Gilboy’s Quest

by Sam Ivey

Chapter VII: Quest’s End
part 3 of 4

And now he found the limitation of his new handiwork. The new rudder functioned very well except for being a little shallow. And because of that, it would at times come clear of the water, as when a large wave would heave up the stern in passing under. It was, however, less tiring to use than the oar had been, and he found himself nearly grateful for the loss of the former. Tomorrow he would see what could be done about lengthening the rudder; he still had a small piece of one of the doors left. But today he would just sail, relax and sail and conserve his strength. And another day without food became history.

Sunrise came around five o’clock, but he was up long before that. Indeed, while that fiery disc was still an hour below the horizon, he had begun his work. In the dawn’s pale light, while still drifting to the drogue, he had unshipped the rudder and had begun to whittle some more, to chop some more, and then to hammer some more — adding the needed extra depth to his rustic fabrication.

By shortly after 8:30 a.m. he was finished, the rudder was re-hung, and by 9:00 he was underway, running away from the sun; running from that inescapable, cosmic metronome, which by its swing — its rising and setting — appeared to mark off those few remaining days of his life.

He had sailed for only about an hour when he sighted what he calculated to be Middle Ballona Reef. If his understanding was correct, this coarse, low-lying coral mass could provide him with a definite fix as to his longitude — the first in several days — the chart placing it at 159º east. And that meant that he was now less than 500 miles from his goal. Of itself the information was encouraging, the distance remaining now seeming to be quite short.

Another matter concerned him, however. If his estimated longitude of January 6th had been correct, the last 12 days had seen an average of only 45 miles a day. And if that rate of progress were to continue, he would be another eleven days at sea; eleven days with no provisions on board except a little water, a little more than four gallons. If he reduced its consumption to half a quart a day, it could hold out for a month. But without food, he could by then be too weak to drink it.

He needed food desperately, and with that in mind he bore in for the shore, thinking again that perhaps he might find some coconut palms. About half an hour passed, while visions of those longed-for palms filled his mind, while hope was overlaid upon dread and while his dire situation plagued him with inescapable morbid thoughts.

And then another bird: landing once again on his head. And again he made a game effort at catching it, but it escaped and flew off for some distance before circling back, apparently still trying to land on his head. This time he did catch it as it came by — caught it in flight as it swooped past him — his hand closing on one beating wing. The brief and inequitable struggle was terminated as he slammed it hard against the deck, ending its life. Again the sea had provided food, and his appreciation was boundless.

He was ravenous with hunger, and as he plucked away the feathers, reducing the little creature’s apparent bulk to a small lump of flesh, he dismissed the thought of skinning it such as he had done with a previous bird; he needed all the strength he could gain from this tiny life. So he bled the carcass, taking care to save the blood. And this time he remembered his mother — how she had singed the pinfeathers from a chicken. So he lit a candle and did the same.

Finally he lit the little alcohol stove, and in a mix of fresh and salt water he cooked the bird whole, entrails and all. To the resulting insipid broth he then added the blood, making a noisome soup, a disgusting, pink-colored pottage. Even to himself — and despite his wretched state of being — it had all the stigma of what is considered to be barbaric. But survival was all, and he ate, saving half of the odious broth for tomorrow.

Having finished eating, he resumed his sailing along the shores of the reef, still in hope of finding some coconuts. Throughout the day he sailed, and part of the next day, Friday. There were a few places where wind and wave had reduced the edges of the barren, infertile, shipwrecking mass to slender strips of sandy beach, and there may have been some scrub growth, striving to survive on the hostile lump. But there were no trees of any sort.

Thus passed the hours, and rather than occurring, Friday and Saturday merely transpired; two eventless periods in which the winds chose to become exasperatingly light. And there would be times when he would find himself lying helplessly impotent, furious with bafflement, and shouting his anger at an unhearing sea and sky as a calm would set in. There would be hardly a wavelet, caused by nothing more than a wraith-like wind on the smooth, heaving surface of the water.

He thought of catching some fish in some kind of way, and he looked about desperately for something from which he could fashion a fishhook. Nothing. He no longer had the spear, of course, it having been among the gear lost in the capsize. And then it occurred to him that he might be able to fashion a spear from the dividers he used to measure distances on his chart. They were virtually useless now anyway. He rummaged about and found a short piece of wood that would serve as a handle. Then he cut a piece of hemp line, unbraided it, and using the strands from it he lashed the dividers to the wood. He was ready.

