When they were done, Bob found a piece of wood about two feet wide and four feet across and, with some of the remaining white paint, dashed off a variation of the classic message in a bottle: “The TRITON—Capsized July 11, 1973, off Cape Mendocino, Cal. Three people on board. All safe. If this is found, please call Coast Guard in San Francisco or L.A. Today is July 13, 1973.”
As he waited for the sign to dry, admiring his newfound talent for art, Bob heard Jim approach behind him. Reading the legend, Jim shook his head. It was not necessary, his eyes said clearly. But he did not comment. With crossed fingers, Bob hurled the painted board into the sea, watching the waves carry it away, watching until it was gone.
Dinner was the second half of the vegelink. Bob and Linda chewed slowly, savoring each morsel, trying to stretch the meal period into a full hour. But Jim disposed of his in two rapid bites. He was anxious to begin observation of his Sabbath eve.
“Do you mind if I have an informal Friday evening service?” asked Jim.
Bob nodded agreeably. The day had been an easy and productive one, and he did not want to be the cause of friction just before they must try to sleep.
With his harmonica, Jim began playing Sabbath school songs, tunes that Bob had learned three decades ago. Perhaps Jim played by chance, perhaps he chose them purposefully. Whichever, they washed memories over Bob, memories of other Friday nights, of brothers and sisters warmed by a blazing hearth, of a father reading from the family Bible—his grandmother reading hers in Russian. He could almost taste the great pot of borscht that the women had prepared to last throughout the Sabbath hours, for it was forbidden to work or cook. And the buns!—quickly made and fried and tossed in hot garlic oil, piled high on a platter to dip into the soup. On Fridays the house would smell of roasting chickens that had to be golden brown by the end of the day’s sun because the stoves were turned off then. The kitchen could not return to life until Saturday night. Everything had to stop for God’s holy day.
Now, lost somewhere in the world’s largest ocean, Bob found temporary harbor in the memory of those bonds.
“‘Jesus in the family … happy, happy home,’” said Jim, his eyes almost mocking Bob over his harmonica. It was a song every Adventist child could sing. Linda, knowing neither the words nor their importance to her husband, clapped along evangelically. When it was done, she requested one from her young years, “Jesus Loves Me,” which Jim played merrily, followed by “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” which set them laughing and whooping and repeating themselves for a secular round of fun.
But the song had to end, and Jim knew no others. He put away his harmonica to read silently from his Adventist book. As the night slipped from their room, he asked if he could pray.
“Have at it,” said Bob.
“I mean,” said Jim cautiously, “a real prayer. Out loud.”
“If you want.” The music had warmed Bob and the memories still clung to him in the silence.
“Dear Lord, dear Jesus,” prayed Jim, his eyes tightly closed, his hands possessing his book as if it were the Grail. How quickly the power filled him, swelling his voice! Blessings were asked for his wife, his sons, his unborn child, his parents, for Bob’s family, for Linda’s people. And then he stopped, as if the prayer were done. But he had not intoned his customary, “Thank you, Jesus, for hearing and answering our prayers,” and Bob expected more would come.
“And if it is Your will, dear Jesus, that we be rescued,” continued Jim, “then we are ready to be rescued. We do not want to rush You, Jesus, for we know that Your heavenly plan will be unfolded. But we want You to know that we are waiting. Thank You for hearing and answering our prayer, dear Jesus. Amen.”
Beside him, Linda said “Amen.” Her benediction surprised Bob, for he had assumed her religion was even more casual than his. Rarely had they attended formal church services during their three years of marriage.
After the singing, after the prayer, Linda went to sleep quickly, passing the entire night, for the first time, without trembling or screaming.
The next morning brought yet another first. A brilliant sun illumined Jim’s Sabbath, a clear and hopeful Saturday dawn that contained none of the dark gloom that had commenced each of their days since the capsizing. Rays of warmth and light burst through the cutout place in the board that covered the hole above their heads.
