Highiliners

by William B. McCloskey Jr.

  Steve was a strong man, and he rowed the absurdly frail oars with an unstinting back. But by nightfall they seemed no closer to shore than before. Even though the wind had slacked, it came steadily from shore, holding them at bay. The waves were eight to ten feet high, waves negligible from a boat deck that now rose above their heads each time the raft slid into a trough. As Hank watched them he thought of his Navy destroyer. From its bridge he might have termed such a low sea glassy calm.

  Daylight fell away. With the cloud cover there was no sunset. The water turned from gray to black until it merged with the mist and the sky. They each stared from under the canopy at the last of the light.

  Table Island Light shone clearly from its high bluff. They saw it as they rode each crest, and guided their oars by it. Hank’s burned arm hurt more and more. When his turn came, he found it impossible to row without brushing the spot against Seth beside him on each stroke. In the dark, he allowed his face to remain screwed in pain. Rowing kept him warm, but it also made him thirsty. He thought of a juicy apple or an orange. He tried to discipline himself to think of Jody instead.

  The canopy was a nuisance for sight and movement, but it preserved their body heat. It was sewed to the sides and raised on flexible struts, with the only openings being at the long ends of the raft. The lookout released a securing clamp and pressed his face to one of the openings. They alternated this job along with rowing and holding the rowers legs.

  A small light on top of the canopy automatically activated itself, but Jones noticed it quickly grew dim, so he found a way to turn it off to save it.

  “Wait until a boat comes along. Keep that lookout good.”

  By two in the morning their backs and legs ached, and they were neither warm nor dry. Hank’s feet bothered him especially. The thin leather and elastic deck slippers had become simply boxes to contain the soggy mess of socks around his feet, so he removed them, wrung his socks, and massaged. Above all, avoid what happened to Nels. Seth shared his coat—it became the property of whoever stood lookout—but his boots stayed on his feet. Hank pictured the boots in the dark, and the dry warmth of boots inside, dismissing any thought of boots full of water as Seth’s surely were.

  “Boat!”

  They all started moving together, like snakes in a pit. Hank held the flashlight while Jones turned on the canopy light and rummaged for the flares. No one knew how to assemble and activate the parachute flare. The directions were on the package, but it took a while to read them. The others opened both sides of the canopy and tied up the flaps so they could stand. Hank felt the cold wind at once. They could see the lights—a crab boat like their own. Coming close.

  “Hot mug-up,” chattered Seth. “Just a hot mug-up, no booze.” He started to laugh.

  “God heard my call,” said Ivan.

  “Hey, you Aleut, for once I’m glad to have you along. Jones, she’s coming abeam fast, about a quarter mile away. Looks like Dan Kenney’s Sea Spray. I’ll buy that fucker the biggest— Got that flare ready?”

  “Start one of them little ones. I’ve about got this figured.”

  They lit a hand flare. It cast a sputtering pink light that reflected on the surfaces of black water. The boat kept its steady course.

  Jones activated the parachute flare. It shot into the sky and descended slowly, illuminating everything like a star come to earth. They could see the clean white of the boat’s superstructure, practically read its name.

  They cheered together, then fell silent as the light died. The Sea Spray moved on, away from them.

  “That cocksucker asleep?” cried Jones.

  They waved another hand flare as they shouted and screamed. The Sea Sprays engine chugged steadily. The boat came close enough to show the spill of the galley light on the afterdeck. But it passed them by as if they did not exist.

  “All the times I’ve stood watch,” said Steve in a husky voice as the lights receded. “Gone down a minute for a piss or a sandwich when she was on course and everybody sleeping, Jesus!”

  “Another parachute,” said Seth desperately. “He’s got to be back from his piss.”

  “Only one in the survival kit.” Hank motioned Seth down with a hand on his shoulder, and replaced the canopy flaps. “Start rowing again, whoever’s got it.”

