Rapture of the Deep

prisoner of a paranoid, he was forced into a confrontation with death--and with himself

The last remnant of the marriage was disposed of: Brian Cooper had just sold their house near the eastern end of Long Island. Like the tissue at the bottom of a Kleenex box, it had been used and now tossed away. So, in a way, had the marriage. It was all over; he had even paid the lawyers their stupendous fees. Still, he couldn't really complain from a financial point of view. He was not required to pay her any alimony. Movie stars of her caliber didn't ask for alimony.

Brian finished the fried clams at the little seafood restaurant and then started out into the night. It was a small, convenient place to eat near their house. He had often stopped there for a snack before starting in to New York. This was undoubtedly the last time he would see it.

Across the highway from it was a dirt road winding off toward Peconic Bay. Brian had glanced in an unseeing way at that dirt road a thousand times and, in an unthinking way, thought that he ought to drive down it sometime, that it looked as though something interesting might lie at the end of it.

But of course he never had: He'd never seemed to have time. She had always had to hurry into New York for some commitment or other, or he had had to cover a story for the newsmagazine. Brian had, in fact, an interview with a Senator, a Southern Democratic chairman of an important Congressional committee, in the morning at the Waldorf, but it didn't interest him now. Who cared?

He had never taken such an attitude toward his work before, but then, his attitude had changed about many things. He had never really been sure of himself in his life; despite a healthy appearance and a surface confidence of manner, her leaving him--for a second-rate French movie director, at that--combined with a major setback in his career had left him now quietly but deeply desperate. Brian had always been a well-organized person, and this trait had carried him to this point: through the settlement and divorce and division of property and now sale of the country house.

He was left with nothing to do, and thus defenseless against the onslaughts of his unsureness and his desperation. There were no children to be concerned about: She had not wanted children, because they would interfere with her career and because in some way she feared the responsibility of being a parent.

Perhaps down that winding little dirt road across the way would be one of those incredibly dangerous, no-guardrail bridges over deep rushing water Senator Edward Kennedy had encountered on Chappaquiddick Island--Brian had covered that story. If there were, he now decided, with a cold destructiveness that frightened him, that he would do deliberately what Senator Kennedy had done accidentally, drive off it into the water, capsize, drown. It would look like an accident. It was crucially important that it look accidental. That way she would not have to feel guilty, not have to bear the responsibility. He would not inflict on her the vengeful, punishing guilt suicidal people usually inflict on their survivors. That was a second-rate, adolescent thing to do. And he would not do it to her for one very simple reason: He was still in love with her.

The obituaries could be not only respectful but positive thinking. After all, for someone 32 years old, he had accomplished quite a bit, covering two wars, several national elections and major disasters, and so on; he'd won a number of prizes, appeared on enough television discussions to be recognized sometimes on the street and, last but not least, been married to a major movie star.

No one should ever marry a movie star, he was thinking as he walked out of the seafood restaurant into a driving nighttime gale, the kind of flailing April storm Long Island Sound specializes in. Marrying a movie star was a mistake for one reason: They were all monsters. When it became clear to him, two years before, after four years of marriage, that she was a monster, too, he began pondering obsessively the question of whether it was being born a monster that drove her and all the others to become movie stars or whether in the process of becoming stars they were turned into monsters. He had never figured that out and now never would. It didn't matter, any more than Senator Grits or whatever his name was mattered.

He loved her too much to share her with that career. And she had to have it, every last gratification that an internationally famous, politically active movie star is heir to. She wanted to become bigger, always bigger. And that expansion automatically meant that the marriage had to become smaller, continually shrink. He couldn't stand the torment of this tiny, day-by-day loss of her.

Brian got into his car, a small, tough little Alfa Romeo he'd bought during the 18 months his headquarters had been in Rome. It was economical and he made a fetish of living within his own income. Now he saw that its small, low-slung construction would make it more difficult to escape from than a standard American car if it lay overturned and submerged in a rushing stream.

He started the engine, turned on the windshield wipers and the headlights and headed across the deserted highway and into the dirt road. It wound toward the bay with high evergreen trees on both sides.

Puddles and mud had formed in the road. He bumped slowly along it so as not to break a spring or anything in the Alfa. Then, realizing what he was doing, he smiled bitterly to himself: Don't damage the car en route to drowning yourself.

