Our aged wooden fishing boat measured 30 feet long and 10 feet wide, with a rudder at the stern for steering, a large storage area below the front deck, and a small storage area below the rear deck. There was a cabin in the middle of the boat, which had two side windows and a front and rear door, but was only four feet high, so the adults had to bend down to get in and out. However, because the cabin was so low, I could hold on to the wooden rails on its roof whenever I walked from the bow of the boat to the stern.
. . .
Fortunately, as a skilled seaman, Si knew how to maneuver his boat into the waves so that we didn’t capsize. All through the storm, Dad manually pumped water off the deck as the rain whipped down on him like crystal nails. But his biggest problem were the waves, which were crashing into him, sometimes nearly knocking him over. To protect himself from being swept away by them, he had to hold tightly onto one of the rails on top of the cabin with one hand as he pumped with the other.
The storm went on for hours. At some point, I must have passed out from exhaustion, since when I woke up, the storm had already passed, and an eerie silence was filling the air.
But then, the noise of the front hatch opening, and Loan and Huyen climbing out onto the deck, relieved my fears that some of us may not have survived.
Miraculously, we all got through that horrific night…
. . .
Now starvation, thirst, and fear were making Si paranoid. Out of desperation, he accused my father of hiding water, which was ridiculous. He also blamed my father for damning his family to death because my father had persuaded everyone to continue the journey after the first storm.
Si became so enraged that he pointed his pistol at my father’s head and threatened to shoot him. But my father showed no signs of fear. Like the rest of us, he figured he was going to die anyway. So he just sat there calmly, waiting to be executed.