SINGLE PAGERS

Here are 3 NEW ‘Single Pagers’ for your review. Each ‘Single Pagers’ is a complete “Short Short” Story, told in one page, that are at time linked by common characters, A selection of previously posted stories are still here. Each is intended to help go somewhere unexpected (that might encourage you to read the next)…

A new Alphabet City Series will be starting soon!

Please come back…

Selections from the Legends of the Diner series are posted at the bottom.

Your comments, suggestions and requests are appreciated.

MPC

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

MOST RECENT THREE: (Followed by Best of ALL)

GARGOYLES

        “The gargoyle blinked,” Gail LaCalem said, almost too softly to be heard.

        “My point, exactly,” William Barnes replied, smiling as he pointed to the two spreadsheets, laid out side by side on the conference table. “And the final audit will show that both unit leaders have been skimming. That’s my take.”

        “No,” Gail whispered, shaking her head. “I mean it really blinked.”

        “What are you talking about?”

        “Across the mall, there’s one on each corner at the top of the Graymar Building.”

        “O.k. I see two really odd faces, with pointy tongues hanging out. So what?”

       “Those are not just odd faces.  Those are gargoyles,” Gail said, and then suddenly, she shouted, “There! It did it again.”

       “Good Lord, Gail.  Have you lost your mind?”

       “Maybe, yes… but, just keep watching.”

       A moment later, Gail jumped in her chair, and Barnes said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”

       “I don’t think it’s smart to say that, out loud,” Gail whispered in fear.

       “What do you mean?”

       “What if it can see us and understand what we’re saying.”

       “That’s impossible.”

       “What are you talking about?” Gail answered.  “I don’t think we are both crazy, but we both just saw a gargoyle, that’s carved in stone, blink.”

       Across the plaza the Gargoyle blinked one more time.

       William gasped and then said, “O.k. Now, I propose we slowly back away from the glass, and if we are smart, we will never tell anyone what we saw.”

       And as they both backed away, slowly, on the other side of the plaza, one of the Gargoyles, who was watching them closely, flicked its’ granite tongue and hissed to the other, “How about a snack?”

       “Way too soon,” the Gargoyle on the far side replied.  “Ask me again in a decade.”

FIRST THOUGHTS

     The ongoing conversation between Rebecca and her son, Will began three weeks before he was born. In the morning when Will silently asked how bell-shaped curves might apply to the two of them, Rebecca was certain she was having a psychotic break. 

       A request from her unborn son that she reconsider her conclusion by re-reading a study focused on mental disorder, that he had absorbed, because she had read it in the public library at his request, made matters worse.

       When Will said, “Na, we can both see how insanity is unlikely, since we are in fact communicating in words.  Your memories are being transferred to me, constantly, even the ones you have been blocking for years. This was included as a possibility in the release you signed before entering Dr. Plank’s research study.”

       Rebecca decided she had nothing to lose by keeping the situation to herself.

       On the day before the two agreed he would be born, they also agreed that no one else could ever know what was happening between them.  They concluded that Will would pretend to cry at birth, which he did.

       The two never spoke words out loud together, until he was well over one year old..

      “Some might say we owe Dr. Plank,” Rebecca said before a follow-up at the Center.

      Will frowned and replied, “I don’t think so, Na.  He did not do this for us.”

      That morning Will took hold of Dr. Plank’s little finger and spoke into his mind. The message was simple and direct.  The result was that the man never went near Will’s mother, Rebecca, again.  He also never had another meaningful night of sleep for the rest of his life, and stopped pretending to be either a research scientist or to practice his unique brand of medicine, all without understanding why.

       On a quiet afternoon in May, as Rebeca and her young son, Will, sat on a veranda of their home in the Piedmont, purchased when Rebecca won the lottery with numbers developed as a probability by a three-year-old Will. The pair agreed that when he was twenty-two he would win a second time, which he did under an assumed name, legally created one year earlier, so that no one would ever make the connection.

THE OTHER GPS

       “The GPS wants us to turn around, Poppi,” the young girl said, studying the map on her cellphone.

       Her grandfather smiled, but kept driving straight on a two-lane country road. “It might think so, except it can’t actually think for itself. Only we can do that.”

       “Think about what?”

       “Look around us, Little One and tell me what is unusual that you see.”

       The young girl looked up from her screen. “There is a field and an old red barn and a very big tree.”

       “Is there a ridgeline to our right?”

       “Yes, Poppi.  I can see it whenever we are crossing a field.”

       “That ridgeline is the reason this narrow road was built here a long time ago.”

       “Have you driven here before, Poppi?” The little girl asked.

       “Not on this road… no… but in this place… yes.”

       “I don’t understand what you mean.”

       “If you like, I will explain more when we get to Auntie Nella’s.”

       “Momma gave me the cell phone with a GPS on it and taught me to use it, so I won’t get lost.”

       “Yes, that’s right.  Your mother loves you very much and teaches you well, but there is another GPS, Little One. We see it without numbers and hear it without words.”

       “Then how can we get where we are going, Poppi?”

       “By following the other GPS, we will always arrive where we might be instead of where we think we should be going.”

       ”I don’t understand, Poppi,” the young girl said as the two drove very slowly across a narrow, rickety, old wooden one lane bridge in the middle of a forest of old oak trees.

       At that moment the GPS blinked three times and a voice said, “Recalculating.”

       “Look at the screen, Poppi.”

       “You look for us both, Little One, while I look at the road ahead and enjoy the drive.”

SAMPLE OF BEST:

STORY #1:  A THOUSAND MILES

      At the intersection of two narrow, blacktop roads on a flatland that was miles from the nearest mountain ridge, an old, hand-painted sign, attached to the top of an iron post, was embedded in the desert floor.

       The sign read, “YOU ARE A THOUSAND MILES FROM NOWHERE. IF YOU ARE SMART YOU WILL TURN AROUND AND GO BACK.”

       “Holy cow!” Jason said, as he stepped out of the car.  “Just like Steve told us.”

       “Look there,” Brent, replied, pointing to the far left of the road they had just taken.

       At the edge of sight, a growing line of dust was forming.  After a few minutes, the dust began to fade, but then reformed as an expanding cloud, moving in their direction. Within minutes the dust revealed an approaching state police cruiser, that slowed to a stop next to the two friends.

       The dark-tinted driver’s window rolled down.  A white-haired trooper sat behind the steering wheel. He was dressed in a state-police uniform and wearing black sunglasses.

       “Are you boys lost?” the trooper asked.

       “No, sir.  Not that I can tell,” Brent replied, “A friend of ours told us about this strange sign, and we decided to see it for ourselves.”

       The trooper looked up at the painted board and nodded. “I’m going to guess that your buddy did what the sign says and turned around. Right?”