Blackness was everywhere except in the small tunnel of brightness the headlights cast ahead and, combined with the racket of the gale in the surrounding trees, made him feel in a state of isolation more total than any he'd ever known. It was intolerable, like life. Both had to be put a stop to, had to be. It was as though his being had no hold on anything, and so no justification; it was a vacuum, which nature abhorred. The compulsion to eliminate that being was becoming overwhelming.

The car slithered past a gate, then over more ruts and through puddles and past trees, no dangerous bridge appearing. And then the road seemed to open out into a cleared area and, in crossing it, the rear wheels got into a mudhole and could not get out and he was stuck.

It was ignominious and laughable, and she would have laughed a lot.

Brian was not going to go out into that kind of weather, even if it was, as it was, a matter of life and death. There was an eerie sense of decorum about anything as final as death. It had to be done just right. Suicide--his, anyway--had to have an orderliness, macabre, but an orderliness all the same. He could not bear a botch.

The sense of nonbeing that had engulfed him a few minutes before was fading; he could bear to live with himself temporarily.

So he turned on the radio.

One of the late-night New York discussion-show hosts was talking about Venutians with a group of intellectual cranks. Venutians were people from Venus. They were here, circling in transparent flying saucers. To fuel their saucers, they were draining electricity out of New York. They also caused the excessive dog droppings that were polluting the city's streets. Mayor Lindsay was in communication with them about that. Their use of the electricity was nonnegotiable.

The storm howled on more wildly than ever. The sheer energy of it was hard to believe. He had never been out in such a storm. He had traveled all over the world and been in war zones, but he now realized that his had been on the whole a Hilton Hotel--Pan American Airways sort of war-correspondent career.

The reporting he did reflected that. It had been cerebral, formulated, gutless, basically out of touch. Orderly.

Probably that was why his career was slipping at the age of 32. He had never gone out into the storm.

Brian got out of the car. The rain and gale hit him from all sides. Tremendously exhilarated, he stumbled into it, taking a battering, feet immediately soaked, stumbling ahead into the blackness, without plan.

The blustery beating he was taking, the physical assault of the storm, made every minute seem ten times as long, and it could not have been more than three or four minutes before he realized that he could not get back to the car. He had turned the lights off, he notoriously had no natural sense of direction and, of course, he couldn't strike a match in this wind. He listened for the sound of his car radio, but he couldn't hear it above the storm. For the next minutes--ten? 30?--he groped and stumbled blindly, feeling like a ridiculous clown. It was no good; he was sure he was farther from the car than ever. He did not want to die of exposure, not at all. Finally, he bumped into something, something wooden, long, with a lid that opened. Feeling around inside, he discovered some thick rope coiled at the bottom. The rest of the space was empty.

He climbed in, lay down on the rope, closed the lid over him. It was like a coffin, but it was dry and away from that tearing wind.

Maybe he could stay here forever, just like this. He had not felt so secure since the womb. And in this frame of mind, despite the coil of rope under him and his clammy clothes, he eventually dozed off.

He dreamed of her dancing wildly with some Senator--Kennedy? Grits?--on top of a flying saucer, and of himself constantly trying to climb up to them on a rickety ladder that rested against nothing, climbing desperately rung after rung, forever.

Waking, cramped and clammy and groggy, his first thought was of the dream. No, I won't go on climbing that rickety ladder forever, I won't do it.

He raised the lid of the box and peered out into the most beautiful April morning he had ever seen. Last night's storm seemed to have gathered up all the bad weather and thrown it across Long Island and out to sea. What remained was an endless blue clarity of sky, cloudless and eternal, and sunlight shimmering on the silver and green ripples of Peconic Bay, which began a dozen yards in front of him. He was in a small boatyard. The sun glistened on the white hulls, the surrounding pine trees and the frothing purity of the bay. It was very beautiful.

Beauty, what was beauty? She was beautiful, too.

He climbed out of the box. Unshaved and bedraggled, he must look like a real beachcomber.

"Looking for some rope, were you?" an old man's voice inquired sharply.

Brian looked behind him and there was an old man in faded blue pants, worn but very clean white sweater, yachting cap, sneakers.

