Jake and the Castaway Daughters
a Novelette by Varangian Kellis
Spring, 2000
The ship pitched wildly once again, smashing Jake’s head painfully against the strong door of the converted locker. He fell to the deck in nausea, blood streaming from his scalp, as the ship heaved violently back and forth, casting him to the other side of the small compartment.
“Oh, Christ!” he moaned aloud, his wail obliterated by the rage of the typhoon that tossed the huge ship as if it were a cork. Above him wind with a strength beyond imagination screamed in the remains of the rigging. The whole structure of the ship, oaken beams thick as his torso, creaked and snapped in constant complaint. Jake had been at sea for 27 of his 44 years, but never had he known such a storm as this. The wind above was so powerful that violent gusts of it penetrated to his prison, deep in the hold, strong enough even there to blow out the oil lamp swinging in the passage beyond his barred door. A few other lights remained in the hold, enough for him barely to make out the silhouette of a hand held before his face.
And now water splashed over him as the ship rolled! He struggled to his feet, holding to the bars of the door, cold with sudden fear for his life.
A crash loud as thunder rang through the ship and his hands were torn from the bars. He fetched up on the soggy remains of his bedding. Had the mainmast snapped off? A terrible grinding sound reverberated through the ship, on and on, making his teeth ache. No, not the mast. Most of the motion had ceased; what remained seemed to be more pitch than roll, and the deck beneath his feet now sloped permanently upward toward the bow. His cold fear increased as he understood. The Fleeting Star was fleet no longer. Its back was broken on rock. The grinding meant that the storm would soon tear it apart.
At least it would be easier to stand now. He forced himself up, reaching again for the iron bars. The light was just bright enough for his astonished eyes to see that the door stood open. The crash on the rocks had forced the locking bar from its hasps.
“Get out, we’re sinking!” a voice screamed from somewhere in the hold, barely audible above the terrible grinding. Instantly Jake launched himself through the open door.
Water rushed at his ankles as he made his way to the nearest companionway. Death seemed fairly certain as he coughed his way toward the upper decks, but less so than in the dark of the hold, now filled with choking dust from the disturbed cargo. He knew that some kinds of dust, tea in particular, were explosive and that lamps were yet lit in the ship. He seemed to fly up the steps.
He reached the well deck intent only upon escape and forced open the fo’c’sle entrance. Without hesitation he threw himself into the pitch darkness of the main deck — and slammed into a wall of water. Immediately he was submerged, alternately lifted and dashed down, twisting and turning crazily, arms and legs flung about by overwhelming forces. Great rushing sounds and monstrous gurglings pounded his ears through the water.
He knew only that he was about to die. His lungs were bursting. The run up the companionway had already exhausted his oxygen and he had taken no time to replenish it. Though the violent confusion had eased, he gave up. He opened his mouth to suck in the killing fluid.
But it was air that filled his lungs. Sweet, incredible air! He found himself at the surface of the sea, flailing and spitting, but breathing, by god!
A breaking wave dashed his momentary elation, but he clawed his head above water again and took another breath. After this happened two or three times he discovered that he fared better faced away from the wind-whipped froth and struck out swimming in that direction. Shortly his arm struck something large and very hard: a smooth, endlessly long pole, probably a ship’s spar. He encircled it with both arms and held on desperately as the storm sought to destroy him.
Time passed interminably. Hours later a gray light stealing over the world roused him from numbness. To his amazement, he was still alive. The sea was calming because the storm was past. Soon the sun rose above the horizon into a sky cloudless except for a dark mass high in the west, the retreating storm. It promised a lovely day for those more fortunate than he.
But he too was fortunate, he suddenly realized, finally registering what his ears had been telling him for some time. The boom of surf! On the crest of the next wave he looked wildly around and espied a dark island behind him hardly 200 yards across white froth.
* * *
Though weak and exhausted, he wasted no time in pulling himself erect and staggering above the strand, beyond the reach of the dashing water. There he flung himself on his back and took great lungfulls of air. He almost fell asleep, so peaceful was this motionless land and cool breeze, but the very incongruity of his fate amused him. From prisoner in the tiny locker to freedom in an infinitely larger prison!
Presumably so until further notice. He rose first to his elbows, then to his feet, the better to survey his new world. From wave marks above the surf, he judged the tide to be low. Despite that, the sandy beach was relatively narrow. A jungle began hardly fifty yards from the water. Tilting his head back, he understood the reason for the narrow beach. The land, clothed in palms and broad-leafed tropical vegetation, rose quickly in a slope he thought as much as forty degrees to a hill high enough to shade this beach in early afternoon.
