The Last Ship by William Brinkley Page B

with the Russian submarine commander in the Strait of Gibraltar, to our agreement: ourselves to undertake to find a habitable place for both of us, him to go where he believed the nuclear fuel still to be that would free us from the prison that any place we found and settled on was certain otherwise to become. There had been a time when I hardly knew whether to long for his arrival more than anything on earth, the fuel being the greatest gift that could be made us, enabling us to go anywhere without the desperate calculations on which we were even now engaged; or to dread that same arrival for the reason of the awesome complications sure to be attendant on the integration of his ship’s company of 112 men into whatever community we might establish on whatever habitable space we might find, a difficult enough undertaking for ourselves alone; coming down at last on the former, believing we could somehow make it together; the matter long since become academic, his having vanished an almost forgotten time back from the frequencies on which we kept contact, presumably lost at sea in a manner we would never know. All of it seeming such a long shot even at the time that I had withheld the nature of his mission from all my officers save two, lest it distort our every planning. How wise that now seemed! Yet I still found my mind unwillingly admitting the thinnest possibility, catching myself at odd times gazing at the northern horizon to see if that immense low black profile known as the
Pushkin
would appear against it . . . the prospect of such an impossible bounty, a five-year fuel supply, making me for those instants hope’s fool. A road to madness. I turned back to Selmon.
    “This is contingency, from your data.” I had to hear it again. “You don’t think we’d be forced out of here?”
    “Not by that. Barring those two changes, or perhaps even one of them, negative. In my department I couldn’t imagine better atmosphere than right where we’re presently anchored, Captain.”
    I waited again. I thought I heard the distant clatter. “What a pleasant change from your usual reports, Mr. Selmon.”
    The j.g. smiled back almost boyishly. “I try to please, sir.”
    “I never noticed it. Then, gentlemen,” I said, “let us rest it there for the present.”
    Sure enough there was the ritualistic three knocks on the door. “Enter,” I said.
    The lookout stood there.
    “Silva, Captain. Boat’s coming alongside, sir.”
     *  *  * 
    “Captain, the terns were right. Sea birds always are. All I had to do was follow them. That ocean,” he said, “is full of fish—great schools of fish . . .”
    His blue Scot’s eyes shone against his bronze Portuguese skin. The exaltation there reflected in myself. A sense of the most immense relief. We stood on the quarterdeck at the top of the accommodation ladder. Just looking at each other. Above the emotion in me I could just hear him going on.
    “Cantwell here . . .” He indicated the ship’s sailmaker who had followed him up the ladder from the boat “. . . says he can make casting nets from ship’s lines. We can have the first in three days. Big nets. And when the fuel runs out he can make us sails . . .”
     *  *  * 
    Then had come Delaney. On top of Silva, it was almost as if that single ingenuity decided me, its affirmation of our one true strength; the light of hope it lit; a thing so seemingly small but in truth saying everything about the men I had under me.
    “Grapnels,” the gunner’s mate said, “sir.”
    His eyes filled with fervor.
    “Captain, you’d be amazed how much like a harrow they are. Harrowing, sir, that’s about the most important part of farming there is
.
And these grapnels here, we’ve got
fourteen
of them. I and Mr. Thurlow tried this one out.”
    Under the hot zenith sunshine we squatted on the fanfail, examining it, Silva there with us. Bits of island earth still clung to its flukes.
    “Noisy says he can sharpen these