The first torpedo came out of the darkness and hit amidship some time after midnight. Emilio felt it as much as he heard it sounding like a cavernous echo somewhere in the hollow depths of the ship, plunging the crew’s quarters into immediate darkness. He could feel the ship beginning to list to the port side. When the second torpedo hit, it was followed by a choking smoke that stung his eyes and burned his lungs as he stumbled and fell in the darkness, feeling the harsh metal of the ship’s floor scraping against his knees.
Panic ensued. He cursed himself for his own stubbornness at having taken his pants off, remembering how he’d told himself it was too hot to sleep in them. Now, he couldn’t find them. It didn’t matter, he told himself as he struggled to stand upright. He was holding on to the bunks on his left side, feeling the ship shudder underneath him, listening to a distant bang that sounded like a metronome coming out of the darkness, and he wondered what that could be. The propeller shaft, he told himself. It’s bent, he thought, as if the explanation made perfect sense to himself.
It was too dark to see where he was going, so he followed the crowd in front of him, hoping someone knew where they were going. A horn blared somewhere outside, and he saw a flashing red light ahead of him, thinking maybe someone had found a hatch and pushed it open.
The sea was rough, the waves cresting the deck, and the night sky looked to be filled with fire. The upper deck was in flames; the bridge lost behind a curtain of smoke. He could feel the list through his bare feet and wondered why he hadn’t thought about his boots before running for safety. And where was his life jacket? He was shivering in the cold. The waves were cresting the bow, and he watched as the bow slowly dropped below the horizon. He turned and looked out at the water. There were bodies floating — chalk-white impressions written against a black slate of the water — and he couldn’t tell if they were dead or dying.
There was a thunderous shudder and he could feel the ship starting to roll out from underneath him. He grabbed the deck rail and held on, knowing that if he fell he wouldn’t be able to get back up in time. The ship was going over — corkscrewing itself under the high waves — and any moment it would be all hands overboard. There hadn’t been time to get lifeboats prepared. Who expects to have to abandon a hospital ship in the middle of the night? All he could think of was that the ship was going over, and they were in the middle of the South Pacific. He was going to drown and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He was certain to fight it — he knew that much — but really, what more did he expect?
He could feel his feet adjusting to the slant of the deck underneath. All he had to do was hold on to the rail and know when to let go. He didn’t want to get dragged under — not without a life vest — and knew he was probably going to die tonight. He’d heard stories of ships drowning in the vastness of the open sea; there’d been stories of some going down in a matter of minutes, and he wondered how long it had been since the first explosion.
He let go of the railing when he saw the water coming up to meet him. He let the ship’s twisting momentum throw him out into the water, and held his breath as the silent behemoth passed underneath him — a cold and malevolent shadow slipping under the depths — leaving a trail of detritus on the surface of the water: bodies, and life vests, and life boats breaking the surface as though released from captivity. He struggled to reach out for a life vest and clung to the side of a half submerged life boat. It was upside down, held up by a pocket of air underneath.
It was over in a moment. The ship was gone and the air was filled with the shouts of the drowning men. There was a churning of water and in a moment the ocean parted and the hull of a submarine broke the surface. Sailors came out on board and an officer ordered them to man the guns on deck. In a moment they opened fire and Emilio dove under the waves, holding on to the side of the lifeboat and coming up underneath it. He began to kick his legs, riding the crested waves and praying the machine guns would not be pointed at him.
The air around him was silent, cavernous, and all he could hear was his own erratic breathing. Something below brushed up against his leg and he kicked out, panicked at the sudden shock of cold flesh, as much as the fact that it had come out of the darkness beneath him. He crawled out from under the boat, found a length of rope and tied it around his waist. His first thought was that the boat would right itself, take on water and drag him to the watery depths. His other thought was that if he lost the boat he wouldn’t have anything to hold to. He floated to the sunken end of the lifeboat, then pulled himself out of the water and lay on the hull of the craft.
The sky broke free of the clouds and he could see the sheen of the ship’s oil slick glistening in the light of a fading moon. There was a churning in the water and he climbed up higher on the lifeboat, telling himself he had to get out of the water. The submarine may have gone but the sharks had come, lured by the scent of blood in the water.
Emilio rolled onto his back, looked up at the sky and wept.
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