Brian stared blankly at him for a while--what in God's name to say?--and then explained that he'd mistaken the road, gotten stuck, gotten lost, taken shelter.

The man's moist light-blue eyes watched him but seemed to be having private reactions, unrelated to Brian's explanation.

"Well, goodbye," said Brian firmly. He would have to get away from here, execute his decision somewhere else, perhaps just keep driving until he found the right kind of bridge over the right kind of water. The ground was fairly dry and his car didn't appear to be still stuck. He got in and tried to start it. Nothing happened. Because he had left the radio on, the battery was dead.

Brian got out and asked the man, who had moved near the car, if there was a phone nearby.

"No."

"You don't have a car here, do you?"

"No." A long pause ensued while they contemplated each other. "I got a boat," he then offered, as though playing a crucial card in a bridge game.

"Oh, fine. If you could give me a ride to the nearest phone ... I'd be glad to pay... ."

"No money." He waved a big-knuckled hand. "Money is the corrupter."

No it isn't, Brian thought glancingly, love is.

"My name's Brian Cooper," he said as he followed the man past several small sailboats and powerboats that were up out of the water.

The man plodded on, not commenting. They reached a long wooden dock, and tied up to it there was a small, very old-fashioned white yacht, battered and worn and chipped and cracked, but clearly an elegant one in its day, the kind they didn't make anymore, with a big glass-enclosed wheelhouse, an on-deck cabin behind that, big brass fixtures and even a short, squat smokestack. "Don't use that anymore," the man said. "Got a diesel in her." There were quite a few cats lounging here and there. The name of the yacht in elegant gold lettering across the stern was Taurus Dolores.

"Welcome aboard!" said the old man.

"Thanks, Captain," Brian said, now having a title if not a name for him. "Ah--how'd you find this fine old relic?"

"In Palm Beach," replied the captain with a set grin.

Brian would have thought the man had never been south of Sag Harbor. There seemed something provincial, rooted, local about him; now he began revising that estimate rapidly and accelerated this when he saw copies of Réalités magazine lying about.

"Let's go down to the galley and get us some grub." The man seemed to be playing the role of crusty old sea dog, when in reality he was probably a Wall Street banker. Or perhaps it was the other way round. He led Brian down a very steep, narrow stairway--ladder--to a cramped but spotless galley, and then produced a very good ham-and-eggs, toast-and-coffee breakfast.

This morning I'm going to quit my job, Brian suddenly realized. When you decided your life was coming to an end, you dealt yourself a very strong hand of cards. In a sense, that decision made you all-powerful; you could do everything everyone else didn't dare do. Self-destructiveness was one of the most powerful forces in the world. Brian decided he was going to try to enjoy his annihilation to the hilt.

"Got any booze?" he asked the man.

The captain took an unwavering look at him and then said carefully, "Yeah. I got some hooch."

"Well?"

"You a heavy-drinking man?"

"Not usually, but I was out in that storm--wet clothes--chill----"

"Um-hum."

The captain went into a small office behind the galley to fetch what Brian expected would be a bottle of rum. There was a pause, he heard ice rattling, and after a while, the man came out carrying a tray with a cocktail glass on it. Brian took it and tasted it; it was a very dry vodka martini.

"Now let's cast off," said the captain. "I'll get you to that phone."

Brian gulped down the martini and followed the captain back up on deck.

The beautiful spring morning spread away from them on all sides, so matchless in its hopeful shine that thoughts of death might now vanish. But the reverse proved true. The morning glowed of happiness and it mocked him; he could not join it, never capture it; eluded by beauty, he stood mocked by it. He wanted to die.

"Cast off fore and aft!" yelled the captain, standing at the wheel behind the big glass window. He started the engine and the high-hulled old craft trembled slightly.

Brian cast off the lines and the Taurus Dolores backed slowly away from the dock. By now his system, not used to alcohol in the morning, began to react to the martini. Perhaps it was metabolism, but he found that one martini in the morning was like four in the evening. In a glowing haze, he ambled back and sat down on the high swivel chair next to the captain's. He was slowly turning the ship away from land, and then, shifting the rattling engine into forward, he headed into the glittering open water.

"What's your name?" Brian called out over the engine's rumble.

