(20)

Two hours before, at about the moment when Bob was looking at Jim and wondering how he would peel away the layers of clothing so that he could more easily sever his limbs if he died, a young Scottish merchant seaman had gazed routinely out from his watch. The seaman served on the S.S. Benalder, a 58,000-ton British container ship, bound from the east coast ports of the United States to Japan. The huge vessel, almost one thousand feet long, was a few days out of the Panama Canal and hurrying to the Orient via the great circle route.

Something odd broke the monotony of the sea to the sailor’s eye. At first he took what he saw to be a shadow. But when he lifted his binoculars, the shadow coalesced in focus and became a capsized boat.

The seaman strode briskly to the ship’s master who peered down through his glasses. On a yellow pad he made these notes:

“Upturned trimaran, blue and white hull, possible number on side #WA 5456. Showing red flag. No signs life. Fresh paint!”

The Benalder was only a few thousand yards away at that moment, and the sea was calm, visibility good. If there were life aboard the pathetic little boat, said the master, surely someone would be out on deck—or whatever you call the bottom of a boat when it is floating on top of the water—waving a distress signal.

The master made the decision not to stop and inspect the mysterious sight. But he ordered the news radioed to the U. S. Coast Guard in San Francisco. There the message was received and studied by Lieutenant Victor E. Hipkiss, controller on watch. By a stroke of fortune, Lieutenant Hipkiss has been on duty during the fruitless search for the Triton. But that was two long months ago.

Nevertheless, Lieutenant Hipkiss was intrigued enough to request the master of the Benalder to turn his great ship around and dispatch a search party to investigate, board the trimaran, and determine its fate. Lieutenant Hipkiss told a skeptical colleague in the radio room that it was unlikely that this could be the Triton. He looked at the map dominating the control room. The Benalder’s radio position was more than a thousand miles due west of Los Angeles, almost halfway to Hawaii. A trimaran simply could not drift that far without breaking into pieces. A thousand miles!

But the mystery, said the lieutenant, was too tantalizing not to investigate.

The two men were carried on stretchers into a cabin that served as sick bay, and placed in adjoining beds. No doctor was on board, but a crew member familiar with routine medical procedures took their life signs.

Meanwhile, radio messages hurried back and forth across the Pacific, determining what to do with the two survivors. The nearest port was Hawaii, but the Benalder would have to make a costly and time-consuming detour. It was arranged, therefore, that the ship would take her new passengers to Midway Island, where a U. S. military plane could ferry them to a hospital in Honolulu.

The U. S. Public Health Service in Honolulu was notified, and doctors there cabled the Benalder with the following questionnaire:

1. Please give general statement about patients’ condition.

2. Please give pulse, respiration, and temperature.

3. Can patients stand and walk by themselves?

4. Are patients suffering from sunburn or skin infection?

5. Do patients have any specific complaint?

6. Before sailing, did patients have any medical problems we should be aware of?

7. Did they take, or are they taking now, any medication?

8. Please describe how much water and what type of food patients had for two-month period.

The questions were quickly answered. Both men were in “fair” condition. Neither had sunburn or skin infection. Jim Fisher had lost one hundred pounds, Bob Tininenko only fifty. Neither was able to stand or walk. No known medical problems prior to departure on July 2. One item of concern: While Tininenko’s pulse rate was a surprisingly stable 65, Fisher’s was erratic and high, from 90 to 110. Their diet—chiefly sardines and peanut butter.

“Both men,” radioed the Benalder’s master, “are extremely weak, especially Fisher, but they have been washed and are taking warm orange juice and they are in good shape, considering their extraordinary ordeal.”

Within an hour of being aboard the Benalder, Bob was happily sipping orange juice. Jim could not hold a cup, nor keep the liquids down on his own, so he was fed drop-by-drop with a syringe.

No sooner was Bob done with the first cup of juice than he asked for a second. Then he took a glass of beef broth. Off went another cable to Honolulu: Exactly how much liquid could he safely consume? If the kidneys are functioning, came the reply, as much as he can accommodate. On the first day aboard the Benalder, Bob drank an astonishing ten gallons of liquid. That his kidneys worked well was cabled to the doctors in Honolulu waiting for the two men. The news was also known by the seamen who were busy emptying bedside urinals all day.

