We Float Upon a Painted Sea

Bull was swathed in an emergency blanket, his face pressed against the porthole. For most of the time, he was staring at his harrowed reflection in the glass window until the lightning would flash on the horizon and supplant the pitch blackness with a fleeting glimpse of the monstrous sea. He thought of Malcolm and how he had failed him. He wondered if he had a family back home, a wife or a partner. Curiously, his passing felt like the death of a friend. Despite them sharing no words they had been brought together by a wretched fate, and although his wounds may have proved fatal, thought Bull, he held himself accountable for abandoning a helpless man. On seeing the lifeboat, he hadn’t considered Malcolm’s welfare, he had only thought of saving his own life.

Andrew sat on the centre bench in silence, holding on to one of the boat’s stanchions for support and gathering his own feelings. He called to mind the two episodes where he had offered Malcolm up to the sea as a human sacrifice in order to save his own life. He quelled the urge to submit to despondency and decided any staid observance should be conducted after they had been rescued. This was not the time for grieving, he thought. As Andrew dampened the fires of guilt, Bull’s mourning was stoked by it. Andrew was first to break the silence. He said,

“I know you’re feeling bad right now but this is not the time to apportion blame. That time will come during the inquest, when we get to shore.” Bull unfastened his nose from the porthole. He turned his head and offered Andrew a sorrowful expression. With a lump emerging in his throat Bull replied,

“Inquest?”

“There’s always an inquest. I wouldn’t worry. It’s a formality. There’s no need to blame yourself.”

“I do blame myself though. A mental fog must have descended upon me. Seeing the lifeboat in-between the waves, the darkness, fear, my heart beginning to race, falling forward, and then…”

“Your pitiable attempt at swimming towards the boat?”

Bull fell silent. He could feel Andrew watching him. He considered his actions and wondered if he had jeopardised Andrew’s life. He felt pathetic. He thought of himself like an over excitable puppy dog, let off the leash and bounding off towards the cliff edge. If it hadn’t been for Andrew coming back for him, he would have certainly perished. After they had boarded the lifeboat, Bull had shivered violently but there had been chemical heat blankets onboard. Andrew attended to Bull first and then himself. He had saved Bull’s life.

Bull analysed every emotion. Was it selfishness, irrationality, the instinct to survive or unadulterated cowardice? Or a combination of them all, he thought. He challenged the morals he believed he once carried and held dear. In the end he concluded no one is entirely sure how they would react when such a desperate situation is forced upon them. Bull said,

“I suppose his suffering is at an end now.” Andrew sat trembling under his blanket. He grunted,

“And at least you stayed with him until the last moment, as you said you would.” Bull wondered if Andrew was, in some twisted way, enjoying the moment and revelling in his torment. Bull staggered to the bench and sat beside Andrew. He began to mumble,

“I’m sorry I nearly got you killed. I’m sorry I acted so recklessly.” Andrew opened a flask of water from the emergency ration box. He took a drink and then passed it to Bull. Andrew said,

“He’s gone now and there’s nothing we can do about it and who knows, with our weight out of the raft, he might even make it. I didn’t see the raft sink, did you? He might even get picked up before we do, and we’ll see him again. He won’t know us but we will know him and we can tell him our tales.” Andrew’s attempted wry laugh got stuck in his larynx and escaped as a grunting noise. Bull clasped his hands as if in prayer and stared at his bleached white feet. His long dishevelled hair fell forward and clung to his face. “In the meantime,” said Andrew, “we need to figure out how we’re going to get out this damn sea and get our feet onto some dry land. We now stand a better chance of survival in a thirty foot rigid vessel.” Andrew brought his boot down on the hull as if to test the sturdiness of the boat and then he surveyed the interior. Bull concerned himself with a box, concealed under the far side bench. He opened it and found a number of Datrex food ration bars. He ripped the foiled packaging with his teeth and then greedily forced the whole bar into his mouth. Bull ignored the pain from his chapped lips and chewed lovingly, emitting absurd moaning noises as the food dissolved in his mouth. On hearing Bull’s satisfying groans, Andrew raised his hands in alarm. He shouted,

“What are you doing man? I know you’re hungry but we don’t know how long we’ll need to make the food last.” Bull sulked for a while, feeling like a hungry child caught with his sticky fingers in the family cookie jar. He wiped the crumbs from his mouth and put the food bars back into the survival box.