Linda awoke excitedly. She shook Bob, anxious to climb outside where she could dry her clothing and bed covers. They all lived in a state of constant dampness. Since the hour they had taken refuge inside the Triton’s main hull, Linda had not left her bed. For two days and three nights her world had been eighteen inches wide and less than six feet long.
But first, suggested Jim, why not join him in Sabbath services and thank God for the sun and its promise? Linda agreed to wait. His service followed the formula from the night before: hymns on the harmonica, a text from The Great Controversy, and a concluding prayer. Linda paid little attention to the words, for she was listening more to the sonority than the content. But Bob heard, and what he heard disturbed him. Jim’s prayer seemed to be a continuation of the one from the previous night.
Turning his face to the sunlight, Jim spoke to the Lord. “Dear Jesus, touch each of our hearts. Help us to prepare ourselves for the hour of rescue. Now it is clear. Now we understand, dear Jesus. We understand that You will not rescue us until each of us is prepared. Speak to our hearts, dear Jesus, make our hearts right so that You can rescue us. Thank You for hearing and answering our prayers, dear Jesus. Amen.”
With that, Jim took his half of vegelink and hoisted himself through the hole for breakfast in the sunlight. But the prayer remained, troubling Bob. He could not be sure, but it seemed that Jim was edging closer and closer to a point he wished to make. Bob decided to wait for one more prayer before he took Jim to the mat.
Linda expelled Bob to topside and said she would call him presently. Obeying, Bob pulled himself up and onto the freshly painted bottom of the capsized Triton and sat down. A dozen feet away, Jim faced him. But they did not speak. The current between them, however, was electric.
In Bob’s absence, Linda combed her hair carefully and put on makeup, having tested her cosmetics and determined that they were, at last, dry. As she worked, peering into the tiny mirror built into her purse, she hummed gaily. The discovery of her purse had buoyed her spirits. At twenty-four she was beautiful with or without makeup, even with only salt water to cleanse her face. But she found, as most women do, solace in the jars of cream and color.
When done, she called out to Bob to help her. He stuck his face into the hole and peered down at the beds. Linda smiled flirtatiously. It worked. Bob whistled in appreciation. “You’re beautiful,” he said. He noticed a line of pain around her eyes that the makeup could not hide, but he did not remark on it.
“That’s the best I can do,” said Linda. “Give me a hand.” She raised her arms and Bob grabbed them.
“How do you manage to stay gorgeous in the middle of a shipwreck?” he asked. “Ready?”
Bob pulled his wife through the hole and prepared to embrace her. But in the few seconds it took to help her onto the surface of the boat, her newly decorated face became masked with intense pain. She lay on the arching slope of the overturned trimaran and breathed heavily.
“What is it, honey?” asked Bob, bending down beside her.
“It’s nothing,” lied Linda. “My legs hurt a little. Probably cramps. They’ll go away.”
“Maybe I’d better take a look.”
“No!” Linda grabbed her husband’s hand and refused to let him touch her.
“Linda, it won’t hurt to look. You might have bruised something when we capsized. Let Doctor Tininenko examine the patient.”
Reluctantly she permitted him to pull off her jeans. They had not been removed since the moment the Triton flipped over. And then Bob saw. It was all he could do to avoid recoiling in horror.
Covering Linda’s hips, thighs, legs, all the way to he
r ankles, were sores—some as large as a tennis ball, the others more the size of a quarter, all festering, puckering with white infection. Bob counted quickly. At least fifty. Maybe twice that. Obviously she had been and was in intense pain.
“Poor baby,” said Bob, trying to sound calm, “you’ve got a bunch of lousy sores. Must be an allergy or something.”
Linda knew their cause. Ever since the boat turned over, there had been no discussion of toilet needs. The men had been urinating inside their pants, automatically rinsing their clothes when they dropped into the water to search for supplies. And they had made trap holes in their mattresses which made it easy to unfasten their flies and urinate into the sea, flushing continuously beneath them.
