But Jim stirred, opportunely, with another violent spasm shaking his body and sending tremors across the ropes. At this intrusion, Bob put away the idea of his death. He would at least try to get through this day.
They fell asleep again, the two men, the seventy-first morning of life within an eighteen-inch air pocket.
In the late afternoon, Bob awoke in fright. A hand was on his shoulder. Wildly he turned and saw Jim’s face bending near him.
“What is it?” asked Bob frantically, feeling for the place where he had hidden the knives. With relief he felt their blades between his mattress and the ropes.
“The food,” said Jim, as if it were routine. “Here.” He pitched the piteous lot onto Bob’s bed. One last can of sardines, the jar of peanut butter less than one quarter full, a pack of cherry Kool-Aid, a packet of freeze-dried peas. Bob had forgotten these. In the inventory of his mind he had misplaced them.
Eagerly he set about to prepare a meal. Bob filled his cup with seawater and dropped five peas in, watching them soak and expand, as if life were swelling within them. He ate them one at a time, savoring each molecule, taking a full hour to consume what would occupy but half a spoon. But never did his eyes stray from the restless, tossing figure of Jim.
When it was dark again, Bob began to think once more about how he would dispose of Jim’s body. It could not be long before he must face this task. He could not possibly drag a dead man through the hole for burial as he had Linda. The simplest method, he reasoned, would be to push Jim off the bed and into the water, hoping that the body would wash out through one of the open hatches, as the tuna had found freedom. But what if it didn’t? What if Jim’s remains lodged against a corner of the Triton and stayed there, rubbing against the wood, making a noise of excruciating horror? What if the corpse bloated and rose to the surface and floated about beneath the bed? Bob threw the heels of his hands against his eyes and tried to black out the grim visions. There were moments when he wondered about his own sanity, when he questioned his rationality. Linda’s mind had deteriorated. Jim’s was splintering. When would he tumble into madness? Was he already there?
Near midnight Bob reached a terrible conclusion. If Jim died, he must take the knives and cut the corpse into little pieces and pitch them up and out and through the hole. The work would be strenuous, but there was no other option.
So it comes to this, he told himself, trying but failing to deny the horror of what he was thinking. He shuddered. Revulsion filled him. He promised himself he would not even consider this again. But it returned. Finally he knew that he could not expel this last demand of survival. He would renew his strength by drinking Jim’s blood.
He began to sharpen the knives.
(19)
The moment he awoke on the morning of September 20, Bob remembered what he had decided to do in the event of Jim’s death. He looked carefully at his brother-in-law, noting that Jim was bulky with clothing—two pair of jeans, two wool sweaters, a ski jacket, and, on top of everything else, a wet suit and a life jacket.
How will I get all those off of him? Bob worried. By the time I peel the layers of clothes away, I will be too weak to use my knives. I must strip him now, before he goes. He must help me.
“Jim?” he called out once more. “It’s morning. Are you still giving up?”
Silence.
“If you are giving up, Jim, can I have your life jacket?”
After several minutes, Jim suddenly said, quite rationally, “Yes, of course, after I’m dead.”
“But I need it now, Jim. If you die, I’ll never get it off you. I’m just as tired as you are.”
“I’m cold at night.”
“Please, Jim. Give me your life jacket.”
When no response came, Bob shut his eyes to dam the tears of frustration. His head throbbed. He wanted to sleep, but he feared what Jim might do to him.
Near noon, their chamber was a steam room. Taking the towel, Bob dipped it in the sea and put it over his face, hoping it would cool him. He made note that he must raise the cloth every few seconds and inspect Jim. But the heat and the gentle rocking of the boat lulled him to sleep.
At the first sound, Bob thought he was dreaming, for long ago it had become difficult to mark the edge between consciousness and unconsciousness. But when the gagging noise continued, increasing, became reality, Bob ripped the rag from his eyes and spun around in his bed.
In horror he saw. He screamed, “No, Jim!”