Bull lay down on the bench and stretched out. His eyes flashed for a second on noticing his flip-flopswere not on his feet. He sighed and pulled his blanket closer around himself. He said,

“I’ve lost everything. I know it wasn’t much but they were mine and not some hand-me-downs from a bitter old spinster’s suitcase.” Andrew looked at the woollen tights, fur coat and bobble hat drying on the bench. He said,

“You’re still alive man. That’s what matters. You’re not the only one who has lost something. Many of my personal artefacts went down with the Andrea Starlight. Some only had sentimental value but other items I actually need. There are things more important than plastic sandals.”

“I know it sounds ridiculous but I feel naked and vulnerable without something on my feet. It wasn’t so bad on the raft because we spent all of our time sitting on our backsides, but in here I’m proper feeling it.”

“Perhaps you should have taken Malcolm’s shoes when you had the chance. They would have been no use to him now anyway.”

“That would have been immoral” Bull stared at his bare feet and then added, “Anyway, he was a size nine and I’m a size sixteen.”

The storm eased and Andrew searched the inside of the vessel, inspecting every compartment and cubby hole. He entered the wheelhouse and sat on the pilot’s seat. He tried to fire up the engine. A high pitched whining noise came forth from under the boat, and then the motor went dead. After several attempts, he slapped the control panel with the palm of his hand and cried,

“I think the engine has given up the ghost. We’re not much better off than we were before. We’re still drifting aimlessly.” Bull entered the wheelhouse and pressing a light switch above Andrew’s head, he said,

“Now we can see what we’re doing. This is a good sign. The battery hasn’t gone flat.” Bull located a tool box underneath the pilot seat and dropped down into the engine room. Later, he returned with an oil pump, examining it under the cabin light. He adjusted it with a screwdriver. Andrew watched with fascination. He grunted,

“You do know what you’re doing there, don’t you?”

“I’m no expert but I know a thing or two about gas propulsion engines.” Bull disappeared down into the engine housing again. When he returned, his hands were covered in black grease and he had a grin cast across his face. He turned the ignition and the engine spluttered into life. Andrew’s face came alive. The sound of the engine filled him with a feeling of hope. Bull said,

“The engine looks sound. I checked the hydrostatic interlocking unit and the crank shaft and there doesn’t appear to be any problems. I would imagine the propeller must have been damaged and the engine stalled. It’s a common occurrence.”

“You never told me you were a mechanic.” Bull turned the engine off.

“I’m not. I’m an engineer. Mechanics are the ones who do all the hard work. Computational fluid dynamics is my speciality.”

“So we can travel?”

“Once we repair the propeller we can put the engine in gear and there’s half a tank of LPG, so why not? We need to inspect the external communications systems in the morning. I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted and still getting used to using my legs again.”

“Alright. The morning it is.”

Bull followed Andrew back to the main cabin. They sat on the centre bench. Bull said,

“Do you miss her? Andrew looked confused. He replied,

“Who?”

“Your wife. I noticed you wore a wedding ring, back on the inflatable. I presumed you must be married.” Andrew held up his hand and examined his finger where his wedding ring only recently rested. The white indentations on his finger were still visible. He accepted the marks would fade in time, but the loss of his ring was symbolic of his failed marriage. He wondered if he had lost it in the sea while rescuing Bull. He said,

“We are separated. She lives in Barcelona with my two children.” Gathering his blanket under his chin, he sat in contemplative silence. Bull packed a corner of the cabin with lifejackets and both men settled down to sleep.

When Andrew woke it was still dark. He waited for signs of first light and cursed his shackle for stopping on the day the Andrea Starlight sunk. Finally, with the first signs of daybreak, he got to his feet and rubbed some heat back into his stiff muscles. He opened the escape hatch and prayed the morning would deliver some signs of hope. The world was monochrome. A parapet of pearl grey mist surrounded the boat. He walked the deck, all the time looking out to the inanimate sea hoping for a patch of clarity in the blanket of fog. He climbed the mainmast and inspected the communications antennae. He returned to the cabin, slamming the escape hatch door behind him. Bull woke and rubbing the sleep from his eyes said,

“Where’ve you been?”

