Lost at Sea Essay -- Personal Narrative Rescue Essays

Lost at Sea The breeze from the Indian Ocean moved across my skin like freshly ironed silk as I stood on the fantail of the aircraft carrier looking up at the night sky. It is an impressive sight to look upon the fires of those uncountable stars. If you were to take the grandest starlit sky that you could imagine, then imagine it after God has thrown another bucket of stars across the dark. That is like the night sky at sea can be. Flight operations had secured several hours earlier, and I used the opportunity to escape from the steel interior of the ship. I tried to get some fresh air at least once a day to deliver my senses from the smells of jet fuel and sweat that pervaded my world. Days are long when the ship is underway. The fifteen or twenty minutes of fresh air I could get in the evenings rejuvenated me. There is no deeper dark than the dark at sea. The stars are bright in the sky, but they don't lower themselves to light the deck of the ship. Warships practice light security and no white light is allowed to breach the weather decks. White light travels for miles at sea. The only light on deck is what meager light your retinas can collect from the moon and stars. There seemed to be no moon in the sky on this night. I could barely make out the vague shapes of the aircraft parked around the flight deck. I stood there for some time letting the stars persuade me that my home wasn't really all that far away, when I sensed someone's presence. Half way through a turn toward the feeling, my arms were grasped and I was being pushed toward the catwalk. I remember calling out, trying to figure out what was going on, when I heard a gruff voice say, "This just ain't your night swabby, you're going for a swim with the... ...me small drinks of cold fresh water. I grabbed for the canteen, but didn't have the strength to take it. "It's a lucky thing we spotted you, shipmate." another voice said to me. I was lifted into a stokes type stretcher and a blurry face appeared before me "They've got the two dudes that tossed you in custody. It seems like it was a case of mistaken identity. They thought they were tossing someone else over." He laughed a quick short "Ha!" and looked at me like I was the hero, and not him. I would have cried if there had been any water in me to spare. The chopper followed the octopus wearing my boots and landed on the deck I had left four days earlier. I felt the stretcher being offloaded, bouncing me toward sickbay. I looked at the sea one last time with burnt red eyes before they brought me into the interior of the ship and I said to it, "I beat you!"