  Despite the opposing wind, which slacked steadily, they began to make headway toward shore. Table Island Light grew brighter. By daylight, around five, they could see the small white structure itself, and the rockslide slopes of Cape Barnabas alongside. No one had slept, although they spoke nothing beyond the rudiments necessary to change watch. The closer they came, the greater their lee from the land so that each hour was easier.

  “If I’d known we was going to abandon ship,” said Jones, breaking the silence, “I’d have paid better attention to my tides. When we get past the rocks were into Sitkalidak Strait, and that leads straight around the corner a few miles to Old Harbor.”

  “I got cousins in Old Harbor,” said Ivan. “My mother’s people. That’s a good sign. They’ll take care of us.” He turned to Steve. “You’ll see Aleut hospitality and stop making jokes.”

  “If we’ve hit the right current,” Jones continued, “she’ll ride us right into the village, but with the wrong one we’ll never get inside the rocks.”

  “That’s right,” said Ivan. “That tide’s a bitch.”

  “Ivan,” said Hank, “could we walk around Sitkalidak Island if we beached?”

  “That’s twenty miles. How you going to get across the lagoon? And the rocks! Now, in the strait, you’re likely to see some kind of boat in or out. Might even be one of my cousins.”

  The progress of a flat raft rowed by small oars left them hours to discuss the matter.

  Around noon, a boat came out of the straits, two miles from them. They threw back the canopy to wave and shout. It kept a course toward Dangerous Cape, never stopping.

  “I know that fellow from the village,” said Ivan. “He’s going to get hell from me tonight for not keeping his eyes open. Everybody knows were in trouble, everybody should be looking.”

  “Why?” asked Hank. “We told the girls we’d be in Three Saints Bay and probably couldn’t get them by radio.”

  “But somebody called a Mayday, you or Boss?”

  Neither Jones nor Hank bothered to answer.

  Seth, on the oars, grunted as he rowed harder. The aluminum sticks merely bent and slipped in the water from the extra effort.

  A northerly wind started, icy and strong. It hit them broadside, and in a half hour had carried them past all of Sitkalidak Island, back into open water. The wind shifted to the west and the sky cleared. Rowing was useless. They tied the canopy and huddled. By second nightfall, land had slipped away.

  “We’ll mebbe pass some halibut boats on Albatross Bank,” said Jones.

  They did, in the dark, but none saw their sputtering little flares as the raft dipped into the troughs of building waves.

  Time lost its meaning. There was long night, and then long day. Hank might have kept a journal with the pad and pen in the survival kit, but first his hands were too numb, then his will. His burnt arm hurt beyond description, a circle of fire exacerbated by the cold. It kept telling him, at least, that he was alive. He remembered that the temperature, the last time he noticed aboard the Adele III, had been thirty-five, so the seawater would be a degree or two above until they hit the Japanese current. His feet were tortured with cold. He had long ago removed his deck slippers altogether. By wringing his wool socks and massaging his feet he restored momentary circulation, and he pestered the others to do the same.

  Their wretched little masthead light had long since died, and the batteries of their flashlight fell apart in the salt water.

  Without incentive to row, they gradually ceased all watches. Every few hours they needed to reinflate the floor of the raft, but even this took such collective effort that the cold seawater on the other side of the fabric penetrated their bodies for long before they ro
used themselves. They lay atop each other for warmth, with Seth’s jacket spread over the shoulders of the two on top. No one slept.

  The collar of the jacket. He was not getting his share, and tugged it over. With a snarl Seth pulled it back.

  The waves grew steadily larger, until waves became their total preoccupation. When they rode in the troughs, they were in a soundless valley between mountains twenty-five feet above them. Halfway up to the crest, the wind began to scream against the canopy and to shake it with a terrible “blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.” When it first happened, Hank thought the canopy was going to fly apart, and by their terrified expressions so did the others. But it held, hour after hour.

