Stefán Máni - The Ship

He has to manage this. He has to!

Sæli crawls out onto the roof and rolls onto his back in the middle. His legs point to the disconnected satellite receiver and at the back of his head the radar mast rises like an oversized scarecrow. Under the seaman 4000 tonnes of cold iron are rocking on the surface of an abyss; above him there is only darkness.

He holds the gun with both hands and points the barrel straight up to the night sky. But he doesn’t pull the trigger. He can’t pull the trigger. Why should he pull the trigger?

They are dead! Dead. All of them!

Hesitating up there on the roof, Sæli startles when the captain fires the shotgun down on the bridge wing.

What was that?

But when the shooter on the pirates’ ship starts pumping lead into the ship’s bridge, it’s as if the seaman’s blood freezes in his veins and his soul leaves his body. The machine gun barks thunderously and the ship shudders under the heavy hail of lead. At first the bullets pelt the bridge wings and the outside of the bridge, but then the shooter raises the barrel of his gun and aims his gunfire at the radar mast, which splinters like a henhouse in a hurricane.

Bits of plastic, screws and bent and broken metal rain over Sæli, who squeezes his eyes shut and cradles the flare gun to his chest like a child with a soft toy.

Silence.

Sæli opens his eyes and stares up into the sky, no longer feeling the cold or his body. The mast still stands but the two radar scanners are simply unsightly scraps and tangles of wire.

Time stands still and eternity smells of salt, smoke and broken plastic.

Sæli doesn’t know what he’s doing, what he should do or what’s happening.

Maybe he should just fall asleep and never wake up?

Yes.

It’s best to try to sleep.

All of a sudden the bells resound throughout the ship and the seaman blinks his eyes and blows shreds of something out of his nose. Then he lifts an arm, aims the gun at the heavens and pulls the trigger.

Pow!

There’s a solid bang and the gun recoils so hard that Sæli almost drops it in his face, but the flare streaks vertically into the night sky. It leaves behind a white stripe as it flies higher and higher, until it stops climbing and pauses for a second, then comes a bright red light that glows like a jewel and changes the darkness into a rose-red dome that grows smaller as the flare sways calmly down, hanging from a white parachute.

Stoker, wearing nothing but a pair of cotton trousers, is sitting by the table in his cabin, mixing himself a pipe, when a green glow lights up the beige curtains.

A green glow?

‘What the hell?’ he mutters, putting down the pipe and the burnt aluminium foil with its hot blend of tobacco and cannabis oil. He stands up from the table and walks over the slanting floor, kneels on the bed and pulls the curtains to both sides.

Out in the sea north of the ship is a wash of green light that’s gradually getting nearer.

‘Pirates!’ declares Stoker and he clutches the curtains in his fists. He has read several books about this perpetual threat on the high seas which, contrary to what many people think, has never in the history of sailing been as real as it is now.

‘One, two, three, four,’ murmurs Ási as he moves the red piece over an equal number of squares. He is sitting alone at the table in his cabin, playing ludo against himself. The blue piece has two sixes in a row, the green is close behind, the red has got started but the yellow one has hardly left the starting square.

‘Come on!’ says the cook as he shakes the die in his right hand, releases it and rolls it over the table. Before it stops, some kind of hailstorm slams into the starboard side of the ship. It clangs against the steel, and sudden thumps pulse through the wheelhouse like someone knocking at the ship with a big hammer.

‘What was that?’ Ási says, stands up and walks over to the window, which is on the port side and faces at an angle up into the night sky.

Outside there is nothing to be seen but darkness.

‘Where had we got to?’ Ási sits back down at the table, where the red die lies motionless, showing two black pips. ‘Wasn’t it yellow? It was yellow. Yellow forward two. You’d better get a move on, my little yellow friend, eh?’

Ási moves the yellow piece two places and now all the pieces have started on one more go around the square board. The cook shakes out a cigarette from a fresh packet and lights up with a match.

‘Whose turn is it?’ asks Ási of no-one, shaking the match out before putting it back in the matchbox. Then he squints, sucks on the cigarette and blows smoke out his nose.

‘Is it green?

The cook takes the cigarette out of his mouth and stubs it out in a tin can half full of sand and stubs.

‘No, wasn’t it blue?’

Yellow’s turn has come round again when the alarm bells resound throughout the ship.

‘What’s all the fuss?’ says Ási, absentmindedly throwing the die.

Four.

Outside of the window a red light starts glowing, but the cook doesn’t notice. He stands up and walks slowly to the door, and opens it just as if the raging clatter of the bell was the doorbell and there was an impatient visitor waiting in the corridor.

Now what’s up?

In the corridor stands a man dressed all in black, who turns suddenly when he becomes aware of the cook and stares at Ási with wild eyes.

‘What can I do for you—’ But before Ási can finish his question the pirate pulls the trigger of his machine gun.

Ratatatatata!

Àsmundur Sigjónsson from the Westman Islands blinks his eyes, moves his lips and tries weakly to hold onto the doorframe, but his fingers are as soft as butter and his body so terribly heavy. So heavy. So…

‘I’d better let Satan out,’ says Stoker, jumping down off his bed. He opens the door into the corridor and runs barefoot and bare-chested down the stairs and out the door at the back of the wheelhouse, to B-deck, where he turns right, runs past the wheelhouse and in three jumps down the stairs reaches the weather deck on the port side.

At the same time five black-clad men throw a line with a three-pronged hook on the end over the railing on the starboard side.

When Stoker is halfway across the icy-cold, wet deck the captain lets off a shot from his shotgun and then the second engineer throws himself on his face on the ribbed iron floor. Seconds later the shooter on the pirates’ mother ship pulls the trigger of the big machine gun and rains lead over the bridge of the ship.

Stoker grimaces and crawls forwards along the deck like a soldier in a shallow trench. When the shooting lets up he has about a third of the way still to go. Then he stands up and runs the last bit, back bent, head stretched forward, and when he sees the red-painted front of the forecastle he throws himself on his abdomen in front of the forward hatch.

He lies there for a short while to catch his breath, then rolls over on his back. Just then the emergency flare swooshes into the black sky.

‘FUCK!’ screams Stoker, knowing that in a few seconds the flare will light up the night – and himself, where he stands defenceless in the bow of the ship, half naked and unarmed.

Why turn out the lights when idiots with a flare gun are loose on board?

Stoker jumps to his feet and runs over to the red door in the middle of the forecastle. He takes hold of the rusty hasps with his bare hands and tears them loose, and just before he manages to loosen the last hasp and open the door to the forecastle the flare ignites in the sky. It sways like a soap bubble at the highest point of the dome and casts a rose-red gleam over the ship and the surrounding sea.