Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (11 page)

The oar was useless for a raft that big. It was only a stick. It wasn’t even useful as a probe to find out how deep the water was. In the first few minutes, with the abnormal strength that emotion gave me, I managed to advance a little. But then I was exhausted. I raised the oar a moment to look at the lush greenery before my eyes and I noticed that a current running parallel to the shoreline was carrying the raft along toward the cliffs.

How I regretted losing my oars! Even one of them, whole and not splintered by a shark like the piece I held in my hand, would have helped me take advantage of the current. For a few moments I thought I would have the patience to wait until the raft reached the cliffs. They glittered beneath the first sun of morning like a mountain of needles.
Luckily, I was so desperate to feel the earth under my feet that my chances of reaching them seemed too remote to bear: I later learned that those cliffs were in fact the shoals of Punta Caribana, and if the current had swept me into them, I would have been dashed against the rocks.

I tried to calculate how much strength I had left. I had to swim two kilometers to reach shore. Normally I could swim two kilometers in less than an hour. However, I didn’t know how long I could swim after ten days without eating anything but a bite of fish and a root, with my body covered by blisters and with an injured knee. But it was my last chance; I didn’t have time to think about it. I didn’t even have time to remember the sharks. I let go of the oar, closed my eyes, and plunged into the water.

Once I hit the icy water I felt better. From that vantage I lost sight of shore. But after being in the water awhile, I realized I had made two mistakes: I hadn’t taken off my shirt and I hadn’t tightened my shoes. Those were the first things I had to do before starting to swim. I tried to float. I took off my shirt and tied it firmly around my waist. Then I tightened my shoelaces. Now I began to swim, desperately at first, then more calmly, realizing that with each stroke I was depleting my strength and that I still couldn’t even see the shore.

I hadn’t gone five meters when I realized that my chain with the Virgin of Carmen medal had come off. I stopped, and managed to grab it as I began to sink into the turbulent green water. Since I had no time to put it in my pocket, I clenched it tightly between my teeth and kept on swimming.

I felt my strength ebbing but I still couldn’t see land. Then I was terrified again: maybe—no, surely—the land
had been just another hallucination. The cool water had made me feel better and I was now in possession of my faculties, swimming feverishly toward an imaginary beach. But now I had covered too much distance: it was impossible to go back and look for the raft.

12
R
esurrection in a
S
trange
L
and

Only after swimming furiously for fifteen minutes did I sight land again. It was still more than a kilometer away. But now I hadn’t the slightest doubt that it was real and not just an apparition. The sun shone gold on the tops of the coconut palms. There were no lights on shore. There wasn’t a town or a house visible from the sea. But it was land.

After twenty minutes I was exhausted, but I was sure I would make it. I swam on faith, trying not to let emotion make me lose control. I had spent half my life in the water but it wasn’t until that morning of March 9 that I understood and appreciated the importance of being a good swimmer. Even though I was losing strength all the time, I kept on swimming toward shore. As I got closer, I could see the coconut palms more and more clearly.

The sun rose just as I felt I could touch bottom. I tried, but it was still too deep. Apparently I wasn’t close to a
beach. The water was deep very near the shore, so I had to go on swimming. I don’t know exactly how long I swam. As I got closer to shore the sun heated up overhead, but it was now warming my muscles rather than punishing my skin. For the first few meters the icy water had me worrying about cramps. But my body warmed up quickly, and then the water seemed less cold and I swam with fatigue, as if in a haze, but with a spirit and a faith that prevailed over hunger and thirst.

I saw the thick foliage clearly in the weak morning sun as I tried to touch bottom a second time. The ground was right there beneath my feet. What a strange sensation it was to touch the ground after drifting at sea for ten days.

But I realized very quickly that the worst was yet to come. I was totally exhausted. I couldn’t stand up. The undertow threw me back into the water, away from the beach. I had the Virgin of Carmen medal clenched between my teeth. My wet clothes and my rubber-soled shoes were terribly heavy. But even in such extreme circumstances one is modest; I thought that at any moment I might meet someone. So I went on struggling against the undertow without taking off my clothes, which hindered my progress. I was beginning to feel faint from exhaustion.

The water was above my waist. With tremendous effort, I managed to push ahead to where it was only up to my thighs. Then I decided to crawl. I dug into the sand with my hands and knees and pushed myself forward. But it was useless; the waves pushed me back. The tiny sharp grains of sand abraded the wound on my knee. I knew it was bleeding but I didn’t feel pain. My fingertips were scraped raw. Even though I could feel the sand penetrate the flesh under my fingernails, I dug my fingers into it and tried
to crawl forward. Very soon I felt another wave of terror: the land and the golden coconut palms began to sway before my eyes. I thought I was being swallowed up by the earth.

But that was probably an illusion brought on by exhaustion. The thought that I might be in quicksand gave me tremendous energy—a vitality born of terror—and painfully, without mercy for my raw fingertips, I went on crawling against the force of the undertow. Ten minutes later, all the suffering and hunger and thirst of ten days took their toll on my body. I lay exhausted on the warm, hard beach, not thinking about anything, not thanking anyone, not even rejoicing that, by force of will, hope, and an indefatigable desire to live, I had found this stretch of silent, unknown beach.

The first thing you notice on land is the silence. Before you know it, you’re enveloped in a great silence. A moment later you hear the waves, distant and sad, crashing on the beach. And the murmur of the breeze amid the coconut palms heightens the feeling that you’re on land. Then there is the knowledge that you’ve saved yourself, even if you don’t know what part of the world you’re in.