  Hank gradually accepted that they all might die, and by their dullness he assumed that the others did too. Yet, after the waves built to nightmarish size, they still automatically reacted for survival. As the raft rose on each crest they all leaned together to shift weight to keep from overturning. Sometimes, even so, the little deck slid nearly vertical and they had to clutch the sides. Each wave was a new struggle, a new bargain, to clutch life a minute longer. They breathed throughout the calm of the trough, then tensed together as they rose and the wind started ripping. If they heard the gurgle of water outside they relaxed and rode the high crest, balancing against the kick of wind, anticipating the blessed pause of the next trough. Like men under formal torture, they strained for the little signals that would tell them what was coming next, grabbing for reassurance that the next moment would not be the most terrible, living moment to moment. If they failed to hear the water after the wind started ripping them, they braced for their agony—the smash of the crested wave over them. Each wave that broke over them tore loose one end of the canopy, sluiced seawater through the raft, and tore out the other end. There was nothing they could do to stop it. They lived in the icy water, sat in it continuously no matter how much they bailed.

  As close as they could remember, the waves started during the second night and continued throughout the third day and night.

  The raft came equipped with two canvas sea anchors. As they put out the first, two of its shrouds ripped. The line was too short, and it seemed as if the tug of the anchor might rip the fabric of the raft where it was attached. Soon the sea anchor itself tore apart. They used the other to press over them for clothing, although the small irregular canvas did no more than shelter a patch of skin from the initial shock of a fresh wave.

  Jones Henry, the oldest, weakened faster than the rest. His will ebbed more and more. After the third night, as Hank watched dully, Jones started to climb over the side. Wish I could do the same, Hank thought. But at the last moment, he wrapped his arms around Jones and held him in. It all happened in slow motion, without words.

  Once, during the waves, he glanced out when the canopy had been torn loose by seawater to see a Japanese trawler nearby. It was drawing in its net, and seagulls swarmed around. They had no way to signal. The waves were too high to row. Their struggle to survive wave by wave was too great, impossible even to lift the canopy and stand. He prayed that the Japs would see the orange top of the canopy, but said nothing, to keep the others from getting excited. The next time he looked, they had passed the ship, which continued in the opposite direction.

  Perhaps because of the constant seawater over their bodies, thirst remained a misery rather than the agony he might have expected. Cold was the agony. Only with a will could he even massage his feet, yet cold was all he could think of, whatever he forced his body to do. He tried to think of Jody, pictured her face for minutes at a time. But then his mind slipped back to the white cold.

  During the fourth day, the wind slacked, and with it the terrible waves. It began to rain heavily, sending a trickle of water through the circular burn in the canopy. They bailed the raft and lay on top each other again for warmth. Hank dozed for the first time since the fire. He woke to the motion of the water, assuming he was aboard the Adele, and could not understand what was weighting his legs and arms. The sleep had lasted only a few minutes. He lay with his chin pressed into the fabric of the raft floor beside Seth and Jones, with Ivan and Steve on top, trying to resume the sleep, but it would not return. He hoped, at least, that it was long before his turn to change positions.

  They saw distant, dark shapes of other foreign fishing ships for an hour or two. Then they were alone again in the empty water. The fourth night was approaching. Jones had not spoken for nearly a day. His eyes remained half closed and his mouth dropped open. Jones was going to go first. Seth would be next, Hank figured without emotion. Seth had become totally passive, acting only to shift his body if someone else pointed or shoved. Should they ease them overboard when the time came? More space to stretch. Take Seth’s boots first. Or would dead bodies retain some warmth to crawl under? After Jones and Seth died... he screwed his face, but the thought came regardless . . . blood was liquid, flesh was survival. He bit into his knuckles to keep from crying out. No one paid attention. Soon his thoughts slipped back to the cold. Hank removed Jones’ shoes, wrung his socks, and massaged his feet, but Jones did not appear to notice. He did the same for Seth, using all his energy to remove the boots and all his will not to put them on his own feet.

  Steve and Ivan stayed together. During the shuffle of bodies, the only energy either showed was if one of the others pushed between them. They would survive longest, Hank decided. Their faces were haggard but peaceful.

