At the age of 18 I traveled by sea from Boston to England, and the following year wrote this story, a mixture of fact and imagination inspired as much by my great devotion to the writings of Joseph Conrad as by the voyage itself.
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INTO THAT SILENT SEA
Night falls magnificently upon the ocean; the darkening
clouds, sky, and water interpenetrate until they surround you with a unified,
brooding hemisphere of mingling greys and blues. Until it sinks into the whitecaps marking the horizon, the expiring sun cuts across the sea a path
shifting slowly from yellow to orange to red, silvered here and there with the
crests of the waves. It is a scene no camera or brush can recreate, so greatly
is its impact dependent upon an engulfing Nature secure in its own grandeur.
Preoccupied with these musings, I leaned lazily on the starboard rail of the small freighter which was bearing me doggedly, if not rapidly, across the Atlantic. With only half a dozen fellow passengers, I was finding the trip singularly uneventful, but my enforced idleness was not difficult to accept as an opportunity to give myself up to reflection and to the reading of whatever battered books I could purloin from the crew`s library. The isolation encouraged introspection, and such was the receptivity of my indolence that I was somewhat annoyed when the dinner bell called me away from my twilight reveries.
The food on the ship was, fortunately, unexceptionable, but that evening I was compelled to consume it to the accompaniment of ceaseless chatter from the individual seated opposite, a woman of indeterminate age and unquenchable enthusiasm, who, bent on a three week perusal of Europe with her balding and non-descript husband, harangued me at great length upon the virtues and vicissitudes of a sea voyage. After the meal I returned to the deck, but the night air had chilled in the interim, and I consequently made my way to the lounge, where several of the passengers, driven by their dislike of inactivity, had begun a half-hearted game of cards which they induced me to join.
We played for several hours in a blue atmosphere of tobacco smoke which thickened gradually as the evening slid towards midnight. At length winners and losers alike drifted away towards their dimly lit cabins, searching their somnolent minds for plans for the morrow’s activities, and bracing themselves for another night of struggling to remain in the bunks of a ship gyrating rhythmically in the swells created by a hurricane some two hundred miles distant.
As I sat alone in the lounge of the silent ship, I tried to divest myself of all thoughts by staring at the clouds of stale smoke floating to the yellowed ceiling, but through my mind ran continual pictures of the sea, sometimes flat and infinite in blazing sun, sometimes agitated and forbidding, menaced by grey and lowering skies, mixing stealthily in my imagination its multifarious shades.
I left the lounge and groped my way to the forward deck, where I leaned against a mast and watched the indifferent stars flash intermittently as they glided smoothly back and forth within the angular frames thrown by the swaying rigging against the black of the sky. From where l stood, the bow appeared as a sharp, black triangle cutting off from view the horizon and the dark-running sea as it soared upward towards the stars on the crest of a swell, then revealing the restless water again as it plunged downwards into the smoothly curving trough.
I caught sight of the man on the bow only when he struck a match for his pipe, and his face, strangely illuminated by the wavering flame, cut through my thoughts to pierce the illusion of my complete isolation. A feeling something akin to resentment sprang up in me at the realisation that another human being was intruding on a scene of which I had considered myself the sole spectator and therefore in some way the possessor. When he heard my approaching footsteps, he turned towards me, and in the dim light diffusing towards the bow from amidships I could see him smile amiably as he said, “Enjoying the night air?”
“And the view," I replied.
My initial disturbance at his presence had given way to gratitude for having a companion to talk with. In addition, I realized that since this man was apparently the bow watch, he was out here not to experience the beauty of the night, but to perform a duty he would probably prefer to neglect. The scene, I surmised, could mean nothing to him, its poetry doubtless long since dulled by familiarity. But his next remark revealed the inaccuracy of my judgment.
“Beautiful, isn`t it ?”
It was more a tentative statement than a question, uttered in a quiet voice suggesting a greater degree of sensitivity than one might expect in a sailor.
“It’s as if you`re the only person in the world, standing here at the point of the ship, nothing in front of you except the sea and night, your back turned on the ship, everything which reminds you of other men out of sight and hearing behind you. Come, stand up here and see what I mean.”
