The officer was Bobby Joe Butler, a talented young seaman who hailed from Natchez. Butler had made no secret of his wish someday to command a ship like the Belle. Maybe even the Belle itself. Following the captain's lead, Butler surveyed the ocean around thirty degrees off starboard.
He saw only the gray, mottled water stretching toward the misted horizon. Then, about a mile from the ship, he sighted a white line of foam at least twice as high as the sea in the background. Even as he watched, the mounding water grew rapidly in height as if it were drawing power from the surrounding waves.
"Looks like a real big sea coming our way," Butler said in his Mississippi drawl.
"How big do you estimate it to be?"
The younger man squinted through the lenses. "Average seas have been running around thirty feet. This looks to be double that. Wow! Have you ever seen anything this big?"
"Never," the captain said. "Not in my whole life."
The captain knew his ship could handle the wave if the Belle faced into it bow first to cut down the area of impact. The captain ordered
the helmsman to program the auto-steer to face the oncoming wave and keep it steady. Then he grabbed the mike and flipped a switch on the console that would connect the bridge with speakers all over the ship.
"Attention all hands. This is the captain. A giant rogue wave is about to hit the ship. Get to a secure location away from flying objects and hold on. The impact will be severe. Repeat. The impact will be severe."
As a precaution, he ordered the radioman to broadcast an SOS. The ship could always send out a recall, if needed.
The green, white-veined wave was about a half mile from the ship. "Look at that," Butler was saying. The sky was lit up by a series of brilliant flashes. "Lightning?"
"Maybe," the captain said. "I'm more concerned about that damned sea!"
The wave's profile was unlike anything the captain had ever seen. Unlike most waves, which slope down at an angle from the crest, this one was almost straight up and down, like a moving wall.
The captain had a peculiar out-of-body sensation. Part of him watched the advancing wave in a disinterested, scientific fashion, fascinated by the size and power, while another part stood in helpless wonder at the immense, menacing power.
"It's still growing," Butler said with unabashed awe.
The captain nodded. He guessed the wave had grown to a height of ninety feet, nearly three times as high as it was when it was first sighted. His face was ashen. Cracks were starting to appear in his rock-hard confidence. A ship the size of the Belle couldn't turn on a dime, and it was still facing the oncoming sea at an angle when the gigantic wave reared up like a living thing.
He was expecting the shock from the wave but was unprepared when a trough big enough to swallow his ship opened up in the ocean in front of him.
The captain looked into the abyss that had appeared before his eyes. "It's like the end of the world," he thought.
The ship tilted into the trough, slid down the side and buried its bow in the ocean. The captain fell against the forward bulkheads.
Rather than strike head-on, the wave collapsed on top of the ship, burying it under thousands of tons of water.
The pilothouse windows imploded under the pressure, and the entire Atlantic Ocean seemed to pour into the bridge. The blast of water hit the captain and the others on the bridge with the force of a hundred fire hoses. The bridge became a tangle of arms and legs. Books, pencils and seat cushions were thrown about.
Some of the water drained out through the windows, and the captain fought his way back to the controls. All the control screens were dead. The ship had lost its radar, gyro compasses and radio communication, but, most seriously, its power. All the instrumentation had become short-circuited. The steering gear was useless.
The captain went to a window and surveyed the physical damage. The bow had been destroyed, and the ship was listing. He suspected that the hull plating may have been penetrated. The lifeboats on the foredeck had been swept from their davits. The ship wallowed like a drunken hippopotamus.
The big wave seemed to have stirred up the seas around it like a demagogue rousing a mob. Waves rolled across the foredeck. Worse, with its engines having failed, the ship was lying transversely to the seas, drifting in the worst possible position.
Having survived the wave, the ship lay with its side exposed, in danger of being "holed," in the colorful jargon of the sea.
The captain tried to remain optimistic. The Southern Belle could survive even with some compartments flooded. Someone would have heard the SOS. The ship could float for days, if necessary, until help arrived.
"Captain." The first officer interrupted the captain's thoughts.
Butler was staring through the broken window. His eyes were locked in an unbelieving stare on a distant point. The captain's gaze followed Butler's pointing finger, and he began to tremble as the thrill of fear went through him.
Another horizontal line of foam was forming less than a quarter of a mile away.
The first airplane arrived two hours later. It circled over the sea and was soon joined by other planes. Then the rescue ships began to arrive, diverted from the shipping routes. The ships lined up three miles apart and combed the sea like a search party looking for a lost child in the woods. After days of searching, they found nothing.