Wanderer

WANDERER

BY

STERLING HAYDEN

This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.picklepartnerspublishing.com

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Text originally published in 1963 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2014, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

BOOK I — MAN AT BAY 5

CHAPTER 1 5

CHAPTER 2 10

CHAPTER 3 17

CHAPTER 4 20

CHAPTER 5 24

CHAPTER 6 28

CHAPTER 7 30

CHAPTER 8 36

CHAPTER 9 40

CHAPTER 10 44

CHAPTER 11 49

BOOK II — OUTWARD BOUND 53

CHAPTER 12 53

CHAPTER 13 59

CHAPTER 14 64

CHAPTER 15 71

CHAPTER 16 77

CHAPTER 17 80

CHAPTER 18 84

CHAPTER 19 88

CHAPTER 20 93

CHAPTER 21 96

CHAPTER 22 99

CHAPTER 23 103

CHAPTER 24 108

CHAPTER 25 113

CHAPTER 26 118

CHAPTER 27 124

BOOK III — EXILE FROM OBLIVION 130

CHAPTER 28 130

CHAPTER 29 134

CHAPTER 30 141

CHAPTER 31 144

CHAPTER 32 147

CHAPTER 33 151

CHAPTER 34 156

CHAPTER 35 158

CHAPTER 36 163

CHAPTER 37 165

CHAPTER 38 169

CHAPTER 39 173

CHAPTER 40 178

CHAPTER 41 182

CHAPTER 42 186

CHAPTER 43 189

CHAPTER 44 194

CHAPTER 45 201

CHAPTER 46 203

BOOK IV — IRONED WANDERER 209

CHAPTER 47 209

CHAPTER 48 211

CHAPTER 49 216

CHAPTER 50 220

CHAPTER 51 224

CHAPTER 52 227

CHAPTER 53 230

CHAPTER 54 232

CHAPTER 55 236

CHAPTER 56 239

CHAPTER 57 242

CHAPTER 58 246

CHAPTER 59 249

CHAPTER 60 252

CHAPTER 61 255

CHAPTER 62 260

CHAPTER 63 267

CHAPTER 64 272

CHAPTER 65 274

CHAPTER 66 277

CHAPTER 67 282

BOOK V — ABYSMAL VOYAGE 286

CHAPTER 68 286

CHAPTER 69 290

CHAPTER 70 292

CHAPTER 71 296

CHAPTER 72 300

CHAPTER 73 304

CHAPTER 74 307

CHAPTER 75 309

CHAPTER 76 311

CHAPTER 77 315

CHAPTER 78 318

CHAPTER 79 322

CHAPTER 80 326

CHAPTER 81 333

CHAPTER 82 334

CHAPTER 83 336

BOOK VI — COLD STAR BLAZING 340

CHAPTER 84 340

CHAPTER 85 341

CHAPTER 86 344

CHAPTER 87 346

CHAPTER 88 350

CHAPTER 89 353

CHAPTER 90 355

CHAPTER 91 359

CHAPTER 92 362

CHAPTER 93 366

A STORMY, SPLENDID READING ADVENTURE! 368

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 369

STERLING HAYDEN 370

WANDERER 370

DEDICATION

To C. D. H.

Who had the heart

To join with me

And plunge

Into the abyss

Where books like this are written

And to

Warwick M. Tompkins and Rockwell Kent

SAILORMEN ARTISTS RADICALS

Who chose Cape Horn

This work is dedicated

By one who chose Tahiti

There is no solace on earth for us—for such as

we—

Who search for a hidden city that we shall

never see.

Only the road and the dawn, the sun, the wind,

and the rain,

And the watch fire under stars, and sleep,

and the road again.

from "The Seekers" by John Masefield

BOOK I — MAN AT BAY

CHAPTER 1

The black pit of oblivion opens like a giant clamshell. I feel myself released, then shot toward the surface. My body is long and cold as it streaks upward, torpedolike, trailing the bubbles of a dream. The pit below grows dim. Light spreads all around.

Suddenly I breach the surface of consciousness, hang for a moment—erect and terrified—before falling back on the old familiar bunk, with the light of dawn seen overhead through a prism set in the deck.

The prism winks with a lusterless eye. A bead of condensation grows at its comical tip, pauses, shudders, then drops toward a pool of wet.

I cradle my head and close my eyes—groping for the severed thread of the dream. No good. Too late. I feel exhausted. Without thinking I know it’s six o’clock. From the main cabin comes the chime of a bell.

Out on the bay the foghorns chant: growl from Alcatraz, grunt from Mile Rock, and a blast from Lime Point. Distant strident tones all mixed and lost in the thick damp wool of the fog.

From far aloft in the rigging a drop of moisture falls. Through bar-taut cordage it slips—past tarred shroud and cunning marline seizing—down and down until it plops on the pale blue eye of the prism, forcing it to blink.

Six o’clock of a morning. Eight hours move to wait for the verdict of the court. I fumble for the piece of yellow paper:

STERLING HAYDEN-CARE SCHOONER WANDERER-SAUSALITO/CAL. JUDGE WILL RECEIVE ALL COUNSEL HIS CHAMBERS TWO PM TOMORROW THURSDAY JANUARY 15/59 AND RENDER DECISION THEN WILL PHONE AT ONCE-CONFIDENTLY-GRANT

Throughout the cold cavity of the ship silence absolute. Twenty bodies lost in sleep. Adults sprawled with mouths agape. Children curled round wooly animals. All mute this time of precious predawn rest.

