Dead Sailors Never Rise
written by: H.E. Ross
I guess interesting is the word of wonder at why I look at my watch when waiting for the day to break? I sit in a damp mood with anxiety, looking for relief only gained by that sprig that lightens the darkness to morning.
My watch had a hand that slides over a marked number five and another hand that has just passed the same number. It is dark all around me with the tinted colours in my cockpit and up there in the sails.
The mainsail pulls with drips that are invisible, just heard, or just known to be there. I sit up, recognising that I had slumped. I rub my eyes, willing them alive and awake to the itch that will catch the first touches of light.
The world has become small through the importance of the day’s brightness. I do wonder about the sanity and how important we want that term to be. The wait for a glimmer on the sea top means more than anything at this point in my life, and I can do nothing about its reality. Is that how gods were invented? Is that why watches were invented? My watch is battery-powered without that old comfort of a tick-tock. It is read as moments of exactness. The sun rise will be exactly at a movement of a tiny arm encased in a globe with a metal base that hugs my wrist. I breathe easier knowing there are just a few more minutes until it defines a horizon for me.
I am alone. Unseen. I am a part of this darkness as water shushes quietly by me as my sails carry my boat forward into more darkness. Sprays of luminescence form tiny bubbles cheerfully and disappear behind my boat.
No, there wasn’t a sprite of light toward the Southeast, just a hope in my head and in the beats of my heart. Yes, it was a sprite of charcoal under the black, and it is growing upward from a line of dark. A hint of lavender forms within the charcoal. Strange.
Where is the bright sky that tells of a new day? Is there really a new day or just a continuance?
I breathe through my nose now, as layers of pale greys define a real, solid horizon and push up old, darker colours. I am alone, wanting another to share this miracle of morning. My lips have formed a smile in my aloneness. Thoughts bunch in my head, and I try to list them, but the excitement of these lights turning the sky into heavy mists seems more important than unphrased thoughts. I look around now to a spreading of light into horizontal grades that vaguely greet my wandering eyes.
It really is like some god is riding these lights across our globe of water with exuberance and a vague cheer.
Yes, I yell out to the sails. You have entered me into another day, I say to the sails, the boat, the sea, the dawn. And with the dawn, I could see a haze to the Northeast that meant land. I questioned it since I had seen no glow of lights in the night in that direction. I went below and turned on the navigation station light to look at the chart again. The land, if there is any, should be toward the Southeast, not the Northeast? Where am I?
Back above, I looked out and saw that the haze was still in the Northeast. I grabbed my binoculars and scanned to the Southeast. There was something, but I could only identify it as a haze. There was something. I decided to set a course for due East, which would mean that I did not really lose much time if I recognised where the land would be. I went below and fixed breakfast of scrambled eggs, refried beans rolled up in a flour tortilla. I brewed some coffee and brought it all above to the cockpit, placed everything neatly on the cockpit seat, and consciously did not look around at the horizon. With my first bite of breakfast, my eyes betrayed me and looked Southeast. I stopped chewing when I could not see the haze. I looked around the horizon and saw no haze nor land anywhere.
I cussed my empty dish and looked around at the day. I missed the sunrise while sitting here eating and looking out to see that blazing ball come out of the sea.
I ate my breakfast, hoping that when I finished, at least the land would appear. It didn’t, but to starboard, a low-lying dark mound was being smoothly washed over by the sea. As I passed it, I could see that it was a rock formation that was extending itself in the direction that I was going. I stood up, climbed out of the cockpit, and onto the cabin top to see a very long finger of submerged land. I jumped down into the cockpit and grabbed the binoculars to look along the finger to find what looked like a small islet with a small brown beach and dark shrubbery appearing through a mist that seemed to move toward the South.
I pulled the helm over to move away from the finger and saw that there was a low-lying dune about a mile away toward the North. I looked around the boat and saw that the water was almost clear, and beneath was not far from the keel of the boat. It was a brownish sand with a few stones and some waving fans of green. I backed the jib, and the boat slowed and started to turn back toward the East. I ran forward and unlashed the main halyard and dropped the mainsail, pulling it by the luff or forward edge until it was completely covering the cabin top. I ran forward, untied the anchor, and let it drop. It went down about ten feet before it sprayed sand, and the boat drifted backward with the plow digging into the sand and straightening the chain that I had fed out until I felt myself safely settled in place.
Back at the cockpit, I pulled the furling line for the jib. There was hardly any breeze, and I found that I was sweating but kept my t-shirt on while I furled the mainsail and loosely tied it off. The sun was a little off the horizon, but it was already very warm. The warmth was clearing away the light mist that enveloped a low growth of land that might have been the mainland, but the mist had not cleared completely, and I could see that there were now trees, and the land had a rise. I sat down on the cockpit seat and relaxed with my back against the coaming and looked around. I was in a cove but still did not know where. A small swell came in at an angle from the Northwest and was not strong enough to even turn the boat.
I faintly heard faint beats of some music in this morning mist and saw a few houses on stilts with thatched roofs off to the North. They had panga boats pulled up on the dark sand beach that extended into the mist. When I heard muffled voices and bits of laughter, I knew I was okay.
- Dead Sailors Never Rise - June 17, 2026
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