Somewhat surprised by his voicing of thoughts so similar to my own, l nevertheless stepped onto the narrow platform wedged into the angle where port and starboard fuse into one, consolidating their separate identities into a single point. As I leaned out into the night, all traces of the ship disappeared around the periphery of my vision, and I was left with the awesome illusion of hanging mysteriously supported above dark waters gliding silently beneath me. I felt myself millions of miles from the rest of the world, hovering in the gentle breeze above the dark Atlantic while humanity slept in distant cities and towns, unaware of the supremely self-sufficient seas rolling on timelessly in the distance.
“You know," said my companion at length, “I once had a skipper who used to come out on deck every night and lean over the railing, gazing at the water. He sometimes came up to the bow when I was on watch, and talked with me a little, although he usually just stared out into the night. One time, when he was staring particularly hard at the water below, he said something strange to me. He sort of muttered under his breath, ‘It seems to me that if there’s anything absolute in this universe, it must be like this sea beneath us. It offers itself to us, but we only skim precariously across it in tin boxes, never grasping the eternity it represents.” I didn`t understand him then, but mumbled a few words of agreement before going below - it was the end of my watch. As I was about to enter the crew’s quarters, I looked back and saw him outlined against the sky, motionless, his head in his hands, his elbows on the rail. The next morning he was gone. We put out boats to look for him, but they found nothing. Maybe he slipped, maybe he jumped. I’m inclined to think he jumped. He never was a very happy man, and he seemed to believe the sea was offering some sort of infinity and peace to him. I sometimes think I see what he meant.”
I thought I did too. I myself could feel to a disconcerting degree the pull of the bottomless waters, could sense beneath me something limitless and inscrutable. I myself would not jump, but I could see how years upon years at sea could impress upon a man, burdened as this captain was with an unsatisfactory existence, the desire to be swallowed up by a world of primeval silence. One jump, and a world left behind, a finite world quivering with the desperation of its ferocity, surrounded and baffled by a seemingly impenetrable night.
The two of us remained silent. Our thoughts were the same, perhaps. A fog I had not noticed closed in upon us, and soon the lights from the small island of humanity amidships faded and were gone. I bid goodnight to the man I could see but dimly, and made my way to the centre of the sleeping ship. It was a bit too dark, and I wanted some light.
Preoccupied with these musings, I leaned lazily on the starboard rail of the small freighter which was bearing me doggedly, if not rapidly, across the Atlantic. With only half a dozen fellow passengers, I was finding the trip singularly uneventful, but my enforced idleness was not difficult to accept as an opportunity to give myself up to reflection and to the reading of whatever battered books I could purloin from the crew`s library. The isolation encouraged introspection, and such was the receptivity of my indolence that I was somewhat annoyed when the dinner bell called me away from my twilight reveries.
The food on the ship was, fortunately, unexceptionable, but that evening I was compelled to consume it to the accompaniment of ceaseless chatter from the individual seated opposite, a woman of indeterminate age and unquenchable enthusiasm, who, bent on a three week perusal of Europe with her balding and non-descript husband, harangued me at great length upon the virtues and vicissitudes of a sea voyage. After the meal I returned to the deck, but the night air had chilled in the interim, and I consequently made my way to the lounge, where several of the passengers, driven by their dislike of inactivity, had begun a half-hearted game of cards which they induced me to join.
We played for several hours in a blue atmosphere of tobacco smoke which thickened gradually as the evening slid towards midnight. At length winners and losers alike drifted away towards their dimly lit cabins, searching their somnolent minds for plans for the morrow’s activities, and bracing themselves for another night of struggling to remain in the bunks of a ship gyrating rhythmically in the swells created by a hurricane some two hundred miles distant.
As I sat alone in the lounge of the silent ship, I tried to divest myself of all thoughts by staring at the clouds of stale smoke floating to the yellowed ceiling, but through my mind ran continual pictures of the sea, sometimes flat and infinite in blazing sun, sometimes agitated and forbidding, menaced by grey and lowering skies, mixing stealthily in my imagination its multifarious shades.
