The Sound of Waves (18 page)

“Stop!… Go!… Stop!… Go!…”

Checking its headway countless times and then moving ahead very slowly, the ship passed through the channel
between the coral reefs. It was then six o’clock in the evening.

One bonito ship had taken shelter within the reefs. Fastening themselves together with several ropes, the two ships proceeded side by side into Unten’s harbor.

The waves in the harbor were low, but the wind grew always stronger. Still side by side, the
Utajima-maru
and the bonito ship threw out four lines each—two hawsers and two cables—tying their bows to a buoy the size of a small room, and prepared to ride out the storm.

The
Utajima-maru
had no radio equipment, depending solely upon its compass. So the radio operator on the bonito ship passed on to them every report he received concerning the typhoon’s development and course.

When night came the bonito ship put out a deck watch of four men and the
Utajima-maru
put out a three-man watch. Their duty was to watch the hawsers and cables, as one could never be sure they might not snap at any moment.

There was also the uneasy feeling that the buoy itself might not hold. But the danger of snapping lines was much the greater. Fighting the wind and the waves, the watch courted death many times to keep the ropes wet with salt water, fearing they might fray if they became too dry in the wind.

By nine o’clock that night the two ships were beset by a wind with a speed of fifty-six miles an hour.

An hour before midnight Shinji and Yasuo and one of the young seamen took the watch. Their bodies were hurled against the wall as soon as they began crawling out onto the deck. The wind-whipped rain struck their cheeks as though it were needles.

It was impossible to stand upright on the deck, which rose up like a wall before their very eyes. Every timber of the ship was creaking and rumbling. The waves in the harbor were not quite high enough to sweep the decks, but the spray of the waves, blown on the wind, had become a billowing mist, shrouding their vision. Crawling along the deck, the three finally reached the prow and clung to the bitts there. The two hawsers and two cables that secured the ship to the buoy were tied to these bitts.

They could see the buoy dimly about twenty-five yards away in the night, just barely revealing its white-painted existence through the pervading darkness. And when, to the accompaniment of the creaking of the cables, which was like shrieks, a huge mass of wind would strike the ship and lift it high into the air, the buoy would fall far below them into the blackness and seem all the smaller.

The three looked at each other’s faces as they clung to the bitts, but they did not speak. And the salt water striking their faces made it all but impossible for them even to keep their eyes open. The neighing of the wind and the roar of the sea, surprisingly enough, gave the infinite night that enveloped them a quality of frenzied serenity.

Their job was to keep their eyes riveted on the lines tying the
Utajima-maru
to the buoy. Stretched taut, the hawsers and cables drew the only indomitably straight lines across a scene in which everything else was pitching and rolling with the gale’s madness. The way they stared fixedly at these rigidly drawn lines created in their hearts a feeling akin to confidence, born of their very concentration.

There were times when it seemed as if the wind had
suddenly stopped, but instead of reassuring them, such moments made the three young men shiver with terror. Instantly the huge mass of the wind would come crashing again, rattling the yardarms and thrusting the atmosphere aside with a tremendous roar.

The three continued their silent watch over the lines. Even above the sound of the wind they could hear intermittently the shrill and piercing creaking of the lines.

“Look!” Yasuo cried in a thin voice.

One of the cables wrapped around the bitts was rasping ominously; it seemed to be slipping a little. The bitts were directly before their eyes, and they perceived an extremely slight but sinister alteration in the way the lines were wrapped about the bitts.

At that instant a length of cable came recoiling out of the darkness, flashing like a whip, and hit the bitts with a snarling sound.

They had dodged instantly, just in time to escape being slashed by the severed cable, which had force enough to have cut them to the bone. Like some living thing that takes long in dying, the cable writhed about in the darkness of the deck, making a shrill noise. Finally it came to rest in a semicircle.

When they finally grasped the situation, the three young men turned pale. One of the four lines tying the ship to the buoy had given way. And no none could guarantee that the cable and two hawsers that remained might not give way also at any moment.

“Let’s tell the captain,” Yasuo said, moving away from the bitts.

Searching for handholds as he went creeping along, being thrown off his feet many times, Yasuo groped his way
to the bridge and made his report to the captain.

The burly captain remained calm, or at least gave the outward appearance of doing so.

“I see. Well, then, let’s just use a lifeline. The typhoon passed its peak at one o’clock, so there’s no danger at all in using a lifeline now. Someone can just swim out to the buoy and tie the lifeline to it.”

Leaving the second mate in charge of the bridge, the captain and the chief mate followed Yasuo back. Like mice tugging at a rice cake, they rolled and dragged a lifeline and a new marline along with them step by step from the bridge to the bow bitts.

Shinji and the sailor looked up at them inquiringly.

The captain stooped over them and shouted to the three youths in a loud voice:

“Which one of you fellows is going to take this lifeline over there and tie it to that buoy?”

The roaring of the wind covered the youths’ silence.

“Don’t any of you have any guts?” the captain shouted again.

Yasuo’s lips quivered. He pulled his neck down into his shoulders.

Then Shinji shouted out in a cheerful voice, and as he did so the white flash of his teeth shone through the blackness to prove that he was smiling.

“I’ll do it,” he shouted clearly.

“Good! Go ahead!”

Shinji rose to his feet. He was ashamed of himself for the way he had been squatting on the deck until now, practically cowering. The wind came attacking out of the black reaches of the night, striking him full in the body, but to Shinji, accustomed to rough weather in a small
fishing-boat, the heaving deck on which his feet were firmly planted was nothing but a stretch of earth that was frankly a bit out of sorts.