While Bob slept, Jim had taken a long piece of the 150-pound test fishing cord and looped it about his own throat. Tying it to the beam behind him, he had lunged forward in his bed, clumsily seeking to push his body off the edge, into the water. Now he lay struggling, feet dangling above the water, the cord garrotting his neck.
In a blur of motion, Bob grabbed his knife and reached over to Jim. He easily sliced the cord that contained the noose. Then he seized Jim’s shoulders and dragged him back to where he normally lay. The suicide was aborted.
Both men were spent. They lay trembling in their beds, limbs jerking involuntarily, mouths opening and closing in search of air. Neither spoke of what had happened. Perhaps, thought Bob, he will not remember it. He must be totally mad to risk the wrath of his God.
In the middle of the hot, quiet afternoon, Jim broke the silence. “I’m thirsty,” he said.
“You’ll have to wait till Monday,” said Bob.
“When is Monday?”
“Today’s Thursday … God, Jim, don’t try to kill yourself again.”
“Did I? I don’t remember.… I can’t wait until Monday.”
“You’ll have to.”
Later, Jim sounded as if he were weeping. Bob listened, not daring to intrude. “I’m sorry,” Jim said.
“That’s all right,” answered Bob kindly. “You didn’t know what you were doing. We’re both about out of our minds.”
Something touched Bob. He turned slowly. Jim had removed his life vest and was handing it to Bob.
“Wear it,” he said. “Or nail it on top.”
Bob nodded. “Are you still giving up?”
There were no more words left in Jim. His lips moved silently in a prayer of submission.
Somehow they endured yet another night.
On the morning of September 21, their seventy-third day lost at sea, Bob awoke on schedule and felt somehow better. Perhaps yesterday was the bottom, he thought, as he took his sip of water. He examined the jug. If Jim died today, he decided, he would cut the water ration down even further. There were perhaps fifty swallows left. Fifty swallows could be fifty days. That will be Thanksgiving, said Bob to himself. I will be home by Thanksgiving.
He must keep himself occupied today, he decided. No longer could he drift in and out of sleep. He would resume the routine and stick by it. Until 10 A.M. he would carve, then he would read from Jim’s book, then he would talk, one-sided as it surely would be, until noon. He would repeat the schedule until dinner.
“Jim!” Bob called the name sharply. He reached across and put his fingers across Jim’s wrist, feeling the erratic pulse. There was still life.
Bob took out his knife and began to work on the message he was carving beside the bed. When rescue comes, he told himself, I will rip away this board and take it home as a souvenir. When I am a very old man, I will look at this board where it hangs above my fireplace and I will remember only what I want to remember.
Even the sun was benevolent. Removing the cover from the hole, Bob felt the early air of dawn freshen their quarters. But by the time he was done with his hour of carving, his eyes were burning, begging to be closed. Just a minute or two, he compromised. A catnap.
On this same early autumn morning, in Longview, Washington, members of Bob and Linda’s family were gathered to pack up the possessions of the lost couple. Although no serious hope was held that they would ever be found, no one could bring himself to the final act of selling Bob and Linda’s house and having a court declare them dead. It had been d
ecided to rent the white frame cottage, once owned by an elderly Latvian couple. Bob and Linda had loved this, their first house, Linda always calling it “the kind your grandmother lived in.”
All morning long, the family members worked at the unhappy task, wrapping Linda’s china, silver, and the other wedding gifts. The new people who had rented the house voiced no objection to having the missing owners’ possessions stored in the attic.
The day before, a faculty committee at the college where Bob taught voted to establish a memorial scholarship fund in his memory. Another teacher had been found to take over his history classes.
Bob felt vibrations. The Triton was shuddering.
He awoke with a start, anxious to push away the old nightmare of the boat disintegrating. But there were no unusual sounds, nothing that suggested boards pulling apart or beams splitting. Only a tremor—like the machine one stands on at a carnival to invigorate the feet.
Breathlessly, he waited for the trembling to go away.
Then he heard something else, alien to the sea: the whine of a machine.
