23^rd May,2011

The plane flew over the illuminated area once more. Those magnificent trophies for the sharks the blazing globes-continued to burn in the waves. If only they could have burned in the sharks’ bellies! The plane circled once and flew off into the night sky. They did not see it again.

Heidi was given the sparklingly clean isolation ward. There she was met by Natasha Popova.

One of the mates went to the bridge and spoke to the captain. “You’ll be going below to isolation ward now, of course.”

The captain filled his pipe, and then asked, “What for?”

Stress, bruises, exposure, exhaustion – Heidi had gotten her full share. But the joy of being rescued works wonders. Heidi regained her self-control. She tried to do everything herself: take off her own clothes, walk, pour her own water….it was if she were showing her gratitude for being rescued. She could not manage everything the weakness she felt was stronger than she was. But she tried. And smiled as she did. She had held out alone in the ocean and now she wanted to hold out among others.

A captain was drawn over the window of the isolation ward: half the ship’s company was milling around noisily outside, as though Heidi was about to give birth.

……. When she asked for a style dryer, Natasha realized that Heidi was fine. She gave Heidi hers.

The young pilot was ready to meet the captain. And the captain came.

“Well,” he said in English, “how do you feel?”

“Okay!” Heidi replied brightly. “It’s all over now. Thank you.”

“We’ve been in touch with Honolulu,” the captain told her. “Now we’re sailing towards one another – an American ship and ours. We should meet in about four or five hours. You’ll be transferred to it. Get some rest.”

Heidi nodded. “Captain,” she blurted out, “ I don’t know what would have happened to me if you’d come half an hour later than you did. Or not come at all… I don’t know.”

And I don’t know, Mochalov wanted to say, but refrained because he knew quite well what would have happened. He laid his hand on her shoulder for an instant, “It’s all right.”

The Soviet refrigerator ship and an American military vessel met five hours later, as estimated. Dawn was approaching. The storm still raged. Almost everyone came up on deck to see Heidi off. She kissed the sailors, hugged the ship’s doctor and shook hands with the captain and his mates. The boat from the American ship approached. In the light of the deck lamps a rope was tied around Heidi – for safety’s sake. Then she was led to the Jacob’s ladder. Heidi dashed fearlessly to the twelve meter drop and descended. Below she was caught by her countrymen. She waved and waved until the boat was concealed from view. The ships parted.

From – No Man Is An Island

Written by Gennady Bocharov

22^nd May, 2011

The pilots saw that a boat had been lowered into the water. The plane turned and flew off. Half a minute later it reappeared, speeding just above the waves towards the boat. When it was about one hundred meters short the pilots switched on a powerful searchlight. Its long white ray traced an exact course for the boat-right up to Heidi’s life raft.

The plane shot upwards and vanished into the darkness. The next minute it reappeared, flying even lower, and again the white beam traced the same course. The third time the plane flew higher and the beam glided along the water at an obtuse angle.

The burning globes danced around the boat. Thus, the riddle was solved. Ahead a tiny electric light twinkled. Heidi’s life raft was fitted out with a light bulb and battery. The captain’s radio came to life.

“There are luminous buoys around us,” Logvinov reported. And a bit later, “A little girl.”

They opened the cowling and went in closer. Went right up to the raft. Now they could see that it contained not a child but a young woman. They calculated the amplitude of the waves, and then grabbed the raft. It broke away. Heidi could not bear to wait-she tumbled towards them. Arms gathered her up and pulled her into the boat. Water streamed from her. Her legs buckled- room was made for her on a seat. A slight attack of hysterics: she seemed to be laughing. Or perhaps she was crying. The difference between her situation now and the predicament she had just been in was not so very great. Two sailors fished her raft out of the water. The first mate spoke to the captain: “The woman’s in the boat. What next?”

“Where’s the little girl?” the captain asked.

Logvinov said, “It’s her.”

“Can she talk?” the captain asked.

“Yes,” the first mate replied. “She’s already talking.”

He switched off the radio. The whole story tumbled out. Logvinov repeated what Heidi had said to the captain.

“She’s alone,” the first mate said. “She insists she was alone. She was piloting the plane.”

“Look around,” Mochalov nevertheless urges. “May be she’s delirious.”

“Now,” the first mate said, with less assurance. “She seems all right. She wasn’t bobbing out her all that long: 15-18 hours.”

“Come on back,” the captain said.

It look half an hour to get back to the ship – the wind drove heavy, thundering billows along. The sailors looked at Heidi – she was shivering. Heidi looked at them. She was beside herself, no doubt about it.

The ship. The deck. Fate’s nasty joke was undone.

