I was sickened with loss, with knowledge of an unforseeable callousness on their part. To take them and to leave me? In all our voyagings we had never envisaged that we might simply be lifted up and taken away like a litter of puppies or kittens. We had wanted instructions, or aid, we needed to be told how to get off this endless cycling and into the Southern current. Now that this had not happened, and no instructions or information had been given, only a sort of kidnapping, then I wanted to scream against their coldness and cruelty, as one small kitten that has been hidden by a fold of a blanket in the bottom of a basket mews out in loneliness as it moves blindly about, feeling with its muzzle and its senses for its lost companions among the rapidly chilling folds of the blanket.
I stayed at the decks edge. For while the ship needed steering and the sails setting, and for all I knew we had already swung about, I could not handle this ship by myself. I already knew that I must leave her, unless I was to choose to live on board her alone, on the small chance that the Disc would hover down again and discharge my companions in the same way it had taken them off. But I did not think this was likely to happen. And I was afraid to stay.
It was as if that Disc, or Crystal, in its swift passage across or through the ship, across or through me, had changed the atmosphere of the ship, changed me. I was shaking and shivering in a cold dread. I could hardly stand, but leaned clinging to a rope. When the shaking had seemed to stop, and I stood clenching my teeth and waiting for the puppy-warmth of life to come back, then the shaking began again, like a fit of malaria, though this was a sort of weakness, not a fever. Now everything in the ship was inimicable to me, as if the discs breath had started a rot in its substance. To say that I had been terrified and was still terrified would be too much of an everyday statement. No, I had been struck with foreignness, I had taken a deep breath of an insupportable air. I was not at all myself, and my new loathing that was so much more than a fear of the ship was in itself an illness. Meanwhile the sails shook and flapped and bellied or hung idle above my head. Meanwhile the ship shuddered and swung to every new shift in the fitfully changing wind. Meanwhile she was a creature that had been assaulted and left to die.
I began making a raft, using timber from the carpenters store. I worked feverishly, wanting to get away. It never crossed my mind to stay on her, so strong was my fear. Yet I knew that to set off by myself on a raft was more dangerous than staying. On the ship was water, food, some shelter, until it foundered or crashed on a rock. Until then, it would be my safety. But I could not stay. It was as if my having been ignored, left behind, out of all my old comrades, was in itself a kind of curse. I had been branded with my ship.
I worked for many hours and when daylight went, I lashed a storm lantern to a spar and worked on through the night. I made a raft about twelve by twelve of balsa wood poles. To this I lashed a locker full of rations, and a barrel of water. I fitted a sail on a mast in the middle of the raft. I took three pairs of oars, and lashed two spare pairs securely to the timbers of the raft. In the centre of the raft I made a platform of planks about four feet across. And all this time I worked in a deadly terror, a cold sick fear, attacked intermittently by the fits of shaking so that I had to double up as if in cramp, and hold on to a support for fear Id shake myself to pieces.
By the dawn my raft was done. The sky reddened in my face as I stood looking forward with the ships movement, so I saw that the ship had already swung about and was heading back in the grip of the Guinea Current to the Cameroons or the Congo. I had to leave it as quickly as I could, and trust that I could still row myself out of this deadly shore-going current and back into the Equatorial stream once again. I put on all the clothes I could find. I let the raft fall into the sea, where it floated like a cork. And with all the sky aflame with sunrise like the inside of a ripening peach, I swarmed down a rope and swung myself on to the raft just as it was about to bob right out of my reach. I reached the raft still dry, though already beginning to be well damped by spray, and at once began rowing with my back to the sunrise. I rowed as if I were making towards safety and a good dry ship instead of away from one. By the time the sun stood up in a clear summer-hazy sky three or four handsbreadths from the horizon, our ships sails were a low swarm of white, like a cluster of butterflies settled on the waves, and well behind me, and I was heading West on my real right course. And when I turned my head to look again, it was hard to tell whether I was looking at the white of the sails or at foam on a distant swell. For the sea had changed, to my advantage, and was rolling and rocking, and no longer chopping and changing. And so I rowed all that day, and most of that following night. I rowed and rowed and rowed, until my arms seemed separate from myself, they worked on without my knowing I was ordering them to. Then one day I think it was three days after I last saw the sails of my ship vanishing East there was a sudden squally afternoon and my clothes got soaked, and I lost my spare oars. And two days after that, a heavy sea dragged my last oars from me and since then Ive been trusting myself to the current that curves West and North. And now I have all the time in the world to reflect that I am still engaged in the same journey in the same current, round and round and round, with the West Indies my next landfall, and poor Charlies Nancy and her song, just as if I had stayed on the ship with my comrades. And after the womens song, just as before, around and around, past the Sargasso Sea, and around in the Gulf Stream, and around in the swing of the sea past the coasts of Portugal and Spain, and around and around. But now I am not in a tall ship with sails like white butterflies but on a small raft and alone, around and around. And everything is the same, around and around, with only a slight but worsening change in the shape of my hope: will They, or the Disc, or Crystal Thing, on its next descent, be able to see the speck of my raft on the sea? Will they see me and find the kindness to give me a hail or a shout in reply when I ask them, How may I leave this Current? Friends, set me fair for that other coast, I pray you.