       The two friends looked at each other in surprise.

       Brent frowned and said, “That’s right.  He had come out here by mistake.”

       At that moment the trooper’s dispatch radio spoke. “Baker One, come in.”

       The trooper rolled up his window, talked briefly, then re-opened the window.

       “Your buddy did the right thing. If you’re smart, you’ll do the same,” the trooper told them before closing the window and swinging the cruiser around to leave at high speed.

       Four hours later, after trying all three directions, each of which was heavy with pot-holes and led to dead-ends, the two friends were back at the sign, wondering why they had not listened to the trooper’s advice, a debate that would go on for years to come.

STORY #2: EXPRESS ELEVATOR:

        There was a loud bang, and the elevator bounced to a hard stop.

        “What the hell?” William Barnes said, looking around him.

        “So much for the Express Elevator,” Dr. Mohammed Safar, added, softly. “Would you like to call it in or should I?” he asked, nodding toward the red Emergency Phone.

        “Please allow me,” Bill Barnes replied, with a lopsided smile.

        “Your call, My Friend.”

        Once the handset was lifted, a voice from the speaker said, “How may I help you?”

        “We’re in the Express Elevator ‘B’, that stopped part way.”

        “One moment, please.” After a pause, the voice said, “That Elevator should arrive at the top floor momentarily.  Please be patient.  There are 65 floors.”

        “You be patient.  This damned elevator is going nowhere.”

        “There is no reason for abusive language.”

        Dr. Safar touched his new friend’s arm and said, “Please allow me…”

        William Barnes nodded and handed him the phone.

        “This is Dr. Mohammed Safar,” he started.  “While my colleague’s language may be a bit colorful, I can assure you, he has more common sense than you ever will.”

       “Please hold,” the operator said, and the speaker began to play music.

       “Now, that’s why they call it Express,” Mohammed said with a shake of his head.

       “O.k. try that one on me.”

       “Because it was designed to help you fully express what you are thinking.” And then the doctor started swearing in Farsi and did not stop for an entire minute.

        “Now that’s what I’m talking about,” William Barnes announced, “And I didn’t even understand a word you said.”

       “Ah!  But I suspect you did.”

       “O.k. You got that straight.”

       And the two new friends spent the next five minutes waiting for a voice on the emergency phone, loudly sharing swear words in five languages.

STORY #3: WE THREE

        Angelique stopped at the Midway Deli on a Wednesday in May to buy three sandwiches wrapped in silver foil, as she had done each workday for a month. The difference that day was that she found it difficult to stop crying.

       The day before she made the mistake of telling the office manager, Kat Carter, what she had been doing each day at noon.  She was not exactly sure why she told Kat, who went to their boss, John Grant, who fired Angelique for being stupid.

       Her trouble had started when she became aware of three senior men, who were always on a park bench, talking together at noon. Angelique felt an unexpected need to do something for them. All three could use a shower at minimum, but they always nodded to her, respectfully, each time she passed.  Angelique had decided they were not a threat on the day when she saw a man in a business suit offer each a dollar and they all waived the man off.  The next morning Angelique bought three sandwiches.

       "What's your name, Angel?" the white-haired one, who was clearly the oldest of the three, asked, as she handed him one of the foil-wrapped sandwiches. The man was dressed in tattered blue jeans and a vintage "Grateful Dead" sweatshirt.

       "That's almost right," she laughed. "My name is Angelique."

       "Well, of course it is," said the second. He was outfitted in worn combat fatigues. "Thank you, Miss," he added, as he took the sandwich she handed him, and then said, "I'm Chad, and my silver-topped pal is Mitch.  And if you are lucky, our buddy Benjy, will stay silent, instead of rambling about why we should all keep away from mezzanines."

       To which the third shaggy-haired friend grumbled, as he bit into his sandwich.

       On the day when Angelique cried, Chad asked her why, and when she told the three what had happened, Benji shook his head and said, "Oh, we'll just see about that."

       The next noon, when she brought three sandwiches from home, Mitch raised a hand. "We all agreed it's time to get back into the game. The company where you worked is being bought.  The snitch will be gone, along with your boss.  In a week, Miss Angel, you'll fly to Boston for management training, then we'll explain the rest. O.k.?"

       Angelique cried one last time, forever, then told them, "You truly are three kings."

STORY #4: OUT OF THE BOX

      As he walked across the university campus, Dr. Douglas Melrose wondered how many times he would make that walk in the next months and years.  Having been recruited as the head of a new Ancient Language Section with full tenure, Dr. Melrose knew that he was not likely to be leaving his post soon.  He sighed, wishing that his life-time companion, Lenore, had survived to see him accomplish her dream for him.

       Suddenly, a sandy-haired young man in a loose sweatshirt was trotting beside him.

       “Hey, Gramps.  What’s happening?” the young man asked.

       “Excuse me?” Dr. Melrose replied with a frown.

       “Not necessary.   You ain’t done nothin’, yet.”

       “Is this a joke? Who put you up to this?”

       “Wow. Two questions at once. Which goes first?” the young man replied in an odd drawl, then laughed and said normally, “My turn, how’d you like my gangstah-speak?”

       Without realizing that he had done so, Doug Melrose stopped walking in the middle of the campus square, and was standing still, amazed, when the young man went on to say, “I stopped you ‘cause you needed to meet me, right now.”

       As Doug could only stare, the young man did a twirl, then said, “Oops… Gotta run,” and trotted off, just as Dr. Harry Seymore, head of the recruitment committee that had convinced his old friend to join the faculty team, walked up to him.

       “Do you know that young man?” Doug Melrose asked, looking around the square.

       “Which one?” his old friend asked.

       “A strange, but friendly student in a university jersey, who was just talking to me.”

       Harry Seymore turned pale.  “Impossible,” he said.  “They told me that was a campus myth and that I had been dreaming, due to heavy travel and lack of sleep. He greeted me the first time I walked across campus.  They say that he only does that for those of us who will be here for the duration.”

       “Wait a minute.  How long ago was that?”

       After a hesitation, Harry, shook his head and told Doug, “Twenty-six years.”

= = = = = = = = = END OF CURRENT 4 STORIES

Stories in this Diner Series will be refreshed soon. Please return.

LEGENDS OF THE DINER: A SELECTION OF LINKED STORIES

IDENTIFIED BY NAME AND NUMBER

(Individual Stories not currently posted refreshed on request)

LEGEND #1: DESERT SONG

     Suzanna, the waitress, was alone just before dawn when she started singing, “Crazy,” along with the voice of Patsy Cline, coming from the antiquated juke box.

     The outside light was slowly growing, and Susanna was unaware when a vehicle pulled to a stop, facing away from the Desert Junction Diner, nor did she hear the door in the middle of the windowed front wall open and close.

