More than that, I had achieved indifference to the lack. The next time I rode high I saw better what it was, and that broke me down. When I first saw the chunk of mast I thought it was a shark. It had moulted from me year by year, for all of my thirty-five, to leave me naked in apathy. It had not dropped from me because of any particular shock or misfortune. I wasn’t able to credit my own non-existence any better than the next man what I had lost was a healthy abhorrence of the state. On that paradox stand not only a host of religions but the entity of sane being. Every man knows he will die and nobody believes it. I recall thinking that I was stroking toward either the end of all life or the beginning of a new one. It was simpler to keep going than to stop and drown, though that was bound to happen at the end of a mile or so. These roughed me as they came up behind but I could rest when they got their grip and carried me along. The seas were high, but negotiable for anyone willing to go the way the waves did. Then I did what I could, aware that it would not be enough.
Not far from where the ship had vanished, I, too, would have filled with water that stopped my fires.Īs it was, I floundered for just the first minute or so. Panic at being in a sea without a visible shore would have bound my muscles and broken the rhythm of my breathing. I would have used myself up fleeing what could not be fled. Once again: if I had cared to live, I would have died. It blew the Naglfar no good, and somewhere, nine days out of Baltimore, down she went. On the fourth day the fog cleared but the sky did not, and the wind came up. The radio failed to function, and a skipper trained to lean on such a gadget was small shakes at dead reckoning. There had been a fog for three days, so no bearings for a similar period. Whether the Naglfar smashed on a reef, broke its back in the waves, hit a stray mine, or suffered loss of atomic union is something I never knew. It is my belief that all other hands, feet, heads, and connecting torsos were dragged bottomwards along with every bolt of the craft.
#SILVERLOCK JOHN MYERS MYERS READ ONLINE FREE#
I was then far enough off to be free of the suction. The next chance I had to look, the ship was going down by the nose.
At that I was first over the side for before I could get purchase anywhere a following wave put me there.Īs I swirled to leeward, I saw one lifeboat smashed. The ship was low in the water, although through oversight or indifference nobody had given me warning - any more than I would have bothered to take the trouble for them. While I was still trying to figure out what was going on I caught a glimpse of men trying to lower boats.
The backwash sluiced me out of it and stranded me by a stowage locker. Dozing after supper, I learned of disaster when a wave bashed in the door of my deck cabin. While not sick, I found my bunk the most comfortable place, leaving it only to take my meals. IF I HAD cared to live, I would have died.Ī storm had come up. Way One: Sea Roads, the Forest, and a Rendezvous 1 The Right Waters
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