He saw shells above the high-water mark and here and there the parallel tracks of crabs and the trident tracks of birds, but no human footprints except his own. The beach curved away to right and left. On his left a huge cluster of rocks rose from the sea a half-mile offshore. Possibly the Fleeting Star had struck a submerged member of that collection.
No strange footprint, but artifacts were washing ashore even as he watched. He waded into the surf and picked up a sailor’s striped shirt, thinking that if he was to survive he might need it. Here and there were other articles: mostly barrels most probably of tea, a few boxes, a pillow from some sailor’s hammock, even a corked bottle. He retrieved the bottle and found a folded paper inside. The handwriting was only too recognizable.
To whom it may concern:
Greetings.
This message is
consigned to the charity of the sea at five bells of the dog watch on July 2,
1848, believed at 7 S 139 W, past the northernmost island of the Marquesas
group, the ship assailed by wind and wave forcible beyond previous experience,
having lost mizzen and midtop before darkness fell, pumps barely keeping pace
with the flood, with 104 souls on board.
Harvey G. Norris, Master, Fleeting Star, out of Canton bound for New York
May
God have mercy on our souls.
Jake stood quietly with the paper in his hand. Curious message! He was certain that the dog watch was long behind them when the ship crashed on the rock. Then he decided, not so curious: obviously the bottle would drift before the storm alongside the crippled ship.
Was he the only survivor? He shaded his eyes and looked farther out to sea. Flotsam in the shape of barrels rose into sight on the tops of swells as far as he could discern them. The fatal rock could be miles offshore. But he had made it! The stormwind must have been onshore; a shoreward current might even be running.
Perhaps the only difference was that he had jumped into the dark almost immediately after the ship went on the rock. Perhaps others had tried to stay with the hulk and were at last drifting closer. He jumped up and down, shouted and waved his arms over his head, but had to give it up when no answering arm could be seen on the sun-sparkling water.
With a sigh and a whimsical smile, he stuffed the paper back into the bottle, shoved home the cork and threw the message as far as he could back into the surf.
* * *
A dry throat finally drove him from under his palm tree back out onto the beach in the dazzling noon-day sun. The storm last night must surely have contained as much rain as wind. He reasoned that somewhere on the island a fresh water stream, however temporary, must today be spilling into the sea. Facing the surf he turned right and set out to round the island, trying to count his paces as he strolled. His clothing, a tattered sleeveless undershirt and side-striped trousers that remained from his mate’s uniform, was long since dry, itching his shoulders and hips with the retained salt. He walked in the wet strand of necessity because the dry sand was hot enough in the sunlight to cook his bare feet.
Though he had slept off and on during the long morning, he was confident no one might have come ashore without him noticing. No footprint had been added to those of his own. Now the tide had turned and was rising.
His count of paces was approaching 200 when he crossed a spit of sand, rounding a boulder large as a house, and saw the white lifeboat stranded hardly a hundred yards further down the beach. He lifted on his toes into a jog, dashing spray from the puddles left by the strongest waves, and quickly reached the boat.
It was 20 feet of white-painted wooden hull, one of four normally born inverted on the main deck, covered with canvas still laced to the gunwales. With a sigh of disappointment he decided that this one had simply come loose from its restraints during the storm to wash up here and be stranded at low tide, as had the other flotsam still lying about.
Ah, but a lifeboat contained emergency provisions! He turned to the bow, where to his surprise he found the laces already loosened, leaving an edge of the canvas free to flap in the wind. Thirst drove him to ignore this anomaly.
Yes! Just beneath the raised flap in the bow thwarts was the provision locker. Leaning into the boat, he worked the sliding catch forcefully, opened the cover and smiled hugely as he held up a corked gallon jug of clear water.
The cork was jammed tight, but reaching farther into the locker he located the corkscrew as expected. The plug was soon extracted. One second later the sweetest water he had ever tasted was washing down his throat, albeit likely it had been moldering in that same jug for the two years since Fleeting Star’s initial voyage.
Much refreshed, he lowered the jug to the canvas cover and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Life was looking up! If this proved to be one of the two boats with centerboard, stepped mast and mainsheet, he could very shortly --
From close behind him a female voice said clearly, “We couldn’t get it open.”