     When the music stopped, a gruff voice behind her said, “You’re still the best singer around, Kiddo.”

     Doing a half spin, Suzanna turned with one hand pointing straight up, and one on her hip, to face the lean figure in a blue and grey state trooper’s uniform.

     State Highway Patrol Officer, Daniel O’Grady was standing on the other side of the row of round-topped seats, with a neutral expression on his face.

     “The usual?” Suzanna asked, smiling, and, then nodded in his direction.

     “Oh, why not?” O’Grady answered, to complete the ritual.

     “Three Adam Nine,” A woman’s voice from the black speaker on O’Grady’s heavy service belt called out.

     O’Grady touched the speaker and repeated back, “Thee Adam Nine.”

     “You at The Diner, yet, Dan?”

     “That’s affirmative.  Just arrived.”

     “Well, tell Sue I said, ‘Hi’.”
     “She heard you,” O’Grady responded.

     “We have a four forty-one without injuries five miles west of your location.”

     “Roger, that,” O’Grady said. “Rolling.”

     “Over and out,” the voice said, as Suzanna poured coffee into a disposable cup.

     “Catch you, later,” the Officer said to the Waitress, as he dropped two one-dollar bills into the large cookie jar set next to the old-fashioned cash registrar.

     “Another day in Paradise,” Suzanna told him and they both shook their heads, as the next version of their sunrise ritual ended at the Desert Junction Diner.

 LEGEND #2: THE WALKER

       The full moon in a cloudless sky lit the flat plain in silvery grey from the Desert Junction Diner to the mountain ridge. Suzanna was about to pour a cup of coffee for State Highway Patrol Officer, Daniel O’Grady, when she stopped, holding the pot in the air between them, staring through the windowed wall that faced the mountains.

        Officer O’Grady turned and put down his cup.  In the distance was the image of a tall man with broad shoulders, lumbering across the flatland toward the Diner wearing combat fatigues and a slouch hat.  He also wore an eye patch over a deep vertical scar.

        When the Walker neared the road in front of the Diner, a car that had slowed to pull into the parking lot, suddenly accelerated and kept going straight, pulling a cloud of dust behind.  Without hesitation, the big man crossed the road, walking steadily toward the door at the center of the Diner, then entered and took a seat at the counter.

       “They say you have the best homemade apple pie in the region,” the Walker said in a gravelly voice.

       “That would be right,” Suzanna told him. “Made fresh by Mrs. Hanrahan at her home in Myrtle Grove every morning.”

       O’Grady studied his coffee as the waitress poured a cup for the Walker and placed a slice of apple pie in front of the big man together with a fork and a napkin.

       Without looking up, Officer O’Grady slid a twenty-dollar bill across the counter.

       “Suzie,” O’Grady told the waitress, “If you could please give this gentleman a piece of pie to go, whenever he is ready. This should cover both of us with something for you.”

       The Walker turned slowly to look at O’Grady. “Officer,” he said with a nod.

       “My pleasure, Colonel,” O’Grady replied.

       The waitress looked from one man to the other and could not think of a word to say.       

       At that moment the speaker on O’Grady’s belt beeped twice and then called out, “Three Adam Nine. We have a report of a suspicious person on foot in your proximity.”

       With a nod toward the Walker, O’Grady said, “That report does not require action.”

       “Ten four,” the speaker said, as the two men ate their slices of apple pie in silence.

LEGEND #3: CACTUS FLOWER

      The juke box at the far end of the Desert Junction Diner gave up the ghost at two in the morning. There were half a dozen truckers at the counter, drinking coffee and swapping stories of home.  At the far end Old Carl from nearby Winter Grove was working on his third cup of Diner Joe for the night.

      “Sorry, Boys.  That old box will do that.” Suzanna, the ultra-blonde-haired waitress, said, as she walked down the counter, wiping her hands on her apron after having loaded a filter into the coffee-maker, to end with her hands on her hips studying the outlet beside the box.

      “Don’t worry about it, Sue,” Old Carl said without looking up from his coffee. “Just leave it plugged in, and it will start when it wants to.  How about you give us all a tune, instead.”

      Suzanna was about to reply when she heard a husky voice begin to sing, “Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home.”  She turned in surprise to look at the juke box, but there was no record spinning.

       The voice continued, evenly, with, “Swing low, swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home.  I looked over Jordan and what did I see, comin’ for to carry me home.  A band of angels comin’ after me, comin’ for to carry me home.”

       Nobody moved a muscle until the grey-haired, dark-skinned driver seated in the middle of the counter had finished the second verse, then stopped to sip his coffee.

       After a long moment of silence, one of the truckers started to clap his hands, but the toughest of the men in the row, put a hand on his friend’s wrist and said, “No, Bill.  It ain’t respectful. That serenade weren’t fer us. That were fer the cactus out on the flats.”

       At that moment the juke box record began to spin and a moment later came the sound of Billie Holiday’s voice singing, “Blue Moon.”

       Old Carl nodded in the Waitress’ direction and said, “Now, we’re all where we’re supposed to be, Gentlemen.”

       A shaved-headed driver, with a Semper Fi tattoo on his fore-arm nodded once in his turn and then said, softly, “Yessir. That’s the truth of it.”

LEGEND #4: SLIP SLIDING (will be loaded on request)

LEGEND #5: ONE BIG CAT (will be loaded on request)

LEGEND #6: DESERT DOG

       The sun was close to rising when the last big-rig of the night pulled away from the Desert Junction Diner. Suzanna, the blonde-haired night waitress, was pouring a cup of hot coffee for Old Carl, when he looked up and saw a dog stagger into the parking lot.

       “Might be best to call the Highway Patrol to shoot him,” Old Carl told the waitress.

       “I don’t think so,” Suzanna said, as she filled a soup bowl with cold water and then walked slowly out the front door.

       Over the next weeks as the big tan dog regained his strength, Suzanna hosed him down every Friday night behind the Diner, since he attracted dirt to him like a magnet.

       “I think Dusty has named himself,” the waitress said, as she studied his face, but then she stopped. “Look here,” she said. “There’s a number tattooed inside his ear.”

       The next night Old Carl told the waitress, “I had a chat with the veteran’s home in Pinewood Creek. Your pal was a guide dog, kicked out by an idiot for snarling at the men who came for the body of his owner, who had died of old age at the home.”

       “But Pinewood Creek is more than fifty miles from here.”

       “You got that right.”

       “Are they coming for him?” Suzanne asked with a sigh.

       “Nope.  They asked if we wanted him, and I said, ‘Yup.  I imagine there’s a lady here who has taken a shine to him.’ And they said, ‘Ok by us’.”

