Ocean Escapes
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We were in the middle of a storm, as I thought at first. I had not been out for two days and my mind was still confused from the long sea voyage. But no sooner had we sighted land than I knew that it was not what it appeared to be; I could not see any landmarks so I guessed the direction but there was no sign of land anywhere about.
As usual, when this occurred, I became more alarmed than ever; then I remembered that my father told me once before that ships sometimes ran aground because their masts broke. This must be one of those occasions. I looked at the other three men on deck: they appeared quite calm and happy.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked them, knowing by their faces that the news would be bad. They all answered yes and began to walk away with their heads held high. ‘Well then,’ I said to myself, ‘it is no good worrying.’ Then I felt better. Perhaps this was what they called “sea sickness”.
If it is an illness, perhaps it will pass off eventually? It seemed as if I would have to spend some time here on board while the ship drifted. The others had gone below and there was no one else on deck – only a few sailors and the captain standing alone near the wheel. He did not appear to be moving either; he just stood looking at nothing.
He was wearing his full dress uniform. At first, I thought that maybe this was because it was too hot to wear anything else in the tropical sun, but then I saw that he wasn’t even sweating or breathing hard. And yet the air was warm and humid; I wondered how it was possible that he didn’t feel hot when all around him people were suffering from the heat.
Perhaps there is something special about him. Perhaps he has some power which means he can withstand heat much better than ordinary men? That sounds like sorcery to me! When I came closer to him I realized that he was not a normal man at all, though he certainly looked normal enough. His face was very pale.
Even though his skin looked healthy, I could tell that it was as thin as paper; it might be covered with wrinkles, but it showed no sign of age at all, except that the hair on his head was almost white and had turned grey in the middle. There seemed to be some dark rings around his eyes and his mouth hung open slightly as if he hadn’t quite finished speaking.
But then why would such a man need to finish talking? Perhaps he isn’t a human being at all? Perhaps he is some kind of animal that has developed a strange form of life, which does not require sleep or food. But if so, who brought him here and why? Or is he a machine? A mechanical man?
I decided to try and find out. I went up to the captain. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said politely. He didn’t answer, so I spoke louder: ‘Excuse me, sir! May I help you?’ Nothing happened. I tried again, this time using different words. Still no reply. After trying several more times, I finally gave up: he just wasn’t listening.
‘Sir,’ I said loudly, ‘please answer me!’ Still, nothing happened. It was obvious that this was a completely deaf man. What a pity! I would never have believed it if someone told me, but this was definitely the case. He could hear perfectly well when others talked but not himself.
This meant that I had wasted my time trying to talk to him, for he couldn’t possibly have understood me. ‘I suppose he cannot understand you either,’ I muttered to myself, as I walked away from him. I had been hoping that somehow my voice would reach his ears. It was a great disappointment but I did not feel like giving up so easily.
My curiosity was too great and besides, I needed to know what had happened to us. I wanted to explore the ship. Perhaps there were some other crew members, or perhaps there were some things on the deck that could tell me something.
The rest of the ship was deserted. There was no sign of anyone else on board. I wandered around in circles without getting anywhere. Suddenly the captain caught sight of me from behind his back. He stopped walking, looked straight at me and shouted: ‘Stop where you are! Get down immediately!’
His face suddenly turned blue as if his heart had suddenly stopped beating. For a moment I thought that this strange man had killed himself but then, quite suddenly, he started jumping up and down and making strange noises.
‘What’s wrong with him? Why is he behaving like that?’ I asked one of the sailors standing nearby, pointing towards the captain. ‘He just fainted,’ the sailor replied, smiling cheerfully. ‘But don’t worry – it won’t last long.’
The captain jumped up and down again and made another weird sound. I looked around and then saw a small box next to a bench, which looked like something that had been left over from before the war. Curious, I went over to it and opened the lid. In a flash, everything changed and I found myself lying flat on my stomach on the floor of some building or room.
I was sure that this was what had happened to me when I met the captain earlier – but how could it have happened so quickly? I got up slowly, feeling dizzy, and walked over to the window, where I stood for some time looking out through a crack into a courtyard. It was night.
