Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea

by Steven Callahan

  Before I have time to test the new spear tip, the plug in the bottom tube trembles and little geysers shoot up at the bow. I put another tourniquet around the pads and plugs and twist it tight. A volcano of fat bubbles spews forth. She’s blown again.

  The still is also leaking more as my old repair works loose. I can’t stop to reinflate the still when I am in the middle of lashing up the raft patch, so it slumps before I can get to it. The distillate becomes tainted with salt water. Just how tainted is hard to tell. I decide it is not too salty to drink, but as the salt level in my body builds, my ability to taste salt decreases. The fact that seawater is beginning to taste pretty fresh is frightening.

  It is dusk when the patch blows, so I lie awake through the night with the tube deflated, huddling as close to the outside of Ducky as possible to keep from sagging too deeply into the floor. Cold and wet, I feel as if I’m lying in a hammock full of water, turned on its side. A heavy, rough lump brushes against me. Another shark. I grab my spear and try to maneuver for a shot. The squealing rubber floor sucks up my legs, twists, and tries to tear off my skin. I cannot see the shark, so try to pull my leggy lures out of the sea by sitting half up on the inflated tube with my head crammed against the canopy. Shivering, I await the dawn.

  In every dusty corner of the attic of my mind, I search for a way to patch the leaking tube once and for all. The smaller line that I’ve been using for lashing rolls over itself too easily, until it rolls right off the end of the tear’s puckered lips. Maybe if I use bigger line, it won’t be able to roll over itself. I will grab just the tip of the puckered lips and wind the line so that the coils lie smoothly next to one another, spiraling like wire wound around a drum, pulling more and more of the lips under its control until the whole mouth of the tear is enclosed.

  At daybreak I try this with quarter-inch line from the sea anchor. Thank God, it works.

  Three hours later the whole thing blows.

  I retie it, add some small-line tourniquets inboard of the large-line windings, and replace the external pressure-retaining lines. I pump up the tube until it is just hard enough to hold its shape.

  Something beats monotonously at the floor. I sprawl across the top of Ducky’s canopy, crushing it down, and peer over the stern. I can feel that the rusty gas cylinder, which originally blew the raft up, has fallen out of its pouch. Not only is it good shark bait but its coarse metal may quickly scrape another hole in my ship. The wind has risen and waves slop over me as Ducky lifts and plunges like a pump diaphragm. I pull up on the gas line that connects the bottle to Duck’s bottom tube. The gas bottle is heavy, full of water, I suppose, and refuses to be reseated. The gas line has been pulled through the bottle’s pocket so there’s not enough slack to pull it up and out of the water. Can’t get it back in and can’t get it out, and I certainly can’t leave it as is. Damn! I feel for the pocket and begin to slash away at it with my sheath knife, being very careful not to drop the blade or ram it into the tube. Twice a sharp pain runs up my arm. No matter. It’s okay if I cut myself. Finally it’s done, and I pull up the bottle and tie it to the upper tube.

  My arms feel like lead, my whole body aches, and my head feels as if it’s been stuffed. For the past several days, I’ve had only a few hours’ sleep and I’ve been sitting in salt water continually. Boils have burst open. Ulcers are growing. The hole that I rubbed through the skin of my left forearm while working on the patch has expanded, grown foul and smelly. I desperately need to satisfy the contradictory demands of food, water, and sleep—fish, navigate, tend the still, and keep watch until I drop. I get another trigger and devour the sour animal as if it were roast duck. The need to reinflate the raft again and again robs me of my sleep at night. There is no longer a clear line between good and evil, beauty and gruesomeness. Life is only one blurry moment following another deeper into fatigue and pain. I have become so conditioned to go through the motions of survival that I do them without thinking. It rains, and I leap to collect about six ounces of water, watching in disgust as small rivers pour into the mouth of the canopy, pure water turning instantly to bile.

  The weather has been calm since the bottom tube was damaged. On the one hand, this has been fortunate because it has allowed me the time to evolve a patch. If a storm had hit when the bottom tube was deflated, I probably would have drowned, and almost certainly my equipment would have been torn out and washed away. As always, what’s good on the one hand is bad on the other. In this period of calm, progress has been dreadfully slow. Recently the breeze has built—now to about twenty knots—and things are rough but not stormy. I’m glad the weather is back. At least we are moving again.

