o the wind and was keeping enough speed
forward to yield to it gradually. That would be all right, I thought,
if the force of the wind stayed constant, and as soon as I thought of
that, it happened. We got into a relative calm, the boat went forward
again, and then was tossed up and spun around. Then I saw a mountain
slope directly behind us, out the rear window.

A moment later, I saw rocks and boulders sticking out of it in
apparent defiance of gravitation, and then I realized that it was
level ground and we were coming down at it backward. That lasted a few
seconds, and then we hit stern-on, bounced and hit again. I was
conscious up to the third time we hit.

The next thing I knew, I was hanging from my lashings from the side of
the boat, which had become the top, and the headlights and the lights
on the control panel were out, and Joe Kivelson was holding a
flashlight while Abe Clifford and Glenn Murell were trying to get me
untied and lower me. I also noticed that the air was fresh, and very
cold.

"Hey, we're down!" I said, as though I were telling anybody anything
they didn't know. "How many are still alive?"

"As far as I know, all of us," Joe said. "I think I have a broken
arm." I noticed, then, that he was holding his left arm stiffly at his
side. Murell had a big gash on top of his head, and he was mopping
blood from his face with his sleeve while he worked.

When they got me down, I looked around. Somebody else was playing a
flashlight around at the stern, which was completely smashed. It was
a miracle the rocket locker hadn't blown up, but the main miracle was
that all, or even any, of us were still alive.

We found a couple of lights that could be put on, and we got all of us
picked up and the unconscious revived. One man, Dominic Silverstein,
had a broken leg. Joe Kivelson's arm was, as he suspected, broken,
another man had a fractured wrist, and Abdullah Monnahan thought a
couple of ribs were broken. The rest of us were in one piece, but all
of us were cut and bruised. I felt sore all over. We also found a
nuclear-electric heater that would work, and got it on. Tom and I
rigged some tarpaulins to screen off the ruptured stern and keep out
the worst of the cold wind. After they got through setting and
splinting the broken bones and taping up Abdullah's ribs, Cesario and
Murell got some water out of one of the butts and started boiling it
for coffee. I noticed that Piet Dumont had recovered his pipe