Telegrams were sent to the parents of Bob and Jim, and to Jim’s wife, Wilma, via the Coast Guard. It was past midnight in Moses Lake, Washington, where Wilma Fisher was staying with her husband’s parents. For two and one half months, she had drifted on a sea of her own, from relative to relative, not knowing her husband’s fate, not willing to declare herself legally a widow, not able to accept the verdict of “lost and presumed dead” on everyone else’s lips. She had prepared her two small sons by taking them aside one afternoon and telling them directly, “We may not see our Daddy again.” But in her heart was still a small fire of hope. As devout as Jim, she prayed most of each day. That she had no home, no car, no furniture, no money, no future, that her third child was due in a few weeks, these concerned her less than being condemned to live in a cruel state of uncertainty.

For seven hours on this day of rescue the Coast Guard attempted to reach Wilma, but the telephone in her father-in-law’s home was out of order. Finally Jim’s sister was located and given the news, and she drove from her nearby home through the night at high speed, battered on the door with both her fists, and burst into the house screaming, “The fellows! They’re safe! Wilma, Jim’s alive!”

When she heard the news, Wilma quickly shut her eyes before the tears filled them, and, like her husband, she thanked God.

The two survivors spent five days on the Benalder en route to Midway Island, and on each morning they seemed improved. Bob’s was the more remarkable progress. Sitting up within twenty-four hours, he was eating roast beef on the third day, holding the sailors spellbound on the fourth with his tale of adventure and survival. But Jim remained flat on his back, too weak to sit, spending most of his hours dozing and suffering the nightmares that continued to torment him, like an almost healed wound that would suddenly rupture and spill new poison.

During their recurrence, Jim woke up screaming, thrashing, terror in his eyes. Rails were positioned on his bed and he was gently tied down. He asked for a Bible; that became his chief nourishment. Sleeping, he held it tightly.

When Jim was conscious, the two men rarely spoke to one another, even though their beds were almost as close as they had been during their seventy-two days within the Triton. The fluids softened their throats, but they remained dry with one another. There was no sense of “Look, we’ve come through.” They were men who had exposed their souls; they were men who had journeyed to the outer reaches of human endurance, and perhaps they had shown too much of themselves. Now each wanted to be done with it and the memories. A new and chilling but not surprising barrier of silence rose between them.

Beyond this, a bizarre kind of competition developed, with Jim anxious to gain strength and health as rapidly as Bob. It was as if the duel of their conflicting philosophies had ended in a draw, to be won by the first man who could rise and walk and laugh and return to his full capacities.

When Bob ate roast beef on the third day and carved it himself, Jim wanted the same, although he clearly had not strength enough even to lift a fork to his lips. A seaman fed him oatmeal instead. When Bob rose from his bed and walked, unsteadily, to the toilet, Jim waited until the seaman was out of the room and attempted the same. But his face immediately bleached of color and he fell back perspiring and weakened. During the night, Bob heard Jim in prayer, heard him cautiously lower the rails of his bed, heard him try to swing his legs to the floor. Bob thought about warning Jim, but he realized that his caution would not be accepted. Instead, Jim tried desperately to get up in the darkness, but he could not accomplish the simple feat of standing alone. How long can he take these disappointing responses to his prayers? Bob wondered.

On September 26, the officers and crew of the Benalder spruced up in stiff and gleaming whites to salute the U. S. Coast Guard, which was dispatching a tugboat from Midway to fetch the two star passengers. A verdant two-mile-square chunk of rock in the Pacific, Midway does not have a harbor deep enough to accommodate ships as large as the Benalder.

With music blaring from speakers scattered about the ship, flags waving, salutes popping, cameras clicking, the two survivors were ceremoniously placed onto stretchers and lowered carefully to the tugboat, tied alongside. The American seamen waiting below, while solicitous of their cargo, were in stark contrast to the Scottish crew. They dressed for the transfer in wrinkled and faded marine denims, along with a demeanor that, while businesslike, more resembled Wallace Beery with cigar stump in mouth than the formal protocol of the Scots.