"Hm? What difference does that make? You going to sue me?"

"Of course I'm not going to sue you. For what?"

"Oh, you could fall down a ladder and say you wrenched your back and sue me."

Brian grinned. "I promise not to sue you."

After a long silence, the captain then said, "My name's Ogden. Philip Carhart Ogden. Heard of me?"

"No. Should I have?"

"Some people have."

"What do you do?"

"I'm an explorer. Fitting this ship out to go up the Amazon. Lots of safety up the Amazon."

Brian knew the upper Amazon to be one of the most dangerous places in the world, but perhaps he'd misunderstood Philip Ogden in the steady beat of the engine or because of the vodka. He let his interest slide to the shining, first-day-of-creation beatitude all around him, freshness incarnate, and the godly splendor of nature and of the sea made him sick--of himself, of her, of everything. If only he had been born a fish, a porpoise, which was surely the happiest creature in creation. And failed, divorced, drunk-in-the-morning journalists were the unhappiest.

The impulse to jump overboard flashed over him, but that would cause endless trouble to this nice old guy and be clearly suicide.

The high, pointed white bow of the yacht sliced on to Peconic Bay. The closest telephone Brian imagined to be in Sag Harbor, but they seemed to be leaving Sag Harbor off to starboard. Brian knew the rudiments of nautical terms and of boatsmanship in general. Brian knew the rudiments of a great many things, competent journalist that he was. It was just, he realized, that he didn't (continued on page 218) Rapture of the Deep (continued from page 82) know the profundities of anything, beginning with himself.

"Doesn't Sag Harbor have a phone I could use?"

Squinting, Philip Ogden proceeded full throttle ahead, toward open water.

Hard of hearing, reflected Brian. Must be taking me to his house, on Shelter Island.

But they were leaving Shelter Island well off to port, and where the hell were they going?

Brian began to feel uneasy. Was he in danger?

And then the sheer ludicrousness of that thought coming to him on this morning--perhaps the yacht might sink! he might drown!--forced him to behold himself for the first time in all his full fatuousness. He leaned back in his seat next to the captain's, crossed his arms on his chest and, bemused and stupefied by the endless quirks of this human animal, himself, awaited events.

They sliced ahead, apparently bound for the open sea, perhaps for the upper Amazon right now. Then the captain veered to port and drew near a very small place called Plum Island.

"Go forward and drop the anchor," he ordered.

Brian found the big, old-fashioned anchor on a coil of rope in the bow and heaved it over the side. The captain cut the engine. Returning to the wheelhouse, Brian remarked dryly, "I don't see too many phones around here."

Ogden eyed him and then walked out of the wheelhouse and along the little deck to the door of the on-deck cabin. They both went inside.

The cabin was fitted out with a bunk and a big walnut desk and nautical instruments and logs and navigational books; several of the cats lay here and there. And there was a ship-to-shore telephone.

"I could have phoned from that boatyard." It was perhaps tactless to point that out, but the vestiges of the vodka were still active.

The captain looked at him and then said, "What number did you want?"

So you wanted company for a short cruise in return for letting me use your phone, Brian reflected. I don't blame you. It's a lonely world.

He gave Ogden the number of the magazine's editorial office in New York, and, when the connection had been made, Brian took the phone.

"Give me the editor," he said to the switchboard.

The editor, Billy Murcheson, kept him waiting, as usual, which was infuriating in this special instance. Finally, he got through.

"Where the hell are you?" Billy demanded without preliminaries. "That Dixiecrat Senator's people have called here twice."

"I'm on a yacht at sea."

"What?"

"I said I'm aboard a yacht called the Taurus Dolores, which we are ... we are victualing for our expedition to the upper Amazon." The captain's chin-jutting smile was set in satisfaction.

"I didn't know you woke up drunk on Monday mornings. Oh. The divorce. Now, listen----"

"No. You listen. Why didn't I get the Washington bureau? I was first in line."

In his voice of wriest irritability, Billy replied, "I'm not going to discuss the magazine's editorial decisions with you this way."

"Yes you are. Or else I quit."

Silence reigned across the waters of Gardiners Bay. Had they been cut off?

"Billy?"

