We, the Drowned

by Carsten Jensen

  I don't know if they saw me throw the pearls overboard, and if they did, they must have thought that I was making a sacrifice to a god not much different from theirs.

  But I hadn't done it to appease any god. I'd done it for myself, out of a sense of duty.

  The sun set just as it had every evening since the dead calm gripped us. That first night it had looked like a red bullet heading for my heart. Now it was even darker—not like blood, but like the bullet hole itself. The whole world was prey, killed by an unknown hunter.

  A crackling sound woke me. At first, still surfacing from sleep, I guessed fire had broken out on board, the heat having caused the Flying Scud to ignite spontaneously. Then I realized that it wasn't the crackling of dry wood ablaze but something slamming hard on the awning stretched above us. I raised myself on my elbow and felt a puff of air on my face. The wind was rising. And it was bringing rain.

  I stood by the rail and opened my mouth. Cold, heavy drops of water fell onto my face. They hit my shoulders and naked chest and a shudder passed through me, as if everything inside me was returning to life.

  I heard movement behind me and turned around. The Kanaks came over, supporting their wounded comrade. Together we stood along the rail and let the rain soak us. I'd never known real thirst before, and I've never felt grateful the way I did when those first drops of rain wetted my lips. I snapped at the air for more, and for a moment I forgot who I was.

  The sea began to stir and when the first waves lapped tentatively against the side of the ship, she reacted with a slight swaying, as if she had been long awaiting an invitation to start moving again. The first wave broke, its top glowing white in the moonlight, and the gaff above us flapped heavily in the wind. A storm was brewing.

  We bustled about, preparing the ship. The awning was sagging beneath the weight of the rainwater that had already collected in it: before we took it down, we filled our barrels. Our throats were no longer parched, but we hadn't eaten for days, and as we worked it was clear how weak we'd become. But no matter: not even the prospect of facing a storm with no provisions could dampen our joy at the return of the wind and the rain. Every time I yelled my orders through the resurrected wind that howled in the rigging, the Kanaks replied with the only words I ever heard them say in English—"Aye, aye, sir!"—like a chorus responding to a solo.

  It might sound strange—even reckless—to say that we sailed into the storm with exhilaration, but there's no other word to describe our mood as, utterly drenched, we watched the waves toss around us, sending up huge sheets of flying foam that merged sea and sky. We'd double-roped the flying jib, but soon we had to drop all but the foresail to prevent the mast and rigging from going overboard. I lashed myself to the wheel as the vast waves thundered over us, clearing the deck, from bow to stern, of anything that wasn't strapped down. I stayed there for two days. I could have ordered one of the Kanaks to relieve me every four hours, but I didn't. Not because I didn't trust them, but because I had something to prove to myself. I think they understood that.

  They'd stretched ropes across the deck to cling to when they moved around the ship, but most of the time they were lashed in place, like me. They'd tied the wounded man to the rigging where the waves couldn't reach him, and from time to time they'd climb up with a mug of water to wet his lips. One of them brought me water too.

  When a wave washed a tuna fish onto the deck, I took it as a sign. Before, the fish had stayed away; now they came to us. The sea was generous. In a brief break between two waves, one of the Kanaks hurled himself at the fish, slashed it with his knife, and brought me a hunk of live meat that still trembled in his hand.

  During the two days the storm lasted, I remained in a state of undiminished rapture. I stayed on my feet with the wheel in my hands, tied to my post by the rope. If I was tired, I never noticed.

  Finally, on the third day, the wind died down, so I untied the rope and allowed myself to be relieved. For a little while I just stood swaying on the deck—until suddenly exhaustion overwhelmed me. I thought I'd faint, and I had to return to the wheel to support myself, fixing my eyes on the deck as I tried to regain my balance.

  When I looked up again, the Kanaks had formed a circle around me. The wounded Kanak had come down from the rigging and was standing unsupported, as if his stay up there had done him good. I held out my hand. They stared at it. Then they stuck out theirs too, and one by one we shook hands. They didn't speak, and no smiles lit the darkness of their faces. They just shook my hand. I don't know whether it was something they'd learned from white men or a gesture they also used among themselves. But I knew what it meant at that moment. We'd sealed a pact. These were sailors, not savages.