Transferred from the tug to a military cargo plane at Midway, Bob and Jim were flown to Honolulu amidst a shipment of golf carts. En route, Bob learned that their destination was Castle Memorial Hospital, a renowned Seventh Day Adventist medical institution in Honolulu. This was on orders of Jim’s family and Bob felt immediately a wave of annoyance. Was the church he had rejected going to make a propagandistic miracle out of their resurrection?

In Honolulu, the men were transferred by helicopter to the hospital parking lot, where beds on wheels were ready to rush them to separate rooms, Bob in a specially equipped area for emergencies, Jim in intensive care.

Tired from the airplane trip and the excitement of the day, Bob fell asleep. When he awoke, a doctor with a somber face stood beside his bed.

“Would you like to call home?” the doctor asked.

“I think we should contact Wilma,” agreed Bob. He was not yet ready to speak with Linda’s parents. He could not handle his mother-in-law’s tears and grief.

The doctor sat beside Bob and felt his pulse. He nodded reassuringly. “Jim’s chemistry is off the chart,” he said. “His condition is pretty serious. I think his wife should come, if she can.”

“How serious?”

“We’re still doing tests. He’s a sick boy.”

Once more the survivors met, in the hallway beside the nurses’ station. A telephone call had been placed to Wilma in Moses Lake. Both men arrived in their rolling beds and they looked at each other as strangers. When the receiver was handed to Jim, he stared at it reluctantly, as if he had nothing to say, or as if he were ashamed to speak. The nurse cradled the phone to his ear and he murmured hello to his wife.

Jim spoke but a few broken words, then dropped the telephone to his lap. Bob took it and waited for the attendants to wheel Jim away. Then he told Wilma that she must come to Honolulu. “He needs you,” said Bob. “He is failing.”

When Wilma entered her husband’s hospital room, she tried to hide the shock of seeing the shell of a man who was waiting for her. All the encouraging news she had heard from the press and the Coast Guard—“doing remarkably well, considering,” “taking nourishment,” “gaining strength”—all these descriptions must have come from another’s chart, not that of the bearded man with the ashy eyes who grew weary even as he whispered her name.

She went to him and kissed him and both began to cry.

“I told you I was going to lose weight by the time I got to Costa Rica,” he said.

She managed to laugh. She was determined to be happy before him. She told him not to use his strength talking to her. They would have the rest of their lives for that.

He would not have silence. “I love you so,” he said.

“I love you, too, hubby,” she answered, drying his cheeks where their tears had mingled in the embrace.

“I don’t know where to start telling you,” he said. “I’m just so sorry I ran away.”

“But you didn’t run away,” Wilma said. “You were lost.”

Jim repeated his shame. Somehow in his thoughts he had come to believe that he had abandoned his family.

“I’m sorry I ran away. Please forgive me.”

“You didn’t run away. You were on a mission for God.”

He was happy with her forgiveness. Then he whispered Linda’s name. Wilma nodded, indicating she knew.

“It’s so sad,” said Jim. “But Linda was ready to meet Jesus.”

The brief talk so tired him that Jim closed his eyes and fell asleep, even as Wilma held him.

In Bob’s room, the families gathered. He told the story of the seventy-two days to his parents, to Wilma, to his brothers and sisters. He sent a telegram to Linda’s parents expressing his grief at the tragedy, promising to visit them as soon as he was able, to tell of her courage and love.

By coincidence, an important international figure in the Seventh Day Adventist Church was in Honolulu at the time, making appearances. Bob’s parents brought the news that this great man wished to visit the sickrooms of the two who had survived the sea. Their faces showed the joy at such a request.

“I don’t want that,” said Bob sharply. “I won’t have this turned into some religious circus.”

But the parents pleaded. Couldn’t the famous religious leader just drop by and say hello? No prayers would be said. No scriptures read before him. Bob sighed. It was easier to give permission than to explain why he wanted to be left alone. And he realized that nothing he said or did would dissuade his people from their belief that rescue was by the hand of God.

When the Adventist leader came to his room, Bob turned immediately to the wall and feigned sleep. The leader chatted briefly and warmly with Bob’s parents, then went to see Jim.

