The Last Ship: A Novel

by William Brinkley

  Their eyes looking up at me, that look of dauntless steadfastness, that heartrending yet stirring sailor’s look I had never seen on the faces of other men of taking what might come reaching up to tear at my heart and soul, at everything that I was; yet nothing giving me more strength. Even as I related to them the grim facts, sparing none, it was as if they embraced them in their brotherhood, in their defiance. Even as I went over the course in the greatest detail, more so than I had ever done, giving all the reasons for it, they seemed borne down not a whit by the imparted knowledge of all the horizons that in all probability must be crossed, each full of unknown trials; none, even the final horizon, giving certain promise that we would find what we must find. I finished up.

  “On slow revolutions we have the fuel to reach the Pacific, and enough remaining to give hope that we can find a place. We have food to get us there—though I have to tell you that rations must be reduced even further. We will work harder than we ever have. I expect every hand to do his part. Knowing that your shipmate is as tired as are you; his belly as hungry. No one knows what we will meet up with as we now start our voyage. It is possible—more than that it is likely—that we will encounter dangers far greater than any we have been through. We would hope to find others who would help us, take us in. There must be others out there, possibly willing to do so. But I can give no assurance as to that. If we do come across people, they may prove hostile to us. If it comes to that, we will make it alone. But we will make it. I aim to bring every man, every woman of us, through to safe harbor.” I waited a moment. “One more thing. Above all we have each other. You have stood stronger, more steadfast than anyone would have a right to ask for. No one ever led a finer body of men and women. I have never been so proud in my life of anything as to be your captain.”

  Concluding, I asked the Jesuit to say a prayer for us. It was brief:

  “Almighty God. Thou who watches over sailors, over all who venture on great waters, guide Thou now the Nathan James. Give her a true course through the seas which are Thine. Give us strength to meet adversity with perseverance, pain with faith. Keep us in our love for Thee, and for one another. Let us trust in Providence—and rely on ourselves. Remind us to care for the shipmate to our right, the one to our left; to help whosoever shall need help; as all of us, at one time or another, will. Grant us self-denial, constancy. Bring us through all trials, keep us from harm. O Lord Our God, Almighty Pilot, steer this ship safely over every horizon, to good haven. Amen.”

  I then asked Porterfield to lead us in one of his hymns, the men seeming to like these. He picked one of their favorites and presently the voices of the men and women rose, softly blending . . .

  Amazing grace! how sweet the sound

  That saved a wretch like me!

  I once was lost, but now am found

  Was blind, but now I see.

  The notes came swelling on the air, in the sailor voices falling out over the Arabian Sea . . .

  Through many dangers, toils and snares,

  I have already come;

  ’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,

  And grace will lead me home . . .

  I waited until the last strains had died away and only the brooding stillness held over the ship, across the waters.

  I turned to my XO. “Mr. Thurlow, make all preparations for getting underway.”

  Soon I could hear the great anchor rise, the long drawn rumbling of iron links running through the hawsepipe seeming overloud in the solitude that lay all around us. Slowly then the ship began to part the stilled waters, bound on our first exploration, the 200 miles of the coastlines of Somalia and Kenya—not a mile farther—we had allotted ourselves; that, barring a not expected habitability, would be our last look at that continent.

  For the record: Not even trusting myself with both, I now gave one of the two keys required to launch the missiles to Lieutenant Girard, at the same time designating her to succeed Chatham as combat systems officer, a billet for which she had qualified during shore duty, one presumably to be chiefly titular from now on, concerned principally with upkeep, ourselves unexpecting of either attacking or being attacked by anything or anybody; having also instructed her before Chatham’s departure to obtain from him the combination to the safe in his cabin in which the key was kept and under no circumstance to reveal that combination even to her captain.

  * * *

  The diversion along the coasts of Somalia and Kenya was for the purpose, as indicated, of making a final determination as to Selmon’s belief that Africa was gone. He had arrived at this projection as to a near certainty in the penetration he had made near Carthage, courageously taking his counter a mile inland and observing its readings steadily incline. This result itself had added another piece of evidence to a fact long known, that interiors of land masses were almost certain to be both more quickly and more heavily contaminated than littorals; a premise borne out in our own experience, most notably on the European side of the Mediterranean, by those pockets of human beings we had encountered along its shores, their having fled there for the precise reason that the lands behind them no longer tolerated human kind. For our final validation I chose an empty beach we came upon some 150 miles into our allotted maximum of 200, near a place called Lama in Kenya. There I led ashore a small party, this time Selmon not going alone, but accompanied, besides myself and Thurlow, by a shore party of eight, all of them being expert marksmen and armed variously with carbines, automatic rifles, and sub-machine guns; all under the charge of Gunner’s Mate Delaney. As an index of habitability we hoped to encounter animals, the marksmen and their armament brought along not to dispatch any of these but to be used only if we were attacked. The party including also two of our biggest and strongest hands, Boatswain’s Mate Preston and Machinist’s Mate Brewster from the hole; also Bixby, along not as a signalman third but as one knowledgeable about animals, having been about to become a veterinarian when the Navy summoned her. As I believe I have mentioned elsewhere, Selmon had educated me in the fact that based on studies conducted during that part of his Radiation School Training spent near Amarillo, Texas, it had been established that as a rule animals possessed considerably higher tolerances than human beings, generally twice or more as much—over a period of forty-eight hours, 350 to 500 rads for man being considered the mean lethal dose as opposed to 1,000 for animals, these of course varying considerably animal to animal; while the Amarillo determinations included numerous species of domesticated animals, others such as elephants, lions, giraffes, hippopotami, not being prevalent in Texas, had not participated in the experiments, hence had tolerances unknown.