  That made him third in line to go. He both saw it as a fact and did not believe it. By now their absence must have been noted. An hour before nightfall a Coast Guard helicopter passed nearby. They heard the chop of the blades. He, Steve and Ivan threw up the canopy and waved and shouted, then gasped from the effort. The helicopter disappeared, then returned on the other side of them. By the second pass, Seth and Jones watched with feverish attention.

  “They fly a grid,” Hank said, surprised at the difficulty of speaking. He had not noticed that his tongue was thick and that his lips cracked open when he moved them. “Looking for us.”

  The fourth night fell. They had no more flares or lights. At one point the helicopter flew directly over them. Ivan prayed aloud in a voice as cracked as his own. Hank mumbled “Our Father” to himself. But the helicopter passed farther and farther away, until its lights and noise disappeared for good and they were alone again.

  Hank, Steve, and Ivan replaced the canopy. Seth and Jones had returned to their different catatonic states. Steve and Ivan accepted the top layer, and they huddled in for the night. Hank dozed and hallucinated again, but he did not sleep. He thought of death, of the warmth of death.

  Ivan, on top of him, starting beating his back. “God heard, ha ha, God heard.”

  They had drifted to within a half mile of a ship without noticing, and the ship pivoted slowly toward them. Foreign trawler, that much Hank could see as it turned, showing the open stem ramp and the lighted deck with hard-hatted figures moving around a net.

  “God led them to us.”

  God bless expensive Jap radar, Hank added reverently to himself.

  The ship approached slowly, bearing all its blessed stenches of fish under steam. They untied one end of the canopy, leaving shelter for Jones from the rain, and stood in the other end of the raft waiting to be received. Steadily it came, the black hull defined in the dark by the glow of decklights behind. They could hear the splash of water from the bow. It bore down, cutting the water, towering above them.

  “Fucker ain’t stopping,” cried Steve. He grabbed one of the aluminum oars to fight it off, like a harpooner against a whale.

  Their frenzied voices filled their own ears without halting the freight-train motion. Hank’s last sight upward was a wall so high he could not see the top. Goodbye, he thought. The wall brushed them aside. Steve thrust his oar into it and catapulted into the air. Hank in a second, without thinking, saw the ship’s anchor pass over his head and leaped to catch it. It scraped over his arms and hands, and he fell into the water. Goodbye!

&nb
sp; A wash of sea, the gunning shock and throb of the propeller and the turbulence, beyond his control, and he remained alive and sputtering with the deckful of men receding. By the light, he saw the overturned raft a few feet away with Ivan clinging to it. Die with Ivan at least, not alone. He found the energy to swim, to clutch the fabric.

  “Steve, Steve!” cried Ivan in panic. He shook Hank with one hand. “Where’s Steve?”

  Steve’s oar floated a distance away, glinting in the final light of the ship.

  “Steve!”

  “Jones! Seth! You around?”

  “Steve!”

  A fist thumped weakly from inside the overturned raft. “Who’s down there,” Hank shouted. He repeated it before Seth’s voice said faintly, “Us. Did they stop?”

  “Is Jones okay? Come out. We’ve got to right the raft.”

  “Did they stop? If they didn’t... forget it.”

  “Yes, they stopped,” yelled Hank with the energy of survival. “Get out here and help.” He ducked under, caught his breath in the air pocket, found Jones, who was struggling, and pulled him out.

  “STEVE! STEVE! STEVE!”

  Hank pounded his fist into Ivan’s face to stop him, then commanded him in Steve’s name to help right the raft. Without Ivan’s strength they could not have done it.

  When it was over, the four lay exhausted in the upturned raft, covered by water. Hank found one of the little plastic cans, perforated for bait so that it barely transported water, and found strength to bail three or four canfuls at a time between rests.

  Ivan leaped overboard and swam in the direction of the oar. Goodbye, thought Hank. Doesn’t matter. But every few seconds, when he thought of it, he called in the raining dark, “Here, were here.”

  Ivan returned. Hank helped him aboard. Ivan sat motionless throughout the rest of the night, clutching the oar he had retrieved.