There were lights burning everywhere in the yard and people coming and going. I had heard that during the night the city became very busy, but I had never seen it with my own eyes before. The people seemed to be hurrying about their business as if they were in a great hurry, but I didn’t see anyone running. Instead of running, everyone was walking fast – in fact almost in a trot.
I noticed that most of the buildings were round and that all the windows were exactly the same size. Then I heard a loud noise from inside the house; it sounded like the doors were slamming shut all around me. At first, I thought that perhaps there had been an earthquake, but the walls stayed as they were and there was no vibration.
It was as though every door had been slammed in quick succession. And it didn’t stop there: now I heard the same sound from outside the door. Someone had knocked on each door and then run away. What could it mean? I felt as though I was going mad.
After a while I heard footsteps running along the corridor behind me, and then someone called my name. A moment later I realized that this voice was familiar. It was the captain who had appeared on the deck of our ship, and he must have come up the stairs behind me.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked me anxiously as he came up to me. ‘You look pale as a ghost!’ I told him what had happened. ‘How bizarre! Are you sure you’re alright?’
‘Yes, yes, I’m fine…’ I replied, still not being able to believe what had happened to me.
I explained to the captain what I had discovered, including my encounter with the mysterious deaf man, but he dismissed it as a coincidence. ‘There are lots of people like that in St Petersburg,’ he said to me.
‘Like what?’ I asked him.
‘They say that these days there are more than twenty thousand of them. No one knows where they all came from. They say that they are all from a village near Moscow.’
I listened attentively, but my thoughts were still on the peculiar situation with the deaf-mute. I decided to do something about it, although there was nothing much I could do on my own.
I found a seaman and asked him to help me find out what had happened to us. He agreed immediately, for such strange stories always interested him. But we soon discovered that our captain hadn’t been telling me the truth and that there was no one here who knew anything about what had happened to us.
We searched for a long time through the house, asking everyone and anyone whether they’d ever seen a man like the captain had described and if they could tell me anything about him. We even looked up and down the street. Nothing. The whole thing had been forgotten by everyone.
Everyone was just going about their work, and no one even gave it a second thought. Even though I had only heard about such things happening somewhere else in the world, it still made me feel very unsettled to think that we might have ended up in some other place altogether.
We went back to the captain and told him that we couldn’t find out any more about the strange incident, and he nodded his head knowingly as if to say that this was probably how it should be. As we walked along the road, I tried to imagine what it would be like to end up anywhere other than St Petersburg.
Would everything be so different there? How would it be possible to get home again? I suddenly felt anxious. If this was what was meant to happen to us, why did the captain seem so unconcerned about it?
I was sitting in front of a tavern with a group of sailors, drinking vodka with them. The conversation turned to our fate and we discussed what we were likely to encounter in whatever country we ended up in.
‘It’s impossible to imagine how much things have changed since we set off,’ said a man at the next table to me. ‘Back then we used to sail from town to town across Europe in little wooden boats. It took us months, sometimes even years, but when we finally arrived at the port, we were greeted as heroes. And now it’s just the opposite.’
Everyone started talking about how terrible the roads had become, and how it was impossible to cross Europe by land nowadays. In former times it hadn’t mattered too much whether you sailed or rode horseback, but nowadays it was impossible to travel from place to place without using roads.
And then someone else said: ‘You don’t know what it was like before. You wouldn’t believe me anyway.’
I thought the conversation was over, but then someone said: ‘What do you mean? Tell us!’
The man stood up and began to recount the tale, and then he sat down again and told us that a few years ago he was crossing a bridge from one island to another and a big gust of wind blew the bridge apart, taking him and his wife with it into the water below.
He managed to grab onto a piece of wood as the current carried him downstream. He didn’t have much strength left, but he managed to cling on to it and was pulled ashore. There he was rescued by two fishermen and taken to the hospital.