  The beach at Lama, as we stepped out of the boat coxswained by Meyer with her hand Barker, yielded a reading on Selmon’s instruments that appeared to dash any slender hopes we may have had as to habitability here. It allowed us but four hours ashore. The expectation being so low, the disappointment was not great. I decided to proceed inland for a bit anyhow in order to make my own test of the littoral-over-inland habitability theory—personal knowledge of it seeming perhaps useful in our future search. Thus we penetrated into the bush lying just beyond the beach, single file, moving through vegetation and trees thick enough but not so much so as to require the machete ministrations of Preston and Brewster, Selmon and myself at the lead, our armed squad of eight strung out behind. Rather dark, now and then opening into a small clearing where we stopped for Selmon to take a fresh reading; at the third such clearing, this:

  “It goes up, Captain. Very slowly.”

  “But it goes up?”

  “Oh, yes. It goes up.”

  “Can we try a little more?”

  “No problem yet. Still, not too far I’d think.”

  “Frequent readings then.”

  “Aye, sir. Frequent readings.”

  The wild growth became thicker; Preston and Brewster, summoned forward to the lead, had to wield their machetes frequently now, their huge bodies making long slashing entries into it. Through the
se we emerged into another clearing.

  The men having come up and gathered around so that we formed a cluster, we all stood still in the great beauty of it; grass so green and glistening it seemed to have been but recently sprinkled with dew, under our feet extending all the way across the clearing and guarded all around by a ring of great many-trunked trees, their long branches stretching protectively over it. Thurlow was the first to speak, in a quiet voice which fell upon the stillness.

  “Those trees, sir. They’re the baobab. They’re supposed to be the oldest living thing on earth—twenty-five hundred years or so. The Africans say they’re the tree where man was born. If civilization started in Africa, one might like to think it started right here.”

  Delaney, a religious man, embellished the idea.

  “Aye, sir. A regular Garden of Eden.”

  “Right now . . .” Selmon was looking at his counter. “We’d better get out of Eden.”

  I had been here twice before—not the exact spot but similar ones in this same country. It all seemed familiar. And yet there was a difference, the nature of which I did not at first discern. Then I knew. It was the absence of sound. More than by any other characteristic, I had always associated Africa with sounds. Of millions of sounds of insects, the carrying sounds of birds, infinitely varying, of all the animals, of unnumbered thousands of living things, a marvelous cacophony, a great and mighty symphony of life itself. We heard nothing; not a single sound. Only a breathless silence, as if God—if indeed He did commence matters here—had created the setting of Eden but not yet got around to creating its fortunate inhabitants. And yet there seemed nothing peaceful in that arcane and transcendent quiescence; rather it seemed somehow a cruel stillness.

  Then—it was as though my thoughts had been heard—from behind the bush and the trees on the far side of this clearing we were startled by a sound. A silence. Then another. Silences again. Then a number of sounds, differing all. I had always loved, immensely enjoyed, animals—had made those visits to Africa for that reason—and knew the sounds of most. These seemed to come from creatures I had never encountered. Sounds I had never heard. Something strange entered the air, invaded our souls, seemed to be felt among the men. A fear; a sudden caution; a foreboding.

  “Let’s have a look,” I said. I spoke to Delaney. “Gunner, have the men put their pieces on ready.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  I heard the clicks as we proceeded cautiously across the clearing, where the bush began again. It was not thick here, no machete work necessary by Preston and Brewster. We had gone I would have judged a hundred yards when we broke again into a clearing far larger than any before, this one almost entirely occupied by what I knew as a wadi, a watering place for animals, surrounded again by stands of baobab trees. Ourselves coming again into a cluster, the source of the sounds stood before us.

  The variety of them slammed overpoweringly at us. Perhaps fifty animals. Quickly I could make out a pair of lions. Three elephants. A giraffe. Some eland. Zebra, gazelle, wildebeest, kudu. I think it took us a little while to comprehend, overwhelmed as we at first were by the sight of so many different species, some of them natural predators of others so that it seemed strange for them to be gathered so peacefully together at one place. Then, as our eyes moved over them, something out of recent memory came to strike terribly at us. The animals seemed to have arrived at almost exactly the same state as had the human beings on the beaches of Amalfi. Chronologically this just about fit.

