…Maud, dearest…Without pen or paper I write to you from nowhere…. What do lovers live by? Everything that has no limits: Eternity; memory; regret.
And so the first day passed.
When night came, they took their bearings from the stars.
Throughout all the previous hours, Anderson had borne his pain with a heroic bravery. Somewhere around eleven, though, he went a bit berserk, shouting out in the darkness that he could bear it no more. That was when the captain gave Morgan permission to give him most of the brandy from Maud’s flask.
Sunday, March 21
Dawn broke fair. The sun came up strong, blazoning the sea with a golden light.
Mid-morning, the Owl died. It was a vanishing of a kind sudden and soundless, made known by a trickle of blood that came out of the right corner of his mouth and dripped down onto Sutter’s hand. Sutter’s tears were the streaming agent: “He’s stopped breathing.”
Corcoran was sitting next to Sutter. By a gesture, the captain indicated to Corcoran that he was to change places with himself. At Sutter’s side he confirmed the Owl’s death. He spoke directly to Sutter: “I’m very sorry, Sutter…. You must let him go.” His tone was as gentle as a woman’s would have been. He began to ease the Owl’s body out of Sutter’s hold. Morgan, watching, considered one of a string of Latin phrases drilled into him at school: Basis virtutum constantia:2 an epitaph for the broken Sutter.
Without looking up from the task of undoing the Owl’s life-jacket, the captain told Brey to keep his eyes on the sail, and to Sanderson, now at the tiller, to head the boat closer into the wind. “We’ll say the Lord’s Prayer, then we’ll slip him over the side.” He turned back to Sutter: “Shaw will help me do that if you’d rather not, Sutter.”
“I’ll do it,” Sutter answered.
They followed the captain’s lead: “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done”—their heads bowed and their voices, in the great containments of sky and sea, near lost:—“but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever.” At the “Amen,” as they raised their eyes, the captain was seen to brush the Owl’s hair back from his forehead, exposing to sight the completeness of his vividly young face on which he gazed for a singular moment. When he next spoke, it was in a carrying voice that shook with feeling: “The Breastplate of Righteousness, the Shield of Faith, the Helmet of Salvation, the Sword of Spirit.” Then: “Now, Sutter.”
The boat heeled sharply as they put the Owl over.
With the act done, the captain resumed his place in the stern.
“Trim the sail,” he ordered, “and resume course.”
There is a pull of water which runs off the east coast of Africa called the Agulhas Current, and they faced the danger of getting caught in it and of being carried by it down around the Cape and out into the South Atlantic: into oblivion. Sutter made the mistake of mumbling aloud, somewhat wildly, what he was thinking: that the Owl’s death was an omen of their collective doom. The captain’s response came with the force of a whip: “Hear me, Sutter. I’ll not stand for that kind of talk. Understand?” Sutter straightened his back: “Sir,” he said. The captain insisted: “Say ‘Yes, sir,’ Sutter”—which, immediately, Sutter did.
Around noon-time, the seas began to make. By midafternoon, the swells were heavy and very turbulent.
At dusk, the captain took the tiller. The waves by then were immense: deep and steep and topped by white, wind-driven spray that blew upon them with the fierceness of a teeming rain. They took shifts bailing the boat. The captain steered with a god-like skill, not as one in contest with the sea, but as if he were a willing accomplice to its savagery. He would crab the boat, quartering it through the canyon of a trough, then straighten the tiller just in time to meet the loom of the next coming-on swell. He did that for almost seven hours: all through the deepest part of the night: how, Morgan would never know. Perhaps, he thought, by some uncanny gift of strength endowed by a high and subtle kinship to the sea itself: by that “belonging” to it he’d discovered in himself that sharp day he’d first encountered it as a land-born boy from Suffern, New York.
