Videre Recte

There was no land in sight. The wreckage sprinkled the surface like ash from a forest fire, and that ancient third day may as well never have been. Men screamed without reserve. Some fought insanely, trying to escape the gaping jaws of death, climbing atop even the children around them, forcing them under the water. Others whimpered but resigned themselves to their fate. Infants wailed, their parents desperately attempting to keep them above the icy chill. But the multitude of discordant voices was barely heard above the thundering waves. 

Yet hope was not quite lost; one boat remained. It was a single lifeboat which he had managed to rescue before the descent of the revelry into its destined grave—they weren’t quite sure how he had done it. Adam wanted to speak to the man. He owed him everything. In the years to come, others would ask him to tell how they came to be two of only a handful of survivors. In those days, his eyes would well with tears, but he would choke out that he couldn’t remember the moment, only that he felt sure he was mere seconds from death when the man had saved him. Now he simply stared in silence—stared at the man with whiskers on his upper lip; the man with kind, soft eyes.

Charissa, too, had been saved. As the ship had gone down, the most intoxicated falling in first, she was the only one to simply follow this man. Adam had decided to find a lifeboat for himself and her to share, but he had fallen into the raging sea when an old man, determined to die on his own terms, grabbed him with inexplicable anger and iron strength, ripping him through the air as he suicidally dove to his doom. His sister, desperately holding out her hand, was the last thing Adam saw before he hit the water. Whether it was minutes or hours in the dark, cold deep he could never be sure. He only knew that he had never known such hopelessness, nor numbness, nor pure animal fear.

Though the restless waves still crashed onto the wreckage and their icy spray still splattered into the boat, Adam and Charissa felt no apprehension of falling in again, as if the laws of Nature had decided in some high court that they both were to remain irrevocably safe and warm in the boat. And besides, after having been saved so completely by this man—for Charissa too would later say she could not otherwise explain why she had followed him—it was not conceivable for them to be lost by him to the storm.

The man was directing the boat toward survivors. With strength many times that of Adam and Charissa, he maneuvered around the larger chunks of debris, approaching a man calling with yet slurred speech, “Sommmeone help me! Someone, please!” The man rowed the lifeboat nearer, mouthing something inaudible, and Adam and Charissa stood, eager to help the man in the water if at all they could. Up and down with the cascading waves went the lifeboat, and up and down bobbed the desperate man in the sea.

With one last heave of the oars, the man thrust the lifeboat within reach. He, too, stood now and reached out his hand to the man cold in the briny water. But upon seeing this extended hand, and those soft eyes, the man, his feet numb beneath and icy water yet splattering his face above, paused. No longer was he screaming. No longer, strangely, did the effects of alcohol mar his face. He simply bobbed in the water, staring at the hand offered to him. 

Slowly, his face contorted into a twisted mockery of a man’s. His eyebrows furrowed, and his mouth opened to an inhuman width. And suddenly, the man started to laugh—not the laughter of joy or even revelry, but of pure rage. 

“Get away from me!” the man screamed venomously. “You did this! I’ll save my own—be damned to the depths! Damn you, damn you, damn you!” He broke off abruptly. And, even as the man reached farther toward him, he turned and swam in the opposite direction, into the mountainous waves in the darkness.

Adam and Charissa stood speechless. The man, too, didn’t move for several seconds, hand still extended. Then he rose and turned toward the children. His eyes, though still kind and soft, were sad.

The moment didn’t last long. Looking past them now, his face set like flint again. He jumped to the oars and rowed furiously, thunder booming overhead, and a duel cry sounded nearby. Adam and Charissa turned to see the source of the noise. A woman waded in the water, grasping tightly a small bundle against her cheek. As they got closer, it was clear the baby she held was not more than a month old. 

“My baby! My baby!” she repeated desperately above the roar as the man rowed the boat even closer to her than he had to the previous man. As soon as the boat was within reach, the woman tried to push her baby into it. But she was tired. Her arms would not raise high enough to accomplish the task, and the man, seeing her exhaustion, reached out to help her in.

Instantly the woman recoiled. “I’m fine!” she shrieked, her shrill voice piercing through the crashing waves. “Just let me put my baby in!” Brows furrowed like the other man’s, she tried again to push her baby onto the boat. 

“I can save you both!” They were the first words that they heard the man speak. “Just let me pull you from the sea!” As he reached down, the woman recoiled again. 

“No! You can’t have her! She’s mine!” she screamed, trying with ever decreasing success to lift her baby into the boat. With every attempt, she avoided the man’s extended arm, and when the man, uttering a loud cry, finally reached within inches of her shoulder, she released one of her hands from her baby and drew her nails deeply down the man’s arm, drawing large drops of blood that dripped into the waves. 

The woman seemed to fixate on the spot where the blood fell. Exhausted, she slowly swam from the spot, and screamed again into the chaos, “Curse him! Curse him! Save yourselves; he won’t save you! You must…” until her voice was swallowed by the sea. 

It was silent for a long while, save for the noise of the waves and the wind. Adam could not tell if there were voices calling for help anymore, but he would not have been able to register if there were. He could not understand, and he could not help it when the tears dripped off the tip of his nose. Charissa sat down next to him, and he felt her body shake in silent sobs. 

The wind blew. Faintly at first, they heard on it, clearer than seemed possible in a stormy sea, the small voice of a boy. Looking about, neither Adam nor Charissa could spot him. There were many people in the water still, but they only swam past the boat or in the opposite direction, and none of them cried for their help anymore. If the voice was true, it must have been coming from a long way off. But the man seemed to know exactly the source. He turned the lifeboat to the west and rowed with the strength of many men. As they went, the voice became clearer: “Save me! Save me!” 

On a great cresting wave, the boy rose into view, rapidly nearing the boat. He was young. Though it was difficult to tell his precise age, he seemed, in fact, to be the same age as Adam and Charissa. Adam was on his feet. “Let me help this time, sir!” he pleaded.

The man looked at him with those soft, kind eyes. “You cannot. He’ll jump off.” He turned with one last stroke of the oars as they glided within inches of this young boy. The man stood as before. And as before, Adam and Charissa’s hearts began to sink. Whatever was in the water which caused men to be tossed by waves and winds of the soul was no less effective on this boy. His desperate eyes turned to slits. His tongue flitted crazily from his mouth. And as the man reached for him in the water, the boy drew his clawed fingers across not only the man’s arms but his own, shrieking with murderous rage. Adam, unable to watch the familiar scene again, bowed his head and waited.

When all was quiet again, and he felt sure it was over, he looked up. But the boy was still there, held fast in the water by the man, with an iron grasp. Blood dripped from the man’s arms once more, but the boy’s face was transformed. No longer were his eyes slits, and no longer did his tongue flit. His eyes were wide, and the sea reflected in them was one of awe and terror. He was limp.

The man, his grasp unchanging, sighed deeply, and with a show of easy strength, he lifted the boy roughly into the boat. 

Adam and Charissa watched him breathlessly. The boy remained face down, heaving then sobbing, heaving then sobbing, the water dripping from his every extremity. When at last he was finished, the water dripping no longer from his face, his eyes, turned toward the man, were human again. The man gazed down on him, arms still bloodied, with his whiskers and his kind, soft eyes. The boy’s lip trembled, and he could only manage, in a voice barely above a whisper, a single, “Thank you.” But his face spoke wordlessly an inexpressible gratitude, even if only a fraction of what was due. 

The man reached out his hand to the boy. The boy, this time unhesitating, took it. And when the man pulled him to his feet, he had no trouble falling into the sunshine of his warm embrace.