The Last Ship (76 page)

T
he integration of the Russian crew into the community went off smoothly. There were innumerable reasons why this should have been the case, and hardly any why it should not have. I mention some of the former in no particular order. As would have been true of any man-of-war,
Pushkin
brought with her a wide variety of skills. Her hospital corpsmen found ready duty in our Medical Department, all under the doc; of especial contribution was that her complement included a dentist, since ours did not, his also taking up a billet there, and familiar already with the mouths of about a score of
Nathan James’
s company from that exceedingly welcome service extended us by the Russian captain at Gibraltar. The submarine’s carpenter’s mate joined Noisy Travis’s building upkeep crew.
Pushkin’
s company proved no exception to what has long been the case in the American Navy, a matter previously touched on, that an astonishing number of sailors come off farms. At least a score of the Russian sailors were of peasant stock and these were soon happily at work in the fields alongside our own men in Delaney’s crew. A half-dozen, two of them ex-fishermen, joined Silva’s fishing detail.

How alike are sailors of whatever national and other background! This was an essential ingredient of the ease with which the conjunction proceeded. But the chief reason was to be found elsewhere. I speak of that realization deep within, scarcely brought to consciousness, a tangible fright even at the idea of confronting it, that there existed at least the possibility that we were the only ones, seeming to mean that we must cling to one another whether we so wished or not: for there to be allowed any serious friction, for there to be admitted any force whatsoever that would harm this solely known community of men . . . such a liberty was simply not permitted us. We were all—irrevocably, to an absolute—simply too dependent on one another. It is my last intention in any way to portray us as saintly; it was not that at all. It was rather that our own existence was at stake, and men have a great desire to live. In his own way I believe every hand on the island, American or Russian, understood that transcendent fact and its unforgiving sequitur: There were too few of his own kind to allow that other, to tolerate any striking out at each other; for anything of the kind to get started, moreover, quite conceivably enhancing until it wiped out the last one of us.

 *  *  * 

Nothing could have so electrified our community as the news that the Russians had brought with them such a priceless gift, a supply of nuclear fuel sufficient to give the
Nathan James
five years of cruising time at fuel-conserving speeds. I want to emphasize that the hospitality, the entire helpfulness, exhibited by the American sailors to their debilitated fellow seamen was extended before the fact of the fuel was made known at a meeting which I called in the Main Hall so to inform them. However, this revelation vastly increased the already forthcoming and friendly attitude of ship’s company toward the new arrivals. They, before, looking upon us as their saviors for the succor shown when they first raised the island in not far from extremis state, we now in turn viewed them as our own liberators. Our gratitude had no limits. When from the cliffside we looked down at the
Nathan James,
we saw no longer a dead ship but one alive as she had been of old, ready to take us anywhere.

Anywhere? That was the question: Where should she take us? Where should we take her?

More than anything, there was the relief, of an absolutely instantaneous character, that we were no longer prisoners of the island. The door had been unlocked. All the inmates had been reprieved, pardoned; they could leave whenever they pleased. That was the feeling that in a great exhilaration swept like a freshening sea breeze through ship’s company. Looking out at the immense waters, they no longer seemed great walls enclosing us on every side, but rather free roadways now easily traversable. The overwhelming fact of this new mobility of our ship seemed in the coming weeks completely to dominate our community. Men could think, talk, of little else. At first there were aspects of it that seemed almost comical, if in a bizarre kind of way—as if everybody were going to rush down the cliffside, jump aboard saying, “Let’s shove off!” “Where?” “Anywhere.” As though if the ship had the fuel to go, that being what a ship is for, to go places, there could not possibly be any thought of not going. This shading after a while into a more sobering, almost contemplative assessment of the real question confronting us: What specifically should we do about this enormous new circumstance of our existence? Where should we go? Should we go anywhere?