…Sometime around three A.M., the tempest began to moderate. With the coming of dawn (on Monday, March 22) as the waves leveled off, they all kept their gaze forward to where, by the calculations they’d been proceeding under, land ought to be. They’d been going, after all, since Saturday morning—two full days—and ninety miles, as Climson dared to say, wasn’t all that far…. To Morgan’s surprise, the captain expanded on Climson’s remark, calling it reasonable, and stating his own disappointment at a lack of evidence of their being on the right course: at the absence, for instance, of any bird life in the sky…. But they’d made it through the storm, he said, and by God, they’d make it all the way…. He looked a bit mad, with his oil-smeared face and torn clothes and gesturing hands that were raw from his hours at the tiller and with, inside the blood-shot whites of his eyes, the blue pupils sharp as razors, taking in the perdition of his men—five of whom (Morgan among them) had broken out head to toe in a fiery rash from the oil; Myers’s skin an oozing mess of salt-water boils; Fuller’s swollen, disfigured face; Anderson’s leg, rotting; and the sufferings of all from exhaustion and thirst…. He looked mad…. And then, as if he knew it and was ashamed, he lowered his head toward his lap and for about an hour, slumped so, he appeared to sleep.
Garvin had the tiller. No one talked. In a silence that grew heavier by the minute, they but sat, absorbed in their thoughts and unspoken fears that they were caught in the current and were being taken from land.
Early in the afternoon a plane flew over.
They heard first the faint, steady throb of its engines, which alien resonance caused them, with a hushed gravity of focused attention, to scan the heavens in the direction of the gaining sound…. Then they saw it: saw it for what they supposed it to be: as their avenging angel of deliverance…. It was flying at a high altitude on a straight course, emerging swiftly toward them through the open sky. In an urgent, wild scurry of movement, they began to wave their arms and to vent their praise of it by yells and shouts of excitement and celebration. With their eyes and arms and voices raised to it, there was a moment of inattention to the boat, fatal in kind: with a sudden sheering velocity, the main boom jibed, snapping the mast in two—that as—without the merest dip in altitude or a wagging of its wings in the known signification that the pilot had spotted them—the plane passed overhead and sped away.
By the two calamities—loss of sail, and the plane’s annihilating snub—the last of their rational hope was taken from them.
From the stricken look on the captain’s face, as Morgan vividly beheld it, it was obvious that he blamed himself for the loss of sail. Out of a combination of conviction and respect and a kind of despairing affection, Morgan addressed him over Browne’s and Tamworth’s bent figures: “It’s not your fault, sir,” he said.
The reply was a low denial that carried: “But it is.”
Anderson—until then mute in his suffering—cleared his throat and rasped out: “Mister Shurtliff’s right, sir. It’s not your fault. It’s the fault of the whole circumstance.” Then, in a tone of appeal: “I’d have some brandy if there’s any left.”
Morgan shook the flask: “I’d say there’s a swallow.” He unscrewed the cap and put the flask in Anderson’s hand.
“At home,” Anderson croaked on to no one in particular, “my wife heads our local chapter of the WCTU…. It would distress her to see me take liquor. I’m going to, though. And tonight, after it’s dark, I’m going to put myself over the side.”
The captain said: “It’s a while till nightfall, Anderson. We’ll talk about it then…. Would you like us to shift you a bit?”
“No. I’ll stay as I am for the time being.”
Over the next two hours, the breeze weakened and the sea turned slack. Cramped, numb, thirsty, itching, sickened by their indi
vidual filth and the reek of Anderson’s festering wounds, they drifted aimlessly under the clear of the unchanging sky, detached in bodily attitude from one another; in spirit, joined entirely in a silent despair.
Midafternoon, from his place in the stern, the captain roused them with a single word: “There.” He was pointing into the distance. And, as they peered: “I’m sure it’s a boat.”
A dot on the horizon.
A dot that was moving.
Moving, in a willed way, toward them.
Toward them, though not directly: in slow, measured, criss-crossing laps insinuative of a vessel on the hunt.
As the minutes ticked by, and as it attained in size, their hopes began palpably to rise.
The captain by now was on his feet, standing just so, rigid and wordless. He looked cast in iron.
He allowed a longer interval of time to pass.
When he broke his stance, it was by way of one of his old, abruptly made gestures, this one triumphant: “I make it out a British Corvette,” he said deeply. And then, in a voice of sudden thunder: “WAVE: Wave your arms off. Yell! Louder. WAVE.”