“I just popped outside for a while.”

“Did you bring back some bacon rolls?”

“No. I’ve got good news and bad news for you. I climbed up on top of the wheelhouse and found the VHF and UHF aerials are smashed beyond repair and the GPS is busted. So is the radar. This boat has been through the mixer.”

“Great, so we’re still no wiser to our location. What’s the good news? You found another bottle of Talisker?” Andrew rubbed his bearded chin and said,

“I think I’ve got a rough idea what direction to take.”

“Did you find the compass?”

“I did, but it’s an electronic compass and it needs calibrated. I’ve looked everywhere for a magnetic compass but found nothing.”

“So what do you propose Sherlock?”

“Well, there are some old charts in the wheelhouse so if we can judge the position of the sun at noon, and I construct another sextant, we can get a bearing.”

“It’s been a long time since we saw the sun.”

“All we need is an approximation of the sun and we can get our bearings. If we go east, we will make land. Until then we need to mend the propeller.” Bull looked at the survival box.

“I’m proper starving,” he said. “Any chance we could get some breakfast before carrying out the repairs? If we mixed some of those ration bars with water, we could make cold porridge.”

“I suppose breakfast would be a good idea.”

Bull pulled a number of boxes from under the side benches. He found a bowl and a spoon. He half filled the bowl with water and then blended in a crumbled Datrex ration bar.” His mood lifting, he handed Andrew the bowl and said,

“Get tucked into this.”

“I think I’ll forgo the porridge. It looks like school gruel.”

“Did you go to school in the nineteenth century?” said Bull spooning porridge into his mouth.

“It was a gastric tradition, either that or early morning torture.” Andrew opened one of the ration bars and chewed. With an emaciated smile he said,

“It’s funny to think when I was at school I used to actually daydream about being marooned at sea, being washed up on a tropical island and trying to survive on nature’s bounty. Have you ever read Coral Island or Robinson Crusoe or Lord of the Flies?” Bull shook his head. Andrew continued, “I was fascinated by tales of epic adventures, books telling stories of being marooned on an island and voyages on the high seas. What about Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?” Andrew glanced out of the porthole and onto the sea for inspiration and tried to remember a line from his favourite stanza. Andrew recited,

“Instead of the cross, the albatross about my neck was hung.” Licking his bowl clean, Bull gazed at Andrew with an impish glint in his eye. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said,

“I was watching this nature documentary with Saffron. It was about how albatrosses mate for life, and if one of the partners dies, it’s known for the other partner to waste away with a broken heart or even end its own life. On the other hand, a dog will basically copulate with anything that moves, and once he’s finished his business, he’s off looking for another bitch on heat.” Andrew stared at Bull, his expression aghast at his boorish statement, but incongruously he was still curious. He said,

“I’m struggling to see the relevance.”

“Saffron took my hand and looked straight into my eyes and asked, so which one are you Faerrleah? Are you the dog or are you an albatross?”

“And what did you say?”

“I woofed in her face.” Bull laughed until he coughed. Andrew chortled,

“Faerrleah? Is that your name then?” Bull noticed Andrew’s devilish smirk and his cackle came to a stuttering halt. He looked reflectively through the porthole and to the ocean. Finally, he said,

“Yes but only my family call me Faerrleah.”

“What was Saffron like?”

“She had these big beautiful dark eyes, but with a softness to them. As if the iris had merged into the pupil to make deep, mystical pools. They drew you in. Totally mesmerising.”

“Like a bush baby? I read somewhere, no doubt in one of those in-flight magazines, that hundreds of years ago, Italian women would extract the juice from deadly nightshade berries, belladonna they called it, and they would drop the liquid into their eyes to dilate the pupils.”

“She didn’t squeeze berries into her eyes.”

“I never said she did. Although lots of women use chemicals these days to give themselves a puppy dog eye expression.”

“It was natural, she wasn’t a phoney and she didn’t use chemicals to enhance any of her attributes. She was organic. She didn’t believe in cosmetic surgery or faking anything. She was in love with the earth and in love with nature.”