Billy's voice eventually resumed, in a gruff but dubious tone. "I don't respond very well to threats, Brian." Clearly, he was disturbed. After all, Brian's reporting really was competent and based on wide experience, bloodless though it might be. "I know you've been through the wringer with this divorce and ... I'm sorry, you're tense. You know something? What you need is a vacation! That place you went in the Virgin Islands? What's its name?"

"Caneel Bay," said Brian slowly. But that had been for a honeymoon. He could not imagine what it would be like lying on the sand of those enchanted coves alone. Yes, he could. He would want to kill himself on the spot.

"It's no use, Billy. It's all over. I quit. Sorry not to give you some notice. But I'm very replaceable and there are lots of good reporters out of work these days. You'll have a hundred good people to choose from."

"Now, listen, Brian." Billy's voice was solicitous, but there was also a new tone in it, a calmness, as the truth of Brian's last words sank in. "You're upset and I think you ought to take two weeks off, and then we'll have a talk."

He means that, he's trying to help me, he's really a decent guy at heart, Brian realized. Everyone on the staff detests him simply because he's the boss, the father, to be rebelled against.

His feelings began to mount and take control of him; he was on the brink of breaking down on the ship-to-shore telephone, so he rasped tightly, "I'm quitting. Thanks." And hung up.

"Good-o," said the captain warmly. His eyes twinkled at Brian for a moment. "I did the same thing, seven years ago. That's why I am," he added proudly, "who I am today."

The buccaneer of the upper Amazon, thought Brian.

The captain began to load one of his pipes.

"What did you use to do?" asked Brian.

"Preach."

"Preach?"

"Yes," he repeated, "preach."

Palm Beach, very dry vodka martinis, Réalités, a yacht?

After tamping the tobacco in the bowl for a while, Ogden fixed him with a watery blue stare and said, "Ask a lot of questions for a stranger."

"You see, Mr. Ogden, that was a newsmagazine I just resigned from. I'm a reporter, well, journalist, well, foreign correspondent, well, pundit----"

"You're what we used to call 'newspaper fella.' In my congregation, newspaper fellas were just one degree more respectable than fan dancers. So don't give me those fancy names for it."

"Just trying to explain why I ask so many questions. Can't help it. I was trained that way."

"I was trained to shepherd my flock of good Christians in the good Christian life." He sucked loudly on the pipe. "But I got over it!"

"Go ye and do likewise," Brian saw, was the lesson for today.

"Now," the captain went on, "hoist anchor."

"I'd like to make another call, to some garage around here to come and recharge my battery."

The captain was going out the door. "Hoist anchor," he repeated and proceeded to the wheelhouse.

There was nothing for Brian Cooper to do but hoist the anchor. This eccentric had to be humored. The winch had no motor and getting the thing off the bottom was hard and dirty work, and Brian was coatless, tieless and sweaty when it was at last accomplished.

The captain set a course away from the boatyard where Brian had encountered him, heading into Long Island Sound toward Connecticut.

Taking the chair next to him, Brian said as pleasantly as he could, "I'd like to cruise around with you, Philip, but I've got things to do."

"Want to have a talk with ya," the captain yelled over the engine's throb. "Got a proposition for ya."

He's not going to make a pass at me, is he?

The man was sturdy but old, and Brian exercised regularly, so he felt sure he could win a fight.

But then that possibility, too, lurched into ludicrousness in the context of his resolve to end his life. Fight to defend his body from sodomy only to deliver it over to suicide. Somehow life was so contradictory that it wasn't worth struggling with. There was no logic or sense in it anywhere. To see that, you had only to decide to end it. Standing thus at the center of the wheel of life, Brian found that in whatever direction he turned, utter absurdity confronted him.

The captain eventually pulled into a small, empty cove on the north coast of Orient Point, cut the engine and then matter-of-factly offered Brian the job of first mate on the Taurus Dolores. One hundred dollars a week was the salary, the duties were general and the eventual joint goal was the upper Amazon.

It broke over Brian that he was being handed a heaven-sent chance to achieve his own personal goal. Nothing in the world would be simpler than to make a suicide look like an accident sailing in this tub all that distance with this raddled old man.

She would not have to feel one twinge of guilt. He stood up. "You know what? I'm going to take you up on that, Phi---- Uh, Captain."

