Juan Gomez-Jurado - The Traitor's emblem

March 12, 1940

When the wave threw him against the gunwale, it was pure instinct that made Captain Gonzalez grab at the wood, scraping the skin all the way down his hand. Decades later-by which time he’d become the most distinguished bookseller in Vigo-he would shudder as he remembered that night, the most terrifying and extraordinary of his life. While he sat in his armchair as an old, gray-haired man, his mouth would recall the taste of blood, saltpeter, and fear. His ears would remember the thundering of what they called the “toppler of fools,” the treacherous swell that takes less than twenty minutes to rise and that seamen on the Straits-and their widows-had learned to fear; and his astonished eyes would glimpse again something that, quite simply, could not have been there.

When he saw it, Captain Gonzalez quite forgot that the engine was already struggling, that his crew was no more than seven men when there should have been at least eleven, that among them he was the only one who, just six months earlier, hadn’t been seasick in the shower. He quite forgot that he had contemplated pinning them to the deck for not having awoken him when all the pitching and rolling began.

He held fast to a porthole in order to turn his body around and haul himself onto the bridge, bursting onto it with a blast of rain and wind that drenched the navigator.

“Get away from my wheel, Roca!” he shouted, giving the navigator a hard push. “You’re no earthly use to anyone.”

“Captain, I… You said we weren’t to disturb you unless we were about to go down, sir.” His voice trembled.

Which is precisely what’s about to happen, thought the captain, shaking his head. Most of his crew was made up of the tottering leftovers of a war that had devastated the country. He couldn’t blame them for not having sensed the arrival of the great swell, just as nobody could blame him now for concentrating his attention on turning the boat around and bringing it to safety. The most sensible thing would have been to pay no attention to what he’d just seen, because the alternative was suicide. Something only a fool would attempt.

And I am that fool, thought Gonzalez.

The navigator watched him, mouth wide open, as he steered, holding the boat firm and cutting in toward the waves. The gunboat Esperanza had been built at the end of the previous century, and the wood and steel of its hull creaked savagely.

“Captain!” yelled the navigator. “What the hell are you doing? We’ll capsize!”

“Eyes to port, Roca,” the captain replied. He was afraid, too, though he couldn’t allow the slightest trace of that fear to show.

The navigator obeyed, thinking the captain had gone completely mad.

A few seconds later, the captain had begun to doubt his own judgment.

No more than thirty swimming strokes away, a little raft was rolling between two crests, its keel at a precarious angle. It seemed to be on the brink of capsizing; in fact, it was a miracle it hadn’t gone over already. There was a flash of lightning, and suddenly the navigator understood why the captain was gambling eight lives on such a poor hand.

“Sir, there are people over there!”

“I know, Roca. Tell Castillo and Pascual. They should leave the pumps, come on deck with two ropes, and hang on to those gunwales like a whore hangs on to her money.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

“No… wait-” said the captain, grabbing Roca’s arm before he could leave the bridge.

The captain hesitated a moment. He couldn’t supervise the rescue and steer the boat at the same time. If the prow could just be held perpendicular to the waves, they could make it. But if it didn’t come down in time, one of his boys would end up at the bottom of the sea.

To hell with it.

“Leave it, Roca, I’ll do it myself. You take the wheel and keep it steady, like this.”

“We won’t be able to hold out long, Captain.”

“The moment we get those poor devils out of there, head straight into the first wave you see; but a moment before we reach the highest point, pull the wheel to starboard as hard as you can. And pray!”

Castillo and Pascual appeared on deck, their jaws set and bodies tense, the look on their faces attempting to mask two bodies filled with fear. The captain positioned himself between them, ready to direct the perilous dance.

“At my signal, cast out the gaffs. Now!”

The steel teeth dug into the edge of the raft; the cables tensed.

“Pull!”

As they hauled the raft closer, the captain thought he could hear shouts, see arms waving.

“Hold her tight, but don’t get too close!” He bent over and picked up a boathook twice as tall as he was. “If they hit us, it will destroy them!”

And quite possibly it would open a breach in our boat too, the captain thought. Beneath the slippery deck, he could feel the hull creaking more and more as they were tossed about by each new wave.

He maneuvered the boathook and managed to catch one end of the raft. The pole was long and would help him keep the small craft at a fixed distance. He gave orders to tie the lines to the bitts and for a rope ladder to be dropped, while he did his best to cling to the boathook, which bucked in his hands, threatening to split open his skull.

Another flash of lightning lit up the inside of the craft, and Captain Gonzalez could now see that there were four people on board. He could also finally understand how they had managed to remain on the floating soup dish as it leapt about between the waves.

Damned lunatics-they’ve tied themselves to the boat.

A figure wearing a dark raincoat was leaning across the other occupants, waving a knife and frantically cutting the ropes that bound them to the raft, slashed ropes trailing from his own wrists.

“Go on! Climb up before this thing sinks!”

The figures approached the side of the boat, their outstretched arms reaching toward the ladder. The man with the knife managed to grab hold of it and urged the others to go on ahead of him. Gonzalez’s crew helped them up. Finally there was no one left but the man with the knife. He took hold of the ladder, but as he leaned against the side of the boat to push himself up, the boathook suddenly slipped. The captain tried to hook it in again, but then a wave that was higher than the rest raised the keel of the raft, hurling it against the side of the Esperanza.

There was a crunch, then a shout.

Horrified, the captain let go of the boathook. The side of the raft had struck the man’s leg, and he was hanging from the ladder with one hand, his back against the hull. The raft was moving away, but it would be only a matter of seconds before the waves hurled it back toward the Esperanza.

“The lines!” the captain shouted to his men. “For God’s sake, cut them!”

The sailor closest to the gunwale searched in his belt for a knife, and then began to cut the ropes. The other tried to lead the rescued men to the hatch that led to the hold before a wave hit them head-on and swept them out to sea.

His heart in his mouth, the captain searched under the gunwale for the ax that he knew had been rusting away there for many years.