The third book in the Kate Shugak series, 1993

THE Avilda rolled into a trench of opaque green seas.

Normally, when she was vertical, those seas rose as high as her masthead. Now the crabber was listing so steeply that the portside railing was awash. Kate, legs braced against the slant of the deck, had her head and shoulders jammed up against the frame of an empty crab pot. The pot was threatening to slide over her and the port rail in that order. Her arms were widespread, her fingers, numbed with cold and wet with salt water, clutched desperately to the frame of the pot. The wire mesh pressed into the flesh of her face. Something warm and liquid slid down her cheek. She wondered, without interest, if it was tears or blood.

The pot was seven feet tall and seven feet wide and three feet deep, a steel frame covered in metal netting, pounds of dead weight empty. Kate was five feet tall, weighed just over 120 pounds and was mere flesh and bone, but she had Newton on her side, and she waited. She could feel the rest of the crew watching, but she was fiercely determined to do this herself, without help and, more importantly, without asking for help.

A muscle in her back rebelled at the unaccustomed strain and spasmed. She cursed beneath her breath, though if she'd shouted her voice would not have been heard above the crash of Aleutian water on deck, the howl of Aleutian winds overhead and the rough, deep-throated roar of the engine beating up through the soles of her feet.

At last, at last, the crabber mounted the next swell and began its inevitable slide in the opposite direction.