The Forty Fathom Bank and Other Stories by Les Galloway

with the cold sea smell was the delicate trace of hay and clover, subtle as perfume, from the islands beyond the northwest rim of the darkened waters. Sweet fragrance in the approaching night, soft land-smells in therising night wind. The birds grew restless; more flew aloft, sitting close together on the spreaders; clung wind-blown along the hempen strands of the topping lift. Suddenly one of the birds flew out of the rigging and started over the water. It flew straight ahead toward land, then circled uncertainly, started off again, out toward the westward islands.
    Then one by one the birds dropped out of the rigging and flew away after the leader. In a little while they were all gone and only the little one on the coaming was left. He had been there since morning, never once moving. Far away and dead ahead I could see the bright pinpoint of light flashing intermittently under the twilight sky on the lighthouse above the harbor. I thought again of catching the little bird, of putting him for the while in the locker under the cockpit seat and letting him go when I reached shore. I reached down slowly as I had done earlier in the morning but suddenly he came to life, flipped his wings and hopped up onto the pinrail. He sat there a moment, the wind shaking the feathers on his wings, parting the yellow feathers on his breast. Then he flew out over the water after the others. For a short time I could see him flying high above the waves, a tiny black spot against the deepening sky. Beyond him I could see the others flying in short shallow sweeps like a flight of woodland swallows across a mountain valley. Then slowly and steadily I could see the little one sinking down toward the wavetops and the sky beyond him growing darker.
    Up ahead I could see the channel lights winking green and red, the bow-splashed white water that foamed along the hull. Close astern the waves rose steep. Deep within the dark slopes I could see the first faint fire of the ocean night lights flash and gleam and disappear.

Last Passenger North, or The Doppelganger

May the eye go to the sun, the breath to the wind
.
    ~ RIG-VEDA X ,
16, 3
.
    Look, look,
    And thou shalt see
    The great immensity
    Enclosing thee.

1

    The old wood-hulled steam schooner,
Caspar
, lay alongside the San Francisco Warehouse Company’s dock near the entrance to the Third Street channel. A dry north wind blowing steadily over the city stirred the dust in quick little eddies around the corners of the soot-blackened brick warehouse and ruffled the feathers of gulls squatting on the splintered planks. A broken piston rod that had delayed the
Caspar
’s departure by more than twelve hours had been replaced. From her rusted stack a twisting black trunk of crude oil smoke rose into the air to flatten into a dense cloud over the channel.
    Captain Larson, or Midnight Larson, as he was known to his shipmates, stretched wearily on his canvas deck chair in the sheltered lee of the fo’c’sle head. The visor of his officer’s cap, pulled down to shade his eyes from the sun’s glare, cast a shadow over the gray stubble on his cheeks. The
Collected Works of Dostoevsky
, its dog-eared pages and margins filled with pencilled notes, lay open in his lap. He had given the deck crew time off while the engine was being repaired. He regretted having to keep his chief engineer and his two assistants below since he knew the inland heat carried by that unusual north wind made the engine room nearly unbearable. He planned to make up for their unpleasant overtime by extra shore leave in Eureka providing, he reflected anxiously, the engine did not break down again.
    To add to his troubles, O’Hare, the company agent, had informed him there would be a passenger on the northbound trip.
    â€œA passenger!” the Captain exclaimed. It was the first passenger the
Caspar
had booked in more than fifteen years.
    â€œWhere’s he going?”
    â€œEureka, or possibly as far as