There were often small fish around the boat, especially when it was calm. So now, leaning over the side, he thrust his crude spear down into the not-to-compact swarm. For over an hour he tried, stabbing repeatedly, and during that time he succeeded in piercing several fish. But since the dividers had no barb, the wounded prey would slip off and swim away in its injured state, very possibly to be consumed by its own fellows. Then he thought that if he bent the point a little, it might be just enough to make a kind of barb. But once done, it proved no more fruitful than before; and his arm grew weary, his heart despondent.

Flying fish were still to be seen — often in fact — but none had landed aboard since before the 13th. And now, on the morning of Sunday the 21st, with Pacific ghosting along in an exasperatingly languid zephyr of a breeze, a new thought occurred to him. Hanging over the side of the boat, he pried off some of the larger barnacles with a knife. They were not at all edible. But in the hope of extracting at least some fluid, if not some nutrition along with it, he chewed on the fishy-tasting, leathery organisms, before spitting them out. And Sunday passed in a sort of timeless interim, a period in which there were no hours or minutes; a chronic vacuum during which light became darkness, motion became stasis, and finally Sunday had become Monday.

Monday: a day that began with a note of optimism. He found a pair of tiny flying fish lying on the deck, the largest being about two inches long. With the exception of the fins they were eaten — both whole and raw — and that having been done, the optimism faded. There were times during the day when he resumed efforts to spear a fish; efforts that proved to be as fruitless as they had been two days ago. It was a day spent in a calm, a day that had ostensibly been crafted with the intent of driving him into insanity, due to its impotency. So in his idleness, and in an effort to maintain lucidity as the boat drifted without steerageway, he began keeping a record of the number of flying fish that came aboard, starting with the two from that morning.

Tuesday, the 23rd: another small flying fish was caught on deck. It was also about two inches in length, and it would prove to be his only food for the day. Although there was a time when he had the hope of catching another bird.

It was about 6:30 in the afternoon when one landed on the boat, several times in fact. He made the most strenuous efforts to catch it, efforts that to a man of average strength would have appeared to lack the zeal and desire that he actually felt. But his feeble endeavor represented the zenith of his strength.

At length, the bird finally landing on the end of the jib-boom, he took his revolver and shot it. Although it was a telling shot, it was not immediately lethal; and the injured bird flew away a short distance to windward, where it fell into the water. Now there came some thirty minutes of anxious struggling, trying to get the boat to head up against the insipid whisper of a wind. But there would be none of it, and Pacific drifted slowly to leeward as he watched the feathered lump gradually disappear from sight — a disappointing loss.

In the course of Wednesday and Thursday, six more flying fish came aboard. Each was small — two or three inches long — and each was eaten in its entirety. Then later in the afternoon on Thursday, the serendipitous offering from the sea was another bird.

It was about three o’clock. He was steering the boat, creeping along under a mere gasp of a breeze, when he chanced to look aft. And there, sitting fearlessly atop the jury-rigged rudder, was another tern-like bird. This time the catch was easy.

By now, however, the alcohol was nearly gone. So he decided to cook his prize over a wood flame. Among the matches were hundreds that had been soaked to the point of uselessness when he had capsized. But their wood — dried by now — could be used as fuel. Using the top portion of the now fuel-less kerosene oil stove as a sort of fireplace, he heaped it full of matches, lit the pile, and roasted the meat whole. It was, of necessity, poorly cooked but not totally raw. Then, after dividing the pitifully small portion — wanting to save part of it for tomorrow — he dined. It was possibly one ounce of meat — and some water.

The next three days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, saw a dead calm. Not a solitary, vaporous breath of wind was there, day or night. It was as though he was again in the Doldrums. But here, there should have been the trades: steady, reliable southeasterlies; the winds that mariners had depended upon for centuries. Indeed there had been the trades, although feeble at times, but now even in their feebleness they were gone. They had died, even as they had indicated they would do for the past several days; they had died, even as he would die, unless there came a wind — some benevolent exhalation from old Aeolus, that perfidious deity of Greek mythology.

A storm? Would he welcome a storm? Yes! Oh, yes!! Let it storm! He would be sorely labored, but the adrenaline would flow like a river and he would handle it. So let it come; let the raw, fearsome blasts of the Viking’s old Odin shriek at him out of the north; let the trades themselves mount such a fury as would butcher the very skies from which they came. Let them claw at him; let them hammer him; let them rend his very sails to unrecognizable tatters. But let there be wind, a wind of any sort that would move him to the west.

But there was nothing. And day after day, above her reflected sister image, sat Pacific, her sails flaccid and impotent, as though in mourning over her own demise. While around him, like an enormous liquid mirror, lay a windless ocean: at once beautiful, and deadly.