Once I had pulled myself together a bit, I began to look around as I lay there on the beach. The landscape was harsh. Instinctively, I looked for human footprints. There was a barbed-wire fence about twenty meters away. There was a narrow, twisting road with animal tracks on it. And next to the road there were some coconut shells.
At that moment, the slightest trace of a human presence took on the importance of revelation. Boundlessly happy, I rested my cheek on the warm sand and began to wait.

I lay there for about ten minutes. Little by little I was regaining my strength. It was after six in the morning and the sun shone brightly. Among the coconut shells along the side of the road were some whole coconuts. I crawled toward them, propped myself up on a tree trunk, and pressed one of the smooth, impenetrable fruits between my knees. Anxiously I inspected it for soft spots, as I had done with the fish five days before. With each turn I could feel the milk splash inside. The deep, guttural sound reawakened my thirst. My stomach ached, the wound on my knee was bleeding, and my fingers, raw at the tips, throbbed with a slow, deep pain. During the ten days at sea there had never been a moment when I felt I would go crazy, but I thought I would that morning as I turned the coconut round and round, trying to find a place to open it and listening to the clean, fresh, inaccessible milk splash around inside.

A coconut has three eyes at the top, arranged in a triangle. But first you have to shell the coconut with a machete to get to them. I had only my keys. Several times I tried using them to cut into the hard, tough shell, but I had no luck. Eventually I gave up. I flung the coconut away in a rage, still hearing the milk splash inside.

The road was my last hope. There at my feet the cracked shells suggested that someone came around to knock down coconuts—that someone came by every day, climbed the trees, and shelled the coconuts. And there must be an inhabited place nearby, because nobody travels a long distance just to collect a load of coconuts.

I was thinking about all that, propped up against the
tree trunk, when I heard the distant barking of a dog. My senses grew alert. I was on guard. A moment later, I thought I distinctly heard the clanging of something metallic coming closer on the road.

It was a black girl, incredibly thin, young, and dressed in white. She was carrying a little aluminum jug, the top of which was loose and jangled with every step she took. What country am I in? I wondered as I watched the black girl, who looked Jamaican, walking toward me along the road. I thought of the islands of San Andrés and Providencia. I recalled all the islands in the Antilles. This girl was my first chance, but also possibly my last. Will she understand Spanish? I wondered, trying to read the face of the girl, who, not having seen me, was distractedly scuffling along the road in her dusty leather slippers. I was so desperate not to miss my chance that the absurd thought occurred to me that she wouldn’t understand me if I spoke to her in Spanish—that she would leave me there at the side of the road.

“Hello! Hello!” I said anxiously, in English.

She turned and looked at me with huge, white, fearful eyes.

“Help me!” I exclaimed, convinced she understood me.

She hesitated a moment, stared at me again, and took off like a shot, scared to death.

I thought I would die of anxiety. In a flash I saw myself right at that spot, dead, picked apart by vultures. But then I heard the dog bark again. My heart started to pound as the barking got closer. I raised myself up on the palms of
my hands. I lifted my head. I waited. One minute. Two. The barking grew closer. Soon there was only silence. Then the crash of waves and the rustle of the wind in the coconut palms. Then, after the longest minute of my life, an emaciated dog appeared, followed by a donkey laden with a basket on either side. Behind them walked a pale white man wearing a straw hat and pants rolled up to his knees. He had a rifle slung across his back.

He saw me as soon as he rounded the bend in the road, and looked at me in surprise. He stopped. The dog, with its tail pointing straight up, came over to sniff at me. The man stood still, in silence. Then he unslung his rifle, planted its butt in the ground, and went on watching me.

I don’t know why, but I thought I was somewhere in the Caribbean other than Colombia. Not certain he would understand me, I nevertheless decided to speak Spanish to him.

“Señor, help me,” I said.

He didn’t answer right away. He continued to look at me enigmatically, without even blinking, his rifle stuck in the ground. All I needed now was for him to shoot me, I thought dispassionately. The dog licked my face, but I didn’t have the strength to move away.

“Help me,” I repeated desperately, worried that the man hadn’t understood me.

“What happened to you?” he asked in a friendly tone of voice.

When I heard him speak I realized that, more than thirst, hunger, and despair, what tormented me most was the need to tell someone what had happened to me.

Almost choking on the words, I said, without taking a breath, “I am Luis Alejandro Velasco, one of the sailors
who fell overboard from the destroyer
Caldas
of the National Fleet on the twenty-eighth of February.”

I thought the whole world would know the story. I thought that as soon as I told him my name, the man would be obliged to help me. But he didn’t budge. He stayed where he was, watching me, not troubling himself about the dog, who was now licking my injured knee.

“Are you a chicken sailor?” he asked, perhaps thinking of the merchant ships that traffic in hogs and poultry along the coast.

“No, I’m a sailor in the Navy.”

Only then did the man move. He slung the rifle across his back again, pushed his hat back on his head, and said, “I’m going to take some wire to the port and then I’ll come back for you.” I thought this was a pretext for him to get away.

“Are you sure you’ll come back?” I asked in a pleading voice.

The man replied that he would. He would be back. For certain. He gave me a kindly smile and resumed walking behind the donkey. The dog stayed by my side, sniffing me. Only when the man was a little farther away did it occur to me to ask him, almost shouting, “What country is this?”

And very matter-of-factly he gave the only answer I wasn’t expecting at that moment: “Colombia.”

13
S
ix
H
undred
M
en
T
ake
M
e to
S
an
J
uan