i
They had steak for supper. Smitty, in a mood of thanksgiving, had cooked an unusually good meal. He served it himself, almost cheerfully.
“Such a nice quiet evening,” exclaimed the Chaplain.
“It’s a real relief,” said the Major. “A real relief. I thought for a while that ... well, that that was it, if you know what I mean.”
“It was pretty close,” said Evans, smiling. His passengers looked much better. The Chaplain especially seemed happy.
“Yes,” said the Major, “I think we’ve been lucky. Of course, we have Mr Evans here to thank. If it hadn’t been for his ... his efforts, I suppose, we’d be dead now.”
“That’s right,” said the Chaplain, looking fondly at Evans. “You really did a remarkable job.”
“Pass the sugar,” said Duval and he took the sugar when it was passed to him and put several spoonsful of it in his coffee. Evans could see that he did not like to hear his Skipper praised.
“By the way,” said Evans, “I think we should really compliment the Chief. He sure did a good job. If his engine room hadn’t been operating I don’t know where we’d be.”
“That’s right,” said the Major, “we mustn’t forget Mr Duval.”
“We’ve been extremely fortunate,” said the Chaplain. “Not of course that we all weren’t quite ready to ... to meet our Maker, as it were.”
“I wasn’t,” said Hodges abruptly. The others laughed.
“Tell me, Mr Evans,” said the Major, “when do you expect to get to Arunga?”
“Tomorrow sometime, afternoon, I guess. Depends on what kind of time we make.”
“Excellent.”
“By the way,” said the Chief, “that ventilator, the one over the starboard engine; water and everything else’s been coming down it. You get someone to fix it?”
Evans nodded; he looked at Bervick, “You want to take care of that?”
“Sure.”
Evans sat down on one of the long benches that lined the bulkheads. Martin was in the wheelhouse. They were on course and the barometer was rising.
He shut his eyes and relaxed. The rocking of the ship was gentle and persistent. He had had an operation once and he had been given ether. There were terrible dreams.... All through the dreams there had been a ticking, a heartbeat rhythm, and a floating sensation much like the sea. He began to recall the dream. He was happy, and when he was happy he enjoyed torturing himself in a subtle fashion. He pretended that he was under the ether again, that the rocking of the ship was the dream. He recalled objects that looked like straws set in a dark green background. Lights shone from the tops of the straws and deep deep voices speaking in a negro manner came out of the tips of the straws. He began to sink into the vastness of the ether dream. There was a struggle and then a sense of being alone, of being overcome. The deep voices kept throbbing in his ears. Then there was quiet.
“Did you have a nice nap?” asked the Chaplain.
Evans opened his eyes and tried to look alert. “Just dozing.” He sat up. The Chaplain and he were the only ones in the salon. He looked at his watch: it was after ten.
“I cannot,” said the Chaplain, “get over the great change in the weather.”
“In the williwaw season weather does funny things.”
“I had what you might call a revelation of sorts, if you know what I mean, during the storm.”
“Is that right?” Evans wondered who was on watch. It was supposed to be his watch until midnight. Bervick had probably taken over while he slept.
“I had a sort of vision, well not quite a vision, no, not a vision, a presentiment, yes, that’s what I had, a presentiment of something.”
“Did you?” Evans was not sure that he knew what a presentiment was.
“This vision, presentiment I should say, was about the ship.”
“Well, what was it?”
“Nothing much at all. It’s really quite vague to me now. It was only that we’d all get out of this, that no one would be hurt on the trip, that’s all. That’s why I suppose one would call it a presentiment. It was just a feeling of course. A kind of instinct.”
“Is that right? I’ve had them too.” Evans wondered if the ventilator was still leaking.
“Have you really? I know there’s a sort of intuition, a sort of sixth sense I would suppose you’d call it.”
“Sure, that’s what I’d call it.” Evans wondered if there was anything to religion. Probably not, at least he himself had gotten along without it. He tried to recall if he’d ever been inside a church. He could not remember. In the back of his mind there was a feeling of great space and peacefulness which might have been the memory of a childhood visit to a church. He had seen some movies, though, that had church interiors in them. Churches where gray-haired men in long black robes stood in what appeared to be upright coffins and talked interminably about large resonant things. He had learned about religion from the movies and from the Chaplains he had met.
The Chaplain, his sixth sense at work, guessed what he was thinking. “You are not particularly, ah, religious, are you, Mr Evans.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” said Evans, who would have said just that if he had not disliked being thought different from other people.