       A month later a would-be robber with a gun made the mistake of his life, as he walked into the Diner at two in the morning, when only Old Carl was at the counter.

       “You gonna give me the money or what?” the robber snarled at Suzanna.

        “I don’t think so,” Suzanna said, as she threw a potful of hot coffee into the robber’s face.  The gun went off, shattering the mirror behind the counter. The robber staggered back, dropping his gun in a desperate need to wipe the coffee from his eyes, even as a tawny shape came streaking around the end of the counter, knocking him off his feet.

       Dusty, the Desert dog, straddled the robber, as the man felt around him for his gun

       “Oh, I really don’t think so,” Suzanna said, as she belted him in the head with a pan.

LEGEND #7: LADY DRIVER (will be loaded on request)

LEGEND #8: THE DIGGER (will be loaded on request)

LEGEND #9: THE RIGHT THING (will be loaded on request)

LEGEND #10: OPPOSITE ATTRACTION

       At three in the morning the debate from the previous day had been in motion for two hours.  The more they argued across the counter at the Desert Junction Diner, the more frustrated the blonde-haired, night-time waitress, Suzanna, got with what she was hearing from Dr. Jason Blair, of the Community College, called ‘Doc’ by everyone.

      “When are you two going to figure it out, and either stop all this fussing over nothing or learn how much you enjoy arguing,” Old Carl, a regular from Winter Grove, told them.

      “What are you talking about?” Doc asked, while Suzanna, simply shook her head.

       “It’s easy to say that opposites attract, but it’s a whole other thing to live with it,” Old Carl told them.  “I would give anything to have Mabel back, so we could fight about everything, because that was the way we liked it.  And, boy, we really did it well.  We argued about the names of our kids. We argued about the color of the next car and whether we should go to town tomorrow or a week from Wednesday.”

       As Old Carl was speaking the front door opened and the burly driver of a big-rig walked in, stepped up to a round-topped chair, sat down and said, “What’s happening?

      “They’re at it again,” Old Carl said, speaking to his cup of Joe in reply.

       “Jeese,” said the Driver.  “What else is new?”

       “What are you talking about?” Suzanna asked him, as she poured a cup of coffee without being ask.

      “Is everyone around here in on this?” Doc asked.

       “Well, I would guess so,” Old Carl said with a frown. “The arguing is going to continue as long as you’re both alive.  So, you better hope you fight a lot.”

       Suzanna and The Doc were married at sunrise a year later in the parking lot of the Diner.  Twenty-five big rigs were parked in lines in the lot and along both sides of the two-lane road in either direction, together with a dozen private vehicles and three State Trooper cruisers, pointed nose-out.  Old Carl handed each a ring for the other.

        Dusty, a tan guide-dog, rescued by Suzanna two years earlier sat alert, between them, as their witness, and barked once when Suzanna looked down and asked, “Ok?”

UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES

Full Length Stories will be posted below that offer Unusual Plots, each written with an end twist… or two.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Thanks for reading. Your comments / criticisms through the CONTACT section of this site are appreciated.

You are welcome to copy the text to simplify reading, but further publication without permission is restricted by copyright.

CURRENT FULL LENGTH STORY:

HUNTING THE WHALE

                                                                                Fall River, Massachusetts

                                                                                            March 15, 1926

           This being the one hundred and fourth year of my existence, I, Matthew Chase, have chosen to commit to paper those events which did occur on the fifth of September, in the year eighteen hundred and forty-three, at a distance of no less than one hundred leagues to the north and east of Provincetowne, Cape Cod.  Feeling the chill of eternity near at hand, I am no longer troubled by the thought that my tale may be greeted with skepticism or, worse yet, derision.

          To all who may chance to read this brief remembrance, I say, this is the truth of the matter, no matter how strongly you may desire to have it be otherwise.

                                                               * * *

           Six men and a boy took to the open boat that morning, risking all to hunt the whale.

          From the start the day had been strange.  At sunrise we lay becalmed on an ocean as still as smooth-beaten brass.  The clouds ran low, flat and wide.  No blue could be seen through the few holes that were torn in the grey deck overhead, only dark, jaundiced traces of another layer, considerably higher than the first.  The air hung about us, thick and moist, with an acrid sweetness to it...more like the tropics in the late spring, than the North Atlantic at the near edge of winter.

          Our ship was the Samuel J. Tuckett.  She was an old, square-rigged, three masted whaler, high of bow and stout in the beam.  We were four bitter months out of New Bedford, months spent following distant spouts that led too often to the open sea.  It was a grim summer, one that brought the taste of cold bile to our salt cod and hardtack.  Too often we were taunted by the elusive shape of speeding finback whales.  Seldom had we seen either the slower right or humpback whales, and when we did they always sank quietly from sight at our approach.

          Two dozen times we put whaleboats over the side, but we only had three whales to show for our effort.  This was the way of it in the North Atlantic in the declining years of whaling by men in wooden boats.  All that remained for us was the hard voyage round the horn and a year or two following leviathan in distant southern oceans.

          With anger we sailed south from Greenland, only to find ourselves following a modest school of right whales. Ironically, we had spotted them just off the Massachusetts coast, almost within sight of home.  We tracked them for most of the afternoon of September the fourth, and then suddenly, shortly before sunset, for no apparent reason they doubled back on their own path, heading due north for an hour before disappearing from view.  That was when the winds died, and we settled, quiet as death, into a restless calm.

          In the stillness of the night we heard the eerie call of the whales.  It resonated out of the water and through the hull of the ship.  It rose and fell so slowly.  The whale sings a mournful song.  In the darkness it seems to come from all directions at once, and nowhere at all.  Few men slept that night... most stood about the deck in small groups, whispering old lies and new speculations.  

          Long past the midnight bell, I leaned against the rail beside Hardy Johnston, the cook, and listened as he spoke. His voice was as dry as the leather of his narrow face, half lit by the great stern lantern.  

          "I seen it like this once.  So still and heavy out of season.  Just once before I seen it.  Adrift we were two days and two nights on the Injin Ocean, somewhere in the deep waters south from the Say-shell Isles.  It was hot like this and the sky was wrong and scary.  On the third day, without no early sign or warning, an ungodly large sperm whale broke through the surface of the water near enough to our bow that the spray from his blow-hole darkened the deck like a warm spring rain.  Wrapped around the head of the whale was half a dozen monster huge tentacles, each as thick as the trunk of full grown tree.  The whale rolled in the water, lifting his great square nose and long, toothed jaw clear of the sea and out into the air, revealing to them of us what was jammed into the bow of our good ship the massive pink and grey body of a giant squid wedged tight into the whale's mouth." 

          "A squid do you say, Cooky?" a deep voice asked from the darkness near the main hatch. 

