Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor (8 page)

The thought that for seven days I had been drifting farther out to sea rather than nearing land crushed my resolve to keep on struggling. But when you feel close to death, your instinct for self-preservation grows stronger. For several reasons, that day was very different from the previous days: the sea was dark and calm; the sun, warm and tranquil, hugged my body; a gentle breeze guided the raft along; even my sunburn felt a bit better.

The fish were different, too. From very early on they had escorted the raft, swimming near the surface. And I could see them clearly: blue fish, gray-brown ones, red ones. There were fish of every color, all shapes and sizes. It seemed as if the raft were floating in an aquarium.

I don’t know whether, after seven days without food and adrift at sea, one becomes accustomed to living that way. I think so. The hopelessness of the previous day was replaced by a mellow resignation devoid of emotion. I was
sure that everything was different, that the sea and the sky were no longer hostile, and that the fish accompanying me on my journey were my friends. My old acquaintances of seven days.

That morning I wasn’t thinking about reaching any destination. I was certain that the raft had arrived in a region where there were no ships, where even sea gulls could go astray.

I thought, however, that after seven days adrift I would become accustomed to the sea, to my anxious way of life, without having to spur my imagination in order to survive. After all, I had endured a week of harsh winds and waves. Why wouldn’t it be possible to live on the raft indefinitely? The fish swam near the surface; the sea was clear and calm. There were so many lovely, tempting fish around the raft it looked as if I could grab them with my hands. Not a shark was in sight. Confidently I put my hand in the water and tried to seize a round fish, a bright blue one about twenty centimeters long. It was as if I had flung a stone: all the fish fled instantly, momentarily churning up the water. Then slowly they came back to the surface.

You have to be crafty to fish with your hand, I thought. Underwater, the hand didn’t have as much strength or agility. I chose one fish from the bunch. I tried to grab it. And in fact I did. But I felt it slip through my fingers with disconcerting speed and nimbleness. I waited patiently, not pressuring myself, just trying to catch a fish. I wasn’t thinking about the shark which might be out there, waiting until I put my arm in up to the elbow so he could make off with it in one sure bite. I kept busy trying to catch fish until a little after ten o’clock. But it was useless. They nibbled at my fingers, gently at first, as
when they nibble at bait. Then a little harder. A smooth silver fish about a foot and a half long, with minute, sharp teeth, tore the skin off my thumb. Then I realized that the nibbles of the other fish hadn’t been harmless: all my fingers had small bleeding cuts.

I don’t know if it was the blood from my fingers, but in an instant there was a riot of sharks around the raft. I had never seen so many. I had never seen them so voracious. They leaped like dolphins, chasing the fish and devouring them. Terrified, I sat in the middle of the raft and watched the massacre.

The next thing happened so quickly that I didn’t realize just when it was that the shark leaped out of the water, thrashing its tail violently, and the raft, tottering, sank beneath the gleaming foam. In the midst of the huge, glittering wave that crashed over the side there was a metallic flash. Instinctively I grabbed an oar and prepared to strike a deathblow. But then I saw the enormous fin, and I realized what had happened. Chased by the shark, a brilliant green fish, almost half a meter long, had leaped into the raft. With all my strength I walloped it on the head with my oar.

Killing a fish inside a raft isn’t easy. The vessel tottered with each blow; it might have turned over. It was a perilous moment. I needed all my strength and all my wits about me. If I struck out blindly, the raft would turn over and I would plunge into a sea full of hungry sharks. If I didn’t aim carefully, my quarry would escape. I stood between
life and death. I would either end up in the gullet of a shark or get four pounds of fresh fish to appease the hunger of seven days.

I braced myself on the gunwale and struck the second blow. I felt the wooden oar drive into the fish’s skull. The raft bounced. The sharks shuddered below. I pressed myself firmly against the side. When the raft stabilized, the fish was still alive.