He stood listening.

The typhoon was directly above the boy’s gallant head. It was as right for Shinji to be invited to a seat at this banquet of madness as to a quiet and natural afternoon nap.

Inside his raincoat the sweat was running so profusely that both his back and chest were drenched. He took the raincoat off and threw it aside. As he did so his barefoot figure, wearing a white T shirt, loomed through the blackness of the storm.

Under the captain’s directions, the men tied one end of the lifeline to the bitts and the other end to the marline. Hindered by the wind, the operation progressed slowly.

When the ropes were finally tied, the captain handed the free end of the marline to Shinji and yelled into his ear:

“Tie this around your waist and swim for it! When you reach the buoy, haul the lifeline over and make it fast!”

Shinji wrapped the marline twice around his waist above his belt. Then, standing in the bow, he stared down at the sea. Down beneath the spray, down beneath the whitecaps that beat themselves to pieces against the prow, there were the jet-black, invisible waves, twisting and coiling their bodies. They kept repeating their patternless movements, concealing their incoherent and perilous whims. No sooner would one seem about to come rising into sight than it would drop away to become a whirling, bottomless abyss again.

At this point there flashed across Shinji’s mind the
thought of Hatsue’s photograph in the inside pocket of his coat hanging in the crew’s quarters. But this idle thought was blown to bits upon the wind.

He dived from the prow of the ship.

The buoy was about twenty-five yards away. Despite his great physical strength, which he was confident would have to yield to none, and despite too his ability to swim around his home island five times without stopping, still it seemed impossible that these would suffice to get him across the immensity of those twenty-five yards.

A terrible force was upon the boy’s arms; something like an invisible bludgeon belabored them as they tried to cut a way through the waves. In spite of himself, his body was tossed on the waves, and when he tried to bring his strength into opposition to the waves and grapple with them, his movements were as useless as though he were trying to run through grease.

He would be certain that the buoy was finally within arm’s reach, and when he rose up out of the trough of the next wave he would look for it—and find it just as far away as ever.

The boy swam with all his might. And, inch by inch, step by step, the huge mass of the enemy fell back, opening the way for him. It was as though a drill were boring its way through the hardest of solid rock.

The first time his hand touched the buoy he lost his hold and was pulled away. But then by good luck a wave swept him forward again and, just as it seemed on the point of dashing his chest against the iron rim, lifted him up with a single sweep and deposited him on the buoy.

Shinji took a deep breath, and the wind filled his nostrils and mouth to the choking point. At that instant it seemed to him that he could never breathe again, and
for a time he even forgot the task he was supposed to perform.

The buoy rolled and pitched, surrendering its body openheartedly to the black sea. The waves ceaselessly washed over half of it, pouring off with great commotion.

Lying face down so as not to be blown off by the wind, Shinji started untying the line from around his waist. The knot was wet and difficult to loosen. When it was finally untied, he began pulling the marline.

Now for the first time he looked toward the ship. He could see the forms of the four men clustered about the bow bitts. The men on watch in the bow of the bonito ship also were gazing steadily in his direction. Although only a scant twenty-five yards away, everything seemed exceedingly distant. The black shadows of the two moored ships were rising together, side by side, high into the air, and then sinking back into the waves again.

The thin marline offered little resistance to the wind and was comparatively easy to haul in, but soon a heavy weight was added to its end. It was the lifeline, almost five inches thick, which he was now pulling. Shinji was all but thrown forward into the sea.

The wind resistance against the lifeline was very strong, but at last the boy had one end of it in his hands. It was so thick that even one of his big hands would not go entirely around it.

Shinji was at a loss as to how to apply his strength. He wanted to brace himself with his feet to pull, but the wind would not permit that posture. And when he heedlessly applied all his strength to the rope, he was all but dragged into the sea. His drenched body was at
fever heat, his face burning hot, and his temples were throbbing violently.

He finally managed to wind the lifeline once around the buoy; then the operation became easier. The line provided him with a fulcrum for his strength, and now for a change he could support his body with the thick line.

He wound the line once more around the buoy and then proceeded methodically to tie it fast. He waved his arms to announce the successful completion of the job.

He could plainly see the four men on the ship waving their arms in reply. The boy forgot how exhausted he was. His instinct for cheerfulness reasserted itself and flagging energy welled up anew. Facing into the storm, he inhaled his fill of air and then dived into the sea for the return trip.

They lowered a net from the deck and hoisted Shinji aboard. Once the boy was back on deck, the captain clapped him on the shoulder with a huge hand. Although Shinji was ready to faint with fatigue, his masculine energy still maintained him.

The captain had Yasuo help Shinji to his quarters and the men who were off duty wiped him dry. The boy fell asleep the moment he was in his bunk. No noise the storm could make could have disturbed that deep sleep.…

The next morning Shinji opened his eyes to find brilliant sunshine falling across his pillow. Through the round porthole in his bunk he looked out at the crystal-clear blue sky that followed the typhoon’s departure, at the view of bald hills under a tropical sun, at the glitter of a placid, undisturbed sea.

T
HE
Utajima-maru
returned to Kobe several days behind schedule. So by the time the captain and Shinji and Yasuo reached the island, where they were to have returned before mid-August, in time for the lunar-calendar Lantern Festival, the festivities were already over.

They heard the news of the island while being ferried across on the
Kamikaze-maru
. A huge turtle had come ashore on Five League Beach a few days before the Lantern Festival and had been quickly killed. There were more than a basketful of eggs in it, which had been sold for two yen apiece.