Read Online Sailors on the Inward Sea by Lawrence Thornton - Free Book Online

whole thing, from drawing the pistol to assuming that absurd stance taking less time than it has for me to describe it. The fact is, I don’t remember it taking any time at all. One moment they were staring at each other, thenext the German was aiming from what I now realized was some version of a dueling pose but which reminded me most of a toy soldier Borys played with when he was a boy.”
    Yet there was duration enough for Fox-Bourne’s bellow to be heard over the siren, a thunderous sound that might have been “No!” or only a soul-deep cry of anguish. A vein bulged in his forehead, which was as colorless as a geisha’s. At the instant he heard the shot Fox-Bourne’s eyes welled. He bellowed again and balled his hands into fists as Conrad turned and saw Whelan standing straight and tall, as if he had been ordered to assume the position of attention. For a few seconds he was motionless and then he brought his hands up and placed them tenderly on his chest in a perfect pantomime of an operatic gesture, as if he were a lover protesting some slight or offering his heart to his beloved. The captain extended his arm again and aimed just as Whelan staggered, recovered, swayed, toppled forward against the rail, which caught him just below his chest so that his arms went over and dangled, swaying with the gentle rise and fall of the Brigadier.
    Everything stopped then including the siren. Conrad and the officers did not move. The German captain did not move, his arm still raised, the weapon still pointed, men, ocean, ships arrested by what had happened. And then Fox-Bourne shouted an oath. The sound shattered the stillness, echoing on the bridge. He shouted again, ordering Scorsby to find the doctor and Higgins to take a crew to the forward gun and fire as soon as possible as he rushed to the doorway and disappeared down the ladder in a flurry of staccato steps, intent on saving Whelan though it was obvious to Conrad as it must have been to the others that the ensign was dead. What reserves of faith or denial drove the man, Conrad could not guess.
    The siren started up again as Higgins and three sailors were pulling the tarpaulin off the gun. Fox-Bourne raced by them, fairlyflying over the deck with neither grace nor agility, his awkwardness adding to the sorrow, the patent uselessness of his desire. Conrad’s heart went out to him when he reached Whelan. Standing beside the ensign, touching him on the shoulder, he lifted him from the rail and carried him with one arm under his back, the other under his knees, to the center of the deck, where he put him down and cradled his head. With his free hand he unbuttoned Whelan’s shirt from neck to waist. As he did so, Conrad saw Scorsby and another officer he presumed was the doctor running up the deck. Somehow their presence seemed to increase Fox-Bourne’s isolation. With the doctor and Scorsby kneeling beside him, Fox-Bourne reluctantly laid Whelan’s head down and moved aside so that the doctor could put his hand on Whelan’s neck, his ear to Whelan’s chest, an attitude he maintained for a few seconds before he sat back on his heels and looked at Fox-Bourne, speaking to him, telling him what Conrad and everyone else on the bridge already knew.
    Fox-Bourne’s head went back so that he appeared to be staring at the sky. Higgins’s crew fired, the round striking at the waterline forward of the Valkerie’ s engine compartment. Within seconds she settled several feet, the angle exposing the gash in the hull to the warm yellow light. The damage was more extensive than it had first appeared, a huge, pyramid-shaped hole whose jagged edges gleamed like teeth, a black hole with no bottom to it which suddenly filled with faces and hands, the men standing on pipes or scaffolding as they grasped the sharp metal that slashed their hands, the force of the rushing water pushing back the weaker ones, the ones with less determination