The sea was agitated but this was not yet the gale. The gale, which had initially gone south, had undeniably changed its course. The captain silently watched a leaden wall move in the direction of the Saint Mark. Its movement was slow but steadfast. The bright part of the sky grew ever smaller and thunder began to accompany distant flashes of lightning.
It got dark. Not as dark as night because nighttime darkness has its own tranquility. This was a restless gloom that devoured light, contradicting the established changes from day to night. It was not uniform: it swirled, thickened, and dissolved depending on the density of the clouds, and its border was at the horizon itself, where a thin ribbon of sky still shone.
Arseny and Ambrogio were brought to the hold. Arseny turned before going down. Lightning struck as if it had noticed his motion, and then came a clap of thunder unlike anything he had ever heard. With that sound, the heavenly firmament split, and its crack stretched along a line of lightning that resembled a root with countless branches. Water gushed from the crack. Perhaps this was water from the upper sea.
Seawater gushed out of Arseny, too, until it had all gone. He and Ambrogio were thrown from their hammocks and rolled along the floor. Both were semi-conscious. The candle toppled and went out. Arseny was turned inside out but there was no longer anything left to come out, so only bile came. He thought that at least he would stop vomiting if the ship sank. The sea’s cold tranquility would seize him there, below.
It was dark and stuffy for Arseny in the hold. Two disasters had come together and deepened one another. Dark stuffiness. Stuffy darkness. They were one indivisible essence, one entity. Arseny thought he was dying. That he would die right now if he did not swallow some air. Ambrogio did not see him grope for the door that led to the stairs and the deck. He pushed the door. He slipped on the stairs. Crawled up on all fours. Slid down and crawled again. He was knocked into the banisters. He crawled up to the door onto the deck and opened it. The hurricane stung him.
Horrified at what he had seen, he began shouting but did not hear his own shout. It was the grandeur of the elements—rather than impending death—that horrified. The hurricane ripped Arseny’s shout from his lips and instantly carried it a hundred miles off. That shout could sound only in a place where there was still a ribbon of clear sky. But that thin ribbon was already pink, making it clear that night was falling and that this last strip of sky would disappear. And Arseny began shouting again because the all-encompassing gloom that was advancing carried hopelessness.
Waves pounded at the side of the ship and everything on the vessel shook, and after each blow Arseny was surprised that the vessel was still intact. Huge waves alternately propped up the vessel and came out from under it. It tipped awkwardly onto its railing: its side bowed to the waves and the tops of its masts nearly touched them. It spun in the maelstroms, bobbed, and dove.
Arseny was still standing in the doorway. Two sailors were making their way past him along the deck. They moved, hunched, their feet set widely apart. And spreading their arms as if for embraces. They were pulling some sort of rope from the mast to the side of the ship, attempting to tighten it, but they themselves were tied to the mast with ropes. They kept slipping and falling to their knees. Their work, which was incomprehensible to Arseny, resembled either a dance or supplication. Perhaps they actually were praying.
Arseny saw an enormous frothy wave moving along the port side of the ship. The wave was very visible despite the darkness, and its crest glistened in a light that seemed to come out of nowhere. This glimmering was the most frightening thing. The wave was much higher than the deck. The ship seemed small, almost toylike, compared to the wave. Arseny soundlessly shouted to the sailors, telling them to flee, but they continued their strange motion. Their hoods, pulled low, made them look like astonishing creatures from the Alexander Romance. And the ropes dragged behind them like tails.
The wave did not strike the ship, it simply crushed it under itself and swept over it. Arseny was thrown below, where he could no longer see what was happening on deck. When he recovered, he again attempted to climb up toward the exit. The captain was standing in the doorway. He was praying. The deck was empty. Much of what Arseny had seen before from this vantage point was missing. Cannons, rails, masts. The two sailors who had been pulling the rope were missing. Arseny wanted to ask the captain if they had saved themselves in time but he did not ask. The captain sensed his presence and turned. He shouted something to Arseny. Arseny did not catch what he said. The captain bent right to Arseny’s ear and yelled:
Did you see Saint Germanus?
Arseny shook his head, no.
Well, I did. The captain pressed Arseny’s head to his own. I believe we can be saved by his prayers.
It was not that the gale had quietened—it had stopped intensifying. The ship was still being tossed from side to side, but that was no longer so frightening. Perhaps because the last light had disappeared with the arrival of night and the huge waves were no longer visible. The ship was no longer resisting its element: it was a part of it.
The sun was shining in a cloudless sky when Arseny went on deck in the morning. A light wind was blowing. Two of the three masts were broken and everything that had been on the deck had been washed away or mangled. The sailors and pilgrims said a memorial prayer. Their arms and faces were covered with scratches.
Arseny did not see several familiar faces. He did not know the names of the dead sailors and had barely heard more than a sentence or two—simple greetings—from them when they were alive, but their absence was gaping. He knew that from now on he would be deprived of their greetings forever.
Forever, whispered Arseny.
He remembered their final dancing motions. He imagined the sailors floating now in the seawater. At a depth where they would be inaccessible to any storms.