The Log from the Sea of Cortez (37 page)
Read The Log from the Sea of Cortez Online
Authors: John Steinbeck,Richard Astro
As soon as the tide began its strong ebb we got into the skiff and started back to the
Western Flyer.
Collecting in narrow-mouthed estuaries, we are always wrong with the currents, for we come in against an ebbing tide and we go out against the flow. It was heavy work to defeat this current. The Sea-Cow gave us a hand and we rowed strenuously to get outside.
Western Flyer.
Collecting in narrow-mouthed estuaries, we are always wrong with the currents, for we come in against an ebbing tide and we go out against the flow. It was heavy work to defeat this current. The Sea-Cow gave us a hand and we rowed strenuously to get outside.
That night we intended to run across the Gulf and start for home. It was good to be running at night again, easier to sleep with the engine beating. Tiny at the wheel inveighed against the waste of fish by the Japanese. To him it was a waste complete, a loss of something. We discussed the widening and narrowing picture. To Tiny the fisherman, having as his function not only the catching of fish but the presumption that they would be eaten by humans, the Japanese were wasteful. And in that picture he was very correct. But all the fish actually were eaten; if any small parts were missed by the birds they were taken by the detritus-eaters, the worms and cucumbers. And what they missed was reduced by the bacteria. What was the fisherman’s loss was a gain to another group. We tried to say that in the macrocosm nothing is wasted, the equation always balances. The elements which the fish elaborated into an individuated physical organism, a microcosm, go back again into the undifferentiated macrocosm which is the great reservoir. There is not, nor can there be, any actual waste, but simply varying forms of energy. To each group, of course, there must be waste—the dead fish to man, the broken pieces to gulls, the bones to some and the scales to others—but to the whole, there is no waste. The great organism, Life, takes it all and uses it all. The large picture is always clear and the smaller can be clear—the picture of eater and eaten. And the large equilibrium of the life of a given animal is postulated on the presence of abundant larvae of just such forms as itself for food. Nothing is wasted; “no star is lost.”
And in a sense there is no over-production, since every living thing has its niche, a
posteriori,
and God, in a real, non-mystical sense, sees every sparrow fall and every cell utilized. What is called “over-production” even among us in our manufacture of articles is only over-production in terms of a status quo, but in the history of the organism, it may well be a factor or a function in some great pattern of change or repetition. Perhaps some cells, even intellectual ones, must be sickened before others can be well. And perhaps with us these production climaxes are the therapeutic fevers which cause a rush of curative blood to the sickened part. Our history is as much a product of torsion and stress as it is of unilinear drive. It is amusing that at any given point of time we haven’t the slightest idea of what is happening to us. The present wars and ideological changes of nervousness and fighting seem to have direction, but in a hundred years it is more than possible it will be seen that the direction was quite different from the one we supposed. The limitation of the seeing point in time, as well as in space, is a warping lens.
posteriori,
and God, in a real, non-mystical sense, sees every sparrow fall and every cell utilized. What is called “over-production” even among us in our manufacture of articles is only over-production in terms of a status quo, but in the history of the organism, it may well be a factor or a function in some great pattern of change or repetition. Perhaps some cells, even intellectual ones, must be sickened before others can be well. And perhaps with us these production climaxes are the therapeutic fevers which cause a rush of curative blood to the sickened part. Our history is as much a product of torsion and stress as it is of unilinear drive. It is amusing that at any given point of time we haven’t the slightest idea of what is happening to us. The present wars and ideological changes of nervousness and fighting seem to have direction, but in a hundred years it is more than possible it will be seen that the direction was quite different from the one we supposed. The limitation of the seeing point in time, as well as in space, is a warping lens.
Among men, it seems, historically at any rate, that processes of co-ordination and disintegration follow each other with great regularity, and the index of the co-ordination is the measure of the disintegration which follows. There is no mob like a group of well-drilled soldiers when they have thrown off their discipline. And there is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him. There is no hater like one who has greatly loved.
We think these historical waves may be plotted and the harmonic curves of human group conduct observed. Perhaps out of such observation a knowledge of the function of war and destruction might emerge. Little enough is known about the function of individual pain and suffering, although from its profound organization it is suspected of being necessary as a survival mechanism. And nothing whatever is known of the group pains of the species, although it is not unreasonable to suppose that they too are somehow functions of the surviving species. It is too bad that against even such investigation we build up a hysterical and sentimental barrier. Why do we so dread to think of our species as a species? Can it be that we are afraid of what we may find? That human self-love would suffer too much and that the image of God might prove to be a mask? This could be only partly true, for if we could cease to wear the image of a kindly, bearded, interstellar dictator, we might find ourselves true images of his kingdom, our eyes the nebulae, and universes in our cells.
The safety-valve of all speculation is:
It might be so.
And as long as that
might
remains, a variable deeply understood, then speculation does not easily become dogma, but remains the fluid creative thing it might be. Thus, a valid painter, letting color and line, observed, sift into his eyes, up the nerve trunks, and mix well with his experience before it flows down his hand to the canvas, has made his painting say, “It might be so.” Perhaps his critic, being not so honest and not so wise, will say, “It is not so. The picture is damned.” If this critic could say, “It is not so with me, but that might be because my mind and experience are not identical with those of the painter,” that critic would be the better critic for it, just as that painter is a better painter for knowing he himself is in the pigment.
