Dorky’s Daydream (cont)

Dorky’s Daydream (Continued)
     By Dougie Dorkheimer

Except that the tempest had not brought death! Here, in the darkest hour of permanent separation, I saw my friend returning to me from the dead. And, as if attached to his underside, another friend, a cabinet shaped like a coffin that, in the ship’s kitchen, had protected perishables, from beetles, vermin, mice and rats. Waterproof and sealed against moisture, it now nimbly buoyed up Quebecette and myself. Lack of warmth troubled us not at all, sailing as we did in  temperate climes. But fatigue proved otherwise. Taking each our shirt and knotting one wrist into a sleeve, we looped the other through an iron handle found on each side of the “coffin” and bound the two shirts together over its top. Then, making sure of the knots, we found ourselves able to surf alongside our conveyance without any of the expenditure of labor that would have been necessary had we simply tried to balance on top of it. 
     With night falling and the waves mountains, our prospects steadily bleakened. The fearsome hurricane bore us nor’easterly into the open sea, ever farther away from all possibility of rescue. Ahead lay unknown prairies of water where not a ship dared sail, seas that cartographers had never yet seen or surveyed. Doomed, we clung to our only refuge, our mutual company, relieved not to have to spend our final hours alone. That small consolation at least was ours. Never had Christian felt more grateful during all his dire most wanderings than did we to our Lord Jesus Christ for his goodness and mercy. 
     Two days we drifted tempest tossed without food or water. The third day dawning, we perceived in the faint distance a sight that suddenly cheered us considerably and began to suggest the possibility of survival. What initially looked like a fine black line on the horizon, began after some hours to show an unevennesses that, even though glimpsed amidst the wind’s and wave’s bellowing, must be hills and mountains. O land! O ahoyness! 
     But knowing that the land must still be many miles distant, our spirits sank deeper than before. As when a storm bound sailor lost at sea  sees ahead a sudden great outcropping of land and, tying his frail craft to it, climbs up and lays him down to sleep, what terrible new hopelessness overwhelms him when he sees in the morning that he has anchored to the scaly sides of leviathan. So we, having no material for sails nor any paddles but only our prayers that the wind would continue to blow us in that direction, fell into the deepest and blackest despair. 
     But then a miracle. To our great good fortune, we found ourselves moving, though ever so  slowly, closer to that far off shore and eventually, during the night, we heard a crash of waves on rocks. Fearful though we were of that turbulence, of crashing on the rocks that would most certainly destroy our vessel and ourselves, destiny seemed determined to land us there amid the roaring and the tumult.
     Eventually we found ourselves close enough to the Island that our feet began to scrape against coral and rocks and with great effort we held onto our craft, forcing our way in the utter darkness against the powerful cross currents to higher ground. Our good fortune held. It was not on rocks or cliffs that we landed but in a small declevity with a smooth bottom and sand under our feet. The beach on which we now lay down to rest seemed heaven sent. We slept exhausted. In the morning, we woke to the sound of the birds and the magnificent sight of trees and grasses. The sun beat down on our wet and weary bodies and we wept in gratitude to our creator for his wondrous kindness to us, to us, these hapless, weary and undeserving insects. 
     When we had rested and when the sun had dried us, we rose to inspect our surroundings. To our great surprise, we saw footsteps in the sand. Hope and fear filled us. Maybe these marks had been made by our companions! Maybe we would find some of them alive who had, like us, reached safety. We followed them some distance and eventually heard voices. Fearfully, silently, not knowing if these might be unfriendly inhabitants of the island we made our way forward with care, then in the distance we beheld, to our surprise, the king, the king’s brother Antonio and Antonio’s friend Sebastian standing in a small group just out of reach of the waves. We helloed and shouted and made our presence known to them and soon found ourselves embracing in awe of the good fortune of meeting once again. How grateful we were that our maker had seen fit to save at least a few of those on the ship besides ourselves .
     We found Antonio and Sebastian, however, bitterly complaining about their state. They would not see, nor could they see, anything good about what had happened to the ship and crew. O the misfortune! O the work of the devil! O the misery of separation from city and court! O the wickedness of some member of the crew who, like proverbial Jonah, doomed the good ship because of his flight from God! I wished to hear no more such vitriol so I drew the king aside and spoke to him of the mystery round about us.
     “Look at our clothing, your Highness. Do  these not seem to you to be new and fresh”? I entreated. “The many days of our voyage soiled them but they seem to have undergone a strange transformation, an unexpected purification. And, look, all around us. Is it not intensely beautiful and green and perfumed? This must be a magical isle! Never have I felt such newness, as if I had just been recreated. I wonder if this place is blessed. Maybe it is our fortune and not our fate that we have landed here.”
    Antonio and Sebastian, wandering nearby, had overheard and they would have none of this! An ordinary sailor should not appear unsolicited before royalty, let alone dare to address the king himself! That silenced me, but the king hushed them in no uncertain terms and bade me speak openly and without fear. I did that with some misgivings for I knew that making enemies of them would likely prove dangerous to Quebecette and myself. For now they held their peace. 