  Below deck I lay down in Jack Lewis's berth. I felt I'd earned the right to it. It wasn't until the next morning that I discovered Jim was missing. I remembered that I'd left him on the table—but now he was gone. I looked for him in the bottom berth and the locked cabinet, but he was nowhere to be found. It wasn't until I crawled around on the floor that he reappeared. He'd rolled into a corner, and somehow finding him in that humble position on the not very clean floor stripped him of the horror that had both attracted and repelled me. I wiped the dust from his hair, wrapped him in his frayed cloth, and locked him in the cabinet.

  Not for one moment did I consider sending him the same way as the pearls. He was no longer a threat. Jim was a witness to the darkness in Jack Lewis. But I'd been there too, and I'd come back.

  IT TOOK US a week to reach Samoa, but during that whole time I never thought about the purpose of my journey: I was too busy with my duties as a captain. I measured the height of the sun, plotted our course, kept an eye on the sails, and issued my orders. We had plenty of water and we lived on fish. We saw no other ships, and the trade wind blew constantly from the same direction.

  When I stood in the bow and watched the never-ending break of waves and the white foam flecks glinting like pearls spilling onto a stone floor, I remembered Jack Lewis's words: a young man should travel the whole sea and every island in it. But when my gaze slid astern toward the white stripe of the wake sparkling in the sunlight, it struck me that it was a kind of chain, and I knew that the moment I became captain of the Flying Scud I was free but at the same time bound.

  The ocean was so infinitely vast. It could take you anywhere, and yet it shackled you.

  The port of Apia is shaped like a bottleneck: a big bay encircled by two peninsulas. The western one is called Mulinuu, the eastern one Matautu. Beyond that lies a reef that looks a bit like the breakwater around Marstal. Here the thunder of the surf is so loud that it's difficult to hear yourself speak: even five kilometers away, high in the green mountains that soar up behind Apia, you can hear the waves roar. And no one in Apia will call a captain a bad sailor if he wrecks his ship trying to pass through the gap in the reef during a storm, because it's regarded as well-nigh impossible. Instead they'll call him irresponsible or ignorant, for everyone knows that in foul weather, the open ocean is a safer bet than their shelterless bay in an oncoming wind.

  ***

  But I knew nothing of this when I bent over the chart in Captain Lewis's cabin. To me, Apia was no more than a name on a map. But since that time, I've learned that a shipwreck can be a welcome thing, if the ship's loss saves a man's honor.

  And as we neared Apia, my honor was very much on my mind. How could I ever explain the way I'd ended up as captain of the notorious Flying Scud? Who'd believe my story about the free men in the hold, the cannibals from the Morning Star, the death of Jack Lewis, and the leather bag of pearls thrown overboard?

  Yet I was bound to this ship, for I could not reach my destination without her. Jack Lewis and I were inseparable. He'd plotted the course and I could do nothing but follow it. From now on, regardless of whether people saw me as his killer or his accomplice, my reputation would be connected to his.

  I'd considered changing course, but it wasn't just myself I was responsible for. And where else would we go?
We couldn't last on fish alone, trusting the weather gods for our supplies of water. I felt that my fate was already cast—and inescapable. I had only one thing left to hold on to: my duty as a captain. I had to guide the ship and its crew to safe harbor.

  But in making my calculations, I'd forgotten one factor: the sea.

  Every sailor knows this bitter feeling: the coast is near, but you'll never reach it. Is there anything more heartbreaking than drowning in sight of land? Is there a single one of us who hasn't at least once felt haunted by the fear of slipping away within sight of a safe haven?

  I imagine that drowning is less devastating when a gray, raging sea has wiped out the horizon completely. But to close your eyes for the last time on something precious—a hope, a hand reaching out for you—that must be the worst. Even terror needs a yardstick, and surely the yardstick for the unknown is the known?