I mount the ladder and ease myself on deck. Thickafog. Horns louder all around. Gray-green morning world with topmasts indistinct and the long proud sweep of the main-deck jutting east. I draw the sheepskin coat around me—two buttons missing—and burrow my chin in the matted warmth of the collar. My back aches; sign of tension. Gulls stand inert atop stumps of wooden piling.

The five-foot iron wheel bucks gently, softly. I lean wearily against the cockpit’s rim, then run a hand through the dew on the ovaled teak. Rustlings from below: Mate and his wife astir. Plumed woodsmoke curls from the fo’c’sle stove, and a rattle of pots and pans.

The twin doors part. A tattooed hand gropes as the mate ascends the steps. Good morning, he says.

Morning, Spike.

He plants himself with a small shiver and closes the halibut shirt. His face is hard, with a whiskered jaw, lean and leathered, and a ravaged look in the eyes and a scar across one cheek. We stand apart to stare out with the mainsail furled overhead.

This is the big day, I observe, offhand.

High time, at that.

What’s your guess? Will the man say yes or no?

He leans and spits in an offshore arc. I’m past guessing, I’m all guessed out. But I think he’ll let us go.

I take a cigarette.

A rap on the doors and we open up. His wife stands down on the ladder with a tray at half-arm’s length. He takes his mug of coffee. I reach for a pot of tea, and there’s a slice of lime in the saucer’s mouth. She has a shock of red hair drawn back from a fresh strong face, and it’s tied with a small green bow. The tea burns down.

Can I offer you something to go with that? she asks. I look at the mate, who pretends he doesn’t hear, but one eyebrow lifts as he looks away.

Why not? I say. Can’t do us any harm.

Not after last night, she laughs.

A bottle of aquavit: I pour till the mugs are full. Our eyes meet and the mugs touch. To the goddamed judge, he says.

Never mind the judge. To the voyage no matter what. We drink.

A splash of blue sky from the paling east with the sun below, burning at the fog. Inshore the whine of a Greyhound bus. Action on the foredeck as Kit Africa, aged eight, pops from hatch to rail to rigging overhead, with Matt Hayden, not quite eight, in hot pursuit. They clutch bananas in dirty paws and shirttails flap astern of small dungarees.

Refill the mug—half and half—then over the side and shoreward along the old dock, with happy playtime yachts to the right and left. The fog thins out and some hillside homes come clear. A window flames when struck by the sun. The ancient harbormaster pedals past on a beat-up bike.

How are you, Sid?

Good morning, Cap—sailing soon, do you think?

I think.

He waves and the bike commences a pirouette till his free hand grips the bars. His face looks puffed, as though he’d been in a fight.

The bank building by the village square all brown and squat and neat. I peer in. Very orderly here. Rows of windows that front on boxlike stalls; a swinging excuse of a plywood gate leads to the executive branch. Let into one wall is the steel-clad safety vault; cold and hostile glass; behind, a wondrous mechanism showing forth, proud at the thought of all that green stacked safely out of reach.

My inner man awakes:

You could do with some money like that. Here you are like an arrow in a drawn bow.

That’s right.

You’re insane. You haven’t the ways and means. How much are you worth this day, a thousand dollars perhaps? Perhaps.

And you’re six thousand in debt?

That’s right.

And you owe your lawyers ten thousand more for their services to date?

I do.

Plus five thousand to your ex-wife’s counsel for the same action?

Oh yes.

Yet if the judge says it’s all right you’ll take your ship and let her ride for Copenhagen.

You’re goddam right.

Nonsense! You’re in a financial abyss.

Maybe not.

A bus comes snarling in, blue-gas banners high, windows veiled in steam, faces blurred behind cleared moist circles as they gaze at the bay.

Incongruous sight, I bet: this tall lone man in a sheepskin, arms crossed on a parking meter, wool socks that rise from leather boots, his hand holding a mug of tea. Hair tousled and damp above a four-day growth of beard.

The bus halts by the coffee shop. A man with a hat peers from his private circle. Relaxed he is, with his collar white and neat. My arm goes up in a gesture of mute salute.

The ship at rest in the crooked left arm of the dock. A driven row of piling protects her from the bay. Some old fallen spars are linked in series to ride always with the tide. I stand beneath her taffrail looking out. The copper-painted hull bursts from the water’s edge. The white sweep of her topsides comes running aft to blend with a broad transom, where a gilt eagle with outspread wings looks hard to starboard with an angry eye. He is pinned between two names: one steeped in mystery, Wanderer; one crowned with majesty, San Francisco.

Breakfast time and an empty deck. I go on board just long enough to freshen up the tea. Then down and out along the line of wet and heaving logs to a vantage point some hundred feet beyond the bows of the ship. A gull leans out, shoves free, and sweeps skyward with a long and raucous cry. Ebb tide.

Free water. Free to pour seaward through the Gate. Beholden to no man. Free to link up with the California Current beyond the Farallones and head for the Bering Sea. To curve west and roam for months toward Asiatic shores. To slip southward into the blue arms of tropic seas roiled by the northeast trade, then to range on and on, not far above the Line.

