On the deck of the Verda they found the mate. He looked at the papers sent from the Hall and at the men’s discharges and lifeboat tickets.
“You can take the eight to twelve, Martin. And you, Rio, the four to eight. The bos’n won’t mind. He’s sleeping some of it off. We sail at five and if you go ashore, for God’s sake don’t get too drunk. Somebody has to handle those derricks. Al and Pete’s ashore, and the ordinaries came from Mr. Fizz in the office. They won’t know a block from a winch.”
“I’m not going ashore,” said Martin.
“Me neither,” said Rio.
The mate looked at them in some astonishment as they went aft. Then he shook his head.
It was like all ships at sailing time. The sailors cursed the lines and the mates cursed the sailors. The ordinaries didn’t know what to do, but they hopped gallantly from one side of the deck to the other in a cold sweat of pretense. Pete’s arm was nearly pulled from its socket when Al gave the winch too much steam. A linesman on the dock shook his fist at the ship and the captain walked up and down the bridge, saying little, but looking at his watch frequently. A longshoreman got his finger caught, working at one end of the hatch, and yelled frantically in Italian.... But finally it was done, as it is, always. And the Verda backed into the current with a tugboat pushing against an impossible weight and barking angrily through her whistle. It was almost eight when the last hatch had been battened and the lines coiled. Martin went back to the fo’c’sle and washed his hands and face. Then he rubbed his back and chest, put on a clean shirt and was on the ladder to the bridge in time to hear eight bells struck.
Martin grew into the relativity of time. Was it a day?—a month?—a year that he had been in these warm waters?... The stars grew deeper in the night; the constellations spread their tails above the ship; the moon, more arrogant than ever, called from the sky and filled his eyes with dust. It was the same. The dark, fast knife of cloud that ran at him was welcomed as a friend. This monster might blot out, in mercy, the silhouette of Deane.... When pressure, rain and cracked, dry lightning burned his eyes, he held his hands—his arms into the wind, that it might bring him solitude from dreams.... And when the squall had passed he turned to Rio.
“That entity was beautiful and clean. It swept out all the clammy, dirty things.... You see that cloud?” He pointed to the swift, retreating sky. “It had more tears in one brief moment, Rio, than both you, and I, and all our comrades in a lifetime. And once again, when life is sticky—seminant with lies, we’ll find a ship, and find that cloud and hold it....”
Rio sighed.