The Last Ship (72 page)

T
he two vessels lying a scant half a cable’s length apart below the cliff; our own ship, the
Nathan James,
with her sleek gray lines;
Pushkin,
a low, long black configuration, actually a hundred feet longer; each pulling not at all at her anchors, each mirrored in the glassy waters; ancient enemies of the sea, destroyer and submarine, now lying in neighborly proximity. A quietness lay over the scene, over what was happening, and that seamanlike orderliness and competence, excluding the least evidence of agitation, of wasted emotion and energy, which takes over when there is urgent business to be attended to. Coxswains bringing our boats alongside the submarine’s low Jacob’s ladder to offload
Pushkin
’s crew for the short trip ashore, our crewmen assisting each into the boat; presently each helped out, set ashore. I suppose more than by any other single aspect I was struck by what I would term the “naturalness” of the scene, in a way only another sailor would understand; there seemed the minimal of strangeness in it: But no mystery really in this. Sailors even of different nationality are closer than in perhaps any other trade men follow; normal barriers attenuated; by no means completely obliterated, but fewer to start with, and these more swiftly overcome. The explanation obvious: the mutuality of the sea and the sea life, the kind of men drawn to it and the kind of men made by it; origins hardly entering. Sailors off whatever ships inwardly know each other when they meet; they are never strangers. They are brothers of the sea.

More important even was that other ancient law of the sea, indelible in every seaman, of proceeding instantly to the aid of other seamen in distress; the fact that the two ship’s companies were coming together on land in no way lessening this iron commandment. These particular sailors had arrived frail, almost ghostlike figures, bodies depleted, not a few close to the edge. Our hearts went out to them, having been ourselves in not dissimilar condition not all that long ago. I will remember well that scene, watching it from the top of the cliff, when the Russian officers and sailors, scarcely a hundred in number, first climbed, step by slow, agonizing step, up the strong ladders we had fashioned for its ascent; in fact, in such weakened condition were many of the submariners that in each case one of our men went behind one of theirs on the climb, steadying him, helping him up the ladder, ready to catch him should he fall back. When they reached the top, the doc and the hospital corpsmen waiting to take in hand those who immediately needed their attention. The truth of the matter, as the Russian captain had explained to me, was that they were near the end of their tether; their food stores of any kind down to near-zero levels, themselves on just-short-of-starvation rations. We were eager to share the bounties of the island—the fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, fresh fish. What a joy it was to see the way in which these fellow sailors, without such fare virtually since the launchings, now some thirteen months ago, fell on these offerings. Men reprieved, they were, from the long imprisonment of their submarine. I believe they looked upon us as their saviors.

 *  *  * 

I waited several days for his ship’s company, including himself, to get some strength into them before taking the Russian captain on a tour of the settlement. I led him past the central “common” building—mess-headquarters hall—past the men’s dormitories, his murmuring his approbation of their construction qualities, through the guardsmanlike trees that ended at last at the waterfall, symbol of our priceless fresh water supply, where we stood awhile as I described to him the stream that, falling from it, led across the island to our Farm which I also described. I sensed in him the marvel at the setting itself that had struck me when I first saw it that day, seeming now so long ago, that Coxswain Meyer and Seaman Barker and I first set eyes upon it and only the great trees stood there. He listened with the most attentive care, scarcely ever interrupting even with a question, only an occasional “yes, yes” in his good English to certify that he was taking it all in, missing not the smallest detail; a superb listener, like every good ship’s captain I had ever known; briefing him meticulously, in Navy fashion, on the assets of the island: how the Farm was producing abundantly, food supplies increased by the island itself, the excellent fishing grounds just offshore. (Routinely explaining, something as a seaman he would instantly understand, why, despite the difficulty of access presented by the cliffs, we had chosen to build the settlement on this leeward side of the island, hurricanes sure in time to hit the other, windward shore, in addition the cliffs themselves a fortress against violent weather; in fact, since
Pushkin
had arrived a vicious storm bearing Force 11 winds, just below hurricane strength, had attacked the island, battering it for close on to two days, great waves traveling high and white up the unyielding cliffs, Noisy’s buildings, in which we had battened down to ride it out, holding up with hardly a whimper. I was almost glad of the storm, to show how well we had built.)