But Linda had not left her bed, nor was there any convenient way she could urinate other than simply passing water inside her jeans. The urine combined with the salt water that always dampened her clothing, and the reaction was an eruption of sores and infection on the lower half of her body. Moreover, Bob noticed large purple bruises on her knees and elbows, where she had clung so desperately—as they all had—the morning they waited futilely for the Coast Guard plane to find them.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” said Bob. “We’ve got to start doctoring these.”
“They didn’t bother me,” said Linda. The pain had not seemed worth telling about, so great were their other problems.
Bob took the bed sheet and dried it in the sun and placed it over Linda’s legs so that she could, modesty’s dues paid, feel the warmth. But within less than an hour she had grown so weary that Bob had to lift her and gently take her back through the hole to their bed. From the medicine kit, Bob took penicillin salve and spread it over her legs. As he worked, he wished for fresh water to bathe the sores.
And then he remembered. The water distillation kit! It would be usable today because the sun was out, its power able to withdraw the salt from the seawater and deliver them gallons of fresh. If the sun held, and fair weather could be hoped for since the summer day was July 14, they would have an inexhaustible supply of water.
Bob stuck his head through the hole and called to Jim, who was sitting pensively, staring out at the sea. Although he had caught but a glimpse of Linda’s sores, Jim seemed deeply affected by her suffering. He had turned quickly from the corruption and found a place away from them where he could sit alone in brooding silence.
“Jim!” called Bob. “Let’s set up the water distillation kit.”
Jim turned slowly. “Where is it?” he called down, as if the existence of the apparatus was a revelation to him.
“Where is it?” Bob echoed. “What do you mean, ‘Where is it?’ I gave it to you the second day to keep. You put it up somewhere, remember?”
With a noncommittal shift of his shoulders, Jim descended slowly through the hole and dropped onto his bed. For a few moments he rummaged brusquely through the food and supplies he had stored at the place near his feet. Then he turned and shook his head. Negatively. Impassively.
“Can’t find it,” he said. He spoke casually, as if he could not find a missing button or a sock dropped under the bed.
In disbelief Bob stared at him. “You’re kidding me,” he said. “Hand it here so I can set it up. There’s good sun. We should have water by dark.”
Jim stretched out on his bed. He looked at the oppressive ceiling, inches from his face. He would not look at his brother-in-law. “It’s simply not there, Bob. I guess it fell off.”
Rage leaping within him, Bob lunged across the space dividing the two mattresses. He crawled about Jim’s body, pawing desperately through the possessions. The book. The knife. An opened can of peanut butter. A camera. Binoculars. Not there! A torrent of conflicting ideas careened through Bob’s brain. Was Jim joking? Was this the punch line to a burlesque skit of blackest comedy? Was he concealing the kit for his own use? Was it already set up somewhere in a secret place? Had it really fallen into the water? Did it ever exist? Did he imagine finding it and handing it to Jim? Am I dreaming this very moment? Am I going mad? Now a scream escaped him and as he cried, he rolled into the water beneath the rope platforms, thrashing wildly in search of the missing kit.
“Help me, dammit! Help me!” Bob yelled at Jim, reaching up with wet hands and trying to pull him forcibly into the water. Jim drew back, expelling Bob’s grasp, as one would deny the importunings of the deranged.
A small piece of something bobbed a dozen feet away in the corner of the hull and Bob, seeing it, leaped por-poiselike out of the water and crashed toward it, seizing the object with his hands and lifting it hurriedly to his eyes. It was nothing but torn plywood, ripped from a cabinet, and Bob hurled it angrily against the wall.
Across the water, in a voice of calm and serenity, Jim spoke to him. “Maybe it is the will of God that we no longer have the kit.”
“No!” Bob gulped air and plunged to the floor of the hull, staying under until his lungs ached and demanded that he end his search. Defeated, his body throbbing from the cold, Bob swam to his bed and dragged himself up, collapsing beside Linda, burying his face in the damp mattress and trying to expel the terrible thought that consumed him.
It seemed impossible, cruel, and Bob sought to dismiss it from his consciousness. But it simply lodged there, like the piece of flotsam in the corner of the hull, refusing to go away.
