By Hanns Heinz Ewers 1921
Translated by Joe E. Bandel 2008
Copyright 2008 by Joe E. Bandel
Protected under United States Copyright Law as a derivative work of a foreign Author originally published prior to 1923
He had wanted to see the world so he boarded a steamer in Hamburg. It was as if the ocean carried him and not the ship. The ship was only the cradle that held him. It was the almighty Mother that rocked it. The ocean sang, sang for him. When he closed his eyes he could hear the melody and understand the words.
He got to know the Captain and some of the crew. By St. Paul’s reef in the middle of the ocean he asked if they could stop for a few hours to fish for some sharks. The Captain didn’t want to, but said he would ask the engineer. The engineer gave the good word, saying that he could make up the lost time before they got to Montevideo.
So they stopped, baited some hooks, threw them out and caught five powerful fellows. Like all seamen, they sliced the bodies open to look for human remains but found nothing. There is no surplus of human flesh in the middle of the Atlantic by St. Paul’s reef.
Down under in Punta Arenas they met up with a dirty tramp steamer out of the La Plata government. It was going around between the islands lost. The Captain was a Basque out of the mountains and supposed to take soundings at different locations but couldn’t find them. There was a Kosmos agent onboard out of Sudhafen, Germany. He copied some figures out of a German book he had and gave them to the Captain. The Captain paid with many furs and sealskins and went back to Buenos Aires. No one ever read it.
They crossed the straits of Magellan to Tierra del Fuego, then over to Pantagonia. They shot wild Llamas in South America and in North America shot otters and large fox. Up in Alaska they visited the wretched goldminers that were always searching, freezing, swearing and drinking. They had a few skirmishes with the boat Indians, naked in the cold, starving, dirty, pitiful animals that would sell their lives for a mouthful of schnapps.
In a quiet bay he lay on the deck watching the blue glaciers break off and slide deep down into the ocean. On the way back he looked into the water for a seal or penguin and threw bacon pieces for the cape pigeons, Boobies, and albatross that were putting on a show like clumsy giant ducks.
In the long evenings he would lay below in his cabin on furs or beneath furs or smoke and play chess with the Swedish helmsman. There were his old books as well. He certainly dreamed with them. There were not very many, only six or seven; Jacomino’s Fra. of Verona, Jacopone’s da Todi, and others by Brother Pacificus and St. Bonaventure.
The Swede looked at them derisively and a bit skittishly, “They never went around Cape Horn!”
Frank Braun said, “Never? Magellan probably had Brother Pacificus and St. Bonaventure on his bookshelf when he went around it the first time.”
He left the ship, bought a pair of horses somewhere and rode off with two Indians through Pantagonia, climbed over the Andes and down into Coronal, Chile. He climbed on a small whaler at a Norwegian station and helped harpoon two whales. He broke off a pair of teeth from the huge animals and rode back to the ship snail slow in the cockleshell towing both huge animals, one on the port side and one on the starboard.
Then he went through German Chile, north with the train through Spanish Chile, again over the Andes and back to Bolivia. He sang and drank with the German officers stationed there that were making soldiers out of the barefooted monkeys.
By that time he was ready to go back. There was a steamer from Hapag Lines waiting in Antofagasta harbor. He was strong and healthy except for that little something that would never leave.
The green water was so clear you could see many meters down. Close by the boat was a thick cloud of waltzing, shoving swarms of herring that were gleaming bright like silver patina. There were a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand herring in the silver cloud.
The sea lions were hunting them and driving them deeper into the harbor. They formed a large half circle that surrounded the fish completely from shore to bay and back to shore on the other side. Like skilled cattle drivers one surfaced and then another. An old one surfaced and pushed against the ship’s rudder.
Oh, the old fellow knew well enough that he was free, that he was protected and that no one on the West Coast would be permitted to harm him. He was curious about the boat. Would anyone come out into the water? Would the ship leave? Who would be dumb enough to leave this place? To go away from this happy hunting ground of uncountable herring?
Fools, he thought, fools! He pushed his powerful body in a hard leap half out of the water and dove back in, head over heals reveling in the rich booty. Behind him stretched the Saltpeter wasteland, a bleak, desolate stretch that rose at almost thirty degrees between the ocean and the mountains.
It was brown, white, yellow and red. No trees, no shrubs, not a blade of grass, nothing. The city, Antofagasta, stood out in the heat of the sun like Arequipa, like Mollendo, like Iquique and all the other cities, the German, the English, the Chilean, the Croatian and the Syrian. They were all torn out of the unproductive soil, the same soil that in the old country would give lush crops.
The people were pale and withered like the wasteland around them. It is as if a great sigh sounded over the long West Coast, “Water!” There is a mighty ocean full of water close by but it does not help!
The sea lion doesn’t understand at all. Flocks of white birds swarm on the cliffs and the hunt is on, the great drive hunt. The females and young animals take the middle, on both flanks are the older and stronger ones. The circle always closes tighter, the water is always more shallow, the herring are always being pushed in on the breakwater.
No humans are fishing, it is a holiday. A couple of tired and sleepy rascals look downward from the harbor as the sea lions seize, grasp, devour and hunt in the silver cloud. They throw themselves high and shoot back into the water, ten, twenty of them at the same time.
Little clever heads show between them, almost like people, these birds that have become fish, the penguins. They are jealous because they can only seize one fish at a time while the seals are devouring dozens.
An ancient giant bull, heavy and forceful, lifts himself onto the pier with a loud crash. He pants, snorts and shakes his head, blinking through the bright sunlight over at the boat.
He knows it, this old one, knows it well, knows the secret of life. To become a fish, he thinks. That’s what it is! For humans as well as it is for the saucy birds, for the penguins! Become a fish, oh, you silly people, become a fish! Come back into the ocean!
He laughs, looks smiling at the clumsy pelican that is over in the water splashing like a thick ball! It sticks its head under the water and brings it back out with a herring in its beak. Then it throws the fish high and catches it in its craw before fluttering laboriously up from the waves back to the shelter of the cliffs.
Clumsy and awkward, thinks the old one, so clumsy and awkward! As if to prove his point, he springs down from the pier with a mighty leap into the water and emerges in the blink of an eye with the booty between his teeth. It is not a herring this time but a different fish three feet long. He holds the wriggling fish sideways in his mouth, throws it high like the pelican and catches it. Then he does it again like a juggler!
Seagulls come, five or six of them, screaming and shrieking as they fly around his head pecking at the fish, wanting their share as well. He bites it in two, devours one half and leaves the other for the birds, magnanimous, almost compassionate, and returns once more to the hunt.