From – No Man Is An Island

Written by Gennady Bocharov

18 May 2011

Heidi saw a brilliant globe drop from the Coast Guard plane. It was followed by a second and a third. The globes fell into the water but were not extinguished: in fact, they burned even brighter in the waves. Heidi could have hugged herself: these guys knew what they were doing. Not one of the white creatures that was hanging about would mess with her now. Those pea brains are scared of things they do not understand.

The light from the floating globes was broken up by the roaring waves-a spasmodic cardiogram-and gilded the night air. The darkness could not close over Heidi’s head.

The captain focused his binoculars. Forty-fifty degrees off to the starboard of the course they were following he saw multicolored streaks on the horizon. To all appearances a fire on board a large ship.

The Americans sighted the approaching refrigerator ship and fired a series of orange flares. The signal meant, “ A man in distress needs help.” Now the sky shone, too.

The captain saw all this. It conjured up a picture in his mind: rockets over the black ruins of Leningrad buildings. He was making his way through a pitch-black courtyard, he was a puny 14 year old, and buildings were on fire after an attack. The way was illuminated by an orange light.

And rockets were in the air.

The captain shook himself.

“Man overboard!” he said. “Turn on the searchlights!”

Three searchlights-one on the bow and two on the deck house-lit up simultaneously. Those who would be working in the waves pulled on life jackets. The windlasses began to hum. Tarpaulin slapped in the wind. The ship’s doctor, Natasha Popova, drank down some tincture of valerian and got ready to save the lives of the burned people.

The ship had been moving at top speed-now it needed to be slowed to a halt. Otherwise, the multiton vessel could add to the misfortunes of those who had gotten a full dose already. The calculations had to be perfect. Captain Mochalov directed the approach to the site of the emergency.

Heidi’s raft was tossed about like a child’s shoe. Her last ounces of strength went towards holding on. The ship and plane were before her eyes.

Heidi got ready to live!

The Ussuriiskaya taiga performed a couple of ponderous maneuvers and hove to. The point of the maneuvers was to protect the starboard lifeboat from the waves. Everyone not on watch-everyone who was loitering idly about-had come up on desk. They looked at the roaring night sea. From a distance some took the lights to be the burning remnants of a ship, others for lifeboats.

“All of you go,” the captain ordered his mates: Logvinov, Stepanov and Zarichansky. “Take 12 sailors with you.”

Twelve young men took their places in the boat, and it set off alone to contend with the waves. Four hundred meters-that was approximately where the boundary lay between the pinkish darkness and the yellow-red light of the globes.

From – No Man Is An Island

Written by Gennady Bocharov

17^th May,2011

Heidi perceived that on top of everything else-the waves, wind, thirst, hunger and uncertainly-it was getting colder-winter was still not over in the southern hemisphere. The water of the open ocean was cold. A track suit was all Heidi had on and her head was bare-casual dress for a routine flight over the ocean. The waves had been drenching Heidi for more than twelve hours by then. She shivered. The life raft became less safe.

There was no doubt about it-a shark fin had cut through the water. Heidi felt as if she had died. The impact of a wave brought her to her senses. She clutched the rubber side of the raft. The next wave almost washed her overboard.

Killed by those creatures! Killed by creatures that attacked anything! Killed by creature with a mania for food! Killed by creatures that ate their own innards!

Heidi had seen Jaws. She remembered.

In the next moment she saw something else-a four engine plane was speeding right towards her. The Coast Guard! The plane passed overhead, turned around and came back. The sharks and the airplane, the horror and the joy all but caused her heart to burst.

Then a thought occurred to Heidi: how could the plane help her? Indeed, how?

“It can’t,” Heidi shouted.

“It can’t,” the sharks said silently.

A tall wave raised her life raft and, a second later, crashed down on the Cessna, which, as though tired of bobbing on the surface, went straight to the bottom. Before Heidi’s eyes the plane’s white cross sunk into the ocean depths. It was all over with the Cessna.

Heidi got ready alternately to live and to die.

Emptiness lapped in the lenses of the captain’s binoculars. He lowered them and wondered what was on the radar.

It had been a long time since Mochalove peered into the watery distance as he did now. But he remembered how he had once. That was long ago-almost forty years. Then, admittedly, he had not been a captain. He was 20. the war* was over but their lives hung by a thread each day. The crew was clearing the sea of mines, which outnumbered the fish. He had escaped being blown to smithereens. Though he could have been, he thought.

In all his years of seafaring no one had ever asked him if he liked his work. He had not asked himself that question either. Now it was kind of late. And the answer was clear.

The first mate reported that the radar had picked up the airplane. It was circling over one spot.

“That means it’s there,” the captain said. And, without pausing he added, “Full speed ahead.”

In other words, 18 knots.

“There,” he repeated. No one would circle over one spot just for the fun of it. For no reason at all.

The ship picked up speed. Night descended over the ocean, but it seemed to be waking up.

