Stefán Máni - The Ship

Bloody hell, this simply isn’t possible!

But he has to succeed. The longer the captain has no idea where the ship is, the sooner his underlings will lose faith in his ability to get the ship safely to Suriname.

The captain narrows his right eye and looks with his left through the little telescope on the back of the sextant. He peers through a slanting half-mirror and circular sight on the front of the instrument. The horizon divides the middle of the sight while the mirror at the top of the instrument reflects the rays of the sun, stars or moon through a coloured glass, down to the half-mirror and then to the eye of the user – that is, if the conditions are right. What the user has to do to find the height of the moon or sun is to keep the horizon steady in the sight and move the graduated arc at the bottom of the instrument, until the light is reflected from one mirror to the other and reaches his eye. Then all he has to do is secure the graduated arc and read from it the number that the pointer on the vertical part of the instrument indicates.

Technically this is a very easy thing to do, but at the same time it is complicated and difficult, especially at sea.

‘Come on, then!’

At seven minutes after one o’clock, two and then three strong rays of the sun appear to the south. The captain tries to make up for the motion of the ship by stretching out his legs and bending them alternately. He holds his breath and manages to concentrate long enough to estimate with some accuracy the height of the sun over the horizon, before he loses his balance and rams into the iron wall and falls on his backside, grasping the sextant like a fragile work of art.

This sextant is a fragile work of art and, as things now stand, worth more than a thousand times its weight in gold. All the satellites of the world are little more than dusty electronic junk compared to this classical invention that has the lustre of scientific aesthetics, man’s desire for truth and his unshakable faith in the reliability of God’s creation.

A mere instrument on land; the breath of life at sea.

Guðmundur scrambles to his feet, with the sextant in his arms, and manages to get it into the bridge, where he places it on the desk in the chart room without disturbing the adjustment.

But the desk is empty. No charts.

‘Of course,’ Guðmundur says under his breath. For a moment he thinks someone has stolen all the charts, then remembers he removed them himself – rolled them up and hid them in the wardrobe in his cabin.

He had meant to make sure that no irresponsible person got hold of them and then sailed the ship somewhere other than was intended. When he became aware of the mutiny of the gang of five he didn’t know what they were up to, and automatically thought the worst.

Guðmundur finds the walky-talky, turns it on and adjusts it to an open channel.

‘Rúnar, can you hear me? It’s the captain calling,’ Guðmundur says into the transmitter. ‘Rúnar, can you hear me?’

Skuggi lifts his head off the floor and looks at the captain. Crackling sounds are heard from the receiver.

‘Rúnar here. Over.’

‘Will you get Methúsalem to relieve me? I’m going to calculate the position of the ship. Over.’

‘Give me two minutes. Over and out.’

Rúnar hangs up his overalls in the storeroom and saunters up to E-deck, a lit cigarette between his lips.

‘Methúsalem?’ he calls and knocks on the door of the first mate’s cabin.

No answer.

‘ Methúsalem! ’

The bosun grabs the doorknob and opens the door with his left hand as he knocks politely with his right.

‘Methúsalem! Are you there?’

The first mate must be in the cabin, because the hasp prevents the door from opening more than a few centimetres.

‘Methúsalem? You asleep?’ Rúnar knocks again on the door, which rattles against the hasp.

No answer.

It is pitch black in the first mate’s cabin and a strange smell floats into the corridor, a sort of mixture of mould, bad breath and strong body odour.

The bosun drags on his cigarette, grimaces, and then blows the smoke through his nose.

‘ Methúsalem! ’

Still no answer.

‘To hell with you then,’ the bosun says and slams the door.

Rúnar draws on the cigarette until it’s burned up to the filter before throwing the stub out the door behind the wheelhouse up on F-deck, then he shuts out the storm and saunters on up to G-deck.

‘Where’s Methúsalem?’ Guðmundur asks when Rúnar enters the bridge.

‘He didn’t answer,’ says Rúnar as makes his way to the port side and pours a mug of coffee.

‘Wasn’t he in his cabin?’

‘Yeah, the hasp was in place. He’s just fast asleep. Unless he’s ill or something. There’s a bloody stench in the cabin.’

‘He wasn’t feeling too good yesterday,’ mumbles Guðmundur.

‘Yeah, that’s right. He’s probably got some kind of bug.’

‘Damn it!’ Guðmundur shakes his head. ‘It’s hard enough to man the watch as it is.’

‘I can relieve you for a while,’ says Rúnar, grabbing a handle with his left hand as the ship rolls to starboard. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m heading down to my cabin to calculate our position,’ Guðmundur answers, picking up the sextant as if it were an infant. ‘The charts and calculator are below. I won’t be long.’

‘Take your time,’ says Rúnar as he gets into the captain’s chair. ‘I was thinking of taking him some food to the forecastle.’

‘Doesn’t the man have any food?’.

‘No. But we left him some water.’

‘That’ll have to do for now. There’s no way I’m letting men risk their lives outside when the weather like this.’

‘I see,’ Rúnar says into his coffee.

‘We’ll look into it this evening,’ says the captain as he opens the door into the corridor. Skuggi stands up.

‘Are you okay with that?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

The captain leaves the bridge with Skuggi at his heels.

Methúsalem?

Methúsalem!

Who is Methúsalem?

Is he the man who drove to a party and drank maybe one glass of white wine to be polite, and then another, and another, but still just one glass – the same glass – over and over again, and then drove home to prove to himself that he wasn’t drunk, since he’d been sober for five weeks, four, three, two…?

No! Who’d want to talk to him?

Methúsalem is me.

Me? Yes! Who am I?

The first mate of death!

Death? What rubbish!

Knock, knock, knock…

Come in!

I mean…

Methúsalem Sigurdsson opens his mouth but no words come out.

Is it possible to be so hung over from one beer? The beer was just a pick-me-up. One beer. He was sober when he drank it, there’s no doubt about that, see!

The beer must have gone off. How long had it been hidden in the refrigerator? A year? Two? Ten?

‘ Methúsalem! ’

The first mate lies on his back in the hot dark and hears someone call from a vague distance.

A black skull speaks through a faint yellow light that sneaks in like fog through the doorway that opens beyond a dark room full of nothing.

Is he dreaming? Or is someone knocking on the door? On what door? The door to his head? Is there a door in his head?

Where is he? Outside his head? Is he knocking? Or has he got the DTs?

‘To hell with you then.’

The door slams shut, the skull disappears and the furry darkness is filled with a feverish silence.