"John Myers Myers - Silverlock" - читать интересную книгу автора (Myers John)

Silverlock
by
John Myers Myers
(1949)
 TO MAC McCORRY MYERS
Who knows each point of call along the line
From misty islands clear to RidersтАЩ Shrine
 WAY ONE
Sea Roads, The Forests, and a Rendezvous
 I
The Right Waters
If I had cared to live, I would have died.
A storm had come up. While not sick, I found my bunk the most comfortable place,
leaving it only to take my meals. Dozing after supper, I learned of disaster when a
wave bashed in the door of my deck cabin. The backwash sluiced me out of it and
stranded me by a stowage locker.
While I was still trying to figure out what was going on I caught a glimpse of
men trying to lower boats. The ship was low in the water, although through
oversight or indifference nobody had given me warningтАФany more than I would
have bothered to take the trouble for them. At that I was first over the side; for
before I could get purchase anywhere a following wave put me there.
As I swirled to leeward, I saw one lifeboat smashed. The next chance I had to
look, the ship was going down by the nose. I was then far enough off to be free
of the suction. It is my belief that all other hands, feet, heads, and connecting
torsos were dragged bottomwards along with every bolt of the craft.
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. Where it
foundered is anybody's guess. There had been a fog for three days, so no
bearings for a similar period. The radio failed to function, and a skipper trained
to lean on such a gadget was small shakes at dead reckoning. On the fourth
day the fog cleared; but the sky did not, and the wind came up. It blew the
Naglfar no good, and somewhere, nine days out of Baltimore, down she went.
Once again: if I had cared to live, I would have died. I would have used myself
up fleeing what could not be fled. Panic at being in a sea without a visible shore
would have bound my muscles and broken the rhythm of my breathing. Not far
from where the ship had vanished, I too would have filled with water that
stopped my fires.
As it was, I floundered for just the first minute or so. Then I did what I could,
aware that it would not be enough. The seas were high, but negotiable for
anyone willing to go the way the waves did. These roughed me as they came up
behind; but I could rest when they got their grip and carried me along. 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. I was a fair swimmer only.
I recall thinking that I was stroking toward either the end of all life or the
beginning of a new one. Neither possibility stirred me. Every man knows he will
die; and nobody believes it. On that paradox stand not only a host of religions
but the entity of sane being. 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. It had not dropped from me because of any particular shock or
misfortune. It had moulted from me year by year, for all of my thirty-five, to