I knew it would be too bright, but it needed to be done sooner or later. I might as well get it over with. I opened my eyes ever so slightly. Damn, it was really way too bright. The damn saltwater contributed what it could to the sting. I tried to rub my eyes to ease it, but soon realized that was a mistake. My hands were just as wet as my face, and all they did was add sand to the mix. I did the obvious: gave up and closed them again.
As soon as my eyes were closed, another problem became apparent. The damn ringing sound in my ears seemed to get louder again. It drowned out everything else. There should have been the sound of the surf. Maybe some wind rushing in my ears. Some birds maybe? Nope, there was nothing at all, just this damn ringing.
I thought about it and decided that I could live with the thought of being deaf. It sure sucked, but it could be worse. Being deaf with that constant ringing would be unbearable, though.
Just to distract myself, I tried to open my eyes again and this time it worked a bit better. As expected, I was sitting on a tropical beach, looking at the sea. Not a single miracle had happened since I had arrived here. Damn.
There are two very different ways of ending up at a beach. One is to come from the land side, maybe bringing a picnic basket and your loved ones and enjoying a nice day. The other is to swim there from the open sea after a shipwreck. There was not a single picnic basket in sight. I had no loved ones left in this world, anyway, so it was no real surprise to see none around me.
I looked at the smoldering wreck in the distance and still didn't understand how this could have happened. Sure, the good ship
Pacific
was in the autumn of a productive and useful life. Okay, make that late winter, but she had always been a slow, but reliable, workhorse. Her trusty boilers had never shown the slightest inclination toward exploding, destroying the ship, and killing almost everyone aboard. Still, this was what had evidently happened.
This was unlikely enough, but the odds of it happening so close to one of the countless Maluku Islands were staggering. Even more astonishing, the wreck was apparently sitting on a reef and had sunk just a few feet. I wondered if this was a navigational error or a coincidence, but was too dizzy to invest any more thought in this. Just a blessing in disguise, probably. A very thorough disguise.
Tiredly, I looked around, trying to get a grip on the situation I was in. Going back to sleep was tempting, but wouldn't help my situation at all.
A beach. Of course. It seemed insanely bright, almost white, but it wasn't very wide. The sea was an almost impossibly bright turquoise. The water was very shallow near the beach, as I knew from having waded through it. I also knew that there were wickedly sharp reefs a little further out, which were tricky to pass for swimmers, as they formed dangerous currents and waves.
I looked around and saw that even palm trees were present to complete the Robinson Crusoe cliché. The vegetation looked dense enough to make passing through it a difficult task. Somewhere behind the tree line, the terrain rose sharply and formed a substantial mountain. Above a certain height, the larger vegetation gave up and steep rock faces were visible.
I sighed. Establishing a lookout at the mountain top would be a piece of hard mountaineering work. I would have to decide later if it was going to be worth it.
While I caught my breath, I watched the pathetic figures around me. They were in various states of pulling themselves together and didn't seem to need immediate assistance. I was afraid that the weaker survivors may have been weeded out in the reefs, although I luckily had not witnessed anything like that.
The boilers had been in the aft section, where the crew and third-class passengers slept. I didn't expect many of those among the survivors. My fellow castaways would most probably be first-class passengers, who had their quarters as far away from the engines as possible.
There were a bunch of people on the beach, but I still felt too dizzy to count. A lifeboat was sitting on the reefs near the shore, obviously busy being ripped to shreds by the sharp edges. This explained why it wasn't available when I had been looking for it. Someone had taken it without bothering to wait for anybody else.
The smoldering wreck sat in sight right in front of me. It was a sad sight. Good old, at the end not that reliable,
Pacific
wouldn't ever go anywhere again. The year 1955, the place some godforsaken island in the Pacific, was the definite end of her long journey.
The hulk looked close enough to reach with a short swim. I know exactly how untrue that perception was, as I had swum over here through the rough sea and had barely made it, despite being a very good swimmer. I was still too dizzy to feel true compassion for the ones who hadn't made it. I knew that would come later.
I looked at the wreck a little bit closer. Stern and the midship section seemed to be almost completely gone. There were a few bent and blackened shreds of metal above the waves, pointing out where they should have been, like dark torn fingers. The bow and about the front third of the ship seemed weirdly undamaged from here, but I know from first-hand experience that things inside looked a lot worse. I wondered if anyone inside might still be alive. Vividly remembering the smoke-filled chaos of torn metal inside, I decided probably not.
I looked around and saw the miserable group of human beings that was to be expected in such a situation. Everyone I could see was obviously from the first-class section, as expected. The clothing was expensive, but not really complete. Most had shed some piece or other to make it through the sea. Amazingly, one woman was still wearing gloves matching the remnants of the fancy red dress with white dots she was wearing. All in all, the prevailing light summer dresses had survived the contact with the Banda Sea rather well.