  I have been too weak to do yoga for over a week. Before the accident, I thought I had reached a sort of starved, steady state, but now my body is becoming more battered and even thinner. I can take it. Others have taken worse. You’re on the home stretch now, no letting up, push the pace. You’ve got to move even if you punch more holes in your hide, got to drive on. No second place in this race, only winning and losing. And we’re not talking ribbons or trophies, here. You’ve got to hang in and be tough.

  Will the seas punch the patch apart? Now, don’t panic. DO NOT PANIC! Somehow I sleep. I dream that all of my family, friends, and those I’ve loved are gathered for a picnic. I try to take a picture of them sitting on a stone wall. Can’t fit them all in. “You’ve got to get back,” they shout to me. “Back, back, farther, keep going farther.” I move back more and still more, bringing crowds into the frame. Thousands of speckles shout, “Back farther!” They shrink more, and still more sweep into view, until everyone turns to a blur and is gone.

  The soggy floor of the raft is in such unbelievable motion it feels like a carnival ride. I can’t imagine trying to effect another repair in these conditions. The patch splutters and spews, but it holds.

  To protect the bow of the raft from my spear should another spear failure occur, and to prevent curious fish from nipping at the patch, I drape a bib of sailcloth through the entrance over the bow and let it drag under the raft. Rubber Ducky III has become a big-mouthed sea creature with a haggard tongue hanging out. I dangle inside like a weak tonsil. I pull the tongue tight against the raft so it does not flop, which would reduce my visibility and range for fishing. Ducky and I are now ready to gobble up anything in our path.

  The farther west we get, the more we feel the effects of the warm, moist easterly trade winds. Cauliflower cumulus begin to sprout from the fertilized sky. Small showers fall in gray smudged streaks. I remove the kite that I’d originally made as a signaling device but ended up using to catch water that comes through the leaky observation port. I replace it with a plastic bag, which serves the purpose temporarily but not very efficiently. As the rain comes down, I hold the kite up like a shield against the drops, with the point down in the Tupperware box. The added square footage allows me to catch almost a pint of the sky’s elixir.

  For days the butcher shop’s cupboards have been bare of any fresh food. Only a few dried fish sticks remain. They seem fine, even though they’ve hung for a month. The rock-hard amber sticks sit in my mouth for a half hour before they soften enough to be at all chewable.

  Two Beatles songs begin to plague me, rolling around in my head again and again. Like the first song says, I am so very tired, and my mind is definitely on the blink. Okay, sure, why not just get up and fix myself a drink? Drink … drink … Humph. As if in answer to my frustration, the second song bursts out. Help! Yeah, sure, I need somebody, but I’d settle for anybody. Yes, I sure could use someone’s—oh, universe, do you hear me?—Help! None comes, of course, no drink either; but the songs won’t stop.

  Food dreams become more real than ever. Sometimes I can smell the food; once I even tasted a dream. But it is always without substance. Even in reality, after I eat I am still hungry.

  Once again I try for a dorado. I must be more particular than ever about my shot. The knives are too frail to drive through a fish at any angle or t
hrough its muscular back. I must somehow get off a gut shot. These piscatorial targets sometimes move at over thirty miles an hour, and I must hit a bull’s eye of a few square inches. It seems beyond my feeble powers. However, the dorados have slowly developed identifiable styles of bumping Rubber Ducky. Some still stiffly punch the bottom or whack the perimeter with their tails, but some rub their sides against me, sliding against my knees and out in front of me on their sides. I am so close that I can see details of their eyes, tiny scars, and their pinprick nostrils.

  Knives flash in the sunlight. Ducky makes rubbery groans, as if frightened. I spread out the sailcloth, sleeping bag, and cushion to protect as much of the raft as possible, particularly the tubes. I fire and hit a dorado perfectly under the spinal column, a large hole through her. I grab the spear with my left arm and lift the thrashing fish from the sea, keeping the point high in the air. I frantically try to pin her down on my sleeping bag. By the time my knife cracks her back, fish eggs and blood are spewed everywhere. So what? I have food! I make little hobbling jumps and yell, “Food! Food!”