Philip Ogden put the pipe firmly back between his teeth. "Hoist the anchor, Mate!"

They sailed here and there along that stretch of coast during the next weeks, up and down Long Island Sound, to Fishers Island, Block Island, and on to Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Chappaquiddick Island, with its fatal bridge, was there, right across a narrow stretch of water. Brian considered it and immediately rejected the idea: a grandstand play and a giveaway.

Captain Ogden knew a good deal about boats and navigation, it turned out. Aside from that, he seemed pleased to spend a great deal of time in solitude. Brian's only doubts about becoming first mate had been that he might be bored to death by Ogden, which was not at all the way he wanted to go. Instead, the old man ran the boat efficiently, conversed at mealtimes, tended his cats and spent all other hours in his cabin alone.

Brian, who had been an off-and-on insomniac for years, slept in a little cabin below deck on a very hard and narrow bunk. After all the Hilton Hotel mattresses, this nautical cot turned out to be exactly what he needed: He slept like a child. The confinement of the cot and the cabin suited him; or perhaps it was the lazy rocking of the anchored boat at night, the lisp of the water against the hull. As the weeks passed, Brian concluded that it was the sea itself putting him to sleep, the fact of his being cradled on the vastest and most creative element on earth.

One evening Ogden invited Brian into the captain's cabin for brandy. It was served ceremoniously in large snifters and it was excellent brandy.

The captain, who was already several drinks ahead, sat in a swivel chair next to his desk in the shadowy room. Brian sat in a black-leather wing chair across from him. Cats loitered here and there. The ship rocked faintly.

"How pinko are you?" asked the captain.

Brian made a noncommittal answer, which Ogden seemed to want and expect.

"Can't stand pinkos," the captain went on. "Never could. In the clergy we get a lot of them, half-ass bleeding-heart types. That's why I finally got out of all that and went to sea. Couldn't stand all the pinkos around me, talking about humanity. Too many big words. You ever play squash?"

Brian said he had, and that seemed to make him less pinko in the captain's eyes.

"I had a congregation in New York City," Ogden continued, "like nobody else's. Presidents of big corporations. Celebrities. Socialites. Columnists. TV personalities. Old families. The works. And I gave them what they wanted. You know what they wanted? They wanted me to make the world make sense. Well, I made it make sense for them. How? I told them the truth. You get what you deserve. I must have delivered, I don't know, thousands of sermons. All of them said the same thing in different words. You get what you deserve."

Oh, no, thought Brian.

"And then these new people drifted into the congregation with their radical ideas and they poisoned the water, the water of life, the baptism. Of course, the Kremlin sent them. I was too important, helped keep the country strong too much. They had to get me, so the Red Guard can take over New York City."

Total paranoia, Brian thought. And then he thought: He must have some sense that he's crazy. Why does he go on living?

"Captain, uh, when this happened, this plot, and they, I guess, drove you out of your church, more or less"--a grim nod from Ogden--"weren't you, well, in despair? How were you able to keep on going? Didn't you ever ... I mean ... suicide ... ?"

Scowling at the floor, Ogden then looked up, looked past Brian and grumbled, "I'm no yellow Jap. It's against God's law, our true God's law." There was a grim silence, and then Ogden added, "And it's against my law, to myself. I am going to occupy my place, my space in life and in nature."

Whether you're bent all out of shape or not, Brian thought wonderingly.

Here was a totally paranoid man. He had to be something like that. Raging individualists always seemed to. But so what? He seemed harmless enough.

Harmless! Harmless! Brian wanted to roar with scornful laughter at himself.

"Of course, it was my father," the captain went on. "Never should have died. He could have held them off. He would have stared them down and conquered them and reasserted his authority. That's what he would have done, that man, my father." And staring into the depths of his brandy, Ogden lapsed into reverie.

Still living under the spell of parents, an old man like that, thought Brian. And something stirred in him deeply. He couldn't locate it. He took a gulp of brandy.

Ten minutes later, with the captain remaining in his reverie, Brian got up and said he'd better go to bed. Ogden waved a listless hand after him.

There was a small lifeboat with an outboard motor aboard the Taurus Dolores. Two days later, it occurred to Brian to test the motor. It wouldn't start. He suggested that it be repaired. The grotesqueness of human nature persisted: a suicide-bent man repairing a lifeboat!

