The Voyage of the Frog: Chapters 12–16

Water in the morning. Four plastic cups. He figured that as close to a quart. Four more cups at night. Two quarts equaled half a gallon. His daily ration.

It was viciously salty and he had to drink water as soon as he put the plastic spoon down; then he forced himself to cover the can with a piece of plastic wrap and save the other half for tomorrow.

And that bothered him because he didn’t think it was quite right that he should know more about a funky movie about a mechanical shark than about a president, so he got into trying to summon up more about Lincoln than Jaws, and when it was finally done—he figured in the end they were about even because he remembered the mole on Lincoln’s cheek and thought that was a pretty good detail

he had frittered away most of the afternoon without learning anything and he leaned back and saw the plane.

It was a high jet, leaving a white contrail, heading from east to west, right over the top of him, and for a second his heart jumped.

Then he tighted the jib a bit but left it loose and billowing to catch the light air.

The movement of the helm pulled the bow over slowly, ever so slowly until it was pointed dead east—ninety degrees on the compass numbers glowing in the darkness—and now the sails filled like two ghost wings against the sky and the Frog started to move.

The black skin glistened with water, the white markings so defined they looked painted by an artist.

And before he could breathe again, another whale rose, then another and still another until four of them surrounded the cockpit, moving with the boat in tandem, looking down on David sitting beneath them.

High-pitched squeaking sounds with clicks at odd intervals over the top of him, back and forth.

The other whales did the same, their huge dorsal fins flopping over to the side, curving up out of the water as they swam next to the Frog, almost in formation with her.

And he suddenly remembered a prayer he had seen on a plaque for sale in the store at the marina.

In the afternoon he saw clouds coming from his back, from the northwest, low clouds moving fast, and the wind stiffened again, pushing the Frog over to a more severe heeling angle though she still sailed well, and for the first time he thought of himself and the Frog as “we.”

Movement awakened him, but not with any urgency.

He thought, there are waves making up, and that was a nautical way to think, and he did not know why he’d think that way now but he did.

The hull gave a resounding thump and she seemed nearly to stop.

The change was astounding. It was like a different ocean.

The noise virtually disappeared, the slamming stopped, and the Frog surfed down the long swells and waves so fast she sometimes showed close to ten knots on the speed indicator.

Soon he was keeping to a steady eight knots, surging to nine and ten when she surfed and slid down the waves.

He laughed with the speed, reveled in it, roared with it—the Frog like a train barreling down a mountain.

He slammed the tiller over just as he felt the surf grab the boat and begin to carry them into the fatal run to shore.

She hit then, the keel-centerboard bumping with a sickening feeling that shuddered all through him, a lurching, dead feeling.

Another bump, worse than the first, the surf crashing all around him and suddenly, impossibly, she was free and reaching again, the surf-sound diminishing.

And land. He had found land.
The elation held for several moments.

There were low bluffs, rock and sand and dunes that dimmed away out of sight, but no sign of any human habitation.

Desert. Bleak and dry and sandy with rock ridges.

Carefully, so the chain wouldn’t rub on the boat and mar the finish—Owen had always worried about the finish and without really meaning to David found himself looking for new scratches or scrubs—he lowered the anchor.

The stink was so putrid, so vile—some kind of rotten fish odor mixed with hot breath and sticky seawater—he couldn’t stand it: a thick stink, a rotten-rich-thick stink that filled every corner of his sleep and awakened him and drove him to his knees before his eyes were even open.

Before he could take in the whole scene, an enormous back rolled out of the water near the Frog and a whale blew, a mighty vaporous cloud of breath and spray as its lungs expelled air and David caught the same odor that had covered him while he slept.

Rotten krill, shrimp, plankton, small fish—they ate it all—mixed with gallons of . . . what?

A whole pod of them must have come in while he slept: some small—he saw several with calves—and some large and some so immense they seemed to fill the sea, fill the world, and they were all around him.

When he could see them no longer, not even the spouts pluming moisture into the faint moonlight, he raised a hand, standing at the stern holding the boom, and waved with a small motion, a sad little wave and knew, knew then that he could not stay any longer in the bay.

It would sound cocky, smart-mouth to say that he, David, was captain of the Frog.

“You know that it’s three hundred and fifty miles back to Ventura? Against prevailing wind and current? You’ll have to tack the whole way. It could take two, three weeks. More if you hit bad weather.”

A gull which had been following the ship screeched and flew over, banking on a wind eddy.