Naval officers both—more, Navy ship’s captains—all of this was done in the most straightforward fashion. Not the slightest barrier to communication, either in the providing or the receiving of the storehouse of facts, information, so readily assimilated it seemed. It was as if I were briefing a superior, or perhaps the officer sent to relieve me in a routine change-of-command, on the salient aspects of the new command in which he would soon be completely involved. In naval fashion, too, he confined himself, as I say, almost altogether to listening, myself nonetheless continually aware of his sharp, appraising eyes, which seemed to miss nothing. Now and then a question, always to the point, asking a bit more information on this matter or that—e.g., would the Farm and the fishing grounds feed more? “Easily so, Captain. About a hundred more men I would say, with no strain.” “Is that so, Captain?” “Happens,” I said, “to be about the size of the company of
Pushkin,
if I’m not mistaken?” “Why, so it does, Captain.” I could hardly believe that this was his oblique way of verifying that we intended to keep our side of the bargain, although it was true we had not once discussed it since his arrival; on my part, a waiting for physical recovery before proceeding to such matters; on his side, surely almost a question of manners not to ask—in any event I felt this exchange had reassured him. If he needed further confirmation, on passing the dormitories, myself indicating the one in which a good many of his ship’s company were now recuperating, volunteering, “We built an extra one, Captain. Let’s see. For about a hundred men, I believe.” His stopping then, turning and looking me directly in the face, all-serious. “You expected us, Captain?” “When we built the dormitory we hadn’t given up . . . After a while . . . honestly, I cannot say that I did any more, Captain. In fact I had lost hope. In any event I felt the space would one day be usable. Naturally we would expect our community to grow.” Neither making any further allusion to what that remark might easily have led to. We moved on.

Having come some distance we began to pass through the thickest part of the forest, deliberately left so, still some way more before we came upon the first of those dwellings so different from all others, so much smaller, no other structure visible from it, and he stopped a moment in admiration before it. “How well-built, Captain—how neat and well-kept.” That was all. Continuing through the trees, before long another clearing, an identical house, identically isolated, this time a briefer pause while he regarded it—thoughtfully, it seemed to me. Nothing else said. In this fashion proceeding, my guiding us along a hacked-out path that took us past four or five more of these dwellings, in each case none other in sight, each seeming embowered protectively in its green and flowering setting. Himself, of course, not remotely referring to the matter, my own mind blocking it out, refusing to confront at the moment, putting off, the question inherent in the cottages: Back in Gibraltar’s waters, I had in essence promised the Russian captain to take his people into the settlement, participating in everything—except the women. That subject had never explicitly come up.

I had a destination and I led us on until finally we had left the settlement behind, reentering the pure forest, moving along the stream above the waterfall. Soft and slanting came the mote-laden sunlight through the trees, combining with their branches to fashion flickering patterns of shadow and light on the water with its clean-flowing
piano
sound over its bed of small shiny rocks. From the thick growth on either side of the stream the songs of birds, his stopping to listen in the ardent green all around, with a wonder on his face perhaps possible only in one over a year at sea. Finally, taking up again, before long moving up the sharp climb, as we approached the crest alerted by that sound familiar above all others to sailors, making top, standing at last on the long prominence that sat high above the sea. It was the same cliffside where the Jesuit and I had first gone and which, for its isolation, had become a kind of sanctuary to me.

We stood looking at the endless waters, then as if by joint intention far and away down the coastline at the two ships we commanded, much diminished from here, nevertheless their differing configurations easily discernible and from this far and high, almost aerial distance seeming tied up alongside. He looked then, head turning this way and that, at the island itself, visible in its entirety from here, the settlement some distance away, its every evidence hidden by the trees and the thick growth, the island seeming an untouched thing, virgin, in the sunlight flashing off its impossible greenness a fragrant refuge set in a blue sea.