“Oh no, I can tell that you’re a ... a pagan.” The Chaplain chuckled to show that this epithet was not serious.
“I hope not.” Evans was not too sure what “pagan” meant either. He wished that people would use simple familiar words. That was the main thing he disliked in Martin: the long words that sounded as if they meant something very important.
“Well, there are many, many people like you in the world,” said Chaplain O’Mahoney sadly, aware suddenly of the immensity of sin, the smallness of virtue.
“I guess there are.” Evans wondered if Martin had recorded the rising barometer readings regularly.
“Did you ever feel lost?” asked the Chaplain in an almost conspiratorial tone.
“What? Well, I don’t know.”
“I mean did you ever feel lonely?”
“Certainly, haven’t you?”
The Chaplain was a little startled; then he answered quickly, “No, never. You see I have something to fall back on.”
“I suppose you do,” said Evans and he tried to sound thoughtful and sincere but he managed only to sound bored.
The Chaplain laughed. “I’m being unfair, talking to you like this when your mind’s on the ship and ... and things.”
“No, no, that’s all right. I’m very interested. I once wanted to be a preacher.” Evans added this for the sake of conversation.
“Indeed, and why didn’t you become one?”
Evans thought a moment. Pictures of gray-haired men in black robes and gray-haired men advertising whiskey in the magazines were jumbled together in his inner eye. He had never become a minister for the simple reason that he had never been interested. But the thought that was suddenly the most shocking to him was that he had never wanted to become anything at all. He had just wanted to do what he liked. This was a revelation to him. He had thought about himself all his life but he had never been aware that he was different from most people. He just wanted to sail because he liked to sail and he wanted to get married again because it seemed like a comfortable way to live. Chaplains and Majors wanted to become Saints and Generals respectively.
“I guess I never really wanted to be a minister very much.” Evans ran his hand through his hair. He noticed it was getting long. He would have a haircut when they got to Arunga.
“Some, I suppose,” said the Chaplain philosophically, “are chosen, while others are not.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” said Evans with more emphasis than was necessary.
The Chaplain squinted his eyes and took a deep breath and Evans could see that he was going to be lectured. He stood up and the Chaplain, looking surprised, opened his eyes again and exhaled, a slight look of disappointment on his face.
“If you’ll excuse me I’m going up top. My watch’s now.”
“Of course, certainly.”
Bervick was standing by the windows, looking out. Evans stood beside him and they watched the sea together. The dark water shifted lazily now, gusts of wind occasionally ruffling the surface of the water. The night sky was black.
“You been asleep?”
Evans nodded.
“That’s what I thought. Martin hit the sack.”
“Barometer’s up.”
“That’s nice. I don’t like low barometers.”
“Nobody likes them.”
Evans looked at the stump where the mast had been. “She really tore off hard, didn’t she?”
“Glad I wasn’t under it.”
“I guess the boys’ll really talk about us now, the guys on the other boats.”
“Sure, they’re just like women. Talk, talk, that’s about all they do.”
“I guess they’ll say it was my fault. Harms would say that. He’d want to cover his own hide for sending us out.”
“Well, you didn’t have to go if you didn’t want to. That’s sea law.”
“That’s true.”
“But I don’t think they’re going to say it was your fault. Worse things’ve happened to a lot of other guys.”
“It wasn’t my fault, this thing, was it?”
“I don’t think so. You ain’t no weather prophet.”
“There wasn’t any way for me to tell that there’d be a williwaw.”
“Well, this is the season for them.”
“But how could I know that it was going to happen? We were cleared at the Big Harbor.”
“It’s on their neck then.”
“I hope so, it’d better be. I couldn’t help it if we got caught like that, got caught in a williwaw.”
“Sure, sure, it was no fault of yours.”
Evans looked out of the window. He was getting a little worried. The thought that he might be held responsible for taking a boat out and getting it wrecked in williwaw weather was beginning to bother him. Bervick was soothing, though.
“You taking over now?” he said.
Evans nodded, “Yes, I’ll take over. You got a couple of hours, why don’t you get some sleep?”
“I think I’ll go below and mess around. I’m not so sleepy.”
“By the way, did you fix that ventilator, the one over the Chiefs engine room?”
Bervick frowned, “No, I forgot all about it. I’ll go now.” Bervick left the wheelhouse. Evans checked the compass with the course. Then he opened one of the windows and let the cool air into the wheelhouse. In a few minutes he would go to his cabin and take a swallow of bourbon; then he would come back and feel much happier as he stood his watch and thought.