          "Aye, a squid with a body the size of a sloop and a great round eye as big as the head of an ox.  And the two was locked together tight, with the whale thrashing up the brine like a tuna in a net.  There was blood in the water and a frightful spreading cloud of blue-black ink." 

          The cook was silent then, until a voice from behind us asked, "What happened then?"

          "The skipper, he was a brave man and proud, and the lads all loved and feared him well.  But, when the skipper, he calls out, `Boats away!', nary a man moves to his station.  `Do you hear me, men' he cries.  `Think of the bounty such a beast shall bring in the commons of Boston!' But still no man moves.

          "And then the mate he says, `Captain, it is too much to ask.' And even as he says it the whale makes one last roll and disappears forever into the deep."

          Once again he became silent.  The only sound was a familiar slow creaking from deep within the hull of the Tuckett, as the ship cooled.  It sounded like the rapping of a leaden fist on a great, oak door.

          "Tell us the rest," I said at last.

          "Aye, tell us more," from the darkness.

          "There is no more to tell, other than how fear and shame stood together hand in hand that day on the deck of the Molly Bream," said the cook, and he turned and went below.

          At first light the forward watch called out.  The spouting plume of a whale was sighted no more than half a mile to starboard heading outward toward the east.  The Captain ordered two boats away.  We quickly swung our boat from its birth, but the tackle of the second craft became fouled.

          With curses and a great deal of noise the crew of the second whaleboat worked to free their lines, even as the last man of our boat's crew took seat and unshipped his oar.  Talk of bad luck was heard around the deck, and the faces that watched us over the rail were dark with frustration.

          That was when Jack Dougherty, a tall man with a shock of wheat for hair, looked to the stern of our open whaler and said, "Mr. McFee, what say we bring the boy. Just for luck."

          Argus McFee was a thick, red-haired brick of a man.  He was first mate of the Tuckett, and sternsman to our boat.  McFee thought it through and then nodded.  "Aye," he said.  "For the luck of it."

          Whalers are a superstitious lot.  They live by taking life from a creature whose size is unmatched throughout the world...a creature who can slip into the deep without a sound or crush its tormentors and their flimsy craft like an afterthought. 

          Even in success, as they are stripping their fortunes from the endless carcass of their victim, whalers are confronted by death on such a grand scale as to make their own demise seem fragile in comparison.  Disaster is always within an arm's length and any bit of luck they imagine that they can draw their way is snatched up and held close.

          That morning the whalers' luck took the form of the ship's boy, Kip.  This was a very odd lad, who was twisted of body and simple of mind.  Because his hips sat strangely out of joint, his walk was a crab-like shuffle, although in the rigging he came alive, moving with the ease of an Amazon monkey.

          Some said he was the bastard child of the Captain, some that he had been found at sea, strapped to a piece of floating wreckage, but whatever his past might have been, we knew young Kip as helper to the cook, carrier of buckets, polisher of brass, singer of pretty songs, and, what is of the greatest importance, bringer of good luck.

          On the day we had taken our first Greenland whale he had ridden in the forward well of our whaleboat, which is the space between the harpoon platform and the front-most thwart.  Kip sang chanteys for us as we rowed, and no man resented pulling a bit harder to carry the weight of him.  Gunnar, the massive Swede who threw the harpoon, pronounced him lucky after that first kill and all the men agreed.

          I too felt surer knowing that the crippled boy was behind me as I pulled the oar, but then I also wore a luck of my own making.  I was twenty years of age in the spring when we put out to sea and had past my twenty first birthday somewhere off Nova Scotia.  This was my third whaling cruise, having first shipped to sea at the fair old age of fifteen.  I was bold in most things, confident in the strength of my arms and the quickness of my legs.  That is, I was confident to a point, since, like so many of the sailors I knew on the Tuckett, and so many I have met ashore, I could no more swim than I could fly.

          For the first two years that I sailed, I was ruled by my hidden dread of the water.  This was no idle fear.  Five times I had seen men slip beneath the killing froth never to return.  Three of them I saw disappear from life, at once, when a whaleboat, no more then fifty yards distant from the one in which I sat clutching at the oar, was struck by the flukes of a singularly massive humpback.

          My fear was such that I was willing to suffer the laughter of my shipmates when I decided to guide lady luck in my direction.  From a thick sheet of Spanish cork I fashioned two plates.  With a heated iron I bored six holes into each of the plates, three holes along the edges.  I then threaded the holes with doubled strips of burlap.  Thereafter, each time I took to the boat, I fastened the plates to me...one to my back and one to my breast, tying them securely, one to the other.

          That morning in September was no exception.  As we pulled away from the Tuckett, following the grey plume of steam that sprung from the back of the slow moving whale, I wore my luck around me, like armor with no weight.

          As we rowed I listened to a voice as sweet and high as a girl's.  No man spoke as long as Kip sang.  Through the words and the cadence of his song, Kip told the way of our lives, which was the way of the sea.

          At the tiller, facing me, sat McFee, who rarely smiled, but whose sun-lined face seemed to soften as the boy sang of the Albatross, sweeping the endless miles of open ocean, searching forever for his own true love which was in fact the sea herself.  The ship's boy sang and we pulled at the oars.  For a time we all forgot why we were there.

          We rowed steadily for the better part of an hour, and as we rowed, the Tuckett's sails, hanging, dingy and still, became smaller and more distant.  The whale swam steadily and somewhat quicker than normal.  We were slow to overtake the beast and I found myself paying closer attention to those distant, dwindling sails, hoping to see the first ripple of the canvas, the first hint of motion.  But the canvas draped flat.  It was a long pull out, and if the mother ship could not make way to join us, it would be a longer, slower pull back.

          The second whaleboat finally put over the side when we were well over a mile distant, but her crew never took to oar, the captain having decided that it was a waste of effort.  So we seven traveled eastward alone, following the massive indifference of the whale.

          Then, gradually, I realized that something had changed. Something was missing.  I realized that the silence that hung between the songs had grown.  Our Kip was no longer singing.  It was as though the world was waiting.  The feeling of the oar in my hands and the hot still air on my neck all crowded in.

          McFee lit his pipe, holding the tiller arm in place by pressing it between his elbow and his side.  Bending slightly forward he struck the match along the inside of the gunwale, and touched it to the bowl.  Then he straightened, taking the tiller in his hand again.  He sat erect, pipe in mouth, drawing at the smoke, watching past my shoulder, his face as still as the sea.

          From behind me I heard Jack call out, "Yo, Kip! Earn your keep.  Give us a another song."

