The Forty Fathom Bank and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

whether at the time I admired May’s complacence or merely envied it, I do not know; but the quiet pleasure he took, not only in his work but in just the simple business of washing his hands, was having a strangely salutary effect on me. The tension in my muscles and stomach that, until then I’d never quite realized was there, slowly ebbed away and a kind of airy lightness began to flow through my body. The curtain of anxiety that as far back as I could remember had obscured and distorted my vision lifted, and a new and surprisingly beautiful world appeared almost magically before me. The late morning sun that normally would have been nothing more than a disturbing reminder of time wasted made a broad silvery track southward, a liquid pathway over which I could easily imagine myself a child again, skipping excitedly toward some divine kingdom in the sky, while all around me the slow, inbound swells flashed and twinkled as from countless bright trinkets in the blue darkness of the water.
    With a feeling of unaccustomed delight, I stepped out on deck. The air was warm and soft, and in the silence of the stopped engine I made a surprising discovery. I could feel the
Blue Fin
floating. I say floating because when the heavy hull, vibrating to the pounding pistons, was moving forward at seven or eight knots, there was no feeling of floating, only a persistent and distracting clamor that numbed the senses. Now as we lay buoyantly lifting and falling on the long swells, the lapping of waves at the waterline, the woody thumping of the rudder post and the muted creaking of planks and timbers, all combinedto bring my senses into perfect harmony with the easy motion of the sea around me.
    At the time, however, I did not question this curious transition in myself, whether May’s influence had wrought the change or if something else, perhaps some natural safety valve, was responsible. The unusual experience of feeling myself fully alive and the unbelievable joy it brought left no room for reflection. With new awareness I gazed out over the water. Close by I could see the buoy keg, bright red and strangely out of place on the wide expanse of blue on which it bobbed, and above it the black flag fluttering languidly on its bamboo pole. Far away and looking no bigger than a period, appearing and disappearing against the pale sky, I could make out the first flag that marked the far end of the line. Between those two flags and stretching over two miles of ocean floor, I knew lay some thousand baited hooks. But the thought of sharks down there, of tonnage, of liver, of Vitamin A, of the war in Europe, of work, of money, seemed to vanish altogether in the cool blue stillness of the day. Even my family, though no more than twenty-odd miles from where I stood, seemed remote as if they were living in another life.
    Suddenly I had a deep desire to talk to Ethan May, or possibly not to talk at all, but just sit and eat or maybe smoke a cigarette. I was still standing by the open door of the wheelhouse and May had just gone below. He had taken off his skull cap and put it in his trouser pocket. I followed him down, got the Primus stove going and cooked up some canned stew and made a pot of coffee.
    We ate in what I seemed to feel was a kind of friendly silence, with the
Blue Fin
rolling just a little, the portable table open between us, he sitting on the starboard bunk, I opposite and the soft sunlight through the open portsmaking slow patterns on the white painted bulkheads. May’s black suitcase was open beside him and when we had finished our coffee, he brought out a big almond chocolate bar, broke it, and handed me, I think, the larger half. I still remember, after twenty years, how it tasted, of the pleasant, homely feeling I had while eating it, and of the cigarette I smoked and of May’s pipe, that short stemmed, heavy bowled, comfortable pipe he filled and tamped with his thick strong fingers and the way he leaned back on the