  Some just lay, breathing hard, at the wadi’s edge, patently in a dazed state, occasionally looking at us as through blurred vision. Some were obviously blind. The same stigmata we had seen before. From all, large chunks of flesh had fallen away as though they had been viciously clawed, remaining flesh hanging in tatters, and as with the human beings we had encountered, this process seemed ongoing as if more loss were continuing to take place before our eyes; their bodies decomposing, slow bleedings everywhere; their coats gone mangy, great festering sores where hair or hide had been. A huge elephant tried to get up, succeeded in taking a step or two, fell down again with a mighty crash that shook the forest; weirdly, the other animals hardly seeming to notice, to hear. A great lion spasmatically staggered about, apparently trying to get closer to the wadi, then collapsed, just as had the inhabitants of the Amalfi beach. Mostly they did not move at all, as if hoarding dwindling reserves of strength. Their faces—and this was almost the worst part of all, sending a chill of horror and of unspeakable desolation through us—even their faces seemed to carry expressions highly similar. Looks—I do not think one imagined this—of bewilderment and stupefaction, and for the same reason, the immense mystery and inexplicability of what had happened, was happening, to them. Actually not that many sounds from them: low moanings most of all, heavy breathings as if choking for air; if bewildered by their fate, seeming acceptant of it. I do not know why it should have seemed so astonishing, and in itself so devastating to us, that these symptoms covered almost the exact same spectrum as those of the human beings we had seen on those other beaches. It was certainly not that we felt more sorrow in respect to the animals than we had with the human beings. Perhaps in our sadness a little of this: that none of these species who were before us had had anything to do with what happened. We stood in absolute muteness, the only sounds those the animals made; the sounds of suffering. From high overhead a slight wind came up, sending a mournful note whispering through the baobab trees that surrounded the wadi. It was as if the trees were crying.

  It was Gunner Delaney, the farm boy, one growing up with animals, who first spoke.

  “Captain?”

  I did not need to hear the question. I was about to give the order when Bixby saw two of them coming toward us. As they approached, unafraid, they seemed in astonishingly good health. Fine coats, unstigmatized bodies. Two lion cubs, each a foot long. Bixby sat on her haunches, examined them. I watched her, the thin light of the clearing falling across her auburn, liquescent hair, something of tranquillity in that supple girlish figure whose knowing hands—fast as could be on the blinker light—now felt over these small creatures, one then the other, tenderly, expertly.

  “They look fine,” she said. She looked up at me. “Captain?” She did not say it; she did not need to. The idea would have been to take them along, aboard ship, down the line to release them into some place habitable.

  “Mr. Selmon,” I said.

  He knelt alongside. Bixby held first one then the other while he ran his counter over them. He also looked up at me.

  “Much too high, Captain,” he said. “We couldn’t risk it.”

  Bixby set the last one down gently; stood away. They seemed to want to follow her. She picked them up, one in each hand, and carried them down by the wadi; returned.

  “You may proceed, Gunner,” I said.

  The eight spread out. All expert marksmen. The shots crashed through the jungle. Volley after volley. Soon all sounds ceased. It had taken a little while. We had had barely enough ammunition for some of those great creatures. In the great stillness, seeming more so than ever in the lingering echoes of the shots, we could see the curlings of smoke rising over the wadi, moving in soundless languor upward through the baobab trees.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said savagely.

  We left Eden.

  We made our way, hurrying as much as the thick growth would permit, back through the bush. Once, pausing briefly for Preston and Brewster to do some machete work, I remarked to Selmon, “I hear no birds,” and he replied, “Birds have the lowest tolerances of all. They would have been the first to go.” Soon we were emerging onto the beach where Meyer and Barker stood at their boat, waiting. Beyond across blue waters we could see the ship riding at anchor. We boarded and headed toward her. All the way out we sat with our unvoiced thoughts. Back aboard I gave orders for the ship to make its course at once, N. by N.E. as previously determined. I stood on the bridge wing watching Africa fade behind us. A thought would not leave m
e. Why we had had the mercy to put those suffering ones out of their torment but not to afford the same favor to the human beings on the beaches at Amalfi, the other places. Had it been a failure of compassion? As I watched the dying continent recede forever across our white wake, I wondered if the situation recurred, if we found any more human beings in that state, whether we should extend to them the same kindness we had shown the animals? Then thought: What would it do to us?

  Then Africa was no longer to be seen and we stood surrounded only by the Arabian Sea, moving slowly through gentle waters bound for our first destination, India.

  That very night happening to be the date for Pushkin’s surfacing at 2300 Greenwich, I reached him with no difficulty, informing him of the finality of Africa’s inhabitability, stating that we had transited Suez and were now standing east, giving him in detail our proposed course clear through to Pacific regions. He in reply telling us that he was skirting the Bay of Biscay and on a heading for the North Atlantic en route to the Norwegian Sea, thence to Karsavina and his mission, Thurlow bringing me the message, translating its Russian.