Inseparable from these considerations, the fact of the island staking its own claim. Its very habitability as an uncontaminated place, acceptant of men, when all others had refused us, at first endowing it with an almost sacred distinction, it had by now reached much beyond even that status to appear in our minds as a place sentient, actively helping these once forlorn and homeless sailors, presenting us with fructuous soil to grow our food, bountifully adding its own edible offerings, its waters supplying us with an abundance of fish. Otherwise, this life providing many other things. Everyone was quite healthy in the salubrious climate, men had work to do but not too much of it, off-duty the island itself was a green treasure to explore. The sweetness and serenity also awakening the inner life . . . a truly amazing amount of the reading of books . . . men’s minds occupied by the project Lieutenant Girard had commenced in the Main Hall of two-hour sessions in which all hands, rationed sheets of bond paper from the supply we had been hoarding, were meticulously putting down all they knew, all they remembered—an enterprise which absorbed, even excited them to a degree I could not have predicted. The long sweet days . . . they had adapted, learning, for example, as all men sooner or later do in the tropics, to take naps in the heat of the day . . . a good life, including even, a kind of ultimate gift that had somehow been managed, yes, women, providing that sexual satisfaction which so strangely alone brings peace to men . . . to sailors . . . the Arrangement working out astonishingly well.

Perhaps only the sum of its parts, yet seeming something beyond that, another thing, mysterious and wondrous as could be, taking place to a certainty in myself and which I sensed to be underway as well in the greater part of ship’s company . . . the getting of one’s soul back in the very nature of our new life. Men, looking upon what they had, giving the matter more scrutiny, were doubtful as to course. They waited, in a kind of second reflection; it was good to have a fueled, mobile ship anchored there in the sheltered waters below the settlement. Still they paused, much less taken than before with the idea that this was any reason at all to abandon so good a thing as had been granted them in the person of this island.

There remained that relatively small portion of ship’s company, previously described, who, holding their one fixation to the point of obsession, knew exactly what they wanted to do, had for some time, and now that—as they saw it—there could not possibly be any objections to doing so, more openly began to ask, why did we not all get aboard immediately, head for home, see with our own eyes what happened, if we found a habitable place reestablish our community there, if we did not, always being free to return to the island? On the surface, the case for this course seemed unarguable, correctly insistent. Closer examination revealed that it fell considerably short of answering every question. Ship’s company had put a great deal of themselves into the island, including many months of often brutal labor, under violent tropical suns on the plateau where the Farm now stood, into the altogether handsome, shipshape gathering of buildings constructed with such mighty dawn-to-dusk efforts, such infinite care (including, the women for their part surely were remembering, those lovely cottages for themselves). What was to happen to the island in the meantime—to the Farm, to the settlement itself, all the fine buildings? Left to themselves they would of a certainty deteriorate, the foliage, the thick island growth would reclaim them, make short work of them, swallow them up as if they had never been. Men like Delaney whose hand lay upon the Farm, the rocklike Porterfield, even the normally inarticulate Noisy Travis, whose great craftsmanship had been the principal author of our fine buildings, spoke up, urging shipmates to stop and think; in particular, some of the women, these generally considerably more outspoken even than before, probably across the board exceeding their male shipmates in this respect—women like Ensign Martin, never a passive violet, along with the previously less vocal Signalman Alice Bixby, informed the men quite crisply that they were out of their minds. What were they thinking of even to consider forsaking all of this?