The captain, for some reason, took the suggestion with deep seriousness. He stared at Brian for a long time. Then he said quietly, "Very well."

Brian had it repaired at the boat dock.

The next morning, Captain Ogden ordered him to pump out the bilge. This was the messiest and most menial job Brian had had.

As he was standing in rubber boots in the dirty water, Ogden loomed above him, formidable, gray-haired, weather-beaten. "What are you doing" he asked in a level tone.

Brian stared at him and then said with a half laugh, "Pumping out the bilge."

After gazing at him, the captain said evenly, "Are you sure?" Ogden gazed at him some more and then disappeared.

Brian went on pumping. That afternoon they sailed to an empty stretch of Orient Point. They had supper side by side on the counter in the little galley. Captain Ogden did not speak during the meal.

At the end of it, Ogden stood up. "Go to your cabin," he ordered.

"Wh--what?"

"Your cabin. Go there."

Brian shoved his thumbs under his belt. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You do understand some sort of English, don't you? Or have you radicals abolished that, too?"

He had never directly accused Brian of being a radical before.

I'm not a radical, Brian started to say, and then gave it up. What was the point? He would just humor him.

He passed slowly in front of Ogden, went into his tiny cabin and sat down on the bunk. A second later, the outside key turned in the lock and he was imprisoned.

What an idiot, he thought. Why didn't I dive overboard, or call for help on the ship-to-shore, or at least stay in the open? I knew he was mad. What an idiot I am. Obeying a madman. What does that make me?

A fool, just a fool. Nothing more profound than that.

The tiny, curtained porthole was impossible as an escape route, but he might see a passing boat and yell or signal to it. He pulled the curtain aside, but instead of transparent glass, he saw blackness. He opened the porthole and found that a heavy metal slab had been fixed to the hull outside it. He pushed it, punched it. Unbudgeable. He was completely enclosed in a madman's prison.

"Cooper," came the captain's voice from outside his door.

Taking a breath, Brian answered, "Yes."

"Tell me, Cooper, why do you want to sink my ship?"

"I don't want to sink your ship, Captain."

"I saw you punching a hole in the bottom when you pretended to pump out the bilge. Why did you resent pumping out the bilge so much?"

"I didn't resent it."

"We all have to do unpleasant tasks in life. My father often told me that. If you knew what he made me do! Then you wouldn't have resented pumping at all. That's nothing! You know what he made me do? Clean out the cesspool under our outhouse! A living soul ... a living soul. The kingdoms and the powers under the cesspool in the outhouse." A long silence. "Filth!" Another silence.

"Captain?"

There was no answer.

"Captain Ogden?"

"What?" he answered in a flat, low voice.

"I want to talk to you about my religious feelings."

"Religious feelings," Ogden snorted. "What do you know about religious feelings? Any of you. Scum. If you knew what the people of my day went through mentally in striving to find the one true route to Jesus, you wouldn't try to foist this nonsense about your religious feelings on me. Your generation has all its feelings concentrated in its private parts! My generation at least tried to find Jesus. And my father's generation ... well, there they were, there they were. Marvels. Living secure in Jesus ... living secure... ."

Brian examined his fists carefully for no particular reason. The door of the cabin was unbreakable. He went on examining them. "How long are you going to keep me here?" he eventually asked.

"Until the danger has drifted away. If it ever does."

"What danger?" In asking the question, Brian became aware of its stupidity. He was trying to reason with irrationality.

"If it ever does. It doesn't, usually."

"Did you ever play hearts?" asked Brian.

"Hearts? The card game?"

"Yes," said Brian. "I used to play it a lot, with my father."

There was a profound silence. Then the captain asked, "Was he a tall man, your father?"

"Oh, yes. Very tall." He was five feet, six. Ogden had used the past tense in referring to Brian's very alive father. To him, all fathers were dead.

"Did you cheat when you played cards with him?"

At sea in irrationality, Brian hesitated and then said, "Yes, but he caught me at it and punished me and I never did it again."

"But you are trying it with me."

I'm not, he began to protest, and then instinct told him not to. "I need a lot of guidance. I'm very confused----"

The captain muttered in a deep voice, "If you knew what love I could have for a son."