“But not in love with you? I can sympathise with the sentiment.” Bull’s jaw dropped. He said,

“I wouldn’t need to stay up all night wondering why your wife left you.” Andrew looked at Bull’s empty bowl and barked,

“You’re right about one thing! You are a dog. I’m going to try and repair the radar.” Andrew opened the escape hatch door and left.

Later, Andrew returned to the cabin. Bull was studying a nautical chart of the Outer Hebrides in the wheelhouse. Andrew said,

“I’d rather you didn’t mess around with the charts if you don’t know what you are doing. I don’t want them getting covered in your sticky paw prints. We could end up heading for an island only to find it was a bit of porridge gruel which had fallen from your face onto the map.” Bull ignored Andrew and continued studying the map. He said,

“How did you get on trying to fix the radar?” Andrew grunted,

“No success there. It’s taken a bit of a battering.” Andrew placed his finger on the map and said,

“The prevailing winds and sea currents tend to go north east at this time of year so we’re somewhere over here I would guess.”

“We need to do better than just guess. Our lives could depend on it. Remember, there’s only half a tank of fuel. The Andrea Starlight sunk just east of St Kilda and we passed an abandoned oil rig and you said we floated by a buoy.” Bull stabbed the map with his finger and said, “So going by the charts, I think we’re somewhere in this vicinity. If we apply the worst case scenario, we won’t make it to the mainland by my calculations, but one of the islands might be feasible.”

“We can only go with the information available to us. For all we know, the raft could have been going round in circles but if we go east we will be going in the right direction. Hopefully, by nightfall the fog will have lifted and the stars will miraculously appear. If not, we wait until tomorrow and calculate our position in relation to the sun. All we need is a reliable reference point.” Andrew thought back to when, as a child he used to be able to pick out the North Star at random by drawing an imaginary line in the night time sky from the Plough. He imagined the early sailors of old plotting a direction in a similar way. Bull said,

“Okay, you seem to know more about maritime navigation than I do so get us out of here.” Andrew continued to study the charts in silence. Bull said, “Where do you think this lifeboat came from? Was it from our ship?”

“Perhaps, but I would imagine our ship wasn’t the only one to be caught by the wave. It would explain why there’s so much damage to the rigging. I don’t know enough about these vessels.”

Later, Andrew was back in the ocean, unravelling a wire rope from the propeller blades. Bull stood on the deck holding him on the end of a lifeline so he could work without drifting. When Andrew had finished, they returned to the cabin. Andrew wrapped himself in his dry blanket. He was doubled over and felt sick. Bull worked out how to use a self-heating packet of soup. He handed Andrew a steaming cup and said,

“It’s a bit bland. It could do with a little salt but it’s hot.” Andrew sat on the centre bench shivering under his thermal blanket. He clasped the warm cup and pulled it tight to his body. He vowed never to take a hot drink for granted again. It was the first warm beverage since dinner on the Andrea Starlight before it sunk. Eventually, he said,

“I think I’ve swallowed enough salt today. I used to love the sea. As a boy I remember visiting a lovely beach called Balcary Bay down in the Solway Firth, playing in a rock pool and getting caught out by the tide. Great memories, but if I never saw the sea again, I would die a happy man.” Bull stared at Andrew and said,

“I had a similar experience on Morecambe bay when I was young. Funny that.”

In the evening Bull joined Andrew on the deck. He brought tins of boiled ham, stewed apples and scalloped potatoes. Andrew sliced the ham with the blade from his multi-tool and mixed it with the apples and potatoes. They feasted until their guts were full. Bull said,

“I don’t suppose you saved the bottle of Talisker?” Andrew shook his head and returned below to the cabin and studied the nautical charts. Later, the wind picked up and the fog dispersed, revealing the moon and making their first appearance since their ordeal began, the stars. Andrew lay back on the deck, resting his head on the wheelhouse and wonderingly, he gazed into the celestial display above his head. The cool breeze brushed against his face and the sensation of fresh air invigorated his senses. He listened to the sound of the waves lapping against the boat and for a moment he forgot about his plight. Bull thought back to the narrowboat and the summer nights, sipping chilled elderflower wine and talking with Saffron until the sun came up. Andrew pointed to the North Star and said,

“That my friend is Polaris. I’ve now got my bearing. I can now calibrate the electronic compass. We’re going home.” They returned through the escape hatch door and started the engine.