A tentative solution was put forth: Leave the island, and all we had added to it, in the charge of
Pushkin
’s ship’s company—if they would agree to that caretaker assignment. No reason in the world they would not, quite eagerly so one would imagine: such an attractive and instant living place presented them as a gift. But even here the men began to have thoughts; thoughts which strayed considerably from those beautiful sailor-brotherhood fundamentals I have so lovingly adumbrated. Someone was heard to ask: “Doing that, taking
James,
heading home, assuming the finding of nothing, coming back—what if the Russians should decide not to let us back on the island?” Not out of cruelty, surely they would show the returning
Nathan James
the identical welcome, if needed the compassion, the succor, we had rendered the
Pushkin
and her crew. But what if—it was Thurlow who asked this—we should come back heavily contaminated ourselves? Accumulating on top of levels absorbed in our passage from the Barents to our present island, what would be the effects of additional inroads, further invasions of our bodies, almost certain to be substantially increased on the proposed reconnoitering of our once-homeland. All of this was profoundly sobering, enough to frighten brave men. Levels that conceivably could take us into areas of a highly infectious nature, observable physical changes, no known treatment, certainly none possessed by us, so that the Russians, seeing us thus on our return, had no choice but to deny the island to the very men who had discovered it and created this functioning community, lest these, permitted ashore, destroy themselves, these new tenants, eradicate what known little was left of people and habitable place, our very return suggesting there were no others. What other option would there be but to turn us away—by force if necessary?
Pushkin
was a heavily armed vessel. After all, we ourselves had refused to take in those poor contaminated souls on the beaches of Italy and France. What if we should return like them, even if in somewhat lesser degree? Compassion which will wipe out one’s own ship’s company—we had never had any great difficulty in rejecting that definition of the word. Why should we expect more from the Russians than we had found ourselves able to attain to in that regard? Seen in this light, it appeared to a number of hands that the priceless fuel in point of fact did nothing for us: that we were as much as ever prisoners of the island.

All of these matters gave ship’s company much to ponder. Myself, of course, as their captain, most of all. The problem was by no means so simple as it may have first appeared—boarding
Nathan James
and casting off. Other indistinct but somehow ominous considerations seemed to hover about as we debated—inwardly, outwardly—what our true course should be. Trepidations hung in the air, and the difficulty of separating the real from the imagined. One in particular of the interjections the Russian captain had made in our continuing dialogue stuck in my mind. At one point, perhaps exasperated with the idea that, after all he had personally witnessed and reported so meticulously to us, sane men could take their ship off into what he felt was absolutely unacceptable and unaccepting atmosphere beyond the seas, he burst out, “If you must go into all that contamination, Captain, at least do not take the women into it—to die, to be made sterile at best. At least leave the women—so that, if you find nothing, we can continue . . .” He stopped there, with an absolute abruptness, as if aghast at what he had been about to say, my mind finishing it for him. Perhaps he was just trying to shock us into not going. Nevertheless, that reference to the women—its startling nature greatly magnified by the fact of its being his first direct allusion of any kind to them—seemed almost a reference to the
possession
of them, appearing to me to have escaped unintentionally from him in a moment of anger, seeming further to suggest some sort of intent he had not hitherto disclosed, all of this planting seeds of disturbance in my mind . . . I then dismissed it. He had wanted only to shock us into our senses. That was all. “I have seen Russia,” he had said. “How can you believe America will be any different?”

Thus it was that the Russian captain’s offer to send his own ship instead—her submerging capabilities vastly reducing possibilities of contamination—appeared heaven’s gift, perfect solution to these burdensome matters. I turned then to a close examination of which of the
James
’s company should fill the thirty-three billets allotted to us under his plan for
Pushkin
—to “rediscover the world,” as he so appositely put it. And as I did so, something totally unexpected attacked me as it were: a tremendous desire to make that voyage myself. Yes, I found myself seriously considering it, seduced into the very idea of it. Of this personal matter, tearing me as it did, I must speak here a moment for its importance, not so much in the decision I finally made as for the elements, some hitherto deeply hidden, its consideration forced to the surface and which were later to have such profound effects on our fate.

The Magellan factor, as I had come to think of it, had an almost mesmeric appeal to any seaman; more, to any thinking human being: What was out there? What did the rest of the world look like now, consist of? And most of all: Were there various enclaves of fellow human beings—or more? And if so, where? It was an enormous pull to be one of those who would discover the answers to such questions. All of this abetted by that small hard knot in myself, who long since had accepted the overwhelming evidence of one’s own country, our home, having become to all purposes nonexistent, that twisting thought so ingrained in ship’s captains: Always consider the possibility that you may be wrong. Especially when you are absolutely certain you are right. A shudder going through me: What if considerable life still existed there? But completely apart from that, the voyage itself. I actually confronted a great temptation: to ask the Russian captain to let me sign on. I was in no way qualified to command a submarine, but I was a good seaman and I would be eager, I thought as I almost helplessly toyed with the idea, to go in any capacity on such a remarkable voyage.