The Open Boat and Other Stories

The Open Boat and Other Stories

Stephen Crane

None of them knew the colour of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and

were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were

of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white,

and all of the men knew the colours of the sea. The horizon narrowed

and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged

with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks.

Many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here

rode upon the sea. These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously

abrupt and tall, and each froth-top was a problem in small boat

navigation.

The cook squatted in the bottom and looked with both eyes at the six

inches of gunwale which separated him from the ocean. His sleeves were

rolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of his unbuttoned vest

dangled as he bent to bail out the boat. Often he said: "Gawd! That was

a narrow clip." As he remarked it he invariably gazed eastward over the

broken sea.

The oiler, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimes

raised himself suddenly to keep clear of water that swirled in over the

stern. It was a thin little oar and it seemed often ready to snap.

The correspondent, pulling at the other oar, watched the waves and

wondered why he was there.

The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that

profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least,

to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm

fails, the army loses, the ship goes down. The mind of the master of a

vessel is rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he commanded for a

day or a decade, and this captain had on him the stern impression of

a scene in the greys of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a stump

of a top-mast with a white ball on it that slashed to and fro at the

waves, went low and lower, and down. Thereafter there was something

strange in his voice. Although steady, it was deep with mourning, and

of a quality beyond oration or tears.

"Keep 'er a little more south, Billie," said he.

"'A little more south,' sir," said the oiler in the stern.

A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking broncho, and,

by the same token, a broncho is not much smaller. The craft pranced

and reared, and plunged like an animal. As each wave came, and she

rose for it, she seemed like a horse making at a fence outrageously

high. The manner of her scramble over these walls of water is a mystic

thing, and, moreover, at the top of them were ordinarily these problems

in white water, the foam racing down from the summit of each wave,

requiring a new leap, and a leap from the air. Then, after scornfully

bumping a crest, she would slide, and race, and splash down a long

incline, and arrive bobbing and nodding in front of the next menace.

A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after

successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another

behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do

something effective in the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dingey

one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of waves

that is not probable to the average experience which is never at sea in

a dingey. As each slaty wall of water approached, it shut all else from

the view of the men in the boat, and it was not difficult to imagine

that this particular wave was the final outburst of the ocean, the last

effort of the grim water. There was a terrible grace in the move of the

As the boat bounced from the top of each wave, the wind tore through

the hair of the hatless men, and as the craft plopped her stern down

again the spray slashed past them. The crest of each of these waves was

a hill, from the top of which the men surveyed, for a moment, a broad

tumultuous expanse, shining and wind-riven. It was probably splendid.

It was probably glorious, this play of the free sea, wild with lights

of emerald and white and amber.

"Bully good thing it's an on-shore wind," said the cook. "If not, where

would we be? Wouldn't have a show."

"That's right," said the correspondent.

The busy oiler nodded his assent.

Then the captain, in the bow, chuckled in a way that expressed humour,

contempt, tragedy, all in one. "Do you think we've got much of a show

now, boys?" said he.

Whereupon the three were silent, save for a trifle of hemming and

hawing. To express any particular optimism at this time they felt to be

childish and stupid, but they all doubtless possessed this sense of the

situation in their mind. A young man thinks doggedly at such times. On

the other hand, the ethics of their condition was decidedly against any

open suggestion of hopelessness. So they were silent.

"Oh, well," said the captain, soothing his children, "we'll get ashore

all right."

But there was that in his tone which made them think, so the oiler

quoth: "Yes! If this wind holds!"

The cook was bailing: "Yes! If we don't catch hell in the surf."

Canton flannel gulls flew near and far. Sometimes they sat down on the

sea, near patches of brown sea-weed that rolled over the waves with a

movement like carpets on a line in a gale. The birds sat comfortably in

groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of

the sea was no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens

a thousand miles inland. Often they came very close and stared at the

men with black bead-like eyes. At these times they were uncanny and

sinister in their unblinking scrutiny, and the men hooted angrily at

them, telling them to be gone. One came, and evidently decided to

alight on the top of the captain's head. The bird flew parallel to

the boat and did not circle, but made short sidelong jumps in the

air in chicken-fashion. His black eyes were wistfully fixed upon the

captain's head. "Ugly brute," said the oiler to the bird. "You look as

if you were made with a jack-knife." The cook and the correspondent

swore darkly at the creature. The captain naturally wished to knock

it away with the end of the heavy painter; but he did not dare do it,

because anything resembling an emphatic gesture would have capsized

this freighted boat, and so with his open hand, the captain gently and

carefully waved the gull away. After it had been discouraged from the

pursuit the captain breathed easier on account of his hair, and others

breathed easier because the bird struck their minds at this time as

being somehow grewsome and ominous.

In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed. And also they

rowed.

They sat together in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then the

oiler took both oars; then the correspondent took both oars; then the

oiler; then the correspondent. They rowed and they rowed. The very

ticklish part of the business was when the time came for the reclining

one in the stern to take his turn at the oars. By the very last star

of truth, it is easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to

change seats in the dingey. First the man in the stern slid his hand

along the thwart and moved with care, as if he were of Sèvres. Then the