Where from, you growling water? How old are you? Did you come in from the sea with the midnight flood? Were you sired by an iceberg out of the South Polar Cap, or was your dam a cloud knocked up by the High Sierra? Were you falling rain short months ago? What’s the news from Donner Pass and Emigrant Gap, and how are those new motels? You look a little wan, as though you’re tired of the land. Tried to trap you, did they—up Sacramento way? Piped you through a tunnel, dumped chlorine in your face, spun you through a toilet bowl—small wonder you’re brown as a sportsman’s chest. Don’t quit now; two hours will see you through the Gate, and once you’re clear keep rolling on. I’ll join you one day soon. Maybe.

The fog recoils from the sun’s grasp. I shuck the coat and turn to look at the ship. Well now you great old bastard! Today we’ll know. Harsh names they’ve been calling you in Department 34 (in the Superior Court of and for the people and the County of Los Angeles): Antique. Decrepit. Obsolete. Dangerously small. Seems we might have grounds for a little libel action.

Antique, is it! Who cares that you were built in 1893 just across the bay? What matters is your strength, the strength of oak and fir and teak, of hackmatack knees and locust treenails that alternate with bronze.

Decrepit, they say—too old to keep the sea. Well, you served the pilots for fifty-two years just beyond the Bar. Winter and summer, blow high blow low, you lived out there with the sea all wild when the gales came roaring in. Nothing could put you down. Save progress: diesel power and wireless sets and fancy cabins with steam heat—all alien to you. So when the war died down and the surplus sales began, they dumped you and I snatched you up for a song.

Obsolete, her lawyers claimed. I laugh, for the winds and the seas don’t change. Has the circular storm grown obsolete? Or the heave of a long ground swell? Are they planning a new model of a doldrums calm? Is there a stench of decay on the warm breath of the smiling southeast trade? You were made to spread your canvas and find your way with the elements, and you’ll be obsolete when the oceans drain and the winds no longer blow.

Dangerously small! As though your size were a factor. The lifeboat swims when the liner drowns. You’re 98 feet on deck my friend and you gross one hundred tons. You’ve spent a solid twenty-six years at sea. What do they think you were doing there? You’ve had sails blown out and spars splintered and you’ve crippled some men at their job. Remember Nels Rasmussen? (He was boatkeeper in you before the First World War.) Ten days ago—after I showed him around—he placed one hand on a spoke of your wheel and he gazed aloft and he stomped on your cockpit’s floor. You know, Cap, he said to me, she’s the best vessel the pilots ever had. Then, under his breath: You must have spent a power of money bringing her back, no?

I agreed I had.

You’ve given her new wire an’ chain an’ rope and blocks and spars?

Yes.

You’ve had her canvas cut in Gloucester. You’ve painted her out—you’ve even changed her name?

"Gracie S. meant nothing to me, I said. Daughter of a sugar merchant, so they say, and I never cared for tycoons. Then he hefted the wheel and looked beyond your bows and his eyes seemed blurred as he said: Any judge that holds you now is nothing but a fool."

With that he was over the side and gone, and he never looked back. Two days ago he died.

We look at each other. Tall ship and tallish man. The tar on the shrouds begins to shine and I hear the soft moan of a breeze from the north. I raise my mug; the ship nods ever so slightly. To Rasmussen, I think. To you, too, you proud old wagon, and to all those men—wherever they are—who framed you out and planked you up and rattled you down with hemp. To the ones, also, who made you go, who clung to that wheel with boot heels grinding your deck. To those who worked by your lee rail up to their waists in water, or who—while fisting the inner jib—would plunge out of sight when you pitched.

I throw back my head and drain the mug and tonight I’ll drink to the judge. Maybe.

CHAPTER 2

Measured in terms of enchantment, is there anything can compare with a chartroom? And should this castle belong to a schooner, then you’ve kingdom enough. Unless you’re preoccupied with wealth, prestige, success—or other shallow pursuits.

Carefully I close the teakwood door; the lock clicks. Silence, silence so deep the ears ring, as they did in that first-discovered childhood thrill: alone in a living room with the seashell to one ear—and from the chambered nave the sullen wondrous sound—and the eyes pressed shut with a vision of lost and lonely seas running to curl and break up and down some unknown shore.

Silence broken only by the rhythmic heartbeat of the chronometer where it nests in a padded case. The varnished hardwood table reaches outboard to the skin of the hull. Floor space minimal. Headroom five foot ten below the beams. Oil lamps gimbaled on both bulkheads.

Prominent between lamp and the barometer’s face a photograph is tacked to the wall, telling a grisly tale of a winter’s gale in the far-off North Atlantic, with a Gloucester schooner hove on shore, her hull split like an eggshell and her masts gone by the board. High and dry she lies, with the rockweed matted under the hull and a man standing disconsolately looking on. Icicles trail from the vessel’s bows. Reminders from long ago and far away of what the sea can do.

Around me the tools of the navigator’s trade: sextant, dividers, and parallel rules; azimuth tables and Bowditch and H.O. 214; pilot books and sailing directions from French Frigate Shoal to the Outer Hebrides, from the Gulf of Finland to the Pass of Balmaha. Light lists and current tables; Norrie, Dutton, Mixter. Most cherished of all, a thick blue tome with a gilt anchor embossed beneath the words: Ocean Passages for the World.

