Dutch Harbor Never Sleeps

Cal had been aboard less than an hour. His gear bag was still wedged beneath the bunk in the crew’s cramped quarters. He had not met half the men whose names were shouted across the deck. None of that mattered now. The boat had to get through the crowded approach and reach the assigned berth before the cast-off window closed.

If they missed it, the 8 Legged Hell would sit behind every rival boat in the harbor.

A bell clanged from the pier office. Men began moving along the dock, shoving carts aside and clearing fenders. The launch schedule was being called. Engines woke one after another, coughing black smoke into the gray afternoon.

“Rourke!” Capt. Jim barked. “Bow line.”

Cal ran forward.

The deck pitched as a neighboring crabber eased away from the pier. Its hull scraped the fender, showering splinters across the dock. Cal caught the bow line and leaned into it while the deckhand beside him, a narrow man named Pike, worked the winch.

“Keep her off the corner,” Pike said.

“I know.”

“Then tell the captain. He’s aiming us straight at it.”

The 8 Legged Hell’s bow swung toward a forest of steel crab pots. Cal saw the gap between two boats narrow to the width of a man’s shoulders. Beyond it, the main pier pinched down where cargo pallets and fuel hoses crowded the approach.

Capt. Jim came out of the wheelhouse. “Cast off aft.”

“We’re not clear,” Cal said.

Jim’s eyes fixed on him. “Did I ask if we were clear?”

The captain kicked the line loose himself. The stern drifted toward a rival boat called the North Star, its deck crowded with men in orange slickers. One of them shouted and waved both arms.

“Hold your damn stern!” the man yelled.

Jim smiled around his cigarette.

Cal dropped the bow line and ran aft. The deck rolled under him. He caught the rail, felt cold spray strike his cheek, and reached the stern just as the 8 Legged Hell’s bumper crushed against the North Star’s hull.

The impact shook both boats.

A man in an orange slicker jumped across the gap. He landed hard, slipped, and caught himself on the rail.

“You blind, Jim?” he shouted.

Capt. Jim stepped toward him. “You left your boat hanging in my way.”

“This is my berth.”

“Not for long.”

The man shoved him.

The fight started without ceremony. Jim drove his fist into the man’s ribs, then seized the front of his slicker and slammed him against the rail. The North Star crew surged forward. Pike swore and grabbed one by the collar. Another man swung a hook handle and struck the deck inches from Cal’s boot.

Cal backed toward the winch, searching for space. There was none. Pots blocked the port side. Coiled lines filled the starboard walkway. Behind him, the boats groaned together as the tide lifted them and dropped them against the fenders.

“Break it up!” someone yelled from the pier.

Nobody listened.

Jim threw the first man down. A boot came at his head. He caught it, twisted, and sent the attacker sprawling into a stack of pots. Steel rang against steel.

The longshoremen were watching now. They stood beside the fuel shed and cargo crane, arms folded, faces flat. One of them pulled a radio from his jacket but did not speak into it. He only watched Capt. Jim.

Cal understood then that this was not surprise. They had seen this before.

“Get the boats apart!” Pike shouted.

Cal lunged for the stern line. It had fouled around the cleat, half under a coil of hose. He dropped to his knees and worked the knot loose while the brawl raged above him. The rope was swollen with water and stiff as bone. Somewhere beneath his hand, a strand had begun to fray.

“Rourke!” Jim shouted. “Slack it!”

“If I slack it, we lose the stern!”

“Do it!”

Cal looked at the narrowing gap between the boats. The tide was pushing the 8 Legged Hell sideways. The stern line was the only thing keeping the hull from grinding into the pier.

He held fast.

Jim saw him. The captain’s face changed, not with anger but with calculation. He shoved the North Star man away and reached for the line himself.

“Move.”

Cal rose. “It’s damaged.”

Jim seized the rope and yanked. The frayed section snapped tight under the load.

The crack came sharp as a rifle shot.

The stern swung free.

The 8 Legged Hell lurched toward the center of the approach, dragging the bow around. Cal grabbed the rail as the deck tilted. A crab pot broke loose and slid across the deck, smashing into the bulwark. Men scattered.

On the pier, a forklift operator dropped his forks and jumped clear. The longshoremen finally moved. One ran toward the office. Another seized a mooring hook and began shouting directions.