          There was a further moment of stillness filled with the creak and splash of the oars and the hiss of water along the sides.  I imagined without seeing, that somewhere behind me Kip was thinking, his mind working with deliberate slowness, searching for the melody or an opening refrain.  I imagined him continuing to sing, his voice carrying us lightly across the water again.  But that was not the way it went that morning, because, instead of another familiar chantey or a simple, sweet ballad of his own invention, Kip called back, "Please not now, Master Jack.  I must be still and just listen."

          "Listen for what?" called out Jack.

          "The others," said the boy.  "I think they be near at hand." He was silent for a moment, but then he finished, saying softly.  "They are.  They be following us, now."

          McFee took the pipe from his mouth, and turned to look behind him.  The sea was open and empty except for the top most sheets of a miniature Tuckett, so far astern.  He turned back.  "They'll not be coming, lad, and the wind's no help.  We're rowing alone today."

          Kip laughed...a bit too loud...a bit too long.  "I don't mean them," he said.  "I mean the others.  The ones who are coming."  Before me I saw McFee frown, and I knew without seeing that my boat-mates others were troubled by the answer, too.

          The rhythm of the oars changed.  Where a moment before all four were striking the water together, now there was a ragged pattern to the fall of the blades.  Luck is a fragile thing.  The boundary between good and bad is very thin.

          "What does he mean?" Jack called again. "Is there another ship?"

          "None that I be seeing," a deep voice answered.  It was Tamsoon, a powerful West African.

          "There is no meaning to it," pronounced the voice of Jedediah Sloan.  He was the deacon in a sect of his own invention and a difficult man.  "The boy is daft," he said.

          There was a deep growl from forward, and the Swede spoke for the first time that day.  "You catch hold your tongue.  Dat boy, he sing in his own good time.  What you say, boy?"

          "I'm afraid," whispered Kip.  "We must be still."

          "Let's stow it now, lads."  There were lines of worry in McFee's face as he spoke.  "Here we are a comin' up on the whale in but a short moment.  So pull together, lads.  That's an order.  One and all.  Pull!"

          A rowboat in the open sea is no place for argument, and so we pulled together, as we were told.  Far behind, to the west, the Tuckett was hull down in the distance.  All detail of her rigging was lost from view.  She was just a tiny irregular shape, a solitary nick in the edge of the sky.

          Behind my back I could hear the great beast blowing and the sound of the water shipping over its flanks.  I could smell the foul stench of its breath, like a hundred thousand squid rotting in the sun.

          McFee's short moment went on for half an hour of steady, back-breaking rowing, as we worked our way eastward behind the whale.  "Steady, lads," he said to us at last.  I could hear the whale blow near at hand.

          "Here she be now." McFee leaned forward as he spoke.  His eyes were dark and eager for the kill.  Without ever dropping his sight from the whale, he took the pipe from his mouth, knocked the ash from the bowl on the outside of the gunwale, and stowed the pipe, stem down in a narrow pocket on his vest.  "Stand to, Harpoonsman.  Put that black anger into your iron.  Stand to and do what we came for."

          I looked back over my shoulder then and saw the giant Swede, feet spread, standing in the bow with his arm pulled back.  In his hand was the first harpoon.  The fastening line was draped across his chest.  Tension ran along the length of him, out the wooden stock and down into the swivel lancet tip.  With a deep grunt Gunnar lunged forward, sending the harpoon arcing across the open space.

          Even before the first iron struck the whale, the harpoonsman was reaching for the second.  The first shaft found its mark and the smooth backed beast submerged even as the second harpoon, a long killing lance came flying.  Green water closed behind the whale's back with a boom.  The second iron plunged through the water and stuck deep into the descending mountain of flesh.

          "He got her!  Two irons and the line is holding true!" shouted Jack.

          "Hurrah!" from the others.

          "She sound now!" called out Gunnar.  McFee dropped a loop around the loggerhead, the massive stump of ash centered in the stern, used to pay out the line that ran forward beside us down the length of the boat and out through the great brass ring securely mounted in the bow of the boat.

          The line snapped out of the storage bucket and down into the sea at a terrific rate, whining as it rounded the loggerhead.  We rested at the oars, letting them drag against the pull of the line, expecting the whale to dive for the bottom and stay there for the next quarter hour or so, but that was not as it was meant to be.

          The whale was out of sight no more than two minutes when suddenly it breached again, nose high.  McFee dropped another loop in place, pulling tight on the line.  I was sure we had an easy kill, a worn out whale, that had spent itself before the chase was done, only I quickly realized that this whale was far from spent.  The beast was in fact pulling our boat along the surface at a frantic pace, churning the water into foam with its enormous flukes.

          "Ship oars!"  McFee shouted, and we all lifted our oars from the water and stowed them along the inside of the boat, beneath the gunwale.  In the bow Gunnar pointed a massive arm out toward to the whale ahead.  "Give slack, now" he called to McFee.

          "Aye, man" the ship's mate answered, "The beast asks to take us for a bit of a ride!" and he let go another five yards of line before he dropped a final double loop onto the loggerhead and quickly let it go.  The line snapped tight, lifting the bow of the whaleboat like a sled on the snow.

          "A sleigh-ride it is, men!" shouted McFee as we crested the whale's wake.  "Hold on tight!"

          We were being pulled along the ocean top at a speed no power of men's arms could match.  All whalers love and fear the Nantucket sleigh-ride...when the wind rushes past the flying boat and the whaler moves across the sea as fast as a man can dream.  The hull slapped the water with a boom as the minutes rush by.  It was both glorious and terrifying at the same time.  With each jarring hit, I held yet tighter to the sides of the boat.

          "Surely, yon fish must tire," cried Jedediah.

          "Aye, but nobody told the whale!" shouted Jack and we all laughed and gulped at the air, watching spray break from our bow to fly away behind us.  Ah, but if that the moment could have gone on forever.

          It was Tamsoon who called out first.  "Look!  There to port.  Something come!"

          Less than a hundred yards abeam of us a mighty finback whale broke the surface and immediately pulled smartly ahead of the more ponderous right whale that was dragging us at the end of the line.  The finback is the racer of the sea.  Rarely taken by whalers in small boats because of its speed, the finback normally travels alone or by twos and threes at a time, but as we watched now, no less than six of them broke water, all rushing along on a course that was parallel to our own.

          "Listen," screamed the boy, Kip, suddenly.  "The song! Listen to the song."

          "What's happening here?" cried Jack, as three more right whales surged to the surface on either side of us, trying to outrun the whale that pulled us tirelessly at full speed.

          Suddenly, an enormous school of porpoises appeared in our wake.  They were skipping along the surface, breaking clear of the water with powerful thrusts of their tails.  Above the boom and hiss of our bow in the water we could hear their chittering cries, one to the other, as they raced past us.

          "Run! Run hard!" cried Kip, waving both hands at the leaping porpoises.