It might be so.
And as long as that
might
remains, a variable deeply understood, then speculation does not easily become dogma, but remains the fluid creative thing it might be. Thus, a valid painter, letting color and line, observed, sift into his eyes, up the nerve trunks, and mix well with his experience before it flows down his hand to the canvas, has made his painting say, “It might be so.” Perhaps his critic, being not so honest and not so wise, will say, “It is not so. The picture is damned.” If this critic could say, “It is not so with me, but that might be because my mind and experience are not identical with those of the painter,” that critic would be the better critic for it, just as that painter is a better painter for knowing he himself is in the pigment.
We tried always to understand that the reality we observed was partly us; the speculation, our product. And yet if somehow, “The laws of thought must be the laws of things,” one can find an index of reality even in insanity.
We sailed a compass course in the night and before daylight a deep fog settled on us. Tony stopped the engine and let us drift, and the dawn came with the thick fog still about us. Tiny and Sparky had the watch, and as the dawn broke, they heard surf and reported it. We came out of our bunks and went up on the deckhouse just as the fog lifted. There was an island half a mile away. Then Tony said, “Did you keep the course I gave you?” Tiny insisted that they had, and Tony said, “If that is so, you have discovered an island, and a big one, because the chart shows no island here.” He went on delicately, “I want to congratulate you. We’ll call it ‘Colletto and Enea Island.’ ” Tony continued silkily, “But you know Goddamn well you didn’t keep the course. You know you forgot, and are a good many miles off course.” Sparky and Tiny did not argue. They never claimed the island, nor mentioned it again. It developed that it was Espíritu Santo Island, and would have been a prize if they had discovered it, but some Spaniards had done that several hundred years before.
San Gabriel Bay was near us, its coral sand dazzlingly white, and a good reef projecting and a mangrove swamp along part of the coast. We went ashore for this last collecting station. The sand was so white and the water so clear that we took off our clothes and plunged about. The animals here had been affected by the white sand. The crabs were pale and nearly white, and all the animals, even the starfish, were strangely colored. There were stretches of this blinding sand alternating with bouldery reef and mangrove. In the center of the little bay, a fine big patch of green coral almost emerged from the water. It was green and brown coral in great heads, and there were
Phataria
and many club-spined urchins on the heads. There were multitudes of the clam
Chione
just under the surface of the sand, very hard to find until we discovered that every clam had a tiny veil of pale-green algae growing on the front of each valve and sticking up above the sand. Then we took a great number of them.
Phataria
and many club-spined urchins on the heads. There were multitudes of the clam
Chione
just under the surface of the sand, very hard to find until we discovered that every clam had a tiny veil of pale-green algae growing on the front of each valve and sticking up above the sand. Then we took a great number of them.
Near the beds of clams lived heart-urchins with vicious spines.
85
These too were buried in the sand, and to dig for the clams was to be stabbed by the heart urchins, and to be stung badly. There were many hachas here with their clustered colonies of associated fauna. We found solitary and clustered zoanthidean anemones, possibly the same we had been seeing in many variations. We found light-colored
Callinectes
crabs and one of the long snake-like sea-cucumbers
86
such as the ones we had taken at Puerto Escondido. On the rocky reef there were anemones, limpets, and many barnacles. The most common animal on the reef was a membranous tube-worm
87
with tentacles like a serpulid’s. These tentacles were purple and brown, but when approached they were withdrawn and the animal became sand-colored. The mangrove region here was rich. The roots of the trees, impacted with rocks, maintained a fine group of crabs and cucumbers. Two large, hairy grapsoid crabs
88
lived highest in the littoral. They were very fast and active and difficult to catch, and when caught, battled fiercely and ended up by autotomizing.
85
These too were buried in the sand, and to dig for the clams was to be stabbed by the heart urchins, and to be stung badly. There were many hachas here with their clustered colonies of associated fauna. We found solitary and clustered zoanthidean anemones, possibly the same we had been seeing in many variations. We found light-colored
Callinectes
crabs and one of the long snake-like sea-cucumbers
86
such as the ones we had taken at Puerto Escondido. On the rocky reef there were anemones, limpets, and many barnacles. The most common animal on the reef was a membranous tube-worm
87
with tentacles like a serpulid’s. These tentacles were purple and brown, but when approached they were withdrawn and the animal became sand-colored. The mangrove region here was rich. The roots of the trees, impacted with rocks, maintained a fine group of crabs and cucumbers. Two large, hairy grapsoid crabs
88
lived highest in the littoral. They were very fast and active and difficult to catch, and when caught, battled fiercely and ended up by autotomizing.
There was also a
Panopeus-like
crab,
Xanthodius hebes,
but dopey and slow. We found great numbers of porcelain crabs and snapping shrimps. There were barnacles on the reef and on the roots of the mangroves; two new ophiurans and a large sea-hare, besides a miscellany of snails and clams. It was a rich haul, this last day. The sun was hot and the sand pleasant and we were comfortable except for mosquito bites. We played in the water a long time when we were tired of collecting.
