the storm came on slowly one afternoon. the clouds lookedas if they were stumbling along before the wind, frightened.
the sea took its cue. it started rising and falling in a mannerthat made my heart sink. i took in the solar stills and the net.
oh, you should have seen that landscape! what i had seen uptill now were mere hillocks of water. these swells were trulymountains. the valleys we found ourselves in were so deepthey were gloomy. their sides were so steep the lifeboat startedsliding down them, nearly surfing. the raft was gettingexceptionally rough treatment, being pulled out of the water anddragged along bouncing every which way. i deployed both seaanchors fully, at different lengths so that they would notinterfere with each other.
climbing the giant swells, the boat clung to the sea anchorslike a mountain climber to a rope. we would rush up until wereached a snow-white crest in a burst of light and foam and atipping forward of the lifeboat. the view would be clear formiles around. but the mountain would shift, and the groundbeneath us would start sinking in a most stomach-sickeningway. in no time we would be sitting once again at the bottomof a dark valley, different from the last but the same, withthousands of tons of water hovering above us and with onlyour flimsy lightness to save us. the land would move oncemore, the sea-anchor ropes would snap to tautness, and theroller coaster would start again.
the sea anchors did their job well – in fact, nearly too well.
every swell at its crest wanted to take us for a tumble, but theanchors, beyond the crest, heaved mightily and pulled usthrough, but at the expense of pulling the front of the boatdown. the result was an explosion of foam and spray at thebow. i was soaked through and through each time.
then a swell came up that was particularly intent on takingus along. this time the bow vanished underwater. i wasshocked and chilled and scared witless. i barely managed tohold on. the boat was swamped. i heard richard parker roar.
i felt death was upon us. the only choice left to me wasdeath by water or death by animal. i chose death by animal.
while we sank down the back of the swell, i jumped ontothe tarpaulin and unrolled it towards the stern, closing inrichard parker. if he protested, i did not hear him. fasterthan a sewing machine working a piece of cloth, i hookeddown the tarpaulin on both sides of the boat. we wereclimbing again. the boat was lurching upwards steadily. it washard to keep my balance. the lifeboat was now covered andthe tarpaulin battened down, except at my end. i squeezed inbetween the side bench and the tarpaulin and pulled theremaining tarpaulin over my head. i did not have much space.
between bench and gunnel there was twelve inches, and theside benches were only one and a half feet wide. but i wasnot so foolhardy, even in the face of death, as to move ontothe floor of the boat. there were four hooks left to catch. islipped a hand through the opening and worked the rope.
with each hook done, it was getting harder to get the next. imanaged two. two hooks left. the boat was rushing upwardsin a smooth and unceasing motion. the incline was over thirtydegrees. i could feel myself being pulled down towards thestern. twisting my hand frantically i succeeded in catching onemore hook with the rope. it was the best i could do. this wasnot a job meant to be done from the inside of the lifeboat butfrom the outside. i pulled hard on the rope, something madeeasier by the fact that holding on to it was preventing mefrom sliding down the length of the boat. the boat swiftlypassed a forty-five-degree incline.
we must have been at a sixty-degree incline when wereached the summit of the swell and broke through its crestonto the other side. the smallest portion of the swell's supplyof water crashed down on us. i felt as if i were beingpummelled by a great fist. the lifeboat abruptly tilted forwardand everything was reversed: i was now at the lower end ofthe lifeboat, and the water that had swamped it, with a tigersoaking in it, came my way. i did not feel the tiger – i hadno precise idea of where richard parker was; it waspitch-black beneath the tarpaulin – but before we reached thenext valley i was half-drowned.
for the rest of that day and into the night, we went up anddown, up and down, up and down, until terror becamemonotonous and was replaced by numbness and a completegiving-up. i held on to the tarpaulin rope with one hand andthe edge of the bow bench with the other, while my body layflat against the side bench. in this position – water pouring in,water pouring out – the tarpaulin beat me to a pulp, i wassoaked and chilled, and i was bruised and cut by bones andturtle shells. the noise of the storm was constant, as wasrichard parker's snarling.
sometime during the night my mind noted that the stormwas over. we were bobbing on the sea in a normal way.
through a tear in the tarpaulin i glimpsed the night sky. starryand cloudless. i undid the tarpaulin and lay on top of it.
i noticed the loss of the raft at dawn. all that was left of itwere two tied oars and the life jacket between them. they hadthe same effect on me as the last standing beam of aburnt-down house would have on a householder. i turned andscrutinized every quarter of the horizon. nothing. my littlemarine town had vanished. that the sea anchors, miraculously,were not lost – they continued to tug at the lifeboat faithfully –was a consolation that had no effect. the loss of the raft wasperhaps not fatal to my body, but it felt fatal to my spirits.
the boat was in a sorry state. the tarpaulin was torn inseveral places, some tears evidently the work of richardparker's claws. much of our food was gone, either lostoverboard or destroyed by the water that had come in. i wassore all over and had a bad cut on my thigh; the wound wasswollen and white. i was nearly too afraid to check thecontents of the locker. thank god none of the water bags hadsplit. the net and the solar stills, which i had not entirelydeflated, had filled the empty space and prevented the bagsfrom moving too much.
i felt exhausted and depressed. i unhooked the tarpaulin atthe stern. richard parker was so silent i wondered whether hehad drowned. he hadn't. as i rolled back the tarpaulin to themiddle bench and daylight came to him, he stirred andgrowled. he climbed out of the water and set himself on thestern bench. i took out needle and thread and went aboutmending the tears in the tarpaulin.
later i tied one of the buckets to a rope and bailed theboat. richard parker watched me distractedly. he seemed tofind nearly everything i did boring. the day was hot and iproceeded slowly. one haul brought me something i had lost. iconsidered it. cradled in the palm of my hand was all thatremained between me and death: the last of the orangewhistles.
