We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [76]
"Fine weather," he said suddenly, and inhaled deeply. "Sea air! Nothing like it. Makes a sailor's life worth living."
Of all the things I'd heard Jack Lewis say during the months I'd spent with him, this unremarkable comment seemed the strangest. I didn't believe for one moment that he meant what he said—and yet I welcomed his words. The terror I'd felt these past few hours had eased and we were once again a captain and his first mate on our way across the ocean.
"Yes," I said, and imitated Jack Lewis by inhaling deeply. "Sea air does a world of good."
Our idyll was interrupted by an agitated Kanak who ran up, pointing backward. We both turned. And there was the solitary native in his canoe, a black silhouette against our glittering wake. He wasn't far behind. How he'd managed to gain on us, on his own, in a canoe built for several oarsmen, was incomprehensible.
We watched him for a long time. The distance between our unequal craft remained constant. I glanced sideways at Jack Lewis but said nothing. I expected him to grab his rifle again and put an end to the life he'd spared in a moment of kindness. But he didn't.
Eventually he turned to the helm and ordered me to adjust our course. From time to time I'd look back across the water. The native was still there. The distance remained the same. He neither gained on us nor lagged behind.
A couple of hours passed in this manner, and as I watched our pursuer, my perception of him shifted. Now what I saw was a man all alone in a canoe on the sea. He wasn't a native any more, part of the savage group that had recently attacked us. I no longer knew who he was or what he wanted from us, whether he was a pursuer or someone in need. All I saw was the vast ocean and his lost figure at the center of it. I felt he had to be some kind of messenger, but I had no idea what he was trying to tell us.
"This has got to stop," Jack Lewis said at last.
I knew then that there was nothing I could do.
He went back to his rifle and picked it up. I didn't look at him but kept staring at the solitary oarsman in the middle of the sea. Somehow I wanted to say goodbye to him in the minutes he had left and make sure I wouldn't forget him. My memory would be his only tombstone.
He must have seen Jack Lewis aim his Winchester, because he suddenly stood up and flung his own gun onto his shoulder. A bang sounded from Lewis's rifle, and at the same time a red flash shot from's the muzzle of the native's gun. They'd fired simultaneously. Our pursuer crashed backward into the canoe, and it turned sideways in the wake, where it bobbed up and down. Quickly, the gap between us widened. Soon the canoe and the dead man would be gone from view.
So preoccupied had I been with the native's fate that I'd paid no attention at all to what was happening on the Flying Scud. But now I heard a loud groan. It came from Jack Lewis. When I turned around, he was sprawled on the deck, a red stain spreading across his shirtfront. The native's bullet had also found its target.
Bewildered, the Kanaks knelt around their captain, as if awaiting his orders. Could they not see that Jack Lewis lay dying right in front of them?
For a moment I wondered if they considered him immortal because his actions were guided by the same unpredictable cruelty shown by their own gods. He'd sliced an ear off one of them, and I'd never heard him address them in anything other than a tone of command. He'd used them as pawns in a game that brought them no profit yet might have cost them their lives, and he'd sacrificed them without explanation. So why not consider him a god? After all, this was how gods behaved, wasn't it? With an inscrutability that was indistinguishable from arbitrariness? Believers might offer prayers and even sacrifices, but none ever found a method of worship that ensured their prayers were answered.
When I saw Jack Lewis stretched out on the deck, with the bloodstain