocean.
    “Man overboard!” he tried to shout.
    But the force of the wave drove the gunwale of thePhoenix — and Luke with it — deep beneath the rampaging sea.

CHAPTER TEN
    Saturday, July 15, 2015 hours
    Underwater.
    It was a strangely quiet and peaceful place. Luke was in a trance, experiencing a few seconds in a slow, almost lazy time warp of crystal-clear thought. He was going to drown — he was sure of that. ThePhoenix was sinking, taking everybody with it. Even if he could make it back to the surface, then what? A lone swimmer — even one with a life jacket — had no chance against thirty-foot waves.
    It was almost funny. Luke Haggerty had avoided Williston. Instead he had chosen — a death sentence.
    The gunwale sprang back out of the sea as thePhoenix righted herself with heart-stopping suddenness. Luke lost his grip on the lifeline and sailed through the rain and spray. Flying again
    The pitching deck swung up to meet him. There was a painful thud, and he saw stars. He looked around. He was right in front of the cockpit. There, a terrified JJ. clung to the wheel, wrapped in rigging and torn canvas.
    “The captain — !” Luke gasped, choking and spitting.
    J.J. was sobbing out of control. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! — “
    “Did you find the captain?!”
    J.J. shook his head. “He told me to hang on to the wheel!”
    “You picked a heck of a time to start following orders!”
    Mr. Radford waited for a break in the wave action to roll like a landing parachutist to the starboard deck. He clamped his harness onto a bulwark and began hurling life preservers into the water.
    “Skipper!Skipper !” He panned the waves with his flashlight.
    “The mast hit him!” Luke shouted, tethering his belt to the base of the instrument panel. “He could be unconscious!”
    The mate leaped for the cockpit, shoving J.J. aside with a football straight-arm that left the boy swinging like a pendulum in his harness. Radford grabbed the throttle and thrust it forward. “We’re circling back!”
    With a cough and a sputter, the engine died. Cursing, the mate tried to restart it. It turned over but wouldn’t catch. Then it stopped turning over. “Check the engine room, Archie!”
    “We can’t unhook our belts!” Luke protested.
    “Right below you!”
    Luke knelt down and threw open the hatch. There was the engine, half submerged in three feet of water. He turned to the mate, but his mouth couldn’t form words. Fear had frozen his jaw.
    “Well?” Radford prompted angrily.
    J.J. supplied the answer in the form of a question. “If we’re flooded here, does that mean the whole boat’s flooded?”
    Charla’s upper body emerged from the main cabin. “We’ve got water down here!” she cried.
    “How much?” called the mate.
    “A couple of feet at least!”
    “Son of a — ” The mate switched on the electric bilge pump. It was as dead as the engine.
    “Get on the manual pumps!” he roared.
    “What about the captain?” Luke insisted.
    “We’re looking for him!”
    J.J. pointed frantically astern. “But he’s back there somewhere!”
    “We can’t get back there without engine power!” Radford snarled. “Hehas to findus’t Get all hands on deck to man the pumps!”
    Luke saw Captain Cascadden in every wave, heard a call for help in every gust of wind. His eyes searched the backwash of each breaker that rocked the deck, half-expecting the ocean to return the old sailor to his ship.
    J.J. never stopped yelling, “Captain!Captain !” He got no answer.
    The feeling of hope on the schooner was so strong that Luke could almost reach out and touch it, could taste it