The next flash turned everything blue, and all around us the approaching bank of black, ominous clouds hung down, with spirallike fingers-"witches' fingers," the shrimpers call them-full of venomous, lashing winds. Then it began to rain, a gusting deluge that poured down. We left the rest of the catch on deck, and all hurried back to the wheelhouse.

Edward switched on the light of the engine room and went hand over hand down the ladder into the great noisy yellow Caterpillar engine room below. I didn't even like to look down there; there was always black oily water sloshing back and forth. It was a constant reminder of the wonderful garden of wood-boring isopods and shipworms contained in her hull and the rotten caulking on which our lives might depend. Edward checked the bilge level constantly, at least three dozen times during a trip, and saw that the pump was working. Shrimping had been bad for the last two years. The poor season, the low market price, and the fact that the whole industry is overexpanded and overcapitalized and in debt all led to the fact that they couldn't afford to haul it out at the shipyard and fix it right.

And when I heard him fire up the auxiliary gasoline pump, I recalled the scene of a few weeks ago when the Dena Dini had sunk at the dock and was being raised up from her dockside watery grave like Lazarus. Someone accidentally unplugged the extension cord that ran to yet another bilge pump when the crew went home for a couple of days, and she sank at the dock. Now the image of her muddy, oily hull rising up from the murk, water pouring off her decks, and four pumps running into the night, impinged on my mind. As the winds blustered, dishes rattled and crashed, and Frenchie hurried around battening everything down, I felt a twinge of fear. Could the Dena Dini really ride out a sea like this?

"Don't worry," Edward said, coming back into the wheelhouse, "we're not gonna sink. It's only the planking that's separated; the ribs are strong. She can take a sea like this; I've done it before. Long as the engine's running, the pump will keep her up."

That wasn't much comfort, I thought, as I listened to the wind howl vengefully across the Gulf, because on the trip before last, the engine ran hot, a great boiling caldron of rusty water boiled out of the reservoir tank that cooled the engine, and he had had to shut her off until it cooled. If it happened now, we'd sink.

We stood in the darkness of the pilothouse, holding on, watching the approaching storm on the radar. It was tremendous; it seemed to cover the entire field. Behind us were outlines of the two barrier islands. Ahead the sea buoy flashed red until it disappeared beneath the tumult of wind and water.

The bow rose up and crashed down. The pounding intensified. Then came a heavier deluge of rain, followed by fifty-mile-an-hour winds. Before we managed to shut all the windows, the screens puffed in and out like some respiring animal. Edward slipped the boat off automatic pilot and held it into the sea. "This is going to be a heap longer tow than you want," he announced. "We can't take the net up in this weather. If she blows sideways, that's all she wrote."