They were seen.
They knew it from the way the ship veered from her angled course and turned toward them in a manner presenting. Faced so, head-on, even from so far away, there was something of pomp about her—an impression that strengthened as she increased her speed and began, steadily and surely, to advance upon them. The distance to be covered was not inconsiderable. Progressing, with the sun agleam on her upswept prow, she looked winged. But she could not be fast enough for them—they, with their reaching eyes on her, waiting, the ultimate minutes of her coming the longest of their lives…. Yet when she was all but arrived, that is to say, when she was quite near and for obvious reasons had to slow her pace, the accumulated minutes took a backwards, disappearing leap, so that—now—as she made a sweeping circle of approach and at last hove alongside and was manifestly there, the length of time her coming had taken seemed, in immediate review, strangely swift.
Forever after, Morgan would wonder at their behavior in those first psalm-like moments of knowing they were saved: that no one went to pieces: that they held to a self-control achieved at such a cost that it turned them “cool” (the word, used so, learned years later from another generation and applied in retrospect): the precarious pose maintained throughout and as, in strict accordance with wartime rules, they were boarded and inspected. During this formality, the Corvette, sleek and bristling, held to her removed position. On her decks, her crew remained a silent, stony-faced, on-guard assembly of watchers.
The petty-officer in charge of the inspection was middle-aged, deeply tanned, meticulously groomed, sharp-minded in his interrogation of the captain, and toward them all supremely respectful. With the inspection completed, he raised his hand and made a releasing signal to the Corvette’s crew, who bellowed out at once a loud cheer, backed up by jolly and cordial displays of friendliness. Then, with an efficiency and considerateness that verged at moments on tenderness, they went to work to remove the rescued from the life-boat to their ship: Anderson first, after bedding him on a stretcher; Fuller next, the awful grotesqueries of his mutilated face shined by sudden tears. Then Myers, with his erupted boils, babbling his gratitude through lips that trembled like a fledgling’s wings. Rhode. Underwood. Browne. Magrath. Sutter. Tamworth. Vodapec. Bowen. Climson…One by one. Garvin. Brey. Corcoran. Sanderson…Each after the other. Hughes. Larivey. Dunne. Shaw…. It took a long time…. When his turn came, Morgan, until then sealed in that aforementioned control, broke: he opened his mouth to thank the bosun who stretched out a hand to him, but the intended word never came. Instead, the choke of a feral sob. He could no more have suppressed it than he could have held up the world in his two hands.
A seaman took charge of him. It took three washings down with heavy soap to get the oil off him before he was salved over with a first remedy for his rash.
He never saw his uniform again.
They were taken to Durban, South Africa.
There, they formally delivered themselves over to the British.
A staff of military bureaucrats briefly detained them: “Just long enough to sort you out for the records,” one of them explained.
Clothed in the humble extremes of a too-large pair of pants (clean, though) and a too-small short-sleeved shirt (also clean), naked-footed but for a pair of white gym socks (his shoes, like his uniform, had been cast away), dispossessed of everything that was his own (his confiscated flask and Bible were later returned to him), Morgan, as in a dream choreographed by Kafka, answered as sensibly as he could a series of questions put to him by a balding sergeant who seemed more interested in proving (on paper) that he, Morgan Shurtliff, was not dead, than in acknowledging his flesh-and-blood presence as evidence that he was alive.
Eventually, he was taken to an infirmary. There, in a quiet ward, he slept for hours. The captain visited him on the second day. He pulled a chair close to Morgan’s bed and peered at him: “They seem to have your rash under control. You’re a bit fragrant though.”
“It’s the ointment,” Morgan said. “The ward orderly calls it ‘Essence of Rhinoceros Piss.’” Then: “And how are you, sir?”
“All right, I think…. I had a bad time yesterday morning, but it only lasted about ten minutes. Some sort of delayed reaction, I guess.”
“What happened?”