  My improvised spear works. I can rebuild my strength. Ducky is moving well and her patch is holding. With the stores in hand, I can last at least eight and maybe fifteen days. I’m being used up, but these past few minutes have given me a second wind … or is it an eighth or ninth? A month and a half ago I thought my chances were one in millions, yesterday less than one in ten. Now they’re fifty-fifty.

  From lessons learned while cleaning the triggers, I discover new areas of meat in the head of the dorado. More important are the new wells of fluid, from the fatty liquid eye sockets to the mucous deep in the gill cavity. By the time I throw out the skull, the bone is scraped clean. The stomach is greatly distended. I cut it out, carefully drain the stomach juices overboard, slit it open, and find that it is full of prey. A huge fish lies lodged from the back of the mouth to the top of the intestine. It’s incredible that the dorado could have swallowed something that large. It would be easier to believe someone had ramrodded it down her throat. I wash it in the ocean. Only the skin has been digested. The dark meat is only slightly tangy and tastes quite like mackerel. I think of it as having been pickled. What a bonus. An extra pound of flesh. Two complete table settings of organs, including the eggs. I feel full for the first time in a month. This good fortune comes at a critical time. I have desperately needed a break. I feel as if this fish is a good omen, just as I felt the killing of the big dorado that I lost was a bad omen. Last time the omen proved valid. I hope that this time it will too, that things will now brighten up.

  By now the habitat in which I live, Duckyville, has become a neighborly suburb. The fish and I are familiar so I can chat with them individually, spread gossip and rumor. I recognize a dorado’s nudge, a trigger’s peck, or a shark’s scrape the way you recognize different neighbors’ knocks on the back door. Often I know which individual fish is whacking the raft with its tail or butting it with its head. I can tell when the fish are around even when they don’t knock or flap. I love my little friends and their tight little town. No plague of politics, ambition, or animosity. Simple, unmysterious, unapprehensive life.

  But there is a mystery in this town nonetheless. I failed at catching the dorados by line and they came close enough for the spear. The range of the spear was shortened when I lost the power strap, but they bumped and swam even closer. Now, with my range shortened even more and my power declining, they lie on their sides under my point. It is as if they are trying to help me, as if they do not mind mixing their flesh with mine.

  High in the sky, long, thin, highly arched wings trail a delicate forked tail. Frigate birds do not venture so far from land, do not sleep at sea, and do not fish for themselves; or at least that is what I have read. Yet the shape of the bird—its pointed wings locked into position, its slim body and tail—certainly fits the description. I am still six hundred miles out, and the bird appears to be eyeing the same flying fish on which the dorados feed.

  Night comes, and the weather turns more foul. I hear the patch bubbling and seething as the bow dips and rises in the waves. Pumping more frequently, now every half hour, I realize that I will not last long with such a workload.

  Whitecaps occasionally break upon the canopy and crash through the opening about my head. Quarts of water drain down over me. The raft lurches up and down, so I hang on to the handline with one hand, just in case Ducky is knocked down again. I can’t possibly sleep, so I calmly await the warming sun. Suddenly loud flaps rattle the canopy just above my head. I leap out and hijack the flying fish before it has a chance to flop back off into the sea. As sunlight peeks into Ducky, I clean my beautiful catch. A flyer’s head is shaped in cross section like an upside-down triangle. Huge eyes look down and to each side to keep predators in sight while the flyer glides over the water. I scrape the large round scales off of her flat indigo back and slender white stomach and then remove her long translucent wings. The tail blades form a V aft, and the bottom one sweeps down almost twice as long as the top. Flyers can soar over a hundred yards, and by flicking this little rudder they can get some extra yardage or change direction. Blind flight at night sometimes carries a whole school straight into the side of a passing boat; when they hit, it sounds like machine-gun fire. A number of times, late at night or early in the morning, I have been jolted awake by a painful direct hit in the chest or the face. The flyers’ tasty flesh is soft and pinkish white.

  At first light, I spot a frigate bird overhead. So much for the idea that they never spend a night at sea. It sits almost motionless, as if painted there.

