The captain walked back to me. “Are you feeling better?”
“Yes. I’m getting sleepy, though.”
“Ah. We will take you into one of the berths.”
“No! Not yet. I’d be sick if I had to move. I just want to rest here a minute more.” I slumped down and did my best to look exhausted.
The captain watched me. “You said something about tracks being bombed?”
“Who, me? I never said anything about tracks.”
He nodded doubtfully.
“Why do you do it?” I asked despite myself. “Why do you come halfway around the world to patrol here?”
“We have been given the responsibility by the United Nations. I don’t believe you would understand all the details of the matter.”
So it was true, what they had told us in San Diego. Part of it, anyway. “I know about the United Nations,” I said. “But there isn’t a person from America there to tell our side. Everything they do is illegal.” I spoke drowsily, to put him off his guard. I shouldn’t have spoken at all, but my curiosity got the better of me.
“They’re all we’ve got, young sir. Without them, perhaps war and devastation would come to us all.”
“So you hurt us to help yourselves.”
“Perhaps.” He stared at me, as if surprised I could argue at all. “But it may be that it is the best policy for you as well.”
“It isn’t. I live there. I know. You are holding us back.”
He nodded briefly. “But from what? That is the part that you have not experienced, my brave young friend.”
I feigned sleep, and he walked back to his officers under the red light. He said something to them and they laughed.
Up and down the room pitched, up and down, up and down, smooth and gentle. I jumped out of the blankets and ran toward the open doorway to the bow. The captain had been watching for me to make such a move: “Ha!” He yelled, leaping after me. But he had miscalculated. I just caught the astonished look on his face as I flashed out the door ahead of him—I was too fast for him. Once outside I raced for the gunwale, and dove past the startled sailors into the fog.
10
After a long fall my arms and face smacked the sea, and my body walloped them home. When I felt the water’s chill I thought Oh, no. The air had been knocked out of me, and ten feet under I had to breathe something awful. When I popped back to the surface to suck in air a swelltop rolled over me and I breathed water instead. I was certain my hacking and gasping would give me away to the Japanese, who shouted after me. Undoubtedly they were lowering boats to search for me. The water was freezing, it made my whole body cry out for air.
I struck out swimming away from the shouts and the dim glow of the searchlight, and was rammed by an approaching swell. Damned if I hadn’t jumped off the seaward side of the ship. I would have to swim around it. And I had been sure I was leaping off the landward side. How had I gotten so turned around? My confidence in my sense of direction disappeared, and for a minute I panicked, afraid I wouldn’t be able to find my way to shore. I sure wasn’t going to see it. But the swell was a reliable guide, as I quickly realized when it shoved me time after time in the same direction. It was coming a bit out of the south, I had noted in the sloop, and I only had to swim in with it, maybe angling a bit to the right as it propelled me, and I would be on the straightest course to shore.
So that was all right. But the cold shocked me. The water might still have been from that warm current we had enjoyed the previous week, but now, with the storm wind whipping across the surface and chilling my head and arms, it didn’t feel warm in any way. I almost shouted to the Japanese to come to my rescue. But I didn’t do it. I didn’t want to face the captain again. I could imagine his face as I explained, yes, sir, I did want to escape, but, you see, the water was too cold. It wouldn’t do. If they were to haul me out, that was fine—part of me hoped they would, and soon, too. But if they didn’t, I was stuck with it.
To combat the cold I swam as hard as I could, trusting that I was around the bow of the ship and putting distance between us. It would be a nasty shock to clang into its hull unexpectedly, and it still seemed possible, because in the fog I couldn’t see ten feet. As swell after swell passed under me, however, it became less likely. Too bad, part of me thought. You’re in for it now. The rest of me got down to the business of getting to shore, the sooner the better. I settled into a rhythm and began working.
Only once did I see or hear the ship again, and it was soon after I had made the final decision to swim for it. Usually the fog does not convey sound better than the open air, no matter what some folks will have you believe. It tends to dampen sound as it limits sight, though not as drastically. But it is funny stuff, and sometimes, caught fishing by a fog bank, Steve and I have heard the voices of other fishermen talking in low tones and sounding as if they were about to collide with us, when they were half a mile away. Tom could never explain it, nor Rafael neither.
It happened again on this night. The voices were behind me, and far enough above me that I guessed they came from the ship. I groaned, thinking that I had been confused in my swimming, and that I was still in the vicinity of the ship; but then a cold swirl of wind caught their voices midsentence, and blew them away for good. It was just me and the fog and the ocean, and the cold.
I only know three ways to swim. Or call it four. Crawl, backstroke, sidestroke, and a frog kick. Crawl was the fastest by far, and did the most to keep me warm, so I put my face in the brine—which scared me somehow, but keeping my head up was too tiring—and swam for it. I could feel the swells pick me up feet first, give a welcome shove, and pass under, leaving me floundering in the trough. Other than that, all I felt was the wind cutting into my arms as I stroked. The cutting got so bad that I switched to the frog kick just to keep my arms under water. The water was still cold, but I had gotten used to it a little, and it was better than my wet arms in the wind. Working hard was the best solution, so after a few frog strokes I went back to the crawl and swam hard. When I got tired or my arms got too cold, I switched to frog kick or sidestroke, and let kicking and the swell carry me along. It was a matter of shifting the discomforts from spot to spot, and then bearing them for as long as I could.
The thing about swimming is it leaves you a lot of time to think. In fact there is little to do but think, unlike when hiking through the woods, for instance, when there are rocks to look out for, and the path of least effort to be found. In the sea all paths are the same, and at night in the fog there’s not much to look at. This is what I could see: the black swells rising and sinking under me; the white fog, which was becoming low clouds again as the wind unfortunately picked up; and my own body. And even these things were only visible when I had my head up and my eyes open, which wasn’t very often. So I had nothing to do but worry about my swimming. Mostly I swam with my head in the brine and my eyes closed, feeling my muscles tire and my joints ache with cold, and though my thoughts raced wildly they never got too far from this vital feeling, which determined the stroke I used from moment to moment.
Kicking hard on my back warmed my feet some, and they needed it. I could barely feel them. But kicking was slow, and effortful too. I sure wished I had a pair of Tom’s fins at that moment, the ones he lent us to body surf with. I loved those fins—old blue or green or black things that made us walk like ducks and swim like dolphins. What I wouldn’t have done for a pair of them right then and there! It almost made me cry to think of them. And once they occurred to me I couldn’t get them out of my mind. Now to my little assortment of thoughts was added, if only I had those fins. If only I had them.