The Forty Fathom Bank and Other Stories (10 page)

Suddenly I began to shake, my legs inside my bloody dungarees, my skinny, aching arms, my head, my shoulders. I shook inside. Then my insides seemed to turn to water. My knees went limp and I slipped down quivering upon the deep layer of sharks. For a moment I felt nothing. Then slowly I could feel the abrasive hides, the hard dead flesh beneath and then the viscous slime that enveloped everything and was oozing through my clothes and over my skin. I got up and staggered back into the wheelhouse, holding my hands far in front of me. A clean damp rag lay folded neatly beside the compass box. It was May's rag. I picked it up and began to clean myself. Soon the rag was thick with slime. I wadded it into a ball and flung it over the side, then went back to the wheel. A strange quiescence came over me; all feeling seemed numb or dead. Yet I could think quite clearly. I studied the sky. A few ragged clouds, forerunners of the great dark bank now high above the horizon, sped eastward. Probably it was one of these that had caused the momentary darkness a while before. The wind was blowing harder now, and the swells, with their mountainous crests and deep, black valleys, were traversed by row upon row of fast moving waves. I pulled the wheel over and, with the
Blue Fin
rolling heavily under her huge load of sharks, headed back toward Half Moon Bay. At that moment, another cloud crossed the sun and blotted out everything. Then, just for an instant, a picture flashed into my mind of the long and empty darkness ahead.

The sky was clear and I could see the mast moving slowly like a tall shadow under the stars. The pale yellow flame of the riding light, swinging a little on the halyards, gleamed darkly on the orange-varnished mast high above the top spreaders. In the last of the dying breeze I could still smell the sweet fragrance of wild hay and clover from the Channel Islands now far astern. The long, deep-breasted swells that had rolled down from the northwest all day had flattened out till they were no more than a gentle lifting and falling like the slow breathing of a deep, dreamless sleep. Ragged trails of blue starlight slashed across the low black slopes and over the horizon a vague luminescence glowed with a soft light like the afterglow of moonset.

Along toward midnight the fog came up out of the west, high, dark-shadowed, advancing steadily across the sky, bearing in its misty wreaths the cold, salt smell of the sea. In a little while the stars were gone and there was only blackness where the ocean's rim was meant to be.

With the coming of the fog a subtle change came over the sea, an ominous coming to life. I went forward and made certain all was secure, then returned to the cockpit. Down in the water I could see the strange oblate forms of jellyfish swimming. Convulsive movements, darklighted by the phosphorescence. Now and then a school of anchovies flashed by and after them the flame-bound form of some big fast-swimming fish streaked like a rocket streaming fire through the full blackness of oblivion.

All night the boat drifted. The fog closed off the sea
from the sky and heavy darkness clung to the water. Yet below the quiet surface, the phosphorescent, starlight-gleaming noctiluca spangled all the downward universe, and constant fire trails marked the silent, deadly passage of the fish.

And all the night I waited, keeping watch for the wind. In the dark hours the waves lapped softly under the transom, and deep in the hull the rudder post thumped from side to side with the dull sound of wood on wood. Below and around the ocean lay like a silent, brutal thing that held within its depths terrible strengths and swift destruction; where the sweetness of life depended on a silver belly against a silvered surface—a green back in a green wave to deceive a watchful eye above; where birth was flung in frantic haste through the saline gloom. A world where no flowers bloomed and no birds sang.

In the misted night, it seemed that the sea was the land's slow enemy encroaching with dire intent upon its shores, breaking and grinding and sucking in with a terrible hunger and cunning in its ways, for at times it stretched out sweet and blue and soft and sang its siren song of wind and waves, luring with plaintive melodies the love-born things of land, enticing with strange perfumes and multicolored patterns of cloud and shadow and little smiling waves. Then with dark treachery it closed in upon them with its gray fogs, ringed them around with horizons bleak and endless, brought down its mighty winds upon them. And when all of nature's wise instincts availed them no longer, and they were terror-broken and helpless in a strange new world, the sea sank back into its primal impassivity and let them die.

And so the night passed like a long, long moment. Then dawn through high fog. A swift flowing in of light—no
certain change, just darkness and then light. And the fog held, uniformly gray, lighted by no single source of emanation, a somber radiance, gray-white and constant from verge to verge.

No wind had come and the fog cast its grayness down upon the dark waters of the sea so that it looked like tarnished black glass. And the sensuous swells, sleek-surfaced and silent, stole down like perfidious caresses and were gone. Close astern a big brown pelican glided low over the water, dropping at times below the level of the swells. Heavy-winged, short-tailed, head pulled in close to its body, its big bill pointed straight ahead, flying with the long, easy flapping and gliding of the offshore sea bird. Higher up, a gull moved through the still air with even wing beats, white breast against the sky. It quartered and turned, sailed down in a velvet spiral and I could see the slate-gray back, dark as the dark ocean.

All around there was silence and calm and I slept for awhile, curled up on the seat of the cockpit. Asleep, yet always aware of the gray vaporous glow of the sky, the dark, unquiet deep below and the wide, level solitude that stretched away to a far-off dim horizon.

Then suddenly and softly I was awakened. A faint breath of air across my face and the light brush of a feathered wing. I opened my eyes and there on the cockpit coaming close to my hand sat a small yellow bird. Bright yellow breast, olive-green above, and the black on its head like a round black velvet cap.

The little bird sat quietly, squatting a little on its pale toothpick legs, head hunched down between its drooping wings, its bright black eyes staring at nothing. I watched for a moment, expecting it to fly away, but it did not move. I reached out toward it and still it did not move. Even the
touch of my finger on the soft green feathers of its back caused no more than a slight downward pressing of its small body.