  We could see land. The green mountains of Samoa appeared on the horizon just as the gale blew in at us—as though it had been lurking behind the island, awaiting our arrival. We held out for twenty-four hours. One moment we'd be flung to the top of a mountainous wave, and we'd get a view of Samoa; the next, another wave would plunge our bow underwater, and it would be just us and the sea again. We never came any closer to our destination, but nor were we dragged farther away. Then a huge wave came and knocked the ship onto her beam ends, and the shrouds and stays that had strained to support the mast gave way with a groan, sending both mast and the rigging tumbling down. It felt as if one of my own limbs had been partially severed and now dangled from my body by a few sinews.

  And yet I still believe we could have ridden out the storm. I wasn't short of self-confidence on that deck. But I realized that the real threat to our survival came not from our crippled ship so much as our own fatigue. We were still weak and exhausted from our recent ordeal, and in that state, we were no match for the storm. We had to get to land.

  Even though I'd never called at Apia and didn't know the dangers of trying to force the small gap in the reef during a storm, I was aware of exposing all of us to considerable risk. What if we struck the reef and sank? We'd lost our launch during the battle with the natives in the lagoon. Were we about to drown so close to our destination?

  I told the Kanaks to chop the mast into pieces and lash them to the yards, to make a makeshift raft that could carry us the final distance across the bay into Apia, in case our attempt to pass the reef failed. Meanwhile I turned the Flying Scud so that she lay cross-wind—a maneuver fully as risky as anything else we were about to do. If a huge wave had crashed on top of us at that moment, that would have been it. We all knew our lives were at stake.

  The Kanaks worked hard, concentrating on their axes, and soon the raft was secured to the deck. I'd long since packed my sea chest with my father's boots and Jim. Ordering the Kanaks to tie it to the raft, I straightened up the ship and steered toward the reef.

  From the crest of a wave I caught sight of Samoa again, beneath a stormy sky of poisonous purple. The sun had broken through above the island's emerald mountains, suddenly lighting them—but I can't say this heartened me. More, it gave me the feeling that the elements were mocking us and jeering at our vain wish to survive.

  As I clasped the helm, I felt the ocean's power: the wheel jerked in my hands as if it were arm-wrestling me, while the waves drove the ship in the direction opposite to its course. Suddenly I felt a new and violent force seize the ship. It was the current, taking our side against the storm and sucking us straight into the bottleneck of the bay. The wheel shook again. And in that moment I lost control of it. Or of myself.

  Had I let my guard down? Did I fail in my responsibility? I can't answer that question, and it haunts me still.

  A massive wave seized us and flung us at the reef, making the entire ship shudder and flinging the last mast overboard. I found myself with my back against a rail, my shoulder and arm in such pain, I thought I'd broken them. Then a second wave pounded the ship and nearly overturned her; a cascade of water flooded the deck before streaming back into the sea—and washing me overboard. I grabbed at a piece of the broken rigging, then screamed in pain as it tugged my arm, but I managed to hang on, so at least I knew it wasn't broken. The ship never righted herself. Each fresh wave hit her like a fist bashing a defenseless face, smashing everything to smithereens. Soon there'd be nothing left of us but a wreck on the reef. Clinging to the shreds of rigging, I crawled back up onto the skewed deck and saw that the Kanaks had cut the ropes to the raft—which now slid along the deck and vanished into the bubbling foam. The Kanaks jumped in after it.

  I hesitated for a moment, then leapt. The sea was heaving across the reef in a continuous motion that sucked me right down: I felt sharp coral slash my feet before the water's pressure forced me upward again. When I broke the surface, I spotted the raft a couple of meters away. Within a few strokes I'd reached it, and the Kanaks helped me clamber on.

  We clung to our raft, hoping the surf would carry us into the lagoon. The reef, which had snared the ship, allowed our flat-bottomed craft to pass, but I'd miscalculated when I'd thought we'd find safety in the bay. Here too the sea was in uproar. The reef broke the rhythm of the waves, but it didn't stop them. They were just as mighty within the bottleneck as they were outside it.

  The raft and its makeshift lashings groaned.