Spread out under my arms a pilot chart of the North Pacific—month of January—any year since time began. Divided graphlike into oceanic squares, blue arrows that fly with the wind, dotted serpentine lines where trade winds roam, stubbed black arrows indicating drift, data on ice and fog, and red thin lines to trace the track of storms.

I glance at the chronometer: twenty-three hundred hours on the meridian of Greenwich, not far from London town. Two p.m. California time. I stare at the thin red lines...if only the shore world were regulated by a force as logical—as honest—as the Law of Storms.

I open and close my hands; the chronometric pulse gives way and the lines on the chart grow dim. I hear the belching roar of city traffic beyond an interchange. I see the multimillion-dollar majesty of a courthouse set in the smoggy din of the idiot city Los Angeles. Up the stairs and through some swinging doors. Armed bailiffs with soft bellies lounge around. Escalators purr in futile, endless circles and there’s tension everywhere, in faces and voices and on the very gilt upon the doors.

Three men converge between the sands of twin chromium cuspidors. My attorney: fifty-three or four, stylish, lean, bristling iron-gray hair; an old pro; scarred like the harem bull of a seal rookery in cold sub-tropic seas.

The other two are younger—come this day to hear a ruling of the court, to learn just how well they have done their job. This means a lot to them—this first Excursion into the rarefied realm of the big time with names in headlines and pictures sprawled about. Ask them how it feels to be badgered by the press: Not bad, says one, not bad at all, off the record, that is. His pal in the baggy suit keeps smiling quietly.

Greetings all around: "Hello, Marv. Chester, how are you?’

Tired, Grant. God I’m tired. This case is getting me down; can’t sleep nights, overworked; cramps here—my bowels, you know. Thank God it’s almost done.

Three wrists bared for the time. They vanish through some doors. Somewhere a siren wails. Wreaths of smoke rise from cuspidors.

I stare at the phone. Everything is ready: the cord is clear, cigarettes just so, pencils sharp in hand. Down comes the numbness, the glazed sensation that always comes when you’re truly impotent—the same feeling first felt at the age of eight—when the batted ball ran arrow-true for a vast expanse of glass. Nothing to do but wait; impossible to look ahead, futile to turn around.

The year just past, one soaring headlong drive toward escape from the captive life—and here you sit all buttoned down—proposed voyage stymied in a mass of litigation. Not so much a voyage as a gesture of defiance—known only to those who stand on their own two feet; who stand with legs widespread to flail at windmills (so some say) but answerable nevertheless to no man, no combination of men, no force save that intangible malignancy the conscience.

Two-twenty. Overheard the cr-rump cr-r-ump of the mate’s boots as he paces, staring off, shifting his quid from side to side—waiting.

High aloft, big Nyborg tarring down, watching the traffic ashore, daubing the black salve from Stockholm into recessed marline corners.

Stretched prone beside his diesel, Don Bahl, with a full black beard, hammering doggedly with an eye on the bulkhead clock.

How goes it with the kids, I wonder. Do they know what hangs on this hour? Of course not—how do you explain some things? I see them ranged on the fo’c’sle settees in afternoon studyhall. Pencils poised—an eye for the teacher, an eye for the ship, and sunlight streaming down.

A preliminary click from the phone and I spear it before it rings.

Long distance calling—

"Yes, Ma’am, this is he—yes, that’s right—yes, operator, I will accept the charges, thank you very much—"

Sterling, this is Grant—look fellow, I’m calling you from a booth in the courthouse, that’s why it’s collect—now listen, fellow, I have some bad news—

Don’t tell me I lost custody of the kids?

No, God no, nothing like that. But the voyage is off —did you hear me?—the court rules the voyage is off—

Yeah, I heard you—you’re not kidding, are you? Sterling. I wouldn’t kid about this—why, I’ve never been more stunned or disappointed in all my life—

I’m a little surprised myself.

I know that, fellow. But the judge said some great things about you as a father—

Well what do you know. Bitterly.

I have a copy of his ruling—here, let me read it to you—

No. Just send it along in the mail. I’ll get it first thing in the morning. I’ll be goddamned that’s all I can say just yet.

Don’t be upset. Let me tell you something’ll make you feel better. There’s every reason to believe that if we wait nine or ten months, then go back to the court, they’ll give us—

The hell you say. I’ve been in that court fourteen times in the past eight months—that’s enough—

Look, fellow, don’t get carried away. I’m trying to help you. Within a year, I promise you, we’ll go back and get permission to take the children out of the country—you can sail the schooner and they can fly from port to port to greet you as you come in—I know that’s not what you want but we have to be practical sometimes—

Yeah! Sounds great. Just what they need. Only maybe I can find them work in a movie and let them travel at some studio’s expense and go to a nice school in the basement of a sound stage next to the make-up hall. The court ought to go for that.

Easy now—I know you’re upset and I’ve got to run along. Come down the first of the week and we can talk things out, okay?

Sure, why not.

Phone rammed on the hook. Cigarette. A yellow taste of sulphur where the first drag hits.

Again the chronometer’s pulse; the fine-etched face serene ‘neath a glass-roofed padded box. Freedom lost. To what avail the plough or sail, or love, or life—if freedom fail?