He had been without any food for two days now, and today was Sunday, January 28th. The sun rose over a vacuous disc of an ocean, with its unmarred horizon; and as though a soliloquizing actor on an otherwise vacant stage, verbalizing her lines with mute eloquence, there sat Pacific, her long shadow cast to the west, undulating on the glasslike surface. Gilboy heaved his weary body up through the cockpit opening and sat rubbing his grizzled face. It had been a restless night, one filled with troubling dreams: dreams of dying.

And there had been dreams of the family, of his mom and dad, and of Catherine and little Mary. Ever more troubling, however, were the dreams of food. In them he had dined on greasy, flavor-saturated meats; on bronzed, crisp-skinned turkey, and on dark, blackened roast of beef. With thick slabs of hearty, home-baked bread, he had mopped up rich, savory gravy. And he had felt the tang of juicy apricots on his tongue. But now, with the morning light, the awful reality of his privation had returned, and hunger gnawed like a ravenous animal at his inward parts.

He sat for some time in the nearly absolute quietude; the only sound — if it was sound at all — was the velvety lap of water against the hull. For a while he reflected on the truth that even silence has its sound. And here, in this profound emptiness, he listened to that which is inaudible — a sort of whispering nothingness. And he concluded that this miraculous sensation — for it is assuredly miraculous — is what keeps us aware of the fact that we are, that we exist.

But then he heard it: a sound-sound, a splashing; and he turned to see several flying fish, launching themselves with powerful pectoral fins, and gliding several feet before landing with a happy splash. On they came, nearer and nearer; leaping and falling, vaulting over non-existent barriers, until one chanced to launch itself onto his deck. He was upon it in a moment; and with a single swift slash of his knife, he severed its head. He thought of cooking it, but with the alcohol nearly gone, he ate the fish raw, along with some water, and that answered for breakfast.

The featureless day crept inexorably on toward its goal of becoming yesterday. And it was late in the afternoon, about two hours before sunset, when a pleasant little promise of a breeze stirred itself from the northeast. His tired old canvas rustled quietly, as it filled with wind after days of inactivity. The little jib trembled, then bellied out from the bowsprit; the foresail boom swung to port and its sheet went nearly taut. The scrap of a trysail, now serving as the main, came to life, and as the zephyr freshened, Pacific began to move.

And now he was standing on the deck, letting the wind wash over him. “Oh, thank you, God,” he said aloud, and he gloried in the feel of the deck’s movement under his bare feet. With the wind proving true to its promise — with it filling and steadying — he gave Pacific to her own way, trimming his sheets to permit the vessel to run before this unexpected breeze, his canvas all abroad. Out to starboard went the foresail, with a preventer; out to port he poled the jib, and the makeshift mainsail was out to port as well.

Then, with his sails so disposed and with the rudder lashed amidships, he ran on. Under a dazzling blue sky he ran, a sky graced here and there with brilliant white cumulus and warmed by a beneficent sun; a fair-weather sky that bode good sailing ahead. On he ran, on through the night, and sleeping better now, waking only occasionally to take a look at the weather.

Morning came — with the wind holding true, the sky gloriously clear, and with his little vessel prancing along at three knots or so. It was the sort of day in which one revels; a day in which one is almost delirious with joy, happy to just be alive. And assuredly Bernard Gilboy would have felt that way but for two things: the growing agony of his famine and the specter of death that now overshadowed all. He had been on deck since sunrise, and had watched with a curious mix of melancholy and euphoria, that splendidly brilliant event. He had often watched sunrises at sea — where sunrise occurs as it does nowhere else — but he had never seen this one.

Today, as he sat facing backward — feet in the cockpit — his weary eyes had seen the horizon grow in its radiance; he had drank in the iridescence of the innumerable colors that preceded the sun’s arrival, like a royal entourage in the vanguard of a monarch. And then he had watched the sun itself, easing above the edge of the world to send a long shaft of golden light gliding across the ocean’s indigo surface; had watched until it touched him, and he had felt its welcome warmth.

So had the day begun. Then he took what had become his daily allowance of alcohol. This was something he had been doing for several mornings now, something most uncommon for this man. But in the absence of food, and in the pending absence of water, it permitted him some small solace, perhaps dulling the terrible reality that he could see as the most probable end to his quest: the end of his life. He measured the water in the single remaining ten-gallon keg, finding some few inches, something less than four gallons. It was his solitary link to life. When it was gone there would be nothing. And right at that moment, the awfulness of oblivion seemed to swallow him. Unless relief came in a day or two, he would surely die.

Proceed to part 4...