  Warmth never comes. The sun remains hidden, the black waves break noisily all around me. I would like to remain wrapped up in my sleeping bag, but a wave crashes against the bow, and even above the terrible racket of the tumultuous sea, I hear a hissing eruption. Ducky’s bottom tube becomes flaccid, the floor bubbles up, and we settle again deep in the water. It’s no use bailing. The top tube gives only a few inches of freeboard. Water flows in and out of my territory at will.

  The entire foam plug has been shot out of the hole. I must sew it in place and try once more to relieve the pressure that tries to pull the tear’s lips out flat. Since the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, I decide to warp the shape of the raft so that, when viewed from above, it will look like a doughnut with a bite taken out of one side. I tie long lines across the bow from one handline anchor point to another, then tighten the lines by twisting them until they pull the raft into the warped shape. Next I string a line from bow to stern on the inside and pull until the raft folds up in half. This lifts the bow enough that I can see the tear. With my awl I cut small holes in the lips of the tear and the foam plug. I force through codline and tie the plug in place. As I have done so many times before, I lash it up, add external pressure lines, tourniquets, the works. When Ducky is afloat again, I can still hear a high whistle of escaping air echoing through her tubes.

  Again the night is miserable. Choppy six-to ten-foot seas are on the attack. The canopy dribbles its sour water over me. Intense, stabbing pain from salt water sores mixes with throbbing aches that run through my muscles.

  MARCH 27

  DAY 51

  At 9:00 A.M. the patch blows again. The stock of dorados droops against the wet floor of the raft, turning rancid. Hundreds of sores now fester and eat into my nerves, more breaking and oozing each hour. I’ve slept for only four hours or less each night of the past week, eaten less than two pounds of food a day, and worked almost nonstop. I’m beginning to panic.

  Got to stop it! I’ve got to get it sealed! Can’t. Arms too tired to move. Shut up! Got to. No choice. Move, arms, move! I try to order my beaten and bedraggled body back into action. I crawl forward, relash the patch. She blows. I lash it again. She blows! Time and again the sea throws the raft down. Water smashes against me, flinging me into the torrent that sloshes in and out. Stabbing spasms, twinging, throbbing, convulsive cramping, piercing pain. I cannot ta
ke it, I won’t make it. Stop it! Harder, got to pull the strings tighter. Got to try. World is reeling. Words echoing. Forgotten memories. Hands trembling, skin breaking. Pull harder, harder! Groaning, gasping. Pump. How many? Don’t know, can’t count. Three hundred maybe. Top tube, too, another ninety. My arms are being torn from their sockets, and I am being flayed alive. A wave crashes in. My world jumps and shakes. She blows. Tie her up again, harder. Get it to stick. The still hangs lifeless over the bow. Pump up the tube. So long, now, ever so long. Two hundred eighty. Rest. O.K., squeeze. Two eighty-one … She blows!

  Collapse, can’t move. My left arm is searing. With my right, I drag it up onto my chest. Night is here. So very cold, but I do not shiver. I’m lifeless, floating like a wet rag along the top of the sea. Can’t move any more. Numb. The end is come.

  Breathing hard. Gasping! Yes, I guess I am. Eight days I’ve been trying to patch the leak. No more, please, no more. The ocean rolls me about, sloshes over me, beats me, but I do not resist, hardly feel it. Tired, so very tired. Heaven, Nirvana, Moksa … where are they? Can’t see them, don’t feel them. Only the dark. Is this illusion or real? Aah, word games of the religious and philosophical. Words aren’t real. Hours? Yes. Fifty-one days gone and some hours left. I’ve stumbled, fallen, lost. Why, why, why? Eternity? Yes, the ocean rolls on. I roll on. No. Not I. Carbon, water, energy, love. They go on. Skin and bones of the universe, of God, flexing, always moving. I am lost, lost without trace.

  An immense energy pulls at my mind, as if I am imploding within my body. A dark pit widens, surrounding me. I’m frightened, so frightened. My eyes well with tears, pulling me away from the emptiness. Sobbing with rage, pity, and self-pity, clawing at the slope, struggling to crawl out, losing grip, slipping deeper. Hysterical wailing, laments, lost hope. I scrape to catch hold of something, but nothing is there. Darkness widening, closing in. How many eyes have seen like mine? I feel them, all around me, millions of faces, whispering, crowding in, calling, “Come, it is time.”