Most men were wearing shirts and suit trousers, but the loss of coats, shoes, and hats was inexcusable from a fashion viewpoint. One guy was actually still wearing a tie, but was in the process of removing it. My situation was a bit more fortunate as my shoes were the only offering the sea had claimed.
I saw men politely helping women up. Others were trying to tidy up the clothes they still had. Others yet, were just sitting there, looking at the sea. Everything seemed calm and surprisingly civilized. I could even hear a few "Are you all right?" "Can I help you somehow?" and other fragments of polite conversation. The first-class passengers were still trying to uphold civilization, but I wondered how long that would last.
Then it hit me that I had been able to understand the conversations. There were other noises, as well. So, I wasn't deaf, after all. The damn ringing didn't block out everything, anymore, but it was still there.
Right then it hit me how many had died today. All of my shipmates seemed to be gone. Hell, I would have been gone as well, had I not had the unpopular task of checking the anchor mechanism. I thought about my friends and just looked at the wreck in silence.
"Ho, ho, what a sad assembly do we have here?" broke my reverie.
I looked around at saw something that shouldn't have been there. A stoker. Not just any stoker, but the biggest, meanest and cruelest stoker under the sun. To make things worse, it wasn't just this particular stoker, the ugly bastard was accompanied by two of his best stoker buddies. Okay, he wasn't really that ugly, but I never liked him and the prospect of being shipwrecked together with him didn't exactly enhance my already shitty day.
'What the fuck?' I thought. What were they doing there? The stokers should have been the first to die in a boiler explosion. Even if they had not been on duty, their bunks were the ones nearest to the engines. Something didn't smell right. First, the boiler exploding, then the fact that it happened right next to an island and now three of the persons possibly responsible for tending to said boiler being alive and kicking? No, sir, that didn't look like a coincidence.
Liam Fincher was definitely the last person with whom you'd want to spend time on a remote island. His buddies, Alfie Pattinson and Edward Holloway were smaller, but as they were completely under his spell, they were hardly any better. It looked like I wouldn't have a choice about that, I thought as he came nearer.
"Oh, I see that we are lucky enough to have Jacob Meyers, one of our esteemed superiors among the survivors," he exclaimed, his voice dripping with sarcasm. I knew that he knew I disliked him. On the other hand, he knew that I knew he hated me. The only upside in our relationship was that we were under no illusions and no charade was necessary. I had punished all three of them for some misbehavior or other, as had all of their superiors. They had always been trouble magnets. Whenever something went wrong on the ship, they were close to the action.
"Yeah, glad you survived as well, Fincher, Pattinson, Holloway." I nodded in their directions.
"Haha, I bet."
"Who is in charge here?"
The question had interrupted our exchange of fake pleasantries and had come from behind me.
"I'm not sure, sir, but right now I seem to be the highest-ranking surviving crew member. My name is Jacob Meyers. I'm the boatswain."
"My name is Harold Smythe and I'm a first-class passenger." He emphasized the 'first,' as if he was talking to an idiot. "Mr. Meyers, I find this situation unacceptable. This is not what I expected from the Pacific shipping company. You can be sure that I will file a complaint."
I looked at him, stunned, and tried to make up my mind if he was kidding me. Suddenly, I burst out laughing. Behind me, I could hear the howling laughter of the three stokers. Smythe just turned around indignantly and walked away. When our laughter subsided, I looked at them, pointed over my shoulder with my thumb and we all exploded in laughter again. It was an unexpected moment of camaraderie.
"Okay, guys, we've never been the best of friends, but let's try to handle this professionally." I decided not to think about the exploding boiler and their possible role in it, at least not right then. Surprisingly, they nodded. I guessed surviving such an event and ending up on a lonely tropical island did help to overcome some misgivings, at least for the time being. "Let's see how many survivors we have and whether anyone has salvaged anything."
"Oh, we have some rations and a few tools," Pattinson blurted out. From his look, Fincher wasn't all that happy about that revelation. Pattinson was often called "the ghost." He was rather small, at 5'9", wiry and looked like he had never seen the sun. His skin might have been the only thing on Earth whiter than the damn sand. I had no idea about his age, but he had almost no hair. He was usually a bit grimy and looked like an albino insect. I had seen him at work, though, and found out that he was surprisingly strong.
"Great, Pattinson. Where do you have it?"
"It's still in the boat." Like an idiot, he pointed at the crashed lifeboat, just in case anyone had suspected it might be in the jungle behind us. So it was they who took the lifeboat, leaving the others on the ship behind. I was boiling inside, but knew that this was not the time to bring up the question of why they had stocked a lifeboat with survival gear near a remote island in the first place.
"Okay, let's get it and take stock. Fincher, shall we do the swimming?"
"Meyers, I, ah, I can't really."
"What?"
