GOD of a man
“Don’t give up when you think it’s time to, that’s when you start all over again.”
Chapter Fifteen: Web of misfortune
Dated: October 2425
Life can be anything but straightforward. Everybody makes plans and then the plans go haywire. The diligent ones get back to the basics, analyse what went wrong and start all over again, the meek ones quit and move on. History is an account of human struggle against adversity and only those men are remembered and respected who didn’t give up when everybody else would have. Those are the men who made that vital decision that changed the course of their life story, took a risk when no one was ready to stand by their beliefs.
A little ship with its’ little unwillingly mustered family was like a fly caught in a web that night, a web of fate. Its’ occupants were bipolarised on one hand while its’ existence was about to be questioned on the other. Robin, Andy and Daniel were finally able to force their choice that night, hoping to turn around their social fortunes along with the turning wheel of the ship. But as they say, there are many a slip between the cup and the lip. It was too early to celebrate but they thought they had won the battle.
“That was awesome guys. We did it. Now as soon as we get back to Hatsu, we need to stick together and make sure Steve is nailed for his gun-wielding misadventure and Nakata and Clara are ostracised for their illicit relationship,” Robin was whispering the details of his plans to his two associates.
“We are with you Robin. Anything you say as long as it gets us into that senate,” Daniel was perhaps already dreaming of dawning the mantle of a congressman.
“But I was wondering, you mentioned we should have landed two weeks ago then how did we miss the land?” that Andy was neither the brightest nor the least bit interested in politics, was evident from his disinterest in the current conversation.
“Who cares? Steve can think I messed up but between the three of us, I deliberately changed the course of the ship by a few degrees two weeks back one night,” Robin explained with a wicked smile.
“Wait a minute! Are you crazy? You’ve ruined our only chance of finding a better land,” Andy got a bit upset.
“Relax you idiot and think carefully. If I hadn’t changed the course of the ship and we had made it to another land what would have we achieved? Everything must be in ruins by now, there is no way to transport everyone over from Hatsu, and had we kept on sailing we might have run low on fuel ourselves and been stuck in wilderness. Its’ better we never made it to the new world,” Robin explained.
“Perhaps you are right,” now Andy saw logic in Robin’s decision and as the three continued, lost in their deceitful worlds, the rumble of the storm surrounding the ship grew louder and louder.
“Looks like its’ going to be a tough night on us,” Steve said as he manned the wheel, “Nakata, take the other guys with you and pull the sails down before we get caught in the storm.”
Nakata immediately went to the sleeping room and gathered the other three to fold the sails. As the four of them struggled on the deck getting the modified sails down, the first gust of strong wind hit them. Nakata who had climbed up the pole to untie a rope nearly fell off except for the strong hold of his legs on the pole.
“Careful Nakata,” Clara screamed as her heart nearly jumped out of her mouth.
“Don’t worry love,” Nakata replied with a wink as he gathered himself again and made a second attempt at untying the rope, “One down, three more to go.”
The other three were holding the ropes that tied the sails to the deck, waiting for Nakata to untie the ropes holding the sails to the main shaft, so that they can fold them quickly. But perhaps, they had lost vital time discussing the direction of their journey and subsequently their backbiting bickering.
The winds became stronger and more forceful. Nakata could barely hang on to the pole any longer now. The sea started to roar and rise. Three ropes still needed to be untied and then the shaft itself needed to be dismantled, but the time was not there anymore.
“Get down Nakata,” Clara broke down as she yelled at the top of her voice.
“I can’t sweetheart, I need to get the sails down or we might loose them altogether,” Nakata said as he struggled as hard as he could to climb up the pole to untie the next rope, but the strength of the wind was not only trying to force him off the pole but the sails were fluttering violently enough to tear on their own and wipe everyone off the ship into the sea. The waves had started to rise above the ship and ship was now rocking sideways.
“Come down Nakata, for GOD’s sake please come down,” Clara cried out as she nearly lost her balance as the ship twisted to a side and she barely clung on to the wall of the wheel house. The others held on to the sail ropes, not for the sails but for their lives.
Nakata still continued to struggle up the pole and grabbed the second rope, and as soon as he grabbed the second rope the next gust of wind once again almost toppled him off the sail and the critical angle the ship was to sea level thanks to the violently rising and falling waves, nearly off the ship.
“Nakata, come down this instant,” Clara yelled out hoarse and started crying.
“He can’t. He needs to untie the ropes,” Daniel said.
“I don’t care. Nakata get down this instant,” Clara was adamant.
As the seas rocked the ship and winds blew harder and harder Nakata gathered himself again to untie the second rope.
“Nakata please,” Clara pleaded.
“Let him do his job girl,” Robin asked as he himself slowly made his way around the edge of the deck holding the metal bars, towards the wheel house entrance, just like the rest who had left the sails on their own now and were inching their way towards the wheel house.
As Nakata untied the second rope, the first of the two sails was completely free but there was no one to fold it. It flew across the deck and nearly wiped Clara off the boat and hung to a side held only by the rope tying it to the deck, partially submerged in water.
“What the hell are you guys doing? Will anyone fold the sail?” Nakata yelled as he tried to climb up to the next rope.
“Nakata, come down, please. No one is here to take care of your sails, please come down,” Clara wailed.
“Come down this instant Nakata,” Steve had to rush out of the wheel house leaving the wheel momentarily in lock even though it was one rowdy storm the ship had been caught in.
“But the sails,” Nakata asked.
“Leave the sails. First thing important is to survive. Lets’ hope the sails will be alright on their own,” Steve said, his inexperience as a sailor showing as he didn’t realize how deadly a fluttering sail in a storm can be for a ship. But Nakata’s life was what he was more concerned about right now. He ordered Nakata to come down and as Nakata slid down the pole they all made their way back to the wheel house. The storm intensified.