Freedom. Freedom to what? Escape, run, wander turning your back on a cowed society that stutters, staggers, and stagnates every man for himself and fuck you Jack I’ve got mine. Freedom to leave all this—is that what I really want? Better by far stay home and slug it out with the monster twin heads of greed and glut. Well, why not do it then? Because I’m not well enough strong enough hard enough just yet that’s why. Maybe a year from now I could do it. The thing I need now is change. Change and a chance and a passage of time in which to reflect and tool up for a future.

Beat-beat, beat-beat, beat-beat: fine old chronometer all rated and oiled and wound with no damn place to go. Maybe it’s all the chronometer’s fault. Maybe if I hadn’t been such a stubborn bastard the court might have ruled in favor of the voyage. My mind snakes back to a day in court.

To a smog-stuffed sweltering day ten shopping days till Christmas with the county courthouse rearing dismayed from the roar and welter of the City of the Angels. The judge on his bench in a flowing black robe; four lawyers at the bar; one clerk of the court, one massive Negro bailiff with sad kind eyes and hands like hymnals—a man and a woman no longer married yet wed by bonds of savage contempt. (A calendar lifts its topmost page as a fan trains its breath down the wall. When the page settles back, what I see is fair—the Grand Teton Range, and wild flowers leading to a distant sky-blue lake.)

Enters now one expert yachting witness who swears to tell nothing but the truth so help him God if you will. Chester my foe leads him by the nose through a brief recital of his credentials: very impressive, here a yacht there a yacht yachts all over the lot; long voyages down to Mexico mostly. A nice enough man, you might say—but five hundred miles to the north rests a gnarled vessel about to be libeled.

For the truth as this witness sees it is that the schooner Wanderer is a romantic old ship no doubt, and the man who commands her is skilled, but, he sadly relates, he was onceuponatime called in to survey said ship and found her wasting away in her rivets:

Rivets! My chair comes down with a crash and I lean to my counsel and whisper: Rivets for Jesus Christ’s sake, there’s not a single rivet in all the hull of the schooner. Put me up on the stand and I’ll destroy this sonofabitch. Break in and—

He waves me away with a smile. The witness goes on: speaking of the perils of the sea, of the infinite frailty of children, and how—of a dark night—they well might slip and vanish forever into the trackless waste. Yes, he tells the court, he too has tender-aged children, and were the decision in his hands he would have to rule—reluctantly of course—that the schooner concerned is suitable for coastwise journeys only. As he moves toward the hall, he favors me with a shrug and a cheerless smile.

They call me to the stand. Under direct examination I explain with some emotion that a wooden ship knows no rivets. Maybe our expert had some other craft in mind, but his being a yachtsman calls for some compassion: yachtsmen are consumed with the notion that their boats must be one hundred per cent sound. They are oblivious to the fact that the majority of the world’s working vessels are plagued with rot. Yet these are the ships that do the work, year after year, no holds barred when it comes to weather.

Under cross-examination the talk veers to radios. The man in the baggy suit wants to know why I have no radio, not even the simplest receiving set.

I tell him my creed with pleasure. Why go to sea under sail at all if you’re so concerned with security? Why not go as a tourist, as a kind of frozen vegetable buying your way across the world surrounded by hot running water, epicurean cuisine, swimming pools, and tiny-tot programs, teen-age programs, mommy and daddy programs—designed for your delectation, and designed too to quarantine you from the contagion of elemental wonder and awe known only to simple living? For navigation I rely on simple tools: sextant and chronometer, charts and parallel rules, and a precious selection of passage-worn triangles made of celluloid gone yellow over the years.

Three p.-m. Pacific standard time. The mate now—motionless in the doorway, felt hat askew in a Napoleonic twist. You can pass the word: I say ‘the voyage is dead and done, as of now—they can have the afternoon off’ and we’ll talk at eight tonight. He starts to speak, shakes his head, goes forward in disbelief.

Cable address GRIPPO, BEVERLY HILLS.

A Mercury two-tone two-door pulls up and parks—yellow trimmed with black. The spare tire stuck on like an afterthought, like the tail on the donkey forgotten years ago.

This one’s a hustler. Not tall, but solid gristle and grit with cuff links as big as his watch. He’s an agent—hard as nails when it comes to making deals.

An office flooded with light. A ravished blonde in the anteroom. Dress adjusted just so. Legs crossed delectably. Calves eager and alert. The hustler gives her a glance—made possible by an adjustment of the collar with an urgent sideways twist.

He scans his messages. Get me Mr. Daves at Warners. He retires to an inner chamber. The girl recrosses her legs—patiently. After all, it’s early yet—not quite six o’clock.

Hello, Del? Joe Grippo. What’s on your mind?

Yeah, Del, I know, I heard it on the radio coming through the Pass. No, I haven’t talked with him yet. I’d say your chances were great—he’s played his string out and now he’s got to get to work—and I’ll tell you something else, just between the two of us and a blonde in the outer room, he needs the loot. Yeah, you bet—

I’ll call him right away. Right. Six weeks. Forty thousand cash. Co-star billing. Picture starts February 10—

You’re kidding—the whole picture’ll be shot around Monterey and the Big Sur? Wait till he hears that. By the way, Del, who’s the girl? Oh. Oh great. Del, I’ll call you back.