I left the lounge and groped my way to the forward deck, where I leaned against a mast and watched the indifferent stars flash intermittently as they glided smoothly back and forth within the angular frames thrown by the swaying rigging against the black of the sky. From where l stood, the bow appeared as a sharp, black triangle cutting off from view the horizon and the dark-running sea as it soared upward towards the stars on the crest of a swell, then revealing the restless water again as it plunged downwards into the smoothly curving trough.
I caught sight of the man on the bow only when he struck a match for his pipe, and his face, strangely illuminated by the wavering flame, cut through my thoughts to pierce the illusion of my complete isolation. A feeling something akin to resentment sprang up in me at the realisation that another human being was intruding on a scene of which I had considered myself the sole spectator and therefore in some way the possessor. When he heard my approaching footsteps, he turned towards me, and in the dim light diffusing towards the bow from amidships I could see him smile amiably as he said, “Enjoying the night air?”
“And the view," I replied.
My initial disturbance at his presence had given way to gratitude for having a companion to talk with. In addition, I realized that since this man was apparently the bow watch, he was out here not to experience the beauty of the night, but to perform a duty he would probably prefer to neglect. The scene, I surmised, could mean nothing to him, its poetry doubtless long since dulled by familiarity. But his next remark revealed the inaccuracy of my judgment.
“Beautiful, isn`t it ?”
It was more a tentative statement than a question, uttered in a quiet voice suggesting a greater degree of sensitivity than one might expect in a sailor.
“It’s as if you`re the only person in the world, standing here at the point of the ship, nothing in front of you except the sea and night, your back turned on the ship, everything which reminds you of other men out of sight and hearing behind you. Come, stand up here and see what I mean.”
Somewhat surprised by his voicing of thoughts so similar to my own, l nevertheless stepped onto the narrow platform wedged into the angle where port and starboard fuse into one, consolidating their separate identities into a single point. As I leaned out into the night, all traces of the ship disappeared around the periphery of my vision, and I was left with the awesome illusion of hanging mysteriously supported above dark waters gliding silently beneath me. I felt myself millions of miles from the rest of the world, hovering in the gentle breeze above the dark Atlantic while humanity slept in distant cities and towns, unaware of the supremely self-sufficient seas rolling on timelessly in the distance.
“You know," said my companion at length, “I once had a skipper who used to come out on deck every night and lean over the railing, gazing at the water. He sometimes came up to the bow when I was on watch, and talked with me a little, although he usually just stared out into the night. One time, when he was staring particularly hard at the water below, he said something strange to me. He sort of muttered under his breath, ‘It seems to me that if there’s anything absolute in this universe, it must be like this sea beneath us. It offers itself to us, but we only skim precariously across it in tin boxes, never grasping the eternity it represents.” I didn`t understand him then, but mumbled a few words of agreement before going below - it was the end of my watch. As I was about to enter the crew’s quarters, I looked back and saw him outlined against the sky, motionless, his head in his hands, his elbows on the rail. The next morning he was gone. We put out boats to look for him, but they found nothing. Maybe he slipped, maybe he jumped. I’m inclined to think he jumped. He never was a very happy man, and he seemed to believe the sea was offering some sort of infinity and peace to him. I sometimes think I see what he meant.”
I thought I did too. I myself could feel to a disconcerting degree the pull of the bottomless waters, could sense beneath me something limitless and inscrutable. I myself would not jump, but I could see how years upon years at sea could impress upon a man, burdened as this captain was with an unsatisfactory existence, the desire to be swallowed up by a world of primeval silence. One jump, and a world left behind, a finite world quivering with the desperation of its ferocity, surrounded and baffled by a seemingly impenetrable night.
The two of us remained silent. Our thoughts were the same, perhaps. A fog I had not noticed closed in upon us, and soon the lights from the small island of humanity amidships faded and were gone. I bid goodnight to the man I could see but dimly, and made my way to the centre of the sleeping ship. It was a bit too dark, and I wanted some light.
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