In agony, a fish can jump higher and farther than it otherwise can. I knew the third blow had to be a sure one or I would lose my prey forever.

After a lunge at the fish, I found myself sitting on the floor, where I thought I had a better chance of grabbing it. If necessary, I would have captured it with my feet, between my knees, or in my teeth. I anchored myself to the floor. Trying not to make a mistake and convinced that my life depended on my next blow, I swung the oar with all my strength. The fish stopped moving and a thread of dark blood tinted the water inside the raft.

I could smell the blood, and the sharks sensed it, too. Suddenly, with four pounds of fish within my grasp, I felt uncontrollable terror: driven wild by the scent of blood, the sharks hurled themselves with all their strength against the bottom of the raft. The raft shook. I realized that it could turn over in an instant. I could be torn to pieces by the three rows of steel teeth in the jaws of each shark.

But the pressure of hunger was greater than anything else. I squeezed the fish between my legs and, staggering, began the difficult job of balancing the raft each time it suffered another assault by the sharks. That went on for several minutes. Whenever the raft stabilized, I threw the bloody water overboard. Little by little the water cleared and the beasts calmed down. But I had to be careful: a
terrifyingly huge shark fin—the biggest I had ever seen—protruded more than a meter above the water’s surface. The shark was swimming peacefully, but I knew that if it caught the scent of blood it would give a shudder that could capsize the raft. With extreme caution I began to try to pull my fish apart.

A creature that’s half a meter long is protected by a hard crust of scales: if you try to pull them off, you find that they adhere to the flesh like armor plating. I had no sharp instruments. I tried to shave off the scales with my keys, but they wouldn’t budge. Meanwhile, it occurred to me that I had never seen a fish like this one: it was deep green and thickly scaled. From when I was little, I had associated the color green with poison. Incredibly, although my stomach was throbbing painfully at the prospect of even a mouthful of fresh fish, I had trouble deciding whether or not that strange creature might be poisonous.

Hunger is bearable when you have no hope of food. But it was never so insistent as when I was trying to slash that shiny green flesh with my keys.

After a few minutes, I realized I would have to use more violent methods if I wanted to eat my victim. I stood up, stepped hard on its tail, and stuck the oar handle into one of its gills. I saw that the fish wasn’t dead yet. I hit it on the head again. Then I tried to tear off the hard protective plates that covered the gills. I couldn’t tell whether the blood streaming over my fingers was from the fish or from me; my hands were covered with wounds and my fingertips were raw.

The scent of blood once again stirred the sharks’ hunger. It seems unbelievable but, furious at the hungry beasts and disgusted by the sight of the bloody fish, I was on the point of throwing it to the sharks, as I had done with the sea gull. I felt utterly frustrated and helpless at the sight of the solid, impenetrable body of the fish.

I examined it meticulously for soft spots. Finally I found a slit between the gills and with my finger I began to pull out the entrails. The innards of a fish are soft and without substance. It is said that if you strike a hard blow to a shark’s tail the stomach and intestines fall out of its mouth. In Cartagena, I had seen sharks hanging by their tails, with huge thick masses of dark innards oozing from their mouths.

Luckily the entrails of my fish were as soft as those of the sharks. It didn’t take long to remove them with my finger. It was a female: among the entrails I found a string of eggs. When it was completely gutted I took the first bite. I couldn’t break through the crust of scales. But on the second try, with renewed strength, I bit down desperately, until my jaw ached. Then I managed to tear off the first mouthful and began to chew the cold, tough flesh.

I chewed with disgust. I had always found the odor of raw fish repulsive, but the flavor is even more repugnant. It tastes vaguely like raw palm, but oilier and less palatable. I couldn’t imagine that anyone had ever eaten a live fish, but as I chewed the first food that had reached my lips in seven days, I had the awful certainty that I was in fact eating one.

