Voyage to Somewhere by Sloan Wilson Page B

star sights. Returning as stoically as possible to my cabin, I lay there imagining the most terrible events. I imagined arriving at what I should calculate to be the position of the island of Oahu, and finding no land there—only the limitless ocean. I imagined finally making a landfall on an island, only to find it was the wrong island, one without any habitation at all. When the sun came out and was visible as a dim blur behind the haze, I was on deck taking sights as fast as I could plot them. To my delight the haze cleared away and by ten o’clock the sky was as blue as the ocean beneath.
    At eleven I sent a lookout to the masthead. All hands off watch crowded onto the forecastle deck and craned their necks forward for land. After twelve days at sea it appeared as though land would be something completely out of the ordinary. At eleven-thirty the masthead lookout shouted, and in my excitement I clambered up the mast myself to verify his judgment.
    Lying very low on the horizon, hardly different in substance from a shadow, was a tiny gray blur. As I strained my eyes I could follow it a little to the left and a little to the right; it seemed to waver as I stared at it. It was land, however, not a cloud; there was no doubt about it.
    A few minutes later off the port bow we could see a long low point of land, and gradually the two islands, Oahu and Molokai, sprang up around us. I took a few bearings to verify our position, and with a great sense of satisfaction sat down on my stool on the bridge and smoked a pipe.
    Now that my own anxiety was gone I could look around me and appreciate the crew. The man at the wheel stood confidently and, looking astern, I could see our wake streching straight as a railroad track behind us. The men on deck somehow looked like sailors. Their faces had neither a look of worry nor of irresponsible gaiety. As I watched them, the Chief started them to rousting out the mooring lines, and they moved quickly, as though they knew what they were doing. It was no longer necessary for the Chief to shout at them; I hardly heard his voice at all.
    As I sat there I heard Mr. Rudd come puffing up the companionway behind me. He stood beside me and rested his elbow on the rail. For a moment he surveyed the land that was building up around us, and by the way he blinked I knew that he had just come out of the engine room.
    â€œWell,” he said, “I see you found the place.”
    â€œYes,” I said, “it’s here, all right.”
    Mr. Rudd picked a piece of waste from his rear trouser pocket and wiped his hands on it reflectively.
    â€œWe’ve come a long way,” he said.
    â€œYes,” I said, “a long way. What do you think of your men below?”
    Mr. Rudd said, “They’re a funny bunch. If I can get them to thinking about anything else but letters home and if I can get them to forget their bellies, I guess they’ll be all right. Most of them have got their sea legs already, and a couple of them seem to know their business pretty well. The last two days I’ve only gone down to the engine room a couple of times a watch to look around, and they seem to be handling things all right by themselves, but sometimes when I hear them carrying on about letters and whatnot, I get the idea that they’re really not here at all. If they all divorced their wives and deserted their mothers we might make sailors out of them.”
    â€œI’m afraid only Regulars could qualify under that clause,” I said.
    â€œWell,” Mr. Rudd retorted, “you can’t be a sailor and a decent man at the same time. When I go to sea give me someone with tattooed arms and a foul mouth. Give me a shipmate that has to be bailed out of jail when it’s time to go to sea.”
    â€œDo you mean that?” I asked.
    â€œOf course not.”
    I turned and looked at him. “What do you mean?” I said. “I’ll put you on the spot and be