  And yet it wasn't fear that consumed me now; on the contrary, I was aware of a huge, spreading sense of relief. I'd got rid of the Flying Scud. When I reached land, I'd be leaving Jack Lewis behind. Trusting that the sea would erase all traces of the Flying Scud, I'd already set to work rechristening the splintered ship with a new, but for me familiar, name: the Johanne Karoline, after the old fore-and-aft-rigged Marstal schooner that we'd all dreamt of sailing in before she sank with Hans Jørgen in the Gulf of Bothnia. This was my new version of events—and who would be there to deny it? It wasn't that I wanted to avoid being answerable for my actions. I just wasn't prepared to take the blame for misdeeds that weren't mine. It was a way of sidestepping Jack Lewis and the ugly taint that came with him.

  We were still clinging to the raft, which shuddered from the blows the sea pummeled us with, one whack after another. The green mountains were very close now, but they'd darkened to shadows: the poisonous violet clouds had blocked the sun, and the rain seemed to be lashing the mountainsides as violently as waves on a reef. The storm was at its peak, and though the coast was near, it offered no respite.

  We could hear the thundering surf. Hoisting myself up on one elbow, I could see how close we were to the white beach. From my perch on the cresting waves I seemed to be level with the tops of the swaying coconut palms. That's when I saw the futility of my hopes, just as clearly as if I were sitting on the roof of a collapsing house: the wave we rode was about to crush us all under a mass of water. When it broke with the roar of a thousand waterfalls, the raft shot away beneath me and I was in whirling free fall, with the sky below and the sea above.

  I can't say everything went black: in fact it went as green as the tropical sea itself. But I was off in some place lost to memory: full of nothingness. When I came to, I was in the arms of one of the Kanaks. Behind us another giant wave crashed down, and I saw we were in the middle of the roiling spume, where the huge waves spent themselves before surrendering to the suck of the sandy shore. But we could gain no foothold. I was gulping and choking, while the blue face of my rescuer remained immobile, fixed on the job of dragging us both the last few meters to the shore. From his missing ear, I recognized him as the Kanak I'd borne back to the ship from the lagoon and later nursed. So now we were quits.

  Another wave washed over us. Kicking out blindly in panic, I felt one of my feet touch bottom. I managed to stand but lost my footing again immediately, and tried instead to crawl on all fours through the raging foam. The surf had exhausted itself and the water retreated in a violent undertow, spraying my face and tearing at my limbs from beneath. I was just about to be dragged out to sea again when
the Kanak grabbed hold of me. I walked the last few meters upright, leaning against him for support.

  The beach was so deserted, it seemed we'd arrived in an abandoned world. I wanted to throw myself on the sand from sheer exhaustion, but a prickling sandstorm was whipping at my half-naked body. Then I heard a loud crack and saw a palm tree snap in half. Its top tumbled through the air and landed on the roof of a hut, which promptly collapsed. We couldn't stay here: if we wanted shelter, we'd have to walk farther inland.

  A shout rang out behind us. I turned and saw two more Kanaks struggling in the surf and then staggering onto the beach. Then a third appeared. The entire crew was now safely ashore. Their blue faces made them look like mermen born of the boiling foam.

  I felt enormous relief. I'd wrecked the Flying Scud, but I'd not lost a single man. True, they'd saved both themselves and me, so I couldn't claim the credit, but their survival made the loss of the ship easier to take.

  The nearest huts were all empty, and as we passed them, the wind at's our backs shoved us forward so we could barely walk upright. Soon we gave up running and stumbling, went down on all fours, and simply crawled. All around us we could hear the heavy thud of coconuts hitting the ground, and the storm howling through the wildly swaying palm trunks. I concentrated on my hands and knees, my only contact with the ground in this insane weather. It felt as if we'd all end up being blasted off into the endless universe.

  Then at last our cries for help were answered, and someone let us into a hut. There was no fire burning, and the inhabitants sat silent and cowed, as if they hoped to avoid the rage of the storm by making themselves invisible. The hut quaked and the roof trembled ominously, but it was holding. I was too exhausted to consider the impression I must have made on them. I was a shipwrecked sailor seeking shelter. It made no difference to them that I was a white man. The storm had made equals of us all.