“What a beautiful place. Captain?” he said.

“Sir?”

He gave an apologetic laugh. “Captain, that is the longest journey I have made on land since . . .” His mind seemed to travel backward over great distances in time. “Do you suppose we could sit? Rest a bit?”

He had still not regained his full stamina, though he had forborne to say so. It occurred to me how thoughtless I had been.

“Forgive me, Captain.” My apology being: “It was the same for me at first. Land legs.”

We sat on the long ledge of smooth rock which formed almost an overhang, the very sharp drop hundreds of feet straight down to the rocks and the sea.

“You don’t have acrophobia?” I said.

“All submariners do.” I had no idea whether he was putting me on. “Don’t worry, Captain. I won’t fall off. These cliffs—what an extraordinary color.”

Somehow the great beauty itself had always seemed to me to make the place more lonely, that and the unobstructed vastness of the sea, the distant low sound of the water touching shore the only sound in an empty and hushed universe . . . again, looking far down and away, the very fact that only the two ships occupied such immense reaches further enhancing that loneliness. We sat awhile in unspoken but agreed silence, contemplating these vistas, each with his thoughts; resting after the climb.

I thought of him. He was a handsome man, in a sailor way. In his bearing, a touch of what a landsman might take as swagger but which I knew well as the mark of the sea captain’s essential self-confidence, of his knowing exactly who he is. His voice was marked by that other prevailing characteristic of ship’s captains: quiet-pitched, but with that certain tone in it. Thick hair as black as licorice, seeming the more so for his unusually fair skin. Eyes as blue as deep waters, a strong chin, a bony-sculpted face; the eyes seeming curiously to combine traits of gaiety and of melancholy; and, above all, of that other sailor trait, a quiet watchfulness. A suggestion of an active inner life, of a strong personality, no surprise there; command of men sitting easily on his shoulders—strong shoulders, topping a very straight and lean six-foot frame, tight, hard, a grenadier of a man.

I judged his honor to be beyond question; his word to be absolute. None of this, of course, meant to define a man as in any way naïve or innocent. If ship’s captains were that, ships would not sail, seas would not part, men would not obey without question; i.e., a man capable of cunning as opposed to deceit; of any kind of stratagem in the world that would serve his ship and his men, short of treachery. Yet another mark of a ship’s captain suggested: a man unusually forbearing as to human weakness, correspondingly cold and hard, if need be ruthless, when crossed. Mirror images of each other, ship’s captains? Perhaps. Any of the same profession would tend reflexively to trust him; by the same conditions of that profession, in dealing with him to be equally alert to protect the interests of his own people, his own ship’s company. So it seemed to me we approached each other; open but vigilant; receptive as to ideas the other might present but carefully scrutinizing them. Trust: He appeared to have judged that to be indispensable from the first. I thought of how he could have used the fuel to bargain with me; to extract concessions of one kind or another (I hardly knew what they would be: the women, maybe). He had not. The transfer of the fuel to the
Nathan James
had already been made. Trust, openness. I must wherever possible reciprocate, save only for that one secret relationship toward him I felt I could never do the slightest thing about: that we had personally destroyed his home city of Orel. I broke the long silence.

“Captain,” I said, “there are no words in my language to express our debt. That of my ship’s company. For what you have brought us. The nuclear fuel. I can put it this way. We have come, all of us, to feel a gratitude to the island, for what it gives us—even simply for taking us in; for being habitable. Nevertheless, all of us—some more than others—have felt prisoners on it, with a ship almost empty of fuel. You have made free men of us.”

“I understand,” he said. “We need say nothing more of it. Besides, we are quits as to the matter of gifts. You have taken us in . . . we could not have lasted much longer . . . Let us put an end to this, Captain. There is an old saying of a Russian poet, ‘A thought spoken is a lie.’”