The Discovery Of Slowness. Sten Nadolny

dropping and bracing them. They might even have been able to strike the topgallants. John became convinced that he had to practise the unforeseen. One of these days he wanted to save a ship by acting quickly and correctly.

      Sherard asked him set questions: ‘There’s a storm and there isn’t enough space to leeward for jibbing.’ Or: ‘Man overboard on a course close to the wind.’ Each time, John took exactly five seconds to visualise the whole thing well in his inner eye. Then came the answer: ‘Call out “Man overboard!” Toss the man a daytime life buoy but not on top of him – makes no difference with night-time life buoys, since it’s dark anyway. Heave to. Lower boat into water to leeward. One person always keeps an eye on the man.’ ‘Good,’ said Sherard. ‘Now you see flames on the foredeck.’ Five seconds. Take a breath. Then: ‘Change course to leeward at once. Batten down hatches. Unload guns. Ammunition overboard. Shut magazine. Throw bolts. Hoist boats onto and lower to water level! …’ Matthew had been standing behind him for some time. ‘Not bad,’ he commented. ‘But perhaps you’re starting a little late to put out the fire.’ John understood slowly, then turned red. In a small voice he mumbled: ‘To the buckets …’

      No land for weeks. By now it had become so warm that people didn’t run around in jackets even at night. John was completely at ease with the calm of the sea, a calm quite distinct from the strength of the wind. The crew worked better and more steadily. Even gun master Colpits became friendlier, although he could use his ammunition only for peaceful ends. When Stanley Kirkeby wounded his arm and developed a fever, he had to imbibe a mixture of gunpowder and vinegar. He was soon back on his feet!

      In his dream John saw a new figure. At night the ocean suffused by moonlight became an image of itself. It reared up to a curled cloud of water circling round itself like a spiral growing larger and larger at the top, like a luxuriating plant, like a flickering and burning bush of water or a vortex created not by wind and current but by its own power. The sea gave itself its own body, being able to nod, to strike attitudes, to point the way. This gigantic figure grew effortlessly in his dream, emerging from the deceptively eternal expanse of the horizon; it was like a truth that would make everything different. A crater opened up towards heaven, a mouth or a gorge. Perhaps the whole thing was a leviathan, perhaps a dance of millions of tiny creatures. John often dreamed this dream. Sometimes far-ranging reflections followed him after awakening. Mary Rose in Portsmouth occurred to him, and the fact that what mattered to women was not an outer but a hidden, inner moment. Another time he mused about the trek of the children of Israel through the Red Sea and fancied that not God but the sea itself had arranged their rescue.

      When he was lying in his hammock in the morning, pondering, having been awakened sometime before by the thuds of the holystones, he experienced moments of intoxicating clarity. He sensed that something new was beginning, still very slowly. Even his back sensed what the sea looked like that day. It would not be long before he was a seaman through and through.