From – No Man Is An Island

15^th May, 2011

Despite his strong nerves and character, the captain was as affected by this tension, as electrified by it, as the next man. Not much was needed to act as a spark-having his ship buzzed was enough. So it could be expected that the captain would slam the bridge door and spit after the plane in defiance. And his ship, loaded to the top with fish, would stay its course, not diverging from it a degree. No one could have accused him of bringing about the American pilot’s death. Rather, the blame would lie with the pilots of American planes, who had so often played on his and his colleagues’ nerves.

But events in the Pacific Ocean took a different turn. It seemed as though the plane had wagged its wings. Somebody thought one of the engines had been switched off. What had actually happened?

The captain went up to the open flying bridge. He had his own, special seafaring experience. In all the decades he had spent on the seas and oceans he had never been in distress. He had never gotten into a mess, only in a storm. He had never given command “Man overboard!” except during drills. Fires, holes, collisions-all that had happened to someone else, not to him. He was perhaps only captain who had never seen a single flying saucer. The merchant navy had given him an award “For 20 years of accident-free service.” But only because they had not come up with the idea of giving on “For 30 years.”

The plane seemed to be summoning him somewhere. Two times it flew off in one and the same direction. That was the only information he had. The radio was silent-magnetic storms could not be discounted. If they followed the plane they might run right smack into the typhoon. And how long would it take? An hour? A day? Two? And most importantly, for the sake of what?

The Americans flew away. Perhaps they decided they had been understood.

Life’s most unbreakable code- what and where? How and when? Who and whom? Why and where to?-presented itself to the captain in classical biblical from.

For everything that happens to man, no matter how unexpected it looks, and for everything he undertakes, no matte how inexplicable it seems, the ground has been prepared.

In the ocean that day there were all the latest achievements of modern civilization: a powerful refrigerator ship and a four engine airplane, both equipped with radar, automated systems and similar apparatuses. The technology worked, moved, did not stand still. But it passed a person by. Something else was decisive-the working of the human heart. Intuition and instinct were decisive now, as they had once been ages ago. The captain swung the ship round and pointed it in the direction of the typhoon, where the plane had headed.

From – No Man Is An Island

Written by Gennady Bocharov

13th May,2011
The navigator on watch informed the captain of the Ussuriiskaya taiga that a four engine plane with the identifying marks of the US Coast Guard was approaching the refrigerator ship. At the same moment Mochalov saw the plane come in over the port side. The roar of the engines rolled over the deck. Banking, the plane flew off.
"Did they make contact?" the captain asked.
"No," the radio operator replied.
"Buzzing," Mochalov decided. The plane came back. This time it approached the Ussuriiskaya taiga from the starboard side. It passed within inches of the masts, then banked again.
"You're going to knock the masts down, you dolt!" the captain exclaimed.
No contact was made. Silence reigned on channel 16.* No information came through on the additional frequencies either.
Let us change gears again and pause for a moment.
Civil ships are continuously being buzzed by military aircraft, escorted by cutters and even heavy vessels. I have been told this by many captains, sailors and fishermen.
The planes appear suddenly, do not respond to radio inquiries, intersect your course and circle overhead at impermissible heights. Why do they approach ships? Why do they circle over them? What are they looking for? What will they do next?
You cannot get an answer, no matter how hard you try. All you can do is watch. And wait. And guess. And frankly-worry. The sad state of world affairs is perceptible at sea as well as on shore. Perhaps even more so at sea.

From - No Man Is An Island
Written By - Gennady Bocharov

12^th May, 2011

The waves grew. The jolting exhausted Heidi physically, while the empty horizon undermined her spirits. She realized that no matter how long the day was-she had flown several hours ahead of the sun-it would come to an end. Ahead lay a night in the ocean.

Why had it happened to her? After all, it did not happen to everybody. That hurt.

The waves rumbled and roared. Strange things were going on with the ocean. High in the tropical sky purple and pink shadows gathered. Bright white clouds that lit up the darkness to man lived for its own beauty. Heidi looked away. She felt like a child, cruelly abandoned by everyone.

Heidi was the offspring of the human race.

The Cessna was still afloat. But clearly, if the waves rose by just one more point it would all be over.

“And I’ll be washed into the drink,” was Heidi’s chilling conclusion.

The more she thought about night and the waves, the more it brought to mind land. The firmness and reliability of land now seemed like a sacred gift. That morning it would not have occurred to her. Now Heidi could have given her youth for the chance to feel the earth under her feet-rocky, soft, dry, damp, bare, and grassy. The earth under his feet-that is all a person needs. That first. Everything else comes later.

Fate is not fair. Heidi was clinging to a stabilizer that was gradually slipping away. She still believed she might be rescued. Most who believe perish. Only in a very few instances are those who believe rescue. It is, however, not the majority, who believe and perish, who are remembered, but those few who believe and survive.

From – No Man Is An Island

Written by Gennady Bocharov