The pieces were coming together. The puzzle was not yet formed, but an outline was there. It seemed possible that Jim had deliberately thrown away the water distillation kit. Perhaps he had even destroyed the balls of cheese and the macaroni and the rice and other food he had not even disclosed. Perhaps, thought Bob, Jim is systematically stripping us, denying us nourishment, denuding us in the eyes of his omniscient God. Only Bob dared not articulate his worry, for he preferred to be nagged by possibility than be devastated by confirmation.
But, then, Jim’s next intonement made it all but clear. “We must be totally dependent upon God,” he said softly. “If we made water ourselves, then we would congratulate ourselves and perhaps live a long time and believe that we did it all. I believe it is God’s will that the kit is gone. We must be dependent upon the Lord.”
Bob bit into his mattress to keep from screaming.
(8)
Linda heard the sound first, a drone as faint as a fly buzzing in the far corner of a summer room. She raised up on her elbows, wanting to believe her ears but almost fearful of calling attention. But the noise held. It was there! She shook Bob, daydreaming beside her.
“Listen!” she commanded in a hushed whisper. Bob strained his attention to the exit hole.
Now the drone was louder. It could not be confused with the familiar sounds from the sea. An alien sound, the sound of man. Rescue!
Bob fairly leaped through the hole, shouting at Jim to follow him. The two sprang onto the Triton’s surface, leaving Linda behind, begging to follow but too discomforted by her sores to make the climb.
On the horizon, bearing directly at them from the south, making zigzag patterns across the sky, was a small, two-seater airplane. It seemed obviously in search of something. And below, moving stately across the waves, was a ship, a thin line of grayish smoke leading almost to the plane, as if they were linked by this slender thread. Obviously they were partners.
Had the seascape been the face of a clock, both the plane and the ship would first have been seen at ten o’clock. And by the time they reached an imaginary high noon, Bob and Jim were leaping and dancing on the sloping bottom of the Triton. Waving an orange life jacket, Bob cried across the waves. Jim flagged his hands in frantic semaphore. Below them, in her bed, Linda wept with happiness. She looked at the wall where Bob was carving a daily calendar. July 18, 1973. Eight days lost at sea. He would never carve the ninth!
But the plane abruptly turned, banked east, and disappeared in a shelf of clouds. Never mind, thought Bob. We’ve been seen, the ship is coming to take us. Ten minutes dragged by, the men growing tired from their leaping and waving. The s
hip seemed to stop less than two miles from them. Then it started again, executing a right-angle sweep and racing away toward the northeast. The plane reappeared from the clouds, circling over the ship in some sort of reunion salute. Both proceeded purposefully toward two o’clock on the fantasy clock. Within the longest quarter hour of Bob’s life, they vanished, the plane consumed by the horizon as surely as if it had been shot down.
The two men screamed and begged and implored with their aching arms for the rescuers to return. But they were left exactly as they had been at the moment Linda first heard the faraway drone. Alone.
Dejectedly, Bob sat down. “Now they’ll figure they’ve searched this area,” he said bitterly. “They won’t come back.”
Jim only nodded knowingly, as if he were privy to information Bob did not possess.
That night Linda said she could not take solid food. She had neither the strength to chew it nor the will to keep it down. Bob insisted that she try to take a bite of sardine, but she gagged when she put it in her mouth and the salted fish fell from her lips into the water below the bed.
In despair, Bob remembered the powdered milk packets they had found. Almost dreading the reply, he asked Jim, “Do we still have the powdered milk?”
Jim looked in the storage place and held up four packs.
“Tomorrow,” said Bob, “I’m going to swim to the outriggers and see if there’s any water left.”
“There won’t be any water,” said Jim.
Bob shook his head. “It’s worth a look. I remember wedging some of the containers pretty tightly in the forward hull. It’s possible some of them didn’t wash out.” In the eight days since they had capsized, they had drunk only the liquids from the canned goods. Bob had always wanted to swim to the outriggers to look for water, but the seas had been too choppy and cold to risk plunging in and prowling underneath the Triton.
Lost! Page 7