Suddenly it hopped up onto the edge of the cabin and flew up into the mizzen shrouds. I could see it grip the steel cable with its spiderleg feet and skip up the near-vertical wire. Then it flew away out over the water. I sat up and watched it swing in a wide arc around the stern, flying with a loose-winged, darting flight. Once it shot up a few feet above the water and caught some insect in the air. For an instant I saw it flicker, its underwings and breast saffron-flamed against the gray sky. Then it came back to the boat, fluttered down onto the floor of the cockpit and rested.

This was no sea bird, no grays and blacks to merge with water and sky, no powerful wings for distant flight. Beguiled by some subtle witchery of the sea, it was bound now and quickly for the ultimate end.

I watched it for awhile, marveling at the bright black cap, the brilliant yellow of the breast, the soft green back. I thought of the autumn leaves of mountain willows flaming along some quick-flowing river, live oaks, dusky green back in the coastal canyons. I looked out over the water again but there was only the somber, settled grayness of the sky, the gray-blackness of the sea and the long and level horizon that drew eyes along its bleak monotony in an endless, futile quest.

Off to the west a little flurry of wind rippled the water. I could see it approaching in a single narrow lane, dimpling the crests of the swells as it came. Soon I could feel the gentle coolness of it play across my face. The bird hopped up onto the coaming, its small sharp bill pointing into the awakening breeze, the fine feathers stirring a little on
its breast. And there it sat, no bigger than a wind-blown thistledown, its black eyes staring dully at the incomprehensible sea.

My night thoughts returned. Suddenly I saw it all clearly, the insidious device, the dark purpose. Out of the northwest, like a fragrant breath, had come delight in the wind; wild hay and clover from the Channel Islands, warm land smells and growing things. And the small bird had gone, following the sweetscented pathway, had flown, down out of the dying autumn canyons to the allurement of new places. High into the setting sun he had gone skipping in the red sunset air, delighting in the wind, following the sweet fragrance of those sea-hidden islands. Then with appalling swiftness the ocean night had come down with its cold salt smell. The scented path dissolved away; the land was gone. The sea turned suddenly black, yawned wide and empty, lay in stealthy waiting till the little yellow wings were wearied out with uncertain flying.

I looked up at the stout fir mast, down along the steel shrouds, at the heavy folds of canvas furled on the boom, at the brass-bound oak wheel in the cockpit, at the great sea birds gliding, wide-winged over the gray sea waves. Strength against the pitiless strength of the sea; the endless battle of the strong. And it seemed to me then that all things of delicate beauty were doomed to quick destruction. I was filled with subtle anger, at the pale-domed fog, at the inexorable sea, at the hopelessness of opposing them. Then the thought came that I might take this lost thing ashore, watch it fly away once more to the wooded canyons above. And the thought was pleasant.

Suddenly the bird flew up again, darted quickly away in pursuit of a minute black speck high over the water. It missed, swung back in a zig-zag path, landed on the gaff
tip, its feet slipping on the slick varnish. Then it fluttered down onto the sleeve of my jacket, its dainty wings arched and pointed, throat throbbing.

I looked out over the water again searching for the wind. Soon it would come now, softly at first, growing stronger. I would hoist the sails and the boat would heel over, slip smoothly across the low round hills toward land. I wondered if the clacking blocks, the high spreading canvas would frighten the tiny bird. I thought of catching it, putting it down in the cabin, but there was danger, below, of its breaking its wings against the glass port lights, of being burned on the hot stove in the galley. I picked it up gently, put it back on the cockpit coaming.

A few hundred yards off the stern the pelican was settling down with backward-beating wings on the water over a school of small fish, its wings and tail feathers spread fan-wise against the air. Then it swam along slowly, its brown body riding high above the surface. It plunged its powerful bill into the water, then tossed it upward and I could see the flash of a fish held crosswise, its short body vibrating silver in the gray light. Close by, the gull hovered, waiting to snatch the fish before the pelican threw it headdown into its pouch. I could hear the gull's high-pitched crying
ky-arr-kee-kee-kee
, see the big wings outstretched, the black-tipped wing and tail feathers spread wide and flat.

I went below and ate breakfast. When I came back on deck the little yellow bird was still sitting on the cockpit coaming. I scattered some crumbs of toast on the seat, but it did not seem to see the crumbs. I held some in front of it in the palm of my hand but it did not move, only squatted lower so that its tail and breast rested on the coaming, the small, black-capped head down between its shoulders.

The pelican had finished fishing and was resting on the
water, its body a compact bundle of brown feathers. Its long bill was pointed downward and held close to its breast. It swam in a big half-circle, its beady-bright eyes on the gull that floated close by. Then slowly it unfolded its great wings, kicked its big webbed feet backward with each wing stroke and rose heavily into the air from the summit of a swell. It circled once, spiraling upward, and soared away into the east toward land. A moment later the gull flapped its long, gray-backed wings, ran along close to the water and was off after the pelican.

The plaintive cry of the gull came back for awhile, clear and sharp across the water. Then suddenly there was no sound and I was aware only of the slow, unwearying rhythm of the surge beneath the boat and the quiet little bird beside me on the coaming.

Then vaguely I was conscious of some moving thing above me. A quick shadow crossed the deck, a flash of bright yellow, and down out of the gray sky came another tiny bird, flying with the same loose-winged, tired flight. Silent as a butterfly, wings fluttering, it landed on the furled sails, its little feet clutching the rough folds of the canvas.

Another came, flying on soundless wings, and then another. Soon fully half a hundred clung to the rigging, the halyards, the spreaders, the folds of the canvas sails, their yellow breasts throbbing, wings drooping.

The females stayed close behind their mates. Drab little puffs of yellow and green, thin little bills, black jewelled eyes shining bright in olive-green heads. And the black-capped males, blazing yellow and green, sat defensively forward even in their final weariness.