August 13
17.14 hrs:
Edward is getting as flaky as Johnson. He pours over the celestial navigation tables that the Old One sent us, and claims he is finding entries for planets that don't exist.
Meanwhile our skipper, Matthew, is in a daze. He's burrowed back into our tunnel of a sail locker, and wrapped himself in the Egyptian Death Shrouds. He won't come out.
August 14
12.00 hrs:
It was too much for Brian and I today to take when Johnson started the engine to charge the batteries. Brian went to the helm and pushed us into gear. Johnson freaked and started pounding on him. I tried to stop Johnson and then he pounded on me. What scared the hell out of me – and this is a fear that is staying with me – is that nobody interceded. Nobody stopped the fight! Brian and I were screaming and yelling for help, but it was like nobody else on the boat gave a shit. When Johnson finally stopped, I helped Brian down below and we tried to clean each other up.
Then something odd happened. Johnson went to turn off the engine, and it refused to die. It was as if the engine itself wanted to get out of the High. Brian and I just laid in our bunks listening, hoping that Matthew and Edward or any of the others would take the hint and kick the boat back into gear.
Johnson took it as a personal affront. He tracked down the fuel line cutoff valve to stop the flow of diesel. Even then the engine kept running. Then there came gasps. And there came such terrible chokes and violent shakes that it truly felt as if Johnson were strangling the poor machine with his own hands. It was as though he were murdering something heroic, something that was better than any of us, something that was in its own small way trying to save us all.
August 15
13.00 hrs:
The seaweed is getting so thick! Maybe we couldn't have motored through it anyway. Nobody else seems to register on how odd it is to find acres of thickly matted seaweed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but Brian and I agree that it just shouldn't be here.
August 16
10.25 hrs:
Every day the sun gets hotter, the seaweed gets thicker, and this boat becomes more like a prison. Johnson is right at home.
Everyone is lethargic, but when Edward and Darrell are up on deck they seem naturally able to engage in the kind of stupid jock talk that keeps them in Johnson's good graces.
12.15 hrs:
I'm hiding my journal now, as I realize it might not be so great if certain people found it.
15.20 hrs:
The idiots out on deck have found a new sport. Walking on water. This isn't quite as miraculous as I make it sound. The seaweed is now so thick that Johnson went out walking – crawling actually – on it. He came back to the boat, took off his shoes and clothes, and then leaped back onto the muck shouting, "Oooh! This feels good!" I watched him from a porthole, as Brian and I haven't been on deck since the altercation.
16.00 hrs:
I crawled into the sail locker and again tried to wake up Matthew. Johnson is taking command.
August 17
11.15 hrs:
Every now and then Edward comes in from the seaweed to study the celestial tables. He, too, is naked and dripping with weedy green slime. And he, too, speaks, apparently to himself, about how good it feels. Only the Old One's chart can compete with the lure of the seaweed, for Edward now claims he's trying to figure out where his new planets would be by working backward from the Local Apparent Noon columns.
14.00 hrs:
I slept for quite a while today. The only escape. Woke to much yelling and screaming. Was just more water walking. Brian and Matthew and I are the only ones that haven't gone in. Johnson threw Darrell into the seaweed to make him try it. Once they get into the muck, they don't want to come out. Looking out the porthole now, Darrell, too, has shed his clothes. They are rolling in it, humping the slime, and getting frenzied in a savage way. Must wake up Matthew. We need a skipper.
14.30 hrs:
Finally got Matthew to crawl out of the death shroud, but instead of settling things down, he jumped over the side. Now Johnson is calling for Brian. I've locked the companion way from the inside and fastened the fore and aft hatches.
16.15 hrs:
Brian is out of it. Everyone is pounding on the hull calling his name. Say they will kill him if he doesn't jump in. I've got the flare gun, but if I shoot, I risk burning a hole through the bottom.
The cabin is getting creepy. Over the past several days I've been studying the grotesque carvings that decorate the interior of the boat. None of us even noticed the carvings until we got near the High. Now it seems as if the atmospheric pressure, fog, or something is causing the wood to swell and blister and this stretching of the wood is making the carved characters grow and become uncomfortably three-dimensional. I must be going nuts.
16.27 hrs:
Shit! Johnson just tried to climb on deck but screamed from pain when his feet touched the deck. Their voices are lower now. The others say the boat hurts too touch.
17.45 hrs:
They are swearing at me and telling me that I have to bring out Brian. They say they want to talk to both of us. That nothing will happen.
20.30 hrs:
It's getting dark. Voices are going away. Don't know why they haven't come back on board. If the decks were too hot during the day, they surely must be cool enough by now. Johnson, Edward, Darrell, and Matthew have been over the side for hours now. If it weren't for the seaweed they would all be long dead of hypothermia.