“I was shaving and all of a sudden my hands began to shake. I couldn’t get them under control…. Fortunately, no one was around.” He held out his hands: “They’re steady enough now,” he said of their stillness. Then: “I once heard one drunk say of another, ‘For the shape he’s in, he’s in pretty good shape.’ That about describes me…. But I’ve a lot to tell you—” (said with a sudden livening, eyes charged by an intense blue); and, at once: “Sarkis’s and Pfeiffer’s boats made it through. They stayed together—were about thirty miles off the coast when a British patrol boat spotted them and took them on. They’re all in Cape Town, all of them fine—except for Williams, who’s in the hospital, but—to quote my informant—the Brits by the way are very decent about sharing what they know—his arm is ‘fixable,’ which turns out to mean he’ll have the full use of it when the medics finish with him.” The captain’s clean, brief narration, occluding of an imposed drama, revealed in unsaid full his depth of joy and humility that the story’s end was of a marvelous best.
To it, emotionally, Morgan nodded.
“I’ve more to report,” the captain picked up. “I’ve seen all our group. They’re scattered about the place, but they’re comfortably billeted and by and large they’re in good shape.” He paused, but only for an instant: “Anderson and Fuller were removed to Cape Town yesterday…. I’m told the hospital there is first-rate. Anderson’s the one to be worried about.”
“I’ve been afraid for him,” Morgan said. “I expect to be let out of here tomorrow, the day after at the latest. I’ll make the rounds of my crew then.” He spoke next of what he’d come to believe: that he owed his life to the captain: “For the way you brought us through the storm, sir. Your skill with the tiller.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Shurtliff,” the captain replied. “I’ve been thinking about that. About—everything…. In the end, I’m inclined to the feeling that what brought us through is beyond my understanding.” He leaned forward in his chair: “Just between us, I keep being surprised that I’m alive. If I sound a bit ‘dotty,’ as my mother would say, it’s because I haven’t quite got used to the idea yet.”
“That makes at least two of us.”
A commotion at the door of the ward—two doctors followed by a nurse pushing a cart loaded with a supply of medicinal mysteries—broke their mood. Morgan said: “Tell me about your suit.”
For the first time the captain smiled. “A blinder, isn’t it?” said with a touch to the plaid lapels. “The padre who runs the local seaman’s mission supplied me with it. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, but I have to t
ell you I don’t feel myself in it.”
“It’s not a bad fit though. God knows what I’ll find to wear when I get out of here.”
“If you think I’m eye-catching, you should see Sutter. He’s cocked out in somebody’s dead uncle’s smoking-jacket. Velvet. With a crest embroidered on the handkerchief pocket. You know Sutter. Out to kill.” Then, with a look down: “I’m sorry I said that. The truth is he’s using the jacket to cover up his grief.”
“Malkerson, you mean.”
The captain nodded. And after a moment: “I’m told that as and when transport becomes available, we’ll be shipped home. Not as a unit, of course. Individually. It’ll take a while, so don’t hold your breath.” He stood up. “I’ll see you later.”
“Thanks for coming by, sir.”
For a month he remained in Durban, billeted the while in one of a forest of tents set up on the old, very English, once thriving racetrack, now an R-and-R center—converted to that use sometime back in 1940 or ’41. As seen against the vine-covered, architecturally resolved structures of the old colonial club-house and grandstand and near-by stables and grooms’ quarters, the rows and rows of exactly spaced, precisely staked, dun-colored canvas shelters had the fixed, grandiose look of a Hollywood set: a military encampment à la Cecil B. DeMille.
In the beamed stables, in stalls still vaguely redolent of horse, battle-weary soldiers and tired airmen and ship-wrecked sailors could sit opposite a psychiatrist and confide their wartime nightmares. In the clubhouse, they could play billiards or cards or chess, or just sit around drinking and shooting the breeze. At night, in the arms of Red Cross girls and closely chaperoned, patriotic Durban damsels (even, by dint of discreet infiltration, a few “professional” ladies), they could dance to the music provided by a stack of records, the “smooth” ones vintage American, played by the Big Bands of Glenn Miller, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman…. There were plenty of jitterbug and bebop discs too, and hip morale rousers:
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