          Then McFee shouted "A shark!  A shark!  Oh, Lord, what a monster!"  And there, no more than ten yards to our port, a Great White Shark easily twice the length of the boat rose from the deep.  We watched in fear as it sliced through the water, quickly overtaking us as we hurtled along.  It is a sight of utter dread to all who know the sea...the ultimate spoiler...  death in a long grey cloak.  As it swam, it turned its great black, bottomless eye up in our direction.  But on that day we were not the object of that killer's rush, and, as horrible as this creature may have been, the monster shark was not the cause of consternation in the water.  All about the great white and all around our boat swam myriad creatures of the sea both fish and air-blowing mammal alike, all driving furiously toward the east, oblivious to each other.

          Young Kip was now standing in the bow, holding onto Gunnar's arm.  "The song.  The song.  The song." the boy cried.

          "This is the devil's work!  Sever the line and let us be free," Screamed Jedediah.

          "The Deacon's right!  We're doomed if we don't cut free."

          "Cut the rope!  Save us!  Save us from the devil!"

          But the hulking form of Gunnar turned then, straddling the line, holding a long black-metal lance across his chest.  "No man can make me give back a whale once he be mine.  And if he be Satan in that fish, then I kill the Devil...or any man who be fool enough to cut my line."

          I saw Jack slowly reach for the skinning knife in his belt as Gunnar lowered the lance to the ready.  "Hold tight.  Hold tight!" ordered McFee, as I looked back astern to see if there was any sign of help from the Tuckett.

          "Oh, Sweet Jesus, look! Look back there!" I cried, for what I saw removed all hope of rescue.

          Five hundred yards behind us a great glowing shape was surging through the sea, piling up the water ahead of it in a clear green mound.  I was barely even aware of my own shout of surprise and fear.  The shape was almost as large as a whale, oblong in length, with no distinguishing features.  As it pushed higher toward the surface, the layer of water covering it thinned, changing color from green to yellow and finally revealing a bright red hue shining through the liquid veil.

          McFee twisted in his seat to look astern.  "God in Heaven!" he cried out.  "What can that be?"

          "Now sever the line!" screamed Jack.

          McFee turned back toward us.  His knuckles were white on the tiller.  "Don't be a fool! If you sever the line we fall behind and whatever is back there shall overtake us.  Just look about you, lad.  All the sea is fleeing!"

          I felt a hand gripped tight on my shoulder and Tamsoon leaned past me pointing and shouting.

          "Look! There be more! To port! And to starboard. Both ways.  There be five...no, six...no, there be eight! Eight demons.  Eight.  They stand in line in water...I see eight demon-beasts upon us.  They be herding all living beings before them. Look!"

          On either side of us, stretched out in a row beneath the surface of the sea, were eight enormous, glowing, red shapes like underwater beacons.  They were all rushing through the ocean, pushing up the water in front of them.  As we watched in terror it was clear that they were gaining on us.  All of them were so near the surface that the water was beginning to break around them in a crimson- tinted foam, returning to white as it fell away behind in perfectly parallel lines of wake.  We could hear the sound of the ocean boiling around them and a deeper, vibrating drone beneath.

          Ahead of us the whale seemed driven into an even greater frenzy, as the glowing shapes began to break through the surface.  The sea all around us was alive with creatures, huge and small, all lunging toward the horizon, racing toward the east, driven forward by their fear of the lights, as from out of nowhere hundreds upon hundreds of sea-gulls, screaming their harpy cry, came rushing in, swooping and diving at the beacons and the fish.

          "Listen!  Listen!  Listen!" Kip was shouting.

        "That whale cannot go on forever!  We are doomed!" Someone shouted while Jedediah started to pray.  "Heavenly Father, into Thy hands I commend my soul..."

          The whaleboat had become a bedlam of men shouting and praying and crying, and then above it all the voice of Gunnar roared out.  "Look men!  Look to the sky!  There before us!  There!  They have come!"

          And as one we all turned forward and looked up.

       High above us, the sky was being torn apart.  A swirling, ragged, opening had appeared in the cloud deck and through it bright yellow light was streaming.  The gap in the clouds widened steadily, until we could see the underside of the upper cloud deck, lit like the ceiling of a burning cathedral.  I held my hands up before me, to screen the intensity of the light, as an enormous incandescent disk, greater in size than the largest of the wharf-side storage houses in the Provincetowne Harbour, descended into the opening, until it was level with the lower clouds.  Then it stopped, and there it hung.

          From all around us came a deafening roar as the eight red beacons broke water, lifting fountains of foam behind them.  I fell to my knees in the bottom of the whaleboat, wrapping my arms around the thwart on which I had been seated, knowing to a certainty that at any moment I would die.

          The ruby beacons went rushing forward in eight straight lines traced by white vapor through the air, all pointing at the underside of the giant disk.  As they flew away from where we raced across the sea, both the tremendous size of the disk and its true distance above us became apparent.

          At the last moment before they were to strike the disk, the beacons, now glowing points of red, looped outward in all directions like a swarm of fireflies, as an enormous opening, black against the glowing shape, appeared in the underside of the disk high above.  The beacons re-arranged themselves into a file, like crimson beads on an invisible thread, then flew through the opening in the disk and were gone.

          "Wait!" shouted Kip.  "Now we are all coming!"

          Around us more and more birds were flying in from all points, racing across the waters beneath the disk.  The sea ahead of us, lit golden in the glow of that unreal sun, was alive with every form of creature that can swim.  Slowly, the glow turned from yellow to red as a column of light began to descend from the hole in the underside of the disk.  The bottom edge of that brilliant column shimmered and swirled as it lowered toward the sea, like the curtain edge of a crimson aurora.  And then it touched the ocean.

          Half a mile ahead of us the reddened water began to dance as a finback whale, as big as a hillside, lifted entirely out of the sea into the ruby light.  Slowly it rose upward, clear of the surface, twisting its enormous shape, beating its flukes uselessly against the air.

          Jedediah stood transfixed at the sight.  Jack was openly weeping while Tamsoon sat holding the gunwales on either side of the whaleboat, shaking his head slowly from side to side.  The finback rose higher and higher, a steady saltwater rain falling from its flanks.  And all the while the whale to which we were attached plowed onward, its great flukes churning the sea to a froth bed over which we rode.

          High above us the finback disappeared into the broad hole in the enormous disk as yet another finback was pulled from the sea to start the slow ascent.  A thousand frantic gulls, shrieking in dismay, swirled uselessly around and around the column of light.  From the sea beneath the blood-lit whale, one porpoise and then another and then ten others burst into the crimson vapor.  Like a flock of massive gulls, they all went twisting upward.  I could see their tooth-lined mouths working frantically, but whatever cries they let loose were lost in the screaming confusion of birds and men.