After the first piece, I felt better immediately. I took a second bite and chewed again. A moment before, I had thought I could eat a whole shark. But now I felt full after the second mouthful. The terrible hunger of seven days was
appeased in an instant. I was strong again, as on the first day.

I now know that raw fish slakes your thirst. I hadn’t known it before, but I realized that the fish had appeased not only my hunger but my thirst as well. I was sated and optimistic. I still had food for a long time, since I had taken only two small bites of a creature half a meter long.

I decided to wrap the fish in my shirt and store it in the bottom of the raft to keep it fresh. But first I had to wash it. Absentmindedly I held it by the tail and dunked it once over the side. But blood had coagulated between the scales. It would have to be scrubbed. Naïvely I submerged it again. And that was when I felt the charge of the violent thrust of the shark’s jaws. I hung on to the tail of the fish with all the strength I had. The beast’s lunge upset my balance. I was thrown against the side of the raft but I held on to my food supply; I clung to it like a savage. In that fraction of a second, it didn’t occur to me that with another bite the shark could have ripped my arm off at the shoulder. I kept pulling with all my strength, but now there was nothing in my hands. The shark had made off with my prey. Infuriated, rabid with frustration, I grabbed an oar and delivered a tremendous blow to the shark’s head when it passed by the side of the raft. The beast leaped; it twisted furiously and with one clean, savage bite splintered the oar and swallowed half of it.

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In a rage, I continued to strike at the water with the broken oar. I had to avenge myself on the shark that had snatched from my hand the only nourishment available. It was almost five in the afternoon of my seventh day at sea. Soon the sharks would arrive en masse. I felt strengthened by the two bites I had managed to eat, and the fury occasioned by the loss of my fish made me want to fight. There were two more oars in the raft. I thought of switching the oar the shark had bitten off for another one, so I could keep battling the monsters. But my instinct for self-preservation was stronger than my rage: I realized I might lose the other two oars and I didn’t know when I might need them.

Nightfall was the same as on all the other days, but this night was darker and the sea was stormy. It looked like rain. Thinking some drinking water might be coming my
way, I took off my shoes and my shirt to have something in which to catch it. It was what landlubbers call a night that isn’t fit for a dog. At sea, it should be called a night that isn’t fit for a shark.

After nine, an icy wind began to blow. I tried to escape it by lying in the bottom of the raft, but that didn’t work. The chill penetrated to the marrow of my bones. I had to put my shirt and shoes back on and resign myself to the fact that the rain would take me by surprise and I wouldn’t have anything to collect it in. The waves were more powerful than they’d been on February 28, the day of the accident. The raft was like an eggshell on the choppy, dirty sea. I couldn’t sleep. I had submerged myself in the raft up to my neck because the wind was even icier than the water was. I kept shuddering. At one point I thought I could no longer endure the cold and I tried doing exercises to warm up. But I was too weak. I had to cling tightly to the side to keep from being thrown into the sea by the powerful waves. I rested my head on the oar that had been demolished by the shark. The others lay at the bottom of the raft.

Before midnight the gale got worse, the sky grew dense and turned a deep gray, the air became more humid, and not a single drop of rain fell. But just after midnight an enormous wave—as big as the one that had swept over the deck of the destroyer—lifted the raft like a banana peel, upended it, and in a fraction of a second turned it upside down.

I only realized what had happened when I found myself in the water, swimming toward the surface as I had on the afternoon of the accident. I swam frantically, reached the surface, and then thought I would die of shock: I could not
see the raft. I saw the enormous black waves over my head and I remembered Luis Rengifo—strong, a good swimmer, well fed—who hadn’t been able to reach the raft from only two meters away. I had become disoriented and was looking in the wrong direction. But behind me, about a meter away, the raft appeared, battered by the waves. I reached it in two strokes. You can swim two strokes in two seconds, but those two seconds can feel like eternity. I was so terrified that in one leap I found myself panting and dripping in the bottom of the raft. My heart was throbbing in my chest and I couldn’t breathe.