The hustler renews his cigarette, speaking offhand to an unseen assistant. Hank, get me Hayden up on the boat—no crap this time—get through no matter what—

The hairy voice of the hustler: "Sterling? It’s your old friend Joe. It’s no use to say I’m sorry—about the trip, that is—

I gather you heard the news.

Sure, it’s all over town—must’ve been an awful jolt—what do you figure on now?

I don’t know just yet.

Well, don’t think I’m a scavenger, but—how would you like to make some big dough?

I could use it.

Del Daves called a while ago. He thinks you’re a hell of a guy—and he’d like to put you to work.

Go on.

It seems there’s forty thousand dollars over at Warners with Hayden written all over it—

Yeah.

"Picture called A Summer Place—you’ve heard of it—"

No, I haven’t.

Well then listen to this: they’re shooting on location—at Monterey and along the Big Sur Coast—

Really, the Big Sur?

Aha! I thought you’d react to that. Co-star billing. Just six weeks’ work. Del’s a talented man, as you know.

When do they want an answer?

Sooner the better, I’d say. Peck’s just dying to do the role.

Don’t give me that Peck crap.

Not so fast—he’s dying to do it, but he don’t come cheap.

All right, it’s a deal.

Serious? You serious you’ll do it?

Yes goddam it I’ll do it—what else do you want to know?

Sure, sure—funny thing you know—I had a hunch you’d go for this.

You did, eh.

Sure. Old Joe has to come up winners once in a while, my friend.

The voice seems hairless now: They’ll be giving this to the papers, you know—sure you don’t want to think it over? I know when I’m licked I guess.

Must be a hell of a disappointment—

Yeah.

We were all on your side, you know.

I know.

The phone put down with a tender plunk. Muscles that ache and groan. A tentative rap on the cabin door. Open up, I call.

A small head not five feet off the floor—freckled face and a broad smile, revealing a mouthful of braces. Father? Since we’re not going on the trip, do we get to keep the dogs?

Sure, Son, I guess you do. Remind me the first of the week.

The hollow man rolls into the bunk. Gimbaled lamp turned low. Somewhere the wail of a steamer’s horn—out-ward bound on the ebb.

CHAPTER 3

Midnight: moving aft through the chambered hull of the ship. In the utmost bow, which seamen call the peak, crammed with deck and bosun stores—red lead, litharge, and tins of linseed oil; turps and paints and solvents and a drum of pine-tar oil; the squared balk of the kingpost rammed upward through the deck. A water closet with sea water gurgling at the bottom of the bowl.

The forecastle: in time gone by, a home away from home (or the only home on earth) to unsung sailormen. Wedge-shaped and flaring out with a steep wooden ladder that climbs to the cowl of the hatch. The huge round bole of the foremast painted white beneath a collar of concave wedges —backbone of a schooner’s rig—granitic—monument to fir.

A central table with wings that fold from sight. Rows of lockers holding food, and troughs for the anchor chain. Against the bulkhead aft an iron-bellied stove, piles of sawn driftwood, and racks of children’s books.

Turn up the lamp and look around: seven bunks quarried into the ship, yellow curtains slung on wire. Drawings tacked to the walls—incomplete to the jaundiced eyes of adults, yet full of life to a child. Above one head the legend: Bunk Sweet Bunk.

Three little girls and four small boys. Dolls and post cards and a rosary, bits of wood and twine—and a rare collection of old tin cans. Seven children under twelve: far gone just now, hopeful, trusting, innocent—needing nothing but love and the chance to find their way.

Aft of this the galley: rows of china mugs nodding overhead, stacks of dishes in deep, barred racks, a shallow sink and a white enameled stove—its oven door held in place with wire. Non-skid strips on the floor, a broad ladder and a fire extinguisher. To port a double cabin, claimed for the voyage by Nyborg and Bahl—bosun and engineer.

Next in line the engine space, three times as big as the galley, where a hundred and sixty-five horses slumber, compressed in a block of iron and steel. Generators, pumps and valves and tanks and tools, and a bank of batteries salvaged from the wreck of a cable car.

Across from this a narrow alleyway with a refrigerator on the outboard side, and an excuse of a cabin with a sliding door and two long slits for bunks. A lanky figure lost in sleep—Jerry Burns, late of UCLA, trained in the arts of cinematography, too aware of the wide world to settle in Hollywood.

A half-step up, with the massive break-timber overhead, and into the ship’s main cabin. Eight more bunks ranged around. Ten tons of fresh water tanked beneath the floor. Books and books and books—some five hundred volumes in all. Books of the sea and books of the land, some of them streaked with salt, collected with love and care over more than twenty-five years.

Melville, Conrad, London, Stevenson; Gauguin and Loti and Rupert Brooke; Lubbock, Masefield, De Hartog—Slocum and Rockwell Kent; Trelawny and Cook and Bligh; Chapelle and Underhill—Nansen, Frobisher, Villiers and Scott and Louis Becke. Homer, Gerbault, and Tompkins. Hundreds more: all cast in a common mold—blessed with the genius that makes men feel, and dream, and go.

And a special section of books that deal with the greatest frontier of all—the relationship between men: Marx and Whitman, Thoreau and Henry George, Victor Hugo, Thomas Paine and Jefferson. Lincoln and Emerson, Rousseau, Voltaire and Upton Sinclair, Shaw. Byron, Mark Twain, Roosevelt, Garrison, Jack London again and Shakespeare.