"I'm very confused," was all Brian dared answer.

"Good night!" Ogden yelled and could be heard stumping up the ladder to his cabin.

There had to be a way out. It was just a question of being intelligent enough to discover it. He must remain very calm and clearheaded, not allow himself to panic or even become very nervous.

On the edge of his consciousness he sensed something stirring about himself, and her.

A minute examination of the room disclosed nothing. There was still a way. It was to inveigle Ogden to open the door. The problem thus simplified, Brian pondered how to do that.

"Captain!" he yelled, pounding on the door. "Captain!"

Ogden could be heard coming down the ladder. "What is it?" he said gruffly.

"Captain, I'm sorry. I have to go to the bathroom. I can't go on the floor in here."

There was a heavy silence, and then Ogden muttered, "No, that would be too filthy." Another long silence. "I'm going to let you go to the head in a minute." He pounded up the ladder and soon came back down again.

The key turned in the lock and the door opened. In the tiny dark passage outside, Ogden stood, his eye gazing down the barrel of a rifle aimed at Brian's head.

With coldness closing like a helmet over his skull, Brian realized that the opportunity he had sought to die had arrived.

But his desperation of a few days ago seemed to have disappeared; now he suddenly wanted to live.

Brian's brain then shut down.

He lunged for the barrel of the rifle, shoved it up, the gun went off with a tremendous roar in the confined space as they struggled for it. The man was old but strong, in good condition from life on the sea. He yanked the gun out of Brian's hands, but the space was so confined he could not level the barrel at him and Brian lunged at him again, seizing the barrel and twisting desperately. The man yanked it away again and tried to slam the butt of the gun against Brian's head. Fending that off with his shoulder, Brian forgot the gun and pounded a fist into the man's face. Brian tried to knee him in the groin, missed but caught him on the side of the head with a powerful blow of the elbow. The man hesitated for a split second; Brian snatched the rifle away from him--for that instant, Ogden had seemed to lose his will to possess it--and, stepping back into his cabin, Brian worked the bolt and pointed the reloaded rifle at the old man.

"Now, get up on deck," said Brian, panting.

Looking at the floor and shaking his head--it had all become some silly misunderstanding--Ogden cocked a quizzical look at him and, shaking his head again, climbed slowly up the ladder.

"Lower the lifeboat into the water," ordered Brian.

Ogden slowly began to do so. He said, "I knew you would want to leave the day you had it repaired. That's when I saw your plan. To scuttle the Taurus Dolores and leave on the lifeboat. Who was it," he asked with a tilt of the head, "who sent you?"

"Nobody sent me. All these plots against you are just delusions. You're very sick mentally and you ought to have treatment."

"Oh," a shrug, "treatment. They've tried to treat me. I saw through that. That's just their way of brainwashing me, trying to control me. But you. I could have rescued you from them, if you had trusted me."

Brian stood stock-still. You know, he thought to himself, I think you have rescued me from them.

Brian stepped down into the boat and, holding the rifle against his shoulder with one hand, started the outboard motor. The captain might have another rifle, but if it came to a shoot-out, Brian would take his chances. The lifeboat began to move away, but the captain remained standing on the deck, watching the departure. Then he raised his hand in what might have been a gesture of blessing. He slowly turned, looking perhaps a little more stooped than before, and went back to his cabin.

Infinitely sorry for him, Brian then decided not to make any complaints or notify anybody, but to leave Philip Ogden to heaven.

The lifeboat chugged slowly across the sheet of black water toward a dock. Brian felt utterly exhausted physically, the first time, it seemed, he had felt that way since his college track-team days. It had always been nervous exhaustion since. At sea he had slept the way he had not slept in a long time, either. He was always hungry these days. He looked around him at the imperturbable night-time sea.

When he was hungry, there was food; when he was exhausted, there was sleep; when he felt sex, there always had been before, and would be again, a partner; when he confronted a problem, there was his intelligence. And he now realized that he was emphatically sane.

He must have a future, a real future, not one like hers but one that would banish the hateful feeling he'd had in the Alfa on the dirt road in the rain, of the eternal vacuum, of no hold on anything.

His hold must be to use what he had and pass it on--the way practically everyone else in the world did--to a descendant, an offspring, an heir.