“All hands tighten the ropes aft! Prepare to set two oars; you, sailor, lend me your back at the rudder.”
Heinrich sensed something was about. He groaned aloud. “Only one more day to dry land!”
Groot knew what was coming and within the hour his wooden ship was riding the white-capped sea like a squire tossing atop an unbroken colt. A howling western wind drove hard into the stretching sail while ropes and timbers groaned. Stinging salt water broke over the high bow and crashed atop the struggling crew.
The sturdy craft heaved and plunged atop the sea all through that afternoon while Heinrich trembled deep in the hold. It was sometime just past dusk when the cloth sail ripped. It split into two ragged pieces and, like the rending of the temple’s holy veil, its cleave changed everything. Cries sounded from the deck and the ship suddenly spun. Groot and his seamen grasped and grunted at the rudder, straining against the mighty waves. Unable to have its bow turned toward the wind, the ship drifted sideways to the storm. Water poured onto its deck and the hold began to fill.
Heinrich clambered up from his flooding refuge and sprawled on the slippery deck. With only one arm he could do little more than lie helpless and terrified in the darkness. A desperate sailor hollered in his ear, “Follow me!” The baker obeyed and slid on his belly back to the hold.
“Groot says heave the cargo!” shouted the sailor.
Heinrich nodded and helped drag bushel after bushel of Cornelis’s precious harvest to the deck above. The man strained and groaned and used his back and legs to help his aching arm lift what he could. He wrestled wooden casks, wicker baskets, carts, and crates to the deck while other hands tossed one after the other into the angry sea. It would prove to be a futile effort.
The night’s storm redoubled its bluster like a zephyr gone mad. The wind that had formerly only howled now raged with bitter squalls of raw and unyielding malice as if blown from the fearsome lungs of a leviathan. Groot’s ship was quickly filling with water and listing farther with each crashing wave. No human hands could hold the rudder, and the captain finally bellowed to his crew, “The ship is lost! Find a barrel or plank!”
Heinrich had no time for fear. He could not swim, of course, and knew he was in grave peril. His mind worked quickly. He removed his eye patch and dagger and placed them deep within the satchel he secured over his shoulder. He bound his cloak with a belt and grabbed hold of a wide plank he had secretly prepared for such an unlikely moment. The baker slipped along the tilting deck and followed the sounds of voices until he was huddled with his fellows. A mighty, black wave suddenly lifted and rolled the squat merchant ship high. Then, as if a mighty hand pushed hard from port, the ship tumbled over on its starboard side, plunging all hands into the foaming sea.
Heinrich held his board with all his strength and sucked a mighty breath of air into his lungs before he disappeared beneath the water. For an awful moment the baker’s world was black and suffocating, strangely quiet and nearly still. The oak was not meant to sink, however, and the man rode it on a vertical shot to the surface. Heinrich’s face broke the water with a gasp. Sputtering in the salty spray and with all the might his arm and legs could muster, he pulled and kicked until his upper body lay draped atop the bobbing board.
With legs dangling in the cold water, Heinrich peered desperately into the night’s darkness for his fellows. The man strained to hear, but his ears were filled only with the whistling of wind and the wash of water. Unable to do more, he spent the rest of that awful night hanging desperately to his plank.
By daybreak the wind had eased and a cold rain pelted the flattening sea below. The six men were scattered across a wide area but were within view of one another. In a few hours they managed to kick and paddle their way together. Groot knew he needed to find either a ship or landfall soon, and he strained to see through the cold rain that now washed over them. For hours, the hapless seamen floated aimlessly at the mercy of the sea’s currents until Groot’s ears finally cocked. “Shh.” The six bobbed quietly. “There! Can y’hear it?” A church bell was ringing. “The blessed bells of sext! ‘Tis noontime, lads, and we’re drifting toward land! Tide’s up … that’s good. Now kick and paddle!” His eyes brightened and a huge smile crossed his face. Ahead was a flat ribbon of land, and as the rain eased all could see the spire of a church.
“Prijzen God?” they cried.
By midafternoon a rolling tide tumbled the shipwrecked party onto the sandy beach of the large Danish island of Slotshlomen. The men stumbled out of the surf and collapsed, shivering and numb but grateful beyond words to reach land alive. Groot stared toward the distant town. “Heinrich, I’m not sure where we are. Seems like we’d be near to the mouth of the sound. That would make Havn some two days away by land.”