Yes, Ill hail them, of course, though now a new coldness in my heart tells me of a fear I didnt have before. I had not thought once, not in all those cycles and circles and circuits, around and around, that they might simply not notice me, as a man might not notice a sleeping kitten or a blind puppy hidden under the fold of his smelly blanket. Why should they notice the speck of a raft on the wide sea? Yet there is nothing for it but to go on, oarless, rudderless, sleepless, exhausted. After all I know it would be a kindness to land on Nancys coast and tell her that her Charlie has met up at last with what? Them, I suppose, though that is all I can tell her, not even how he felt as he became absorbed into the substance of that shining Thing. Will she sing her song to me on my raft, drifting past, will the women line up along the walls of their summer gardens and sing, and shall I then sing back how the time is past for love? And then on Ill drift to Georges friend and shout to him how George has what? And where? And then on and on and on, until I see again my Conchita waiting, dressed in the habit of a nun, where all my wandering and sailing has put her.
Man like a great tree
Resents storms.
Arms, knees, hands,
Too stiff for love,
Man like a great tree
Resents storms.
Arms, knees, hands,
Too stiff for love,
As a tree resists wind.
But slowly wakes,
And in the dark wood
Wind parts the leaves
And the black beast crashes from the cave.
My love, when you say:
Here was the storm,
Here was she,
Here the fabulous beast,
Will you say too
How first we kissed with shut lips, afraid,
And touched our hands, afraid,
As if a bird slept between them?
Will you say:
It was the small white bird that snared me?
And so she sings, each time I pass, around and around, and on and on.
DOCTOR X:
Well, how are you this afternoon?
PATIENT:
Around and around and around
DOCTOR X:
Id like you to know that I believe you could snap out of this any time you want.
PATIENT:
Around and around and around
DOCTOR X
:
Doctor Y is not here this weekend. Im going to give you a new drug. Well see how that does.
PATIENT:
In and out, out and in. In and out, out and in.
DOCTOR X:
My name is Doctor X. What is your name?
PATIENT:
Around and
I think he may very well have reverted to age eleven or twelve. That was the age I enjoyed sea stories. He is much worse in my opinion. The fact is, he never acknowledges my presence at all. Doctor Y claims he reacts to him.
DOCTOR X. 24TH AUGUST.
DOCTOR Y:
What is your name today?
PATIENT:
It could be Odysseus?
DOCTOR Y:
The Atlantic was surely not his sea?
PATIENT:
But it could be now, surely, couldnt it?
DOCTOR Y:
Well now, whats next?
PATIENT:
Perhaps Jamaica. Im a bit further South than usual.
DOCTOR Y:
Youve been talking practically non-stop for days. Did you know that?
PATIENT:
You told me to talk. I dont mind thinking instead.
DOCTOR Y:
Well, whatever you do, remember this: you arent on a raft on the Atlantic. You did not lose your friends into the arms of a flying saucer. You were never a sailor.
PATIENT:
Then why do I think Im one?
DOCTOR Y:
Whats your real name?
PATIENT:
Crafty.