When he woke up from his coma he found himself lying in an unfamiliar bed, and when he opened his eyes he saw that he was in a room full of strangers. He was surrounded by doctors and nurses who had come from all corners of Europe. They spoke English, German, French, Greek, Italian, Russian, Dutch, and Danish…
He lay there and stared at them, unable to understand what was happening. Then one of the nurses approached him and asked him what his name was. He replied that he wasn’t sure. She asked him again and pointed to her wrist: ‘Your name is written here,’ she said. He shook his head.
The nurse smiled kindly and showed him again, writing his name on her arm. He looked at his own wrist and was surprised to see that his wrist was bare. Where had the letters gone? ‘No,’ he replied firmly. ‘My name isn’t here.’
He had lost his name. His memory was gone. But then the doctor came and told him that he’d be fine and that this must have been a very bad dream. And then someone called out: ‘What will happen to him?’
‘Who? What did you say?’ the nurse asked.
‘That poor man! Who’s going to look after him? How can you forget your own name and your past life in just a few days?’
At that moment someone else came in and said something to the nurse. She turned around and looked at the man beside me, saying: ‘He needs to go back to his family as soon as possible.’
‘To his family!’ he yelled in amazement. ‘His family!’
She nodded and went back out into the corridor. The man looked at me in confusion and said: ‘And then he’ll remember where his real name is… Will he be able to write it down this time?’
I didn’t reply. I simply got up and left the tavern with the others, wondering what the point was in all these stories, and how long they were likely to take. I knew that we were unlikely to be traveling for long distances and that the captain wouldn’t stop for anything other than essential supplies such as food and water.
It was still dark when the first rays of light appeared above the horizon, heralding a new day. The sun rose slowly, its golden disc reflecting off the lake. The mist was lifting; the sky had begun to brighten and the birds were singing. We sailed towards the eastern shore of the lake.
After breakfast, we spent the morning walking along the lake. There was no sign of any buildings or settlements on the other side of the water. The only sound was the lapping of the waves against the hulls. The weather was good and there was a gentle breeze from the west.
As we walked I could feel myself getting fitter every day. We were beginning to feel more comfortable being on deck and we had already become familiar with the crew who were now treating us politely.
As we made our way around the lake we noticed some boats sailing towards us from the western shore. We waved to them, and they returned the gesture as we continued southwards. They weren’t in any great hurry as they drifted across the lake. Some were heading east, while others were turning north.
All had small sails on their bows and masts and were manned by a crew of three. Their sails were white as were their oars, which were made from ash wood. On closer inspection we could see that the ships weren’t painted – the hulls were covered by an oil-based paint that kept them clean.
We guessed that these were fishing vessels. One boat had a large net hanging from its stern that it was pulling behind it.
We watched as it came closer to us. It seemed to be heading straight for the ship’s prow. As it passed us it was lowered and the fisherman climbed aboard. Then it pulled away from the ship and disappeared from sight. We saw a second boat coming towards us.
This time, it also headed straight for the ship, but the sailors threw a rope ladder over the stern before they tied it to a cleat in the bow.
The men climbing aboard the ship shouted something to us. One of them gestured to us to follow him and began to walk down the side of the ship and climb up onto the beach. Once he was there he pointed to the shoreline and indicated that we should make our way over to the shore.
He told us that we shouldn’t cross the lake until nightfall, so we decided that we would wait until then before we made our descent. The fisherman gave each of us a leather bag containing some fish – two of them had small fish, while the third had larger ones, and there were some smaller fish too.
He also told us that we should try to catch some ourselves if we wanted to eat tonight, pointing to the nets that hung from the ships’ sterns and telling us how to use them. Then he thanked us again, climbed back onboard his boat, and started rowing back towards his home.
We watched him leave, then walked back to the ship, followed by the others who were also carrying bags of fresh fish. We could hear the sounds of people laughing and shouting and music playing from somewhere. A man was beating a drum, while others were dancing, and others were clapping their hands to the rhythm.
When we reached the ship, the captain said to us: ‘Well, well, well, what do we have here? A whole load of sailors, I’d imagine.’
There was a lot of laughter from his crew as everyone stared at us, including one woman who was sitting on her own in the corner.
