That’s what the clock face read when I looked at it with sleep-drowned eyes.
I had awakened with a start in the pitch-black darkness of my cabin, not because of a noise, but because there was none. The engines had stopped. The ship was dead in the water.
I waited for an announcement on the ship’s PA. Nothing.
I sat at the edge of the bed trying to clear my head. The air-conditioner was still on. The lights still worked. Except for the fact that the ship had stopped moving, everything seemed normal. Still, I felt a rising sense of dread, a premonition that something was wrong. I stood up, opened the door and peeked outside. Two or three other heads poked out of their respective doors.
“What’s going on?” I asked one of the heads. “I don’t know,” the head nearest me replied.
“I heard something but it was on the speakers on the corridor. Couldn’t make it out,” said another head further down the corridor.
Just then the ship’s alarm went on, but it wasn’t the usual seven short and one long blast. It was three short and one long. A voice materialized from the overhead speakers and said: “ Code Oscar, Code Oscar. Man overboard. Man overboard. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.”
I went back to my room and lay on bed.
Somebody had fallen overboard. Essentially this did not concern me, but all the same, I felt uneasy. Who fell, crew or passenger? Why and how?
Most of us on the M/V Glorianis had looked forward to this day for a reason. Tonight, a rare celestial phenomenon was about to occur. Predicted by astronomers years ago, tonight the western hemisphere would witness a total eclipse of the moon. Everybody would be out on deck to watch the full moon being obliterated by the shadow of the earth as it passed in front of the sun. It was a sight nobody wanted to miss. Anticipation hung heavily in the air in the days leading to this night. Now, with this accident, anticipation had given way to a sense of horror. Accident or not, no one wants to hear about anyone falling off any ship.
I bathed and dressed, ears cocked out for more announcements. Through the hull of the ship I could hear the sounds of motorboats starting and shuttling to and from points beyond and near the vessel. I decided to go up to the open deck to see what was going on. By this time, an hour had passed since the announcement. In that time, the ship had actually turned back to retrace it’s route. Tender boats were launched and a search had been made. Another hour passed, and then another. Finally the boats were called back in.
The captain’s voice came on the PA. It sounded sad and heavy.
“To all ship’s passengers and crew. As you know, at roughly 800 hours this morning, the bridge received notice that an individual had jumped off from the ship. We immediately stopped and turned the ship around and initiated a search and rescue for this individual. However, we failed to find any trace of him. So it is with great reluctance that I have decided to call off the search. We shall be continuing on to our next port of La Guaira, in Venezuela. For your information, the crewmember’s name was Salvatore. He was a cadet, 21 years of age from Genoa, in Italy. May God rest his soul.”
I stared at the Caribbean sea, so blue and so inviting in this halfway mark between Venezuela and Hispaniola. Brilliant sunlight played and sparkled on the water’s surface. Warm ocean breezes caressed the skin. The waves wore small frothy white caps that seemed to beckon and say: “Come on in, the water’s fine.”
All throughout the afternoon till sundown, the young cadet’s fate was on everybody’s lips.
“So sad, so sad.”
“And where was he from, again?”
“From Genoa”.
“Is that in Switzerland”.
“No, Italy. The one in Switzerland is Geneva.”
“Ah. Why do you think he jumped?”
“I don’t know.”
“ I heard somebody say that he was being escorted to the clinic. He escaped, took off his shoes and socks, piled them neatly on the floor, and dove from the front of the ship.”
“Why was he being escorted
to the clinic?”
“They said he had been acting and talking strangely since he left Genoa. They said he was hearing voices.”
“Maybe he was just being homesick.” “Suicide sounds
extreme for me.”
“So sad.”
The whispered consolations and expressions of horror and regret faded into the gathering dusk.
The moon, large and yellow, rose up from the eastern edge of the sea. People gazed at it with expectant faces.
For my part, I dined at the officer’s mess on mushroom soup, steamed rice, beef bourgouignon, and wrapped it all up with a New York cheesecake and coffee. Nobody spoke about the cadet. Afterwards I went up to the pool deck. The hour when the moon would fade into black was at hand. All around me passengers and crew angled to get a good view of the moon. Many reclined on deck chairs, looking up at the night sky. There was no need to wear eye protection because there were no ultra-violet rays or solar flares to damage the retina.
At 9:00 PM, a dark shadow started to pass over the moon. A collective “Aaah” arose from the gathered crowd. After 20 minutes, the moon completely vanished from sight.. An eerie, penumbral darkness suddenly engulfed the ship and the ocean around it.
The people looked up at the dark spot in the sky where the moon used to be. They were silent, rapt in the magic of this disappearing act. Somewhere in China, or wherever they still believe that an eclipse is the result of a giant dragon swallowing up the moon or the sun, bands of rural folks must be out banging pots and pans and setting off firecrackers to force it to cough it out and restore the natural order of the universe.
As I continued looking up, waiting for the moon to re-appear, everything else that happened during that day became a distant, fading memory.