The wind kept on picking velocity and the waves became more and more ferocious. Steve asked everyone to move into the sleeping room and sit tightly in corners while Robin was instructed to stay with him in the wheel house. The ship rocked and the wind, as it hit the lone fluttering sail with the ferocity of a lion, rocked the ship to its side and made it hit the sea surface. All on board were tossed around as Steve lost his grip on the wheel and thrown at the wall infront of him. Waves of water entered their small world. The ship was tossed a couple of times again when the pole finally gave way and was lost to the sea along with the sail as only a few bits of the sail were left attached to the two ropes tied to the deck. Thunder and lightning kept on scaring them all night as the ship became a roller coaster ride gone awry. They were scared, they were holding on to each other, looking at each other for moral support. Only Clara was praying. She knew her GOD. And only she was calm, now that her Nakata was safe and by her side. The night was long, very long, but it did finally pass.
The morning was still dark and covered but the worst had been over and along with it everything else was nearly over as well.
“Damn! We lost the sails,” Andy’s shoulders dropped as he came out on the deck and realized there was neither the pole nor their sails anymore to bank upon.
“We are stuck! We will never make it back to Hatsu now,” Nakata exclaimed as his face showed signs of terror as horrifying thoughts crossed his mind one after the other.
“Why do you say that?” Daniel got scarred as well.
“Because we can’t travel far without sails, we just don’t have enough fuel. We were able to make it this far because the sails did most of the work relaxing the engines and hence reducing the fuel consumption. But now without any sails we won’t be able to make it back even if we had thrice the amount of fuel than what we started with,” Nakata explained.
“We can always use our small motor boat to travel,” Robin quipped.
“No, we can’t. We cannot carry the requisite amount of fuel in that one. We are a stuck at sea now,” Nakata’s words were more horrifying than the thunder and storm they sailed through a few hours back. Everybody got terrified and panicked. Even Steve was perturbed for a few seconds before he realized they still have one last chance.
“We still have one chance," Steve exclaimed as everybody looked at him with anticipation.
"And what's that?" Andy inquired.
"If we changed our course back towards the land we were looking for, we just might make it safely to land,” Steve said.
"That's ridiculous, we will be stuck there forever," Robin exclaimed.
"Perhaps we might be or we might be lucky enough to find a better home and at the same time some resources to travel back. Otherwise if you insist we can always stay on current course and perish at sea," Steve's cold blooded straightforwardness sounded better words than any of them had ever heard before.
“Perhaps we can but how? We don’t even know what our course is now, and we don’t know what course to take from here,” Robin asked.
“Lets’ just stop the engines, sit here and wait until the clouds clear up and we are able to see the stars,” Steve replied, “Then we can calculate our position and direction from the Southern Cross and the two pointing stars vis a vis South pole.”
“How is that going to give us the direction for the land we are looking for?” Daniel asked.
“From that information we will know whether we are facing south, north, east or west at the moment and then we can turn our ship at an acute or obtuse angle accordingly to make our way to the closest land mass,” Robin knew what Steve was thinking about, “Hopefully it won’t be too far off.”
They all calmed down a bit, went inside and huddled together in a couple of blankets in their small bedroom and waited for the cloud cover to clear. A week’s time was good enough to test their already waning patience for its breaking point will not be an understatement. Food was in scarce supply and so was their luck. Finally, the clouds gave way to clear skies and they were able to figure out their direction of travel and once again they set sail, only this time, it was towards what they had originally set to find. The good thing for them was the radioactivity levels were still hovering below the original Hatsu Saisho mark.
As they sailed closer towards the land they were expecting to find soon, or rather hoped to find soon, the food quantity improved and the variety increased. One day they caught a surprise for themselves.
“Wow! What is that?” Andy asked as he pulled out a strange looking organism with his hook.
“That looks like a crab,” Robin said.
“Yes, it is a crab,” Clara added her confirmation as they all looked at the catch. And that wasn’t the only catch, they had a few of them that day, and infact only them that day. It looked like they had run into an army of crabs travelling the oceans in search of newer habitat just like themselves.
“But don’t these things live near the shore?” Nakata asked.
“Depends on the species, some live in fresh water, some near the shores, some on land and some in deep seas. Besides who knows what kind of evolution has these organisms gone through thanks to radioactivity,” Clara replied.
“Wow, it will be good to have a change of taste today,” Nakata’s eyes lit up at the thought of trying something different than mundane.
“It will be nice for a change but there’s a hiccup,” Steve said.
“And just what is that hiccup?” Andy asked.
“We don’t know what parts of it are edible and what parts are not,” Steve replied.
“Relax Steve, we will remove its’ intestine for you,” Daniel laughed.
“I somehow feel, we are still better of catching fish for food,” Steve insisted.
“Oh C’mon Steve, lets’ just do it for a change today. Besides it is late in the evening and we all are hungry. We will catch some fish tomorrow if possible. Right now I am afraid we might have to do with just crabs for dinner,” Robin exclaimed.
“Yeah Steve, stop worrying too much,” Andy said.
“I don’t know guys but something doesn’t feel right about all this,” Steve said as he reluctantly agreed to a feast of crabs.
They all retired to the wheel house and prepared their dinner by chopping whatever they felt was irrelevant or in-addible. They all enjoyed the change of taste, shared jokes and enjoyed a hearty meal in a long time until Nakata froze, his face turned red as his voice chocked and he collapsed on the ground grasping for breath.
“Nakata,” Clara cried out, “What happened?”
“Did he choke?” Andy asked as Steve and Robin lifted Nakata up and tried to make sure he wasn’t choking by giving him the requisite first aid. But it wasn’t a case of choking, it was something else.