Passage to
Elephant
Island
Hell-of-an-Island
By
morning Ernest Montgomery from Dothan, Alabama had decided to lay off the
sightseeing onboard the cruise ship, last he remembered the ship was somewhere
between the Falkland Islands, and the South Shetland Islands, to be exact, he’d
soon find out, they were docked momentarily off the north shores of Elephant
Island. Ernest had been getting tired of the trip, if not bored, from: Buenos
Aires, Port Stanley, around Cape Horn, Chile, docking at Ushuaia, Argentina for
eight hours, the principle reason for taking the cruise was to make his life
more exciting, and he wanted to be around young women, he was forty-five years
old, freshly divorced, and he was discovering, the longer the trip, the older
the clientele—it was a fifteen-day trip, and there was only a few stray women,
and they were bitchy and older than him by twenty-years plus.
With nothing to do but complain, Ernest decided to get as drunk as
scotch whiskey would make him. He found a nice corner in the bar and by
mid-morning two pints had been consumed. The remainder of the morning he spent
on deck looking at an odd island, everyone called “Elephant,” and some called
it “Hell-of-an-Island.”
He went back into the bar bought another pint of scotch whiskey. And he
went back out to the deck; the wind was white and raw. Then he heard a voice
over the ship’s microphone system, it was the Captain, “Elephant
Island ,” said the Captain, “is
779-miles West-southwest of South Georgia, and 581-miles from the south of the
Falkland Islands, and 550-miles southeast of Cape Horn ,
and we are now three miles in front of it.”
Then he heard him say, “Excursion! those who want to go to the Island
meet at…” and then he stopped hearing, and saw a blond, pathetically he
followed her to where folks were signing up to take the excursion, he had
missed her among the nearly two-thousand passengers onboard the ship, perhaps
near thirty on the three zodiacs preparing for the excursion (he simply put an X for his name on the
document—a manifest, for those intending to go to the island, he was too drunk
to do otherwise). He wiped his hands
over his face as if to wake himself up, “What’s the matter?” said the young
woman, the very one he was attempting to pursue, his face wet and appearing as
if he had been crying, but of course he hadn’t been; and now the ship was even
closer to the Antarctic island.
She pulled the scarf out of the way from her face, standing in line
waiting to board the small craft and getting her lifejacket, putting it on, and
clamping the three clamps together, readying to go to the island, Ernest really
not too aware of anything, just in heat over this young damsel, did likewise—a
monkey see monkey do, kind of thing.
“Nothing’s wrong kid,” he said sharply to the young woman, adding, “Why
did something go wrong?” he questioned.
The girl turned her back, she was hurt, and seemingly one could hear a
few sniffles, as if they were sighs.
“Say what’s the matter with you anyway?” he asked the girl, “you nuts or
something? Let’s get out of here and go to my room instead of this stupid
island trip! Okay?” but she never turned around again, and so Ernest simply put
on his lifejacket, as did the thirteen other people getting into the small
zodiac-boat—although he hesitated, thinking, perhaps thinking why waste time on
this stuck-up chick and this stupid excursion, but before he could deliberate
any further—or completely, they were on their way to the area where Ernest Shackleton
had made his campsite, in 1916, along with twenty-two of his companions—to
Point Wild.
The closer the inflated zodiac vessel got to the island, the more
inhospitable it looked to Ernest, “Say,” said the young lady, the very one
Ernest had tried to pick up, “are you soused?”
“No, I’m as sober as a dead rat, what’s it to you lady?” said Ernest. It
was as if she was trying to rekindle the candle—figuratively speaking, the one
he had lit, and rudely blew out.
“That’s right,” he said, “hell, I’m sober enough to swim to the island,”
and she laughed, and for once, Ernest took that serious look off his face and
laughed with her. But the fact was, and the fact remained, he was more near to
being soused than he knew, and saw only blurs of her, and blurs of the island,
but he hid most of those drunken mannerisms somehow.
(On the Antarctic Island
“Well, I—say, folks let’s board the zodiac-craft and head on back to the
ship,” said the young navigator, in charge of the excursion. As they neared the
ship, Pilar began to look about for Ernest, said to the man sitting next to
her, “Say, where’s that man that I was talking to before, do you know who I
mean?” Not knowing his name. And the man pointed to someone at the other end of
the vessel, who was seasick, and had his head in his palms and his elbows on
his knees—who could have been anybody, and the young woman thinking he was
still drunk, simply said “Oh yes, the stinking drunk. I started to take a
liking for him.” And left well enough alone, thinking no more of it.
The ship now was at sea, heading for Paradise Bay
“How in hell can I get…!” he said out loud, and several times the voice
of his mind mimicked him, with the end of the sentence, ‘off this damn
island…!’ And there he stood thinking, talking out loud, “She was so crazy
about getting my attention, she’ll tell the captain and they’ll come back.”
Then after a long while still standing waiting to see the ship return,
—the voice of his mind scolding him—, he
mumbled, “I reckon that cutie likes me, why didn’t she come across quicker, she
perhaps…perhaps (and lost
his train of thought)… how in
the hell can I get out of here!” (It really
wasn’t a question, but a disparaging statement.)
He looked about—up and down the ice-covered mountainous island (its tallest peak, nearly three-thousand
feet), elephant seals were
observing him from afar; other than that, there was no significant flora or
native fauna, just a few penguins and seals found moseying about Point Wild and
its coast, and a fog and snowstorm was appearing, slowly coming in… he knew he
didn’t have a high cold threshold nor an extreme weather tolerance, and there
was no ship insight, and his pint of whiskey was empty, and he lit his last
cigarette staring out into the sea, waiting, just waiting, continuously
waiting, bored to death, and nearly frozen to death—not believing he was
marooned on an island no more than ten by two kilometers east to west in the
Antarctic waters—waiting, just waiting for the ship to return—continuously waiting, and bored to death…
No: 609/3-28-2010/EC; dedicated to my wife Rosa,
her personal selection. Reedited, 2-2012
