Monday, May. 31, 1937
Alone at Sea
GENTLEMAN OVERBOARD--Herbert Clyde Lewis--Viking ($1.50).
Those who can recall what it felt like to fall off an aquaplane for the first time may also remember a twinge of loneliness at being abandoned, even briefly, in what may have seemed at the moment like a large waste of water. What would it feel like to fall off a ship in mid-Pacific? Few men have done such a thing, and fewer have lived to tell the tale, but many must have imagined themselves in such a terrifying predicament. With as much calm authority as though he had fallen overboard himself, Herbert Clyde Lewis tells just what it feels like. His hair-raising little tour de force is the more effective for being so quietly, matter-of-factly written.
Standish was a most conservative fellow. At 35 he was a well-dressed, healthy, successful Manhattan stockbroker, husband to an eminently satisfactory wife, father of two nice children. And then suddenly Standish lost all interest in life. He went home, went to bed, lay limp for days. When he got up, his one idea was to get far, far away. Sea-travel seemed to soothe him; he began to enjoy himself once more. But he was in no hurry to get home. And when he did start back it was on a slow boat, by the roundabout and little-traveled route of Hawaii to Panama.
Standish savored every minute of the voyage. The sea was glassy-smooth, the other passengers were mostly likable, the sunsets were tremendous. Standish was so bursting with health and the love of life that he even got up early sometimes to watch the sun rise. The 13th day out of Hawaii he rose before dawn, dressed with his usual care, went forward to his favorite sunrise-watching spot, a door in the bow about 15 ft. above the water, kept open because of the halcyon weather. There he stood and watched the sun rise. As he turned to go, his foot slipped on a grease spot and he fell overboard.
If the Arabella had been a bigger or a faster ship, Standish would doubtless have been pulled in by its suction, smashed by the propellers. As it was, he took quite a buffeting before he popped up in the Arabella's wake. At first he was not at all alarmed, simply embarrassed. He shouted, but nobody heard him. But he knew that on such a small ship his absence would soon be noted; the water was pleasantly lukewarm; he was a strong swimmer and could float indefinitely; he knew there were no sharks in those latitudes. "Just the same, it was a lonely feeling to see the Arabella getting smaller--first the size of a rowboat, then the size of a barrel, then nothing but a smudge of smoke.
Nevertheless Standish did not get panicky. He acted on the whole with remarkable common sense. Knowing that it was simply a matter of time before the Arabella put back to pick him up, he passed the time by himself as well as he could. First he sacrificed his expensive suit and his shoes, but tried to save his wallet. When common sense overcame his modesty he let his striped underclothes go. Meanwhile, on the Arabella, everything was going just as quietly.
But sure enough, Standish's absence was discovered, and the ship put about to look for him. It would make her a day late in Panama, but duty was duty. As the calm narrative steams slowly towards its climax the suspense in which Author Lewis dangles his hero and the reader grows more excruciating. . . .
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