“Clear the lane!” he roared. “Clear it now!”

Capt. Jim pointed at Cal. “Get that line back!”

“With what?”

Jim crossed the deck in three strides and struck him across the mouth.

Cal tasted blood. The blow snapped his head sideways, but it also gave him the answer. The spare messenger line hung beside the winch, thin but long enough to reach the pier bollard.

He grabbed it.

“Pike, take the bow!” Cal shouted.

Pike hesitated only a second before running forward. The North Star crew had stopped fighting. They watched from their deck as the 8 Legged Hell drifted toward the pier, her stern quarter aimed at a row of fuel drums.

Cal hauled the messenger line through the chock. The rope rasped over his gloves. He threw the end to a longshoreman standing on the pier.

“Catch!”

The man caught it against his chest and wrapped it around a bollard.

“Pull her off!” Cal yelled.

The line snapped tight. It stretched thin, whining under the strain. Cal felt the boat answer. The stern slowed. The current still shoved at the hull, but the bow line held, and Pike had managed to get the forward spring secured around a piling.

For three seconds, the 8 Legged Hell hung between the pier and the boats, engines growling, ropes screaming.

Then the stern cleared the fuel drums by less than a yard.

A cheer rose from somewhere on the dock. It died when the messenger line began to unravel.

“Line’s going!” the longshoreman shouted.

Cal saw the damaged mooring line trailing in the water, its broken end striking the hull with each rise of the tide. The spare line had taken the load, but it was never meant to hold a crabber in a crowded channel.

“Jim!” Cal yelled. “We need a new stern line!”

Capt. Jim stood near the wheelhouse, blood running from a cut above his eye. He looked at the pier, at the North Star, at the watching longshoremen and the radio in the foreman’s hand.

“Cast off the messenger,” he said.

Cal stared at him. “That leaves us broadside.”

“Cast it off.”

The captain wanted the channel. He wanted the early slot. He wanted every boat in Dutch Harbor to see that the 8 Legged Hell moved when he said she moved, no matter who stood in the way.

Cal looked at the tide sliding black beneath the pier. He had arrived wanting one simple thing: get the boat through without tearing open a hull or killing a man. Now the choice sat in his hands, hard and wet and immediate.

He wrapped the messenger line around the winch drum instead of releasing it.

Jim took one step toward him. “You deaf?”

“No.”

Cal threw the winch into gear.

The drum turned. The line tightened. The 8 Legged Hell’s stern dragged away from the fuel drums and swung into the open lane. The boat lurched forward, pulled by the engine and held by the improvised line. Men on the pier scrambled clear as the hull passed close enough to scrape paint from the pilings.

Pike shouted from the bow. “We’re through!”

Cal kept the winch running until the boat cleared the narrowest part of the approach. Then he killed the power and released the line.

The messenger rope snapped back across the deck, striking the rail. The broken stern mooring trailed behind them, its frayed end sinking and rising in the chop.

The 8 Legged Hell reached the assigned berth. Pike secured the bow. Two longshoremen threw fresh lines aboard, but the stern had no proper hold. The boat drifted outward with every pull of the tide, her quarter edging away from the dock.

Capt. Jim stepped beside Cal. The captain wiped blood from his eye with the back of his hand.

“You disobey me again,” he said, “and I’ll put you ashore before we leave.”

Cal looked at the damaged line. “Then replace it before we leave.”

For a moment, only the engines and the tide spoke.

Across the dock, the longshoreman with the radio lowered it. His gaze stayed on Capt. Jim, not Cal. The foreman said something too low to hear. The man nodded toward the 8 Legged Hell, toward the broken line, toward the fuel drums she had nearly crushed.

Jim’s jaw tightened.

The berth was theirs. The launch slot was still theirs. But the boat sat crooked against the current, held by one bow line and a length of rope that had already begun to split.

Cal bent to haul in the loose end. Water streamed from the fibers onto the deck.

Behind him, Capt. Jim looked down the pier at the men who knew his name and the authorities who knew it better. Ahead, the tide pulled steadily at the boat.

The 8 Legged Hell had cleared the path.

Now the harbor had its hands around her.

End of chapter one. 32 more chapters in the full book.