The Sailor Who Drank the Sea
There once was a sailor who grew tired of the sea.
All his life he had roamed the ocean’s great plains, charting their reaches, learning the secrets of wind and deep. He climbed the water mountains of the Western sea, swam in the hidden rivers of the Great Trench and sailed the nameless regions where the sea meets the sky and no-one can tell where the air stops and the water begins. He learned the moods of the sea, its strange ways and sudden rages. In time, he was able to tell when the great waves would come, when the winds would fall away and when the storms would spring up to batter sailing ships against the rocks.
The only life he knew, the only one he had ever known, was a life at sea. Some said that he had been born there, that the ocean was his mother and a mighty tidal wave his father. How else, they asked, could he know the twelve songs of the wind and the chatter of the numberless tiny krill? But wiser tongues spoke of a great ship with five huge sails. They told of a father who brought his baby son to the centre of the sea and set him adrift to learn the ways of the ocean so that the boy’s knowledge could make him rich.
As the boy grew into a man, the land people would sail out to meet him with questions of the sea. When would the typhoon come? How high would the tide be? From what direction would the great shoals of bluefish swim? For this knowledge, the land people made the boy’s father a very wealthy man.
As time went by, the father came less and less to see his son and the sailor began to fear he had offended him. Perhaps (the thought came to him one stormy night) perhaps he had given wrong information about something and his father was angry? He began to work even harder in his study of the sea so that soon he knew the shrimp’s whisper and the laughter of the herring-gull. He came to know the language of the sea so well that there was no room in his head for the speech of men and when the land people sailed out to consult him he could not understand them. The sailor fretted and began to long for his lost home on the land.
Am I not, after all, a man, he asked himself, and born to men’s ways?
One day, when the Inspector of Winds came to see him, the sailor paused from his talk of hurricanes, of frenzy and of turmoil.
I would like to return to the land, he said. Can’t someone else do this job instead of me?
The Inspector tugged at his huge grey moustache. Are you mad? he bellowed. Don’t you understand? No-one else in the world can do this job. You are the only one. It has always been your destiny.
A few days later, his father sailed out to him in a fury. He cursed at the sailor, saying that if he spoke like that again he would bring shame and dishonour on the family name. And besides, he added, there is no place on the land for you.
The sailor grew old and unhappy with his life. Each day was a misery. In the mornings he awoke to the rolling emptiness. The dolphins’ call no longer made him smile. He stopped singing to the squid and after a while they no longer came to him at sunset with stories from the Middle Ocean, but the sailor hardly noticed. By day, he went about his work without a word and by night he stared into the black of the sky as tears washed down his face.
One spring morning, when sailfish played in the foam and a tiger shark circled the heaving wake, the sailor woke with a marvellous plan. It was the answer to his problem and so simple he was astonished he had not thought of it before. He would drink the sea, and when there was no sea left he would no longer be needed. Then he could end his days on the land.
So he threw down a water skin and scooped up a great wash of brine, which he swallowed. Then he scooped up another, and another. As he drank the salty water he became even thirstier and soon he found that the water skin was too small. So he tore down his mainsail, stitched it together into a gigantic water skin and used that instead to drink the sea. Slowly, the waves began to break further and further out from the shore. Long-drowned islands reappeared. Islands that the oldest men had never heard of, with crumbling houses and great steeples draped in seaweed. The poorest people moved onto them, giving thanks for their good fortune. In the ports, the eight-masted sailing ships lay over on their sides, timbers groaning and ribs caving in under their weight.
The people grew worried and sailed out to meet him. They saw that he had grown into the biggest man they had ever known and, when they asked him why the sea was leaving, his answer only confused them more.
It is destiny, he said.
He’s mad, they told each other. By the look of him he will soon die. And they returned to the land, where fish rotted in mountains and where the pier they had left was only a thin grey line against the horizon.
Within a year, the sailor had drunk all of the sea. He was so big that his ship crushed to splinters beneath him and he lay on the soft mud of what was once the sea-bed. Although he could not stand up, he lifted his head and looked at the land all around him. Lying in his land with no sea, the sailor gazed once more at the bright summer sky, smiled, closed his eyes and died.
As the days went by, the land people grew more and more distressed. Their lives were changed utterly and many died of hunger and grief. At first they cursed the sailor, but then they cursed themselves for not allowing him to live as he had chosen. There was great sorrow throughout the land.
Outside, high above the great mud-flat that stretched from one continent to the next, the carrion birds circled the huge body, awaiting the feast. After a long time, when the sailor did not move, a cloud of vultures swooped down upon the sailor’s body. One plucked out an eye and a huge fountain gushed forth. Another pecked at his teeth and waves surged out. Each peck brought a new torrent of water until the sailor’s body began to rise up on the growing tide. The great wave swept him towards the shore and, washing over the land, laid the body on a low hill above the harbour. There the sailor lay with rivers flowing from him until the water had risen again and the ocean once more crashed against the shore.
Throughout the land, peace returned. The people learned to live with the sea and all its troubles. Each year, on that certain day, they performed a simple ceremony on the hill where the sailor had lain and where they had buried him. They erected a tombstone to his memory and on it they put this simple verse:
If you are not happy with what you see
Think of me.
If you have some doubt about where to be
Think of me.
For I am the sailor who drank the sea.
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