          A right whale lifted next letting loose a thunderous cascade of water to be followed by an awesome sharp-nosed shape as a Great White Shark burst from the sea beside it.  At the sight of the monster shark Tamsoon howled with terror and a grim faced Gunnar raised a clenched fist.  Above the din I could hear Jedediah praying, "And surely the sea shall give up its dead..."

          Stretched in a line now almost directly overhead was an unholy parade of deep-sea shapes each flexing and straining against the force that pulled them irresistibly upward through the air into the dark gap at the center of the brilliant circular shape.

          I wanted to shout and laugh and cry all at the same time as the next right whale lifted...our right whale, our engine of the morning ride with Gunnar's harpoons sticking from its back and forty yards of line attached...our own right whale lifted bodily from the ocean into the column of crimson light.  And as it did, the shimmering light also began to lift, breaking its hold on the ocean, rising into the air like an iridescent drape, a curtain that ended twenty yards below the undulating beast.

          "The line!", I screamed.  "Cut the line!" as Gunnar lunged for the hand ax, but it was too late.  The bow lifted into the air with a sickening lurch, throwing Gunnar off balance in his movement and sending him flying over the side of the whaleboat headlong into the sea.  Everyone shouted as the boat tilted upward end on end.  All went tumbling together in a horrible confusion of men and line and oars.  I ducked my head down and hugged myself even tighter to the thwart and the next moment found myself standing upright with my feet in the stern of the boat with the hull rising in front of me like a curved wall.

          I looked down over my shoulder to see the surface of the ocean dropping away and the crew of the longboat struggling for their lives in the brine.

          "Help me!  Free me!" came a cry from above.  I looked up to see that Kip had become wedged between the front-most thwart and the hull.  Beyond him, stretched perfectly straight, Gunnar's line pointed upward to the struggling form of the whale suspended in the sky like a black cloud before the sun.

          "Help me, Master Matthew!  Please!" the boy cried.

          "Hold tight!" I answered.

          And so, blinding myself to all but the wooden boat before my face, I climbed up the oaken thwarts as though they were a ladder.  Reaching the first thwart, I held on fast with one hand while I worked to free the lad's legs with the other.

          "Hurry," he cried.  "They're calling now."

          "Grab the gun'als above you while I push your legs free," I said.

          It was only a moment's effort, the boy being as light as a sandpiper.  "Now quickly, lad.  Jump for it!" But to my surprise, instead of leaping to safety, the boy scrambled over the bow, stood up on the face of the bow ring and began to shimmy up the rope.

          "Come back, Kip!" I called and started to climb over the bow after him.  Suddenly the light about us changed.  Looking up I saw that the great bulk of the whale was entering the gap in the disk.  As I watched, the beast disappeared into the dark opening and the last of the red light began to fade.  All around me the yellow glow increased as the huge hole in the disk began to shrink.

          "Hurry, Matthew," Kip called down to me.  "They're going to close the door!" He was moving steadily up the rope, bending and lengthening like an inchworm.

          "Forget them," I cried.  "Jump!  Jump!"

          "No, I have to hurry!"

          I stood upon the bow-ring of the whaleboat then, holding onto the rope above me and reaching, meaninglessly for his heel which was now far out of reach.

          "What are you doing?" I called.  "Have you gone mad?" And without thinking I started to climb the rope after him, pulling myself, hand over hand, in desperation.

          "Don't you understand?" I cried as I climbed.  "They are killers, just as we are."

          Kip leaned out from the rope to look down at me. "No!  No!  Listen to the song!  They're singing now.  They're happy!" And he started to climb again with all his strength.  I realized that he would soon be inside the slowly shrinking hole in the underbelly of the disk.

          "Jump, Kip!" I shouted.  "Take your chances in the sea!" But even as I shouted, I knew it was too late, and Kip passed into the darkness and was gone, even as the circle reduced behind him to a few feet in width.  That was when I stopped trying.  That was when I looked down below me, past the dangling boat.

          I think I screamed.  I am not sure.  So very far beneath me was the sea.  Birds by the thousands were wheeling and circling in layers below me.  Some were no more than white flecks against the green.  In the water I could see tiny specks and lines that I knew to be men and oars from the whaleboat.  I felt panic of a kind I had never before imagined, not so much the fear that I would fall, but a truer terror at the thought that I must make myself let go.  In desperation I looked up one last time at the disk.  The light of it was amazingly intense, filling the sky, filling my mind.  In that moment I saw the hole in the disk close completely around the rope, and with a crack like a gunshot, the line snapped at the point where the hole had been.

          For a brilliant instant I hung weightless in the sky...  and then I fell.

                                                                       * * *

           It was the Spanish cork that saved me.  For a time I floated, more dead than alive.  I floated dazed and numb into the arms of Argus McFee, mate of the Tuckett, hunter of whales.  He had lashed two oars together into a cross, to help support him in the foam.  No others were to be seen around us, as we two souls spent the day and the night into the next morning adrift.

          What little I remember of that time is McFee's voice reassuring and threatening, begging and cursing, all to keep the spirit from leaving me.  In a shallow dream we drifted...  in water that was impossibly warm for the North Atlantic in any season of the year.  At some time in the night he made me swear an oath that I would never tell a mortal soul the truth of what had happened.

          I can still hear his harsh whisper in my ear. "There be no place on whaling ships for madmen.  If we tell what we have seen, one and all will say, `These fellows, they are driven crazy with fear of death at sea.'  So, we say nothing.  Nothing!  Swear it to me now!"

           And I swore.

         But McFee is gone now, bound for Fiji on a whaler that passed without a trace.  And with these words I break the oath I swore so long ago, floating in the dark...an oath made so that we two could ship out again as whalers... a sad and bitter oath for me.

         The good First Mate could not have known on that night that for all the oaths I might have sworn, I would never hunt the whale again, nor even see a broad back surge beneath the emerald green... for even as I lived, I died.  The long fall to the water broke my back and left me with legs whose only use is to hold up the blanket draped across them, as I became an object to be fussed over by pale-skinned nieces with hair wrapped up in yellow braids.

          I tell you this now, not so that you will have sympathy for me, but so that you will understand that I have no need of boastful glory.  My only wish is that you understand how it was for me and for those unseen others whose venture brought me to be as I am, trapped in this chair for a lifetime, trapped in my memories that grow sharper and more present day by day.

          And not a day has gone by that I have not wondered about them.  Not a long night has passed that I have not tried to imagine upon what God-forsaken sea they are sailing now.  And I wonder whether a crippled boy sails with them, singing to them and bringing them luck, as they hunt some unthinkable leviathan in the deep beyond the sky.