The wrecked helicopter was floating right in front of me and there were people struggling in the water. I grabbed a bitter end and was standing on the port as it was still swinging down to horizontal. Then I looked around and saw what I needed: the boat falls, coiled loosely on deck, not yet secured. The port of that side was closed, as it had been since the Captain ordered it closed earlier I slapped the switch and it began to grind open. I dived down the ladder without hitting the treads and was on down in the cargo deck almost at once. I’m not much in an emergency it is hours later when I figure out what I should have done. The stream followed it, smashed against the fuselage and again caught a rotor the heli tilted violently and began to fall. The Captain leaned the craft over and it slipped out of contact. A stream of water so solid, hard, and bright that it looked like steel shot out of the end of it it struck a rotor tip and the heli staggered. Some said it was a machine-to me it looked like an enormous elephant’s trunk. It was coming straight toward the ship and would have touched down soon when something came out of the water right under it. The chopper turned a few hundred feet beyond the ship and headed back into the wind.
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