Five hundred books, distillate of distant seas, of a hundred thousand night watches. Of despair and agonies and conviction. Standing by this night, peering out from recessed shelves onto the inert and blanketed forms of seven young men and women come together—haphazardly perhaps—yet drawn as though by magic to the soft and urgent promise of the windship’s lonely world.

Two more cabins now, across the narrow passage, facing each other with the averted eyes of closed doors. Master’s cabin to starboard (traditional at sea), the mate and his wife to port.

A few more steps and there is the lazarette, indisputably (along with the chartroom) the most integral part of the ship’s accommodations. A sprawling cave that reaches out of sight far aft beneath the quarter-deck—a treasure house of gear that enables the ship to keep the sea for months on end with no recourse to the land. A dozen coils of rope (manila, cotton, and hemp), reels of wire and lengths of chain, spare blocks and sheaves and pins. Shackles, thimbles, cringles; sail twine, needles, and wax; sewing palms and flares, canvas in bolts, oddments of ironwork by the keg.

Storm sails and trade-wind sails; mooring lines; hardwood, softwood, brass and galvanized rod. A bale of tarred oakum at rest by a barrel of pitch, and the tanned hide of a cow. All sorted and lashed in place. The rudderpost encased in a brute of a boxlike shaft.

Poised this night: seven children and thirteen adults; ten tons of water, six tons of fuel; a four-month supply of food; three hundred charts—within the trussed shell of the last merchant-built windjammer to fly the American flag (museum ships excepted). Primed and able to go.

So near, yet so far—three miles to the Golden Gate; fifteen miles to the inshore boundary of the high seas; six hundred miles to the realm of the northeast trade; four hundred and eighty miles to the rancid Mecca corner of Hollywood and Vine.

The stilled form of a wanderer, somewhat asleep in his bunk. Pillow swept in a locked embrace—lamp turned low on the wall—empty sheepskin coat above dank and hollow boots. Over his head a tell-tale compass peering down with dry card inverted—older than the ship, brassbound, incorruptible, absolute.

How does she head this night? North by east it is.

What is her port of hail? San Francisco.

And where is she bound? Nowhere.

So they say.

CHAPTER 4

A mind full of fear. Thoughts that steal up, whisper something ugly, then dart away with a laugh. Crackling phantom thoughts rising like bubbles through a pot of steaming mush.

Curious. How a man can fool the world—almost, at least—by a lifetime of pretense. Hayden pacing restlessly in other men’s offices, pacing and smoking, laughing with arms out-swept and lost in the telling of some recent adventure. ... Then we swung her off onto north northwest, let her go for Cape Farewell...hove her to off Bounty Bay in half a gale of wind...coming up with the southwest monsoon…

Incredible, really—how I got away with it; parlaying nine years at sea into two decades of posturing. Poor wanderer: trapped in the green-backed cradle of Outer Hollywood; laced in the strait jacket of the big time—big houses big salaries big fuss when you walk down a street big fuss as you check into hotels—big big big.

Tonight. Facing anew the old threat that gorges the mind—knowing the problem to be simply this: How to break the endless chain? But a chain like this is strong, each link a memory of something tried—and given up at the last minute.

As it was in the old days with a girl from time to time. Not all the time, but enough—enough to breed the foulest kind of fear. Like that night in Havana.

You were nineteen, working as fireman in a P & O liner, and you had to laugh because you’d always dreamed of sailing in past Morro Castle. And there you were, scaling rust inside the funnel in a hundred and fifty degrees of heat, with sweat clouts above the eye and under the jaw, and you felt pretty tough and away far overhead was the tiniest patch of pale blue sky. And all the while you kept thinking how it would be that night: going ashore with Mario who was waiter in the firemen’s mess, Mario who knew the ropes, whose brother ran the hottest place in town an’ jus’ you wait, Yank, you come wit’ me an’ we’ll fix you up wit’ the works.

Exciting enough when you thought about it through the long watches, standing under a ventilator to cool off, with the tourists from back home escorted through the boiler room by ruddy-faced officers—fine long-legged girls all clean and fresh with their skirts billowing out and the engine room gang maneuvering under the pitched steel ladders to get a better look.

Then up to the jammed and filthy fo’c’sle, with the old-timer in the bunk over yours leaning out to hock great green-yellow gobs into a Chase and Sanborn can below your pillow. And out through the port you could see the Pan American Airways seaplane dock, and the tourists milling around in the sun, and some palms by the driveway to the city. You were making forty-two dollars a month and were given a ten-dollar advance, which you creased in your money belt. Mario came bounding in with a broad smile, and you had on the white shirt you’d pressed yourself.

Down on the dock the first thing hit you was the noise—and the dirt—and everywhere wild-eyed Cuban kids trying to scrounge a dime: Good place, Boss. Clean young girls, Boss. Come, Yank, we show you—ten cents we take you quick.

A melodious burst from Mario, and they slink away—dark eyes flashing hate—barefooted and scrawny—torn patches on torn clothes—spitting through clenched and perfect teeth. Then began the fight with the fears shadowboxing through you as you strode along jammed and narrow streets. The swarthy people stepped aside as you charged along and you tried to tell yourself this was the man’s way—no more frustration, no more nonsensical necking in rumble seats with a girl who parried your awkward boyish body all taut and aching from hours of tentative play. This would be the real thing. Action pure and straight—with a flourish.

