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An air search was out of the question until the weather cleared

Every ship within a hundred ed course and steanals Because of her greater speed, Dover reckoned the Cataould be the first to reach the stricken vessel Her big diesels had already pushed her past a coastal freighter and a halibut long-liner gulf boat, leaving the in her wake

Dover was a great bear of a man who had pain his dues in sea rescue He'd spent twelve years in northern waters; stubbornly throwing his shoulder against every sadistic whih and orn, slow and sha in his physical movements, but he possessed a calculator like mind that never failed to awe his crew In less tiraured the wind factor and current drift, arriving at a position where he knew the ship, wreckage or any survivors should be found-and he'd hit it right on the nose

The huines below his feet seemed to take on a feverish pitch Like an unleashed hound, the Catawba seeripped all hands

Ignoring the rain, they lined the decks and bridge wings

"Four hundredout

Then a seaorously into the rain

Dover leaned out the wheelhouse door and shouted through a bullhorn "Is she afloat?"

"Buoyant as a rubber duck in a bathtub," the seah cupped hands

Dover nodded to the lieutenant on watch "Slow engines"

"Engines one third," the watch lieutenant acknowledged as he moved a series of levers on the ship's automated console

The Arnie Marie slowly eh the precipitation

They expected to find her half awash, in a sinking condition

But she sat proud in the water, drifting in the light swells without a hint of distress There was a silence about her that seehostly Her decks were deserted, and Dover's hail over the bullhorn went unanswered

"A crabber by the look of her," Dover muttered to no one in particular "Steel hull, about a hundred and ten feet Probably out of a shipyard in New Orleans"