‘What are you staring at?’ the captain asked them, and the men quickly looked away from us. The woman smiled at us in return.
‘So, where did you come from?’ asked the captain, looking at me.
I explained that we hadn’t seen any other boats like theirs on the other side of the lake and how it had crossed ours without stopping. I was sure he could tell that I didn’t want to talk about it; it wasn’t exactly a story you shared with strangers.
He laughed. ‘Aye, there aren’t many places like this in the world, I expect. And even fewer that have ever been visited by anyone except those with no choice. You know,’ he went on, ‘it’s not surprising that we haven’t had visitors before.
I mean, think about it: how many sailors actually go on a journey just for fun? Most of us do it because we’re forced to. No one really travels these days unless they have a reason, you know what I mean?’
His words were starting to make more sense to me now. If people traveled for pleasure then there must be plenty of sailors out there, but most of them probably stayed close to home. I had wondered why I had never heard of any other islands in these waters or of any people who lived on them.
I asked the captain if he knew where we were now. He nodded. ‘Aye, you’re in another sea that runs parallel to this one. To give you a better idea of where it is, I’m going to draw a map of it for you once we get back to our island. It doesn’t look much, I admit, but I’ve spent a long time making it, and it’s quite accurate.’
He looked around the cabin at all of us, but nobody spoke up to ask any more questions. Instead, he said to us: ‘Now, let’s head back to our island. We need to make some repairs, and then I’ll show you how we can help each other out.’
‘You don’t happen to have any spare sails lying about, do you?’ asked one of the men on deck, and the captain shook his head. ‘That’s too bad,’ he said sadly. Then he turned to us and said: ‘I suppose we should introduce ourselves too, don’t we? I am Captain Jorgen, and my crew consists of five members: myself, Gunnar, Bjorn, Olaf, and Sigurd.’
‘And who are you?’ asked Captain Jorgen, looking at me.
‘I’m Hjörr,’ I replied.
Captain Jorgen nodded. ‘Good. Let’s hope we’ll see each other again sometime soon.’
I was surprised when he told us to jump overboard. I had thought that he was going to row us back to shore, as he usually did, but I was wrong. He told us all to hold onto a rope attached to the front of the ship and swing our legs over the edge, and then push off the side and swim towards the other boat.
When we reached it, it took only seconds for Captain Jorgen to climb onto its deck and tie the ropes together.
‘This is a good thing we have found here,’ he said once everyone else had boarded his vessel. ‘Now we can travel between two different seas whenever we choose to. It will save us a lot of time and trouble in the long run. I hope to visit your island one day.’ He gave me a nod and a smile before climbing back into his ship and pushing off the water with his oar.
When he was gone, the woman with the red hair stood up and walked across the deck toward me. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked. ‘You don’t seem very pleased about what has happened, even though I can’t believe it myself.’
I tried not to stare at her breasts, as they were obviously large. I had seen them hanging beneath her tunic – I couldn’t help but notice how big they were – but I didn’t know what to say when someone so beautiful was standing right in front of me.
‘Well, what do you want from me?’ I finally asked. ‘Do you want to hear my life story? Or would you prefer it if I got on with helping you sail your boat? Because I can do either.’
She smiled and said that she didn’t mind what I wanted to do because it didn’t really matter. She had been waiting for us since we first landed on her island; she just wanted to make sure that no one hurt us while we were on their home soil.
I could tell that I wasn’t meant to understand the meaning behind her words, so I decided not to try. As soon as the woman left the boat, I climbed inside and tied us to the other vessel. The sun had disappeared below the horizon, which made things dark quickly. I sat down at the helm and started steering us through the waves.
It felt strange being surrounded by water again. The sea always gives you something to focus on and takes your mind off of anything else. I had grown accustomed to seeing land every day after leaving the farm on Árvak Island, and now I was sailing through empty waters.
But I knew that we were heading for new shores. It might still be night-time here, but I could feel the sun rising above the eastern horizon, and it gave me hope that we were on the right course.
The End