A narrow alley leading to a big brown door. A secret signal, and some words flung through the thick wood. Then the door wide-swung and I step inside. At the end of a hall a parlor. Three girls run squealing at Mario; one leaps onto his waist, locking her legs behind him; the other two try to climb on his back. Where moments before he seemed small, now he’s nothing but strength. He jogs back and forth in the hall, then throws himself on a couch, his hands playing fast and easily beneath loose folds of cheap gowns that fall open and are snatched together with squeals of mock dismay.

I look back toward the entrance. The door is chained and barred. Mario leaps up and a girl starts combing his hair. I feel ridiculously tall and cold and small. What I want is time now. Nothing else matters—just time to catch my balance and get in the swing of things. I feel a deep disgust —not with the girls, not with the place—but with myself. What’s wrong with me? This is what I’ve been thinking about for years. This is the end of the masculine trail—the single subject of fo’c’sle conversation in a dozen bygone ships. I wish I were back on the esplanade, where I’d be free—free to roam, free to find a quiet lonesome girl, my counterpart, and we could walk down toward the harbor and look at the sea, or at the ships coming in, with the ramparts of Morro Castle outlined against the stars.

Mario hands me a drink. I gulp it down and pretend to size up the girls. They look away shyly. He leads me down a dark hall and into a bathroom with thick red carpet: the tub is full and smoke curls from an incense burner beneath a huge mirror. A bathrobe hangs over a chair.

Big Yank, how you feel?

Oh great. I feel just fine.

Okay okay okay, you take bath, then we have something to eat. He fixes one eye in a slow wink. When he has gone, I lock the door and stand looking down. I want to stay and I know I can’t. I want to go but I don’t dare. What would happen when they heard about it back on the ship? I can see the men now—looking away as I turn around, laughing, saying something among themselves in words I can’t comprehend. At least I can have a bath. The water is deep and hot as I soak—the money belt wrapped in a towel.

The door opens and shuts; and Mario stands inside. I look at the lock in surprise. He is dressed as a waiter now, with a napkin over one arm. There’s something wrong with this guy, I think. He bows stiffly. Mister Big Yank, you would like the two-course dinner or the three-course dinner, please?

I sit up in the tub. Mario—Jesus—all I got is ten dollars. He shakes his head with his eyes closed. No matter. You my guest tonight.

Well, I guess the two-course will do okay.

Yes sir. Ten minutes?

Sure, Mario, that’s great. As he leaves, he takes my clothes.

The robe is too small. I brush my hair and my hands tremble. Why don’t I speak up? Put an end to this nonsense. If I want to get out, then say so. To hell with the crew of the ship. But—there’s nothing to be scared of—this must go on all the time. The girls looked harmless enough—not pretty, hut—I move quietly to the door and try the lock: it simply goes round and round. I look in the mirror and try a hearty smile. The door opens.

We have—what you say?—the old custom here. It is Mario with his napkin drawn tight between the spread of his arms. You wear this over the eyes, please.

I recoil and stand like a stiff-legged clot at the end of a rope. Where’d you go with my pants?

My friend, she pressing them.

Oh.

He places the cloth over my eyes as I stand with thumbs hooked in the money belt under the robe. I know I should call it off right now. But what for? They can’t do anything to me.

We walk down a ball and up some stairs. It is very quiet. Twice I sense someone standing aside. A door opens and I make a move toward my blindfold. Something inside me takes control. I plant myself and refuse to move. He tries to urge me along.

No goddamit, Mario, this is enough.

Just a few more steps, then you sit.

No. I shake my head.

There’s a rustling, and the incense smell again. I want to tear off the napkin but my thumbs stay hooked in the belt. I feel Mario fumbling with the knot. The bandage drops and I’m in a small room. A chandelier hangs over a long, narrow table that stands on a pedestal. An armchair is drawn up with its back to me and a naked girl reclines on the white tablecloth with one foot on each of the arms. A second girl kneels in front of the chair, gazing at me through savage half-closed eyes.

Mario bows and indicates the chair. I slack off the money belt and fumble with the zipper until I come up with the ten-dollar bill. The girl on the table has her head turned to watch. The kneeling girl keeps her head bowed and her hands press down on her knees.

I try to behave with aplomb. Mario, just get me my clothes. He starts to speak but a wave of anger sweeps over me. I say a lot of things and before I know it he’s gone. The girl on the table sits up, says something to her. companion, then crosses unlovely legs and lets them dangle to and fro while she lights a cigarette.

Mario comes in with my clothes. He rips out some words toward the girls. I dress. The ten dollars I press toward the girls. They look at Mario, then shake their heads, so I throw the bill on the table.

Once free of the alley, I look upward for the stars but there’s only the murk overhead reflecting the city’s light. I feel free. Alone and free. The humiliation will have to wait. Right now all I care about is the knowledge of independence, the warm, flowing thought that I can find a skiff if I please and row it clean out of the harbor and past the Morro and onto the west or north, the thought that I can jump ship and walk toward the eastern end of the island and splash in rivers or maybe find a little island close inshore that belongs to nobody and build a camp of sorts.

Some raindrops fall. As I find the promenade, the sky lets go, but I