Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea

by Steven Callahan

I may soon go mad, eat paper, drink the sea.

If there is any enlightenment that I have been awakened to, it is that men’s minds are dominated by their little aches and pains. We want to think that we are more than that, that we control our lives with our intellect. But now, without civilization clouding the issue, I wonder to what extent intellect is controlled by instinct and culture is the result of raw gut reactions to life.

It is beauty surrounded by ugly fear. I write in my log that it is a view of heaven from a seat in hell.

But I know that my hardness is more than this. My impatience and unkindness stem from deeper roots. Seven years of marriage ending in divorce—and an ensuing hot relationship that left me singed—have made me tired of the traumas of women and of love. Perhaps it is a fear that I am unwilling to face. Perhaps I have traded my quest for love for the quest to finish what I set out to do. I don’t really know, but these are among the secrets that I’m unwilling to share with Catherine, despite her soft French voice and lovable smiles. I only want to sail, write, and draw.

For the first time, I clearly see a vast difference between human needs and human wants. Before this voyage, I always had what I needed—food, shelter, clothing, and companionship—yet I was often dissatisfied when I didn’t get everything I wanted, when people didn’t meet my expectations, when a goal was thwarted, or when I couldn’t acquire some material goody. My plight has given me a strange kind of wealth, the most important kind. I value each moment that is not spent in pain, desperation, hunger, thirst, or loneliness.

I haven’t slept for two days. My skin is white, and even my wrinkles have wrinkles. My hair sits dripping and tangled on my head. Fish scales cling to me like ornamental slivers of nail polish. With a gap in the middle of my smile, I must be quite a mess, a real hag. Well, we rafties can’t be at our charming best all of the time.

People will ask me what it was like. I will tell them I hated it, all of it. There was not one slimy corner that did not stink. You can never love it. You can only do what you must. I hated the sea’s snapping off shots of heavy rifle fire next to my ear, rolling heavy stones over me, ripping wounds open, beating me, winning. Weeks on end, no bells, no rounds, continued onslaught. I even hated the equipment that saved my life—the primitive raft that was an aimless, drifting pig of a boat, the wretched tent that turned clean water foul. I hated having to catch drinking water in the same box I had to defecate in. I hated having to haul aboard lovely creatures and tear into their flesh like a beast. I hated counting minutes for thirty-two days. I hated . . . I hated . . . I did not know a man could have so much hatred and so much longing within him. Yes, I will get home somehow. I must.

At last one comes within range. Groaning, I drive the shaft down, strike her in the back, but do not get all the way through. She spirals about the end of the arrow at incredible speed and in a moment, before I can grasp my weapon with both hands, she is gone. I look dumfoundedly at the blunt threaded tip of the spear. In less than two seconds, the fish neatly unscrewed the point and left with it. The dorados have awaited their chance to test me. They have destroyed my ship, disarmed me, and now they mock me. If only I were a sea creature. Fish do not get themselves into problems that they must use intellect and tools to solve. They simply swim, breed, and die. I am awed by the intricate perfection of the world in which I find myself, but I am too tired for true appreciation.

But there is a mystery in this town nonetheless. I failed at catching the dorados by line and they came close enough for the spear. The range of the spear was shortened when I lost the power strap, but they bumped and swam even closer. Now, with my range shortened even more and my power declining, they lie on their sides under my point. It is as if they are trying to help me, as if they do not mind mixing their flesh with mine.

Now each job takes longer and longer to accomplish. I continually wonder how much more a body can take. I don’t consider suicide—not now, after all I have come through—but I can understand how others might see it as a reasonable option in these circumstances. For me it is always easier to struggle on. To give myself courage, I tell myself that my hell could be worse, that it might get worse and I must prepare for that. My body is certain to deteriorate further. I tell myself that I can handle it. Compared to what others have been through, I’m fortunate. I tell myself these things over and over, building up fortitude, but parts of my body feel as if they are in flames. The fire from the sores on my back, butt, and legs shrieks upward and the flames burst forth into my skull. In a moment my spirit is in ashes and tears well in my eyes. They are not enough to even dampen the conflagration.

I am the Dutchman. I arise still feeling asleep.

After two and a half months, I finally have no fears and no apprehension. There is nothing to do and nothing I want. There is only total rest.

Two people touching hands or a phrase that reveals a simple human kindness can drill into the core of the aching loneliness and desperation I once knew, and I find myself in tears. So too does my soul feel wrung by people’s pain and the dignity with which they must sometimes bear it.

To my mind, voyaging through wildernesses, be they full of woods or waves, is essential to the growth and maturity of the human spirit. It is in the wilderness that you really learn who you are. It is in facing the challenges of the wilderness that the thickness of your wallet becomes irrelevant and your capabilities become the truer measure of your value.

Over time, though, life got complicated again and memories faded.

When my ideals had not matched reality, I had fled reality. I could not accept my own limitations as a human being nor those of the people around me. I was a man alone and quite adrift well before the sea cast me into Rubber Ducky.