The Forty Fathom Bank and Other Stories (11 page)

The light breezes that had flecked the oily crests of the swells picked up. I could feel the faint coldness of the northwest wind, could smell the salt-sea tang in the air. The
free ends of the lines on the pin rail swayed a little and the jib club swung over, dragging the jibsheet block across the deck with a dull, wooden rumble. But the birds sat still. I went forward and hoisted the sails and only those squatting among the folds of canvas or on the halyards flitted away and perched in the mizzen shrouds and up in the top spreaders.

The mainsail and jib filled and the boat picked up steerage-way. I swung the wheel over and headed east. A few yards abeam I saw one of the birds in the water, splashing its wings, lifting its head up and down in quick jerky movements. Beads of heavy wet feathers clung to its breast and throat. Then I saw another bird float by, wings spread wide and limp, and little black-topped head hanging down below the surface. There was no movement, and I knew it was dead. The bird that was struggling made a low rasping cry. With the last of its strength it lifted its body out of the water, flew a short distance over the swells but the sodden weight of its wings soon dragged it down again. As the boat drew away I could see it stop struggling, its head sink lower in the water.

The wind grew stronger and colder as the afternoon passed. The sky cleared and off toward the west the sun shone round and cold above the horizon. The cobalt sea was flecked with white, the slow swells steepened into fast-traveling waves.

The birds ruffled their feathers and hopped along the rigging. Now and then one flew up from the deck or cabin top, perched in some high place and looked out across the sea. Faintly mingled with the cold sea smell was the delicate trace of hay and clover, subtle as perfume, from the islands beyond the northwest rim of the darkened waters. Sweet fragrance in the approaching night, soft land-smells in the
rising night wind. The birds grew restless; more flew aloft, sitting close together on the spreaders; clung wind-blown along the hempen strands of the topping lift. Suddenly one of the birds flew out of the rigging and started over the water. It flew straight ahead toward land, then circled uncertainly, started off again, out toward the westward islands.

Then one by one the birds dropped out of the rigging and flew away after the leader. In a little while they were all gone and only the little one on the coaming was left. He had been there since morning, never once moving. Far away and dead ahead I could see the bright pinpoint of light flashing intermittently under the twilight sky on the lighthouse above the harbor. I thought again of catching the little bird, of putting him for the while in the locker under the cockpit seat and letting him go when I reached shore. I reached down slowly as I had done earlier in the morning but suddenly he came to life, flipped his wings and hopped up onto the pinrail. He sat there a moment, the wind shaking the feathers on his wings, parting the yellow feathers on his breast. Then he flew out over the water after the others. For a short time I could see him flying high above the waves, a tiny black spot against the deepening sky. Beyond him I could see the others flying in short shallow sweeps like a flight of woodland swallows across a mountain valley. Then slowly and steadily I could see the little one sinking down toward the wavetops and the sky beyond him growing darker.

Up ahead I could see the channel lights winking green and red, the bow-splashed white water that foamed along the hull. Close astern the waves rose steep. Deep within the dark slopes I could see the first faint fire of the ocean night lights flash and gleam and disappear.

May the eye go to the sun, the breath to the wind
.

~
RIG-VEDA X
,
16, 3
.

Look, look,

And thou shalt see

The great immensity

Enclosing thee.

The old wood-hulled steam schooner,
Caspar
, lay alongside the San Francisco Warehouse Company's dock near the entrance to the Third Street channel. A dry north wind blowing steadily over the city stirred the dust in quick little eddies around the corners of the soot-blackened brick warehouse and ruffled the feathers of gulls squatting on the splintered planks. A broken piston rod that had delayed the
Caspar
's departure by more than twelve hours had been replaced. From her rusted stack a twisting black trunk of crude oil smoke rose into the air to flatten into a dense cloud over the channel.

Captain Larson, or Midnight Larson, as he was known to his shipmates, stretched wearily on his canvas deck chair in the sheltered lee of the fo'c'sle head. The visor of his officer's cap, pulled down to shade his eyes from the sun's glare, cast a shadow over the gray stubble on his cheeks. The
Collected Works of Dostoevsky
, its dog-eared pages and margins filled with pencilled notes, lay open in his lap. He had given the deck crew time off while the engine was being repaired. He regretted having to keep his chief engineer and his two assistants below since he knew the inland heat carried by that unusual north wind made the engine room nearly unbearable. He planned to make up for their unpleasant overtime by extra shore leave in Eureka providing, he reflected anxiously, the engine did not break down again.

To add to his troubles, O'Hare, the company agent, had informed him there would be a passenger on the northbound trip.

“A passenger!” the Captain exclaimed. It was the first passenger the
Caspar
had booked in more than fifteen years.

“Where's he going?”

“Eureka, or possibly as far as Astoria,” the agent said. “Beyond that, I can't tell you much more than that he signed his name William Mueller. No local address and no next of kin.”

“Could he be going up north to find work in the woods?”

“Not likely. He looked pretty well off. Wore an expensive business suit and carried a briefcase.”

“Does he have any baggage? A suitcase, trunk?”

“Nothing but the briefcase. Why do you ask?”

“Seems a bit strange,” the Captain commented. “A well-dressed man heading north with no baggage, no particular destination. And on the
Caspar
? What's he look like?”