He was afraid to draw his breath for fear that it was a dream and the dream would shatter. But the sound remained, grew, came closer. Reaching into the sea beneath him, Bob grabbed a handful of water and splashed his face, wanting the cold shock of reality to make real what was surely another fantasy.
For a fraction of a second, there was silence. Then the vibrations and the mechanical whines renewed. Finally, there were voices. Other voices.
With his last strength Bob struggled from his bed, crawled halfway through the hole, enough for him to see the outside world. Less than twenty yards away was an enormous yellow lifeboat, crowded with sailors, waving at him, snapping photographs of him, bearing him deliverance.
“Jim,” he cried, not daring to move, for still he feared the hallucination would disintegrate. “People, Jim! I think there’re people out here!”
When there came no response from Jim, he wondered if the supreme irony had transpired. Was Jim dead, at the precise moment of rescue? But then Bob felt Jim’s hand clutch at his leg, the hand trying in vain to claw its way up his body. No strength was left in Jim to witness his rescuers, and he fell back, wordless.
Not willing to endure even another few seconds on the Triton, but realizing he must have energy, Bob seized the packet of Kool-Aid and crammed the contents into his mouth, staining his face cherry red, hoping the sugar would course through his atrophied muscles and feed him the energy for what he must do.
He screamed, “We’re alive!” Then Bob pulled himself through the hole and sprawled onto the surface of the Triton. He lunged and fell into the sea, not caring about its shock, not feeling the cold, falling, flailing his arms, not worrying that he was perhaps cashing his last chip of strength.
Two heavily muscled arms reached quickly into the sea and raised Bob, sputtering and choking. As he felt himself lowered gently to the floor of the lifeboat and swaddled in warm, dry blankets, Bob gasped, “Jim’s still in there!” He flung one numbed arm toward the Triton, but he held tightly with the other to the man with strong arms. His savior nodded and smiled in reassurance.
The lifeboat nuzzled alongside the capsized trimaran. Two sailors leaped easily across and descended through the hole, where they found Jim. He was crying. He made an “okay” sign with his thumb and his index finger. As they lifted him like a malnourished child and made a cradle of their arms, he wept. “Thank you, God,” he murmured. Then he blacked out.
When the sailors passed Jim’s frail body across to the others in the yellow boat, he came to, blinking his eyes wildly, as a man emerging in the light and accustomed only to the darkness. He cried out abruptly, “We’re missionaries!”
From where he lay at the bottom of the lifeboat, Bob heard the curious declaration and cleared his throat to correct it. But at that moment the engine revved and the boat burst away. Raising his head, Bob saw directly before them the most dazzling sight he had ever beheld—a glistening new cargo ship. He sobbed uncontrolledly.
As the lifeboat ascended by pulleys to the deck of the great ship, Bob glanced back for the last time. Already the Triton was but a speck on the sea. Even at less than five hundred yards, she was difficult to locate, her orange jackets and curtains and nailed down sinks and hot plates somehow melding and blending into the sun and shadows.
Bob held the Triton in his gaze for a moment. Then he shut his eyes. He could not look on her again.
(20)
Two hours before, at about the moment when Bob was looking at Jim and wondering how he would peel away the layers of clothing so that he could more easily sever his limbs if he died, a young Scottish merchant seaman had gazed routinely out from his watch. The seaman served on the S.S. Benalder, a 58,000-ton British container ship, bound from the east coast ports of the United States to Japan. The huge vessel, almost one thousand feet long, was a few days out of the Panama Canal and hurrying to the Orient via the great circle route.
Something odd broke the monotony of the sea to the sailor’s eye. At first he took what he saw to be a shadow. But when he lifted his binoculars, the shadow coalesced in focus and became a capsized boat.
The seaman strode briskly to the ship’s master who peered down through his glasses. On a yellow pad he made these notes:
“Upturned trimaran, blue and white hull, possible number on side #WA 5456. Showing red flag. No signs life. Fresh paint!”
The Benalder was only a few thousand yards away at that moment, and the sea was calm, visibility good. If there were life aboard the pathetic little boat, said the master, surely someone would be out on deck—or whatever you call the bottom of a boat when it is floating on top of the water—waving a distress signal.