     Scouring the beach for any possible wreckage from our ship occupied the following days. At first we discovered little in the way of materials with any utility for our needs. But then, on the second day, in a small bay a nautical mile from the place we had landed, we chanced upon a tidal cave in which lay a heap of items deposited there by the sea’s currents. Hurrying down, we examined our good fortune and found it to contain clothing, hogsheads of wine, a large sealed cask of butter, four large bags,10 stone each, waxed and sealed tight against water, of flour and strangely, for we had none of us been apprised of their existence on the ship and which must have belonged to a hoard intended for the use of only the captain himself (he being a man of great girth and stoneweight), two barrels of dried and salted herring, two hogsheads of tobacco (containing also, we later found, a quantity of tobacco seed with which we were able to propagate our own that we dried and cured and found as flavourful as any purchased to home), four hogsheads of small beer, a quantity of dried lemons, limes, prunes, raisins, apples, pears, persimmons, carrots, beans, rice  and onions to the tune of one half tonne weight and a variety of other succulent edibles. We rejoiced more than anything at the prospect of making and eating bread! The carpenter’s chest also had come to rest here during the night and inside we found hammers, axe heads, adzes, saws, files, chisels, line, rope, twine, nails, mingles and various other metal tools that would surely prove a great boon to us in our present state of abandonment.
     Antonio and Sebastian refused to transport any of the items, citing (to each other but in voices clearly audible to myself and Quebecette) their aristocratic heritage. The king made no such defence of laziness but, with a will and a strong back, and without a moment’s delay, contributed his person to the enterprise. He, Quebecette and I hove to and began to carry with a will.  After many return trips during many days all of the foods, tool items and utensils were safely stored under tarpaulins up in the tree line. 
     Next (since sleeping rough in the rain under dripping leaves and accompanied by insects of varieties and kinds unknown in civilized realms appealed to us not a bit) we began to construct a shelter of logs that the three of us felled in the forest and wrestled to a spot on a cliff with a wonderful prospect out over the sparkling sea. The forest provided us in the meantime with fresh fruit, apples, oranges, apricots, mangos, and coconut and eventually also grapes in great abundance. We had landed in paradise, it seemed to us, for where else in the world would one be able to live in such easy comfort with food aplenty and shelter made available from nature’s largesse? Each night our little group prayed and sang hymns and gave thanksgiving to our Maker who had saved us from the dark and the deep, from the depths of that despair we’d felt, adrift on the sea.
     The house and the fireplace finally completed, we had only a sleeping arrangement to ponder. Eventually we all decided on a large two-tiered bunkbed and quickly constructed it. Top and bottom bunk each measured 7 feet In length by 5 feet in width. These were covered with the skins of animals that we trapped and hunted with lines and spears. The king, royalty, deserved the right of sleeping alone on the lower tier. Sebastian, Antonio, Quebecette and I shared the upper tier, sleeping across rather than along the bed. When one of the four of us needed to turn over during sleep, perforce all the rest of us turned as well. This worked very well without trouble, outside of the king’s sonorous snoring that had us whispering comparisons to jungle beasts, avalanches, drowning multitudes or collapsing castles. 
     But, after eleven years, the day did finally come when sadness settled on our happy isle. My Quebecette grew ill and, wasting away for want of appetite, weakened quickly and died. Our hearts broke, for his kind, considerate, tireless friendship had made us all deeply love him. It was then, after bidding him farewell with sung hymns and sincere prayers while committing him to God and ground, that we began to plan for the eventual inevitable interment of all of us when our times would come, as they surely must! We carved a fine six foot cross (emblazoned with his beloved name) and erected it with ceremony at the head of his grave, simultaneously constructing similar crosses with each our names carved on the horizontal board. These we erected next to each other in a straight row, looking for all the world as if they were awaiting the arrival of company. The placement of these were determined by a person's height. Next to Quebecette’s (the tallest of us all at six foot eleven inches) was mine, for I stood six feet eight and a quarter inches. Then came Sebastian’s, who spanned five feet three inches, followed by Antonio’s, five feet and one half inch and, last, the king, whose height we had solemnly promised never to speak aloud. In time both the king and Antonio also passed on and left only Sebastian and myself to live through many more lonely  years, during which time the hope of rescue became little more in us than the faintest picture, the vaguest inkling, sometimes briefly flirting through our minds like ghosts of forgotten friends.”
     That ended Dorky‘s tale, and nary a dry eye in his whole company. Even Dorky, who had recounted his adventures on the island more times than he could remember, could be seen dabbing at his eyes now and then while he spoke. A clamouring arose among those assembled there who called out the obvious question with increasingly insistent voices until Dorky himself raised his hand for silence. He spoke now with a wink saying that the story of his eventual return to our Emerald Isle would have to wait for another occasion because at that moment his thirst overwhelmed his desire for the completeness of and the harmony of a proper ending. And thus it was that a reconvening at the Wave and Isle produced Dorky’s desired refreshment, paid for by everyone except the man himself