DOCTOR Y:
Where do you live?
PATIENT:
Here.
DOCTOR Y:
Whats your wifes name?
PATIENT:
Have I got a wife? What is she called?
DOCTOR Y:
Tell me, why wont you ever talk to Doctor X? Hes rather hurt about it. I would be too.
PATIENT:
Ive told you already, I cant see him.
DOCTOR Y:
Well, we are getting rather worried. We dont know what to do. Its nearly two weeks since you came in. The police dont know who you are. Theres only one thing we are fairly certain about: and that is that you arent any sort of a sailor, professional or amateur. Tell me, did you read a lot of sailing stories as a boy?
PATIENT:
Man and boy.
DOCTOR Y:
Whats Georges surname? And Charlies surname?
PATIENT:
Funny, I cant think of them yes of course, we all had the same name. The name of the ship.
DOCTOR Y:
What was the name of the ship?
PATIENT:
I cant remember. And shes foundered or wrecked long ago. And the raft never had a name. You dont call a raft as you call a person.
DOCTOR Y:
Why shouldnt you name the raft? Give your raft a name now?
PATIENT:
How can I name the raft when I dont know my own name. Im called what? Who calls me? What? Why? You are Doctor Why, and I am called Why thats it, it was the good ship Why that foundered in the Guinea Current, leaving Who on the slippery raft and
DOCTOR Y:
Just a minute. Ill be away for four or five days. Doctor X will be looking after you till I get back. Ill be in to see you the moment Im back again.
PATIENT:
In and out, out and in, in and out
New treatment. Librium. 3 Tofronil 3 t.a.d.
DOCTOR X. 29TH AUGUST.
The sea is rougher than it was. As the raft tilts up the side of a wave I see fishes curling above my head, and when the wave comes crashing over me fishes and weed slide slithering over my face, to rejoin the sea. As my raft climbs up up up to the crest the fishes look eye to eye with me out of the wall of water. Theres that air creature, they think, just before they go slop over my face and shoulders, while I think as they touch and slide, they are water creatures, they belong to wet. The wave curls and furls in its perfect whirls holding in it three deep sea fish that have come up to see the sky, a tiddler fit for ponds or jam jars, and the crispy sparkle of plankton, which is neither visible nor invisible, but a bright crunch in the imagination. If men are creatures of air, and fishes whether big or small creatures of sea, what then are the creatures of fire? Ah yes, I know, but you did not see me, you overlooked me, you snatched up my comrades and let me lie squeaking inside my fold of smelly blanket. Where are they, my friends? Administering justice, are they, from the folds of fire, looking at me eye to eye out of the silkily waving fronds of fire. Look, theres a man, thats an air creature, they think, breathing yellow flame as we breathe H2O. Theres something about that gasping gape, they think George? poor Charlie? that merits recognition. But they are beyond air now, and the inhabitants of it. They are flame throwers. They are fire storms. You think justice is a kindly commodity? No, it razes, it throws down, it cuts swathes. The waves are so steep, they crash so fast and furious Im more under than up. They are teaching men men are teaching men to have fishes lungs, men learn to breathe water. If I take a deep breath of water will my lungs tissues adapt in the space of a waves fall and shout: Yes, yes, you up there, you, sailor, breathe deep and well carry you on water as we carried you on air? After all They must have had to teach my friends George and Charles and James and the rest to take deep lungfuls of fire. Youre not telling me that when the Crystal swirl enveloped me with the others it was ordinary air we breathed then, no, it was a cool fire, suns breath, the solar wind, but there are lungs attached to men that lie as dormant as those of a babe in the womb, and they are waiting for the solar wind to fill them like sails. Air lungs for air, but organs made of crystal sound, of singing light, for the solar wind that will blow my love to me. Or me onwards to my love. Oh the waves rear so tall, they pitch and grow and soar, Im more under than up, my raft is a little cork on the draughty sea and Im sick, oh Im so sick, pitch and toss, toss and pitch, my poor poor head and my lungs, if I stay on this thick heavy slimy barnacled raft which is shrieking and straining as the great seas crash then Ill puke my heart out and fall fainting away into the deep sea swells. Ill leave the raft, then.