The master made the decision not to stop and inspect the mysterious sight. But he ordered the news radioed to the U. S. Coast Guard in San Francisco. There the message was received and studied by Lieutenant Victor E. Hipkiss, controller on watch. By a stroke of fortune, Lieutenant Hipkiss has been on duty during the fruitless search for the Triton. But that was two long months ago.
Nevertheless, Lieutenant Hipkiss was intrigued enough to request the master of the Benalder to turn his great ship around and dispatch a search party to investigate, board the trimaran, and determine its fate. Lieutenant Hipkiss told a skeptical colleague in the radio room that it was unlikely that this could be the Triton. He looked at the map dominating the control room. The Benalder’s radio position was more than a thousand miles due west of Los Angeles, almost halfway to Hawaii. A trimaran simply could not drift that far without breaking into pieces. A thousand miles!
But the mystery, said the lieutenant, was too tantalizing not to investigate.
The two men were carried on stretchers into a cabin that served as sick bay, and placed in adjoining beds. No doctor was on board, but a crew member familiar with routine medical procedures took their life signs.
Meanwhile, radio messages hurried back and forth across the Pacific, determining what to do with the two survivors. The nearest port was Hawaii, but the Benalder would have to make a costly and time-consuming detour. It was arranged, therefore, that the ship would take her new passengers to Midway Island, where a U. S. military plane could ferry them to a hospital in Honolulu.
The U. S. Public Health Service in Honolulu was notified, and doctors there cabled the Benalder with the following questionnaire:
1. Please give general statement about patients’ condition.
2. Please give pulse, respiration, and temperature.
3. Can patients stand and walk by themselves?
4. Are patients suffering from sunburn or skin infection?
5. Do patients have any specific complaint?
6. Before sailing, did patients have any medical problems we should be aware of?
7. Did they take, or are they taking now, any medication?
8. Please describe how much water and what type of food patients had for two-month period.
The que
stions were quickly answered. Both men were in “fair” condition. Neither had sunburn or skin infection. Jim Fisher had lost one hundred pounds, Bob Tininenko only fifty. Neither was able to stand or walk. No known medical problems prior to departure on July 2. One item of concern: While Tininenko’s pulse rate was a surprisingly stable 65, Fisher’s was erratic and high, from 90 to 110. Their diet—chiefly sardines and peanut butter.
“Both men,” radioed the Benalder’s master, “are extremely weak, especially Fisher, but they have been washed and are taking warm orange juice and they are in good shape, considering their extraordinary ordeal.”
Within an hour of being aboard the Benalder, Bob was happily sipping orange juice. Jim could not hold a cup, nor keep the liquids down on his own, so he was fed drop-by-drop with a syringe.
No sooner was Bob done with the first cup of juice than he asked for a second. Then he took a glass of beef broth. Off went another cable to Honolulu: Exactly how much liquid could he safely consume? If the kidneys are functioning, came the reply, as much as he can accommodate. On the first day aboard the Benalder, Bob drank an astonishing ten gallons of liquid. That his kidneys worked well was cabled to the doctors in Honolulu waiting for the two men. The news was also known by the seamen who were busy emptying bedside urinals all day.
Telegrams were sent to the parents of Bob and Jim, and to Jim’s wife, Wilma, via the Coast Guard. It was past midnight in Moses Lake, Washington, where Wilma Fisher was staying with her husband’s parents. For two and one half months, she had drifted on a sea of her own, from relative to relative, not knowing her husband’s fate, not willing to declare herself legally a widow, not able to accept the verdict of “lost and presumed dead” on everyone else’s lips. She had prepared her two small sons by taking them aside one afternoon and telling them directly, “We may not see our Daddy again.” But in her heart was still a small fire of hope. As devout as Jim, she prayed most of each day. That she had no home, no car, no furniture, no money, no future, that her third child was due in a few weeks, these concerned her less than being condemned to live in a cruel state of uncertainty.
Lost! Page 18