“He's about your height, gray haired, thin. He sounds educated and speaks in a very low voice.” The agent paused. “Come to think of it, I can't remember his face except that it seemed kind of pale. He'll be boarding around noon so you'll see for yourself.” He paused again. “By the way, he wants a cabin to himself on the lee side of the ship. Says he has an aversion to the wind.”

The Captain explained that since he had never expected to see a passenger again, all the cabins had been taken over for use as paint lockers and general stowage rooms. “Whether or not an accommodation can be made ready on the lee side depends on the whim of the wind. At this time of year, that's about as trustworthy as the
Caspar
herself.”

The agent laughed and said he didn't see why it should make much difference anyway.

Though the Captain enjoyed meeting new people, especially from far off places and with interesting backgrounds, the prospect of a stranger aboard, whose suspect appearance
augured trouble, exacerbated his present frustrations. And he'd had enough of those. He had been on the move since before dawn hurrying about from the engine room to the machine shop, to the welders, to the company office and back, lifting, carrying, and overseeing things too urgent to be relegated to anyone but himself. In addition to all this, he had personally taken on the job of cleaning and preparing the passenger's cabin for occupancy. A younger man would have found the work hard, the problems difficult. At his age, they were nothing less than exhausting. Now he wished only to rest and to lose himself for a time in dreamless sleep.

From the bridge came the muted clang of the ship's clock. Twelve-thirty. He yawned and closed his book. Two, maybe three hours before sailing. He yawned again, deeply, and shut his eyes. Instantly a kaleidoscope of ghastly scenes flashed through his mind—red flames leaping from the forward hold, a man's arm being torn off in the gears of the windlass. Nameless fears projected themselves visually as infantile memories emerged in vivid detail—a snarling beast springing at him from a dark doorway, a dead man sprawled in a gutter. . . . It was as if all the terrifying experiences in his life were disgorged en masse onto his unprotected consciousness. He longed to rest, and above all, to halt the unprecedented torrent that swept out of nowhere, and like the descending course of his life, raced on without cause or purpose. He was too tired to move and too mentally drained to break the savage continuum.

Yet, despite his inner turbulence, he was not unaware that these rampant feelings, unleashed in a moment of high vulnerability, were the accumulated anxieties of a lifetime of hurrying about, of getting things done, of keeping himself busy searching for answers. With a supreme effort, he
opened his eyes. The brilliant sunlight, the comforting reality of the windblown smoke now thinned to a light brown haze, and the tarpaulin covered forehatch battened down and ready for sea, quickly dispelled the morbid flux within him.

A feeling of tranquility came over him, and with it, an almost mystic sense of expectation. It was as if he were on the verge of a momentous revelation in which the sinister and heavily guarded secrets he had lacked the courage to confront were about to be unfolded.

His thoughts returned to the passenger. William Mueller, William Miller, Bill Miller, Jones, John Doe, anyone and no one. A fugitive seeking sanctuary? An emissary on a mission? Yet expectation, whether of good or of bad, he reflected, was far better than the prospect of nothing. It meant change which offered escape from boredom and the ever encroaching desert of ennui.

The trip from San Francisco to Astoria took two weeks counting the calls the
Caspar
made at Fort Bragg and Noyo along the Mendocino Coast and at Eureka, Port Orford, Coos Bay and Astoria farther north. For forty-five years the Captain had been making that same run with little to break the monotony except the usual bad weather off Cape Mendocino, which of late made the old wood hull creak and groan and show her years. The routine sameness of sea and sky, of loading and discharging, of bills of lading, of endless loads of redwood and fir swinging up from the docks, the cry of gulls mingling with the hiss and rumble of steam winches together and unvaried, like a single experience, the Captain sometimes reflected, had certainly made his life seem shorter.

Yet his way of life, isolated as it was, had had certain advantages. It had given him time and the peace of mind to read, which was one of his greatest pleasures; also to write in his journal, which he usually did late each night in the privacy of his cabin—hence his nickname, Midnight. He had always considered himself a reasonably happy man, satisfied with his chosen work, productive in that he had served in the development of the coastal lumber industry, and creative in that his journal, much of which had been published in various shipping magazines, was a vivid and running account of nearly a half century of West Coast trading.

But the Captain's capacity for keeping himself constantly busy was by no means innate. He had acquired it
through years of strict mental discipline and for the specific purpose of protecting him from certain irrational fears that had troubled his youth, fears that if left unchecked would, he had reason to believe, have expanded into self-destructive phobias. Fortunately, his efforts had been doubly rewarding. He had found immense satisfaction in the acquisition of vast stores of knowledge and, as far as he could tell, his fears had been laid to rest, if not expunged entirely.

Yet lately, and despite his characteristic optimism, he had found himself reflecting on the immense passage of time consumed in those years of service. He could recall with amazement and a certain dismay that he had first shipped out, on that very same vessel, in 1890, in another era really, when passengers, of which there were many then, drove down to the dock in carriages, the women in bustles, the children with ribboned hats and high-buttoned shoes. Men sported gold-headed canes and well-trimmed beards. But he knew very well that retrospection, especially the kind that eulogized the unrecoverable past, could become a dangerous habit at his age. Happily, however, he was not inclined to morose reflection and could dispel the touches of loneliness those memories evoked by the simple process of directing his attention to any one of the numerous activities in which he had always managed to occupy himself. Now the prospect of a passenger, even one of dubious intentions, began to arouse in him a feeling of quiet excitement. He glanced at the dock. Except for the gulls shifting restlessly in the wind, there was no movement anywhere.