LISTENING : Today we will listen to "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane.
Stephen Crane (1871-1900), American journalist, poet, and author wrote The Red Badge of Courage: an episode of the American Civil War (1895). He was born on 1 November 1871 at 14 Mulberry Place in Newark, New Jersey.
"The Open Boat" (1898), a fictionalised account of his own harrowing experience adrift in a boat after the Commodore sank.
The
Open Boat, Part 1 (By Stephen Crane)
Our story today is called "The Open Boat" It was written by
Stephen Crane and is based on what really happened to him in 1896.
Crane was traveling from the United States to Cuba as a newspaper reporter.
One night, his ship hit a sandbar. It sank in the Atlantic Ocean,
off the coast of Florida. Most of the people on board got into
lifeboats. Crane was among the last to leave. There were three
others with him: the ship's captain, the cook, and a sailor.
These four men climbed into the only remaining lifeboat. The boat was
so small that no one believed it could stay afloat for very long. None of
the four men thought he would ever reach the shore. But the men fought
the seas bravely, with all their strength. Would they finally reach land?
Here is Shep O'Neal with the first part of the story.
The small lifeboat bounced from wave to wave in the rough seas of the
Atlantic. The four men in the boat could not see the sky. The waves
rose too high.
The waves with their white tops pushed at the open boat with angry
violence. Every man thought each wave would be his last. Surely, the boat
would sink and he would drown. The men thought that most adults would
need a bathtub larger than the boat they were sailing. The waves were
huge, and each created a problem in guiding the direction of the boat.
For two days, since the ship sank, the four men had been struggling to
reach land. But there was no land to be seen. All the men saw were
violent waves which rose and came fiercely down on them.
The men sat in the boat, wondering if there was any hope for them.
The ship's cook sat in the bottom of the boat. He kept looking at
the fifteen centimeters which separated him from the ocean.
The boat had only two wooden oars. They were so thin – it seemed as
if they would break against the waves. The sailor, named Billie, directed
the boat's movement with one of the oars. The newspaper reporter pulled
the second oar. He wondered why he was there in the boat.
The fourth man was the captain of the ship that had sunk. He lay in
the front of the small boat. His arm and leg were hurt when the ship
sank. The captain's face was sad. He had lost his ship and many of
his sailors. But he looked carefully ahead, and he told Billie when to
turn the boat.
"Keep her a little more south, Billie,” he said.
"A little more south, sir,” the sailor repeated.
Sitting in the boat was like sitting on a wild horse. As each wave
came, the boat rose and fell, like a horse starting toward a fence too high to
jump. The problem was that after successfully floating over one wave you
find that there is another one behind it just as strong and ready to flood your
boat.
As each wall of water came in, it hid everything else that the men could
see. The waves came in silence; only their white tops made threatening
noises.
In the weak light, the faces of the men must have looked gray. Their
eyes must have shone in strange ways as they looked out at the sea. The
sun rose slowly into the sky. The men knew it was the middle of the day
because the color of the sea changed from slate gray to emerald green, with
gold lights. And the white foam on the waves looked like falling snow.
As the lifeboat bounced from the top of each wave, the wind tore through
the hair of the men. As the boat dropped down again the water fell just
past them. The top of each wave was a hill, from which the men could see,
for a brief period, a wide area of shining sea.
The cook said the men were lucky because the wind was blowing toward the
shore. If it started blowing the other way, they would never reach land.
The reporter and the sailor agreed. But the captain laughed in a
way that expressed humor and tragedy all in one. He asked: "Do you
think we've got much of a chance now, boys?”
This made the others stop talking. To express any hope at this time
they felt to be childish and stupid. But they also did not want to
suggest there was no hope. So they were silent.
"Oh, well,” said the captain, "We'll get ashore all right"
But there was something in his voice that made them think, as the sailor
said: "Yes, if this wind holds!”
Seagulls flew near and far. Sometimes the birds sat down on the sea
in groups, near brown seaweed that rolled on the waves. The anger of the
sea was no more to them than it was to a group of chickens a thousand miles
away on land. Often the seagulls came very close and stared at the men
with black bead-like eyes. The men shouted angrily at them, telling them
to be gone.
The sailor and the reporter kept rowing with the thin wooden oars.
Sometimes they sat together, each using an oar. Sometimes one would pull
on both oars while the other rested. Brown pieces of seaweed appeared
from time to time. They were like islands, bits of earth that did not
move. They showed the men in the boat that it was slowly making progress
toward land.
Hours passed. Then, as the boat was carried to the top of a great
wave, the captain looked across the water.
He said that he saw the lighthouse at Mosquito Inlet. The cook also
said he saw it. The reporter searched the western sky.
"See it?” said the captain.
"No,” said the reporter slowly, "I don't see anything"
"Look again,” said the captain. He pointed. "It's
exactly in that direction"
This time the reporter saw a small thing on the edge of the moving horizon.
It was exactly like the point of a pin.
"Think we'll make it, captain?” he asked.
"If this wind holds and the boat doesn't flood, we can't do much
else,” said the captain.
It would be difficult to describe the brotherhood of men that was here
established on the sea. Each man felt it warmed him. They were a
captain, a sailor, a cook and a reporter. And they were friends.
The reporter knew even at the time that this friendship was the best experience
of his life.
All obeyed the captain. He was a good leader. He always spoke
in a low voice and calmly.
"I wish we had a sail,” he said, "to give you two boys a chance
to rest" So they used his coat and one of the oars to make a sail
and the boat moved much more quickly.
The lighthouse had been slowly growing larger. At last, from the top
of each wave the men in the boat could see land. Slowly, the land seemed to
rise from the sea. Soon, the men could see two lines, one black and one
white.
They knew that the black line was formed by trees, and the white line was
the sand. At last, the captain saw a house on the shore. And the
lighthouse became even larger.
"The keeper of the lighthouse should be able to see us now,” said the
captain. "He'll notify the life-saving people"
Slowly and beautifully, the land rose from the sea. The wind came
again. Finally, the men heard a new sound – the sound of waves breaking
and crashing on the shore.
"We'll never be able to make the lighthouse now,” said the captain.
"Swing her head a little more north, Billie"
"A little more north, sir,” said the sailor.
The men watched the shore grow larger. They became hopeful. In
an hour, perhaps, they would be on land. The men struggled to keep the
boat from turning over.
They were used to balancing in the boat. Now they rode this
wild horse of a boat like circus men. The water poured over them.
The reporter thought he was now wet to the skin. But he felt in the
top pocket of his coat and found eight cigars. Four were wet, but four
were still dry. One of the men found some dry matches. Each man lit
a cigar. The four men sailed in their boat with the belief of a rescue
shining in their eyes. They smoked their big cigars and took a drink of
water.
This
program was adapted for Special English by Shelley Gollust and produced by
Lawan Davis. Your storyteller was Shep O'Neal.