Panopeus-like
crab,
Xanthodius hebes,
but dopey and slow. We found great numbers of porcelain crabs and snapping shrimps. There were barnacles on the reef and on the roots of the mangroves; two new ophiurans and a large sea-hare, besides a miscellany of snails and clams. It was a rich haul, this last day. The sun was hot and the sand pleasant and we were comfortable except for mosquito bites. We played in the water a long time when we were tired of collecting.
When once the engine started now, it would not stop until we reached San Diego. We were reluctant to go back. This balance in time is one of the very few occasions when we have the right of “yes” and “no,” and even now the cards were stacked against “yes.”
At last we picked up the collecting buckets and the little crowbars and all the tubes, and we rowed slowly back to the Western Flyer. Even then, we had difficulty in starting. Someone was overboard swimming in the beautiful water all the time. Tony and Tex, who had been eager to get home, were reluctant now that it was upon them. We had all felt the pattern of the Gulf, and we and the Gulf had established another pattern which was a new thing composed of it and us. At last, and with sorrow, Tex started the engine and the anchor came up for the last time.
All afternoon we stowed and lashed equipment, set the corks in hundreds of glass tubes and wrapped them in paper toweling, screwed tight the caps of jars, tied down the skiffs, and finally dropped the hatch cover in place. We covered the bookcase with triple tarpaulin, and one last time overcame the impulse to throw the Sea-Cow overboard. Then we were under way, sailing southward toward the Cape. The swordfish jumped in the afternoon light, flashing like heliographs in the distance. We took back our old watches that night, and the engine drummed happily and drove us through a calm sea. In the morning the tip of the Peninsula was on our right. Behind us the Gulf was sunny and calm, but out in the Pacific a heavy threatening line of clouds hung.
Then a crazy literary thing happened. As we came opposite the Point there was one great clap of thunder, and immediately we hit the great swells of the Pacific and the wind freshened against us. The water took on a gray tone.
29
APRIL 13
At three A.M. Pacific time we passed the light on the false cape and made our new course northward, and the sky was gray and threatening and the wind increased. The Gulf was blotted out for us—the Gulf that was thought and work and sunshine and play. This new world of the Pacific took hold of us and we thought again of an unseen person on the deckhouse, some kind of symbol person —to a sailor, a ghost, a premonition, a feeling in human form.
We could not yet relate the microcosm of the Gulf with the macrocosm of the sea. As we went northward the gray waves rolled up and the
Western Flyer
stubbed her nose into them and the white spray flew over us. The day passed and a new night came and the sea grew more stern. Now we plunged like a nervous horse, and no step could be taken without a steadying hand. The galley was in confusion, for a can of olive oil had leaped from its stand and flooded the floor. On the stove, the coffee pot slipped back and forth between its bars.
Western Flyer
stubbed her nose into them and the white spray flew over us. The day passed and a new night came and the sea grew more stern. Now we plunged like a nervous horse, and no step could be taken without a steadying hand. The galley was in confusion, for a can of olive oil had leaped from its stand and flooded the floor. On the stove, the coffee pot slipped back and forth between its bars.
Over the surface of the heaving sea the birds flew landward, zigzagging to cover themselves in the wave troughs from the wind. The man at the wheel was the lucky one, for he had a grip against the pitching. He was closest to the boat and to the rising storm. He was the receiver, but also he was the giver and his hand was on the course.
What was the shape and size and color and tone of this little expedition? We slipped into a new frame and grew to be a part of it, related in some subtle way to the reefs and beaches, related to the little animals, to the stirring waters and the warm brackish lagoons. This trip had dimension and tone. It was a thing whose boundaries seeped through itself and beyond into some time and space that was more than all the Gulf and more than all our lives. Our fingers turned over the stones and we saw life that was like our life.
On the deckhouse we held the rails for support, and the blunt nose of the boat fought into the waves and the gray-green water struck us in the face. Some creative thing had happened, a real tempest in our small teapot minds. But boiling water still produces steam, whether in a watch-glass or in a turbine. It is the same stuff—weak and dissipating or explosive, depending on its use. The shape of the trip was an integrated nucleus from which weak strings of thought stretched into every reachable reality, and a reality which reached into us through our perceptive nerve trunks. The laws of thought seemed really one with the laws of things. There was some quality of music here, perhaps not to be communicated, but sounding clear and huge in our minds. The boat plunged and shook herself, and rivers of swirling water ran down the scuppers. Below in the hold, packed in jars, were thousands of little dead animals, but we did not think of them as trophies, as things cut off from the tide pools of the Gulf, but rather as drawings, incomplete and imperfect, of how it had been there. The real picture of how it had been there and how we had been there was in our minds, bright with sun and wet with sea water and blue or burned, and the whole crusted over with exploring thought. Here was no service to science, no naming of unknown animals, but rather—we simply liked it. We liked it very much. The brown Indians and the gardens of the sea, and the beer and the work, they were all one thing and we were that one thing too.
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