On the third day of his stay in the Adventist hospital, Jim suffered kidney failure, and he was transferred, ironically, to a Catholic hospital, which had better facilities for renal cases. There he was put onto a dialysis machine. The next day his lungs congested with pneumonia. Then the blood infection called septicemia was discovered. Twice again he was put back on the kidney machine, but the treatment failed. His condition was so poor that there was no consideration of a kidney transplant. So deteriorated was he by the ordeal that he was likened by his doctors to a very old man whose parts were going out, one by one. The family intensified its prayers.

On October 2, Wilma spent much of the morning reading to her husband from the Bible. Again she urged him not to talk, but Jim had taken to hoarding his energy and waiting to spend it on his wife.

She read a passage from Revelations and the words both comforted and brightened him. “I saw the dead,” she said, “great and small, standing before God; and the Books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to the things written in the Books, each according to the deeds he had done. The oceans surrendered the bodies buried in them; and the earth and the underworld gave up the dead in them. Each was judged, according to his deeds …”

Jim took her arm and pulled Wilma close to his lips. “No matter what happens, we must believe in the will of God,” he said.

Wilma nodded. She hurried to finish the passage before her voice broke. “… Yes, God himself will be among them. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain. All of that has gone … forever …”

Jim tried to raise his head. Wilma put her hand to his neck and cradled him. “God did hear my prayers, didn’t He?”

“Of course, hubby.”

“I tried to do the will of God, Wilma. You understand that, don’t you?”

She nodded again. She saw the profound weariness moving over her husband and she kissed him, promising to return after he slept.

She went downstairs for less than ten minutes. And when she returned, Jim was dead.

The doctor who brought the news to Bob wept. But Bob did not. How curious, he said to himself. He felt sorrow at the news. His sister had lost her husband, his nephews and the unborn child had lost their father. But he did not feel the pain of bereavement that pours acid on the soul. He tried to analyze his feeling. He did not understand fully why he felt the way he did.

Two weeks later, on the day he was discharged from the hospital, Bob was wheeled downstairs and, he thought, toward the ambulance that would take him to the airport. But there remained an unscheduled stop, one he had not been told about. Abruptly Bob was pushed into the hospital chapel, where the families were gathered, their hands linked in a prayer circle. The moment was awkward. “Leave me alone!” Bob wanted to cry. But he endured their prayer and raised his head when the photographers asked for pictures. These would not reveal a man in beatitude.

On the long flight to Los Angeles, where physical therapists and nutritionists waited to restore his arms (only four inches around at the biceps) and his legs (less than seven inches at the thigh), Bob took a seat next to the window. Once, when the clouds broke, he glanced down and saw the Pacific stretching forever below him.

Fascinated for a time, he observed the sea. The Coast Guard officer who had come to take his statement in the hospital had speculated that one day, perhaps, the Triton might wash ashore. If her course held, it might be somewhere in the South Seas. At first, Bob was elated at the prediction. In his haste to leave on the morning of their deliverance, he had forgotten to take with him the house he had carved for Linda and the calendar and the cheap compass, all of which he had wanted as tangible memories. Nor had he remembered to drink the can of celebratory root beer.

But now, as he turned his eyes from the sea and drew the shade, he changed his mind. He hoped that the Triton would never touch land again. Better that she contain her secrets, better that she stay forever adrift, a prisoner of the sea.

He tried to read, but the words blurred before him. He put on the earphones, but the music became three frightened people singing the “Doxology.” He closed his eyes, but the image of an overturned trimaran was burned on the inside of his eyelids. He opened the shade once more and looked again at the sea.

I won, he told himself. My code bested Jim’s. I proved that if a man husbands his energy and uses his mental powers resourcefully, then that man can pass—marked, but basically unharmed—through the most excruciating of ordeals. Jim gambled everything on his naïve passion for God. And he lost.

But Bob felt no victory. If he had won, why was his spirit troubled? Why was his sleep not the sleep of a secure and contented man? Why did he even find himself, in fleeting moments, envying Jim, who had slipped serenely to death and its promise of resurrection?

The thoughts overwhelmed him. He put them away. But he knew that after his muscles were rebuilt and his health restored, they would continue to torment him. He would wrestle with God until the last day of his life.