Cape Flyaway
— Cape Flyaway — a name given the fancied or fictitious appearance of land.
The long smooth combers rolled in, surged higher as they neared the shore, then folded over and broke with a hollow thud. One after the other, each repeated the motion, echoed the sound.
The young man sat on the dune and watched the waves, counting each one as it came to shore. The waves coursed in as though some great unseen pair of hands was slowly shaking out wrinkles from a blanket.
One day, he thought, I will give a wave its exact number, and the waves will stop moving, and I will be able to walk across them over the horizon to home.
Every day, every night, he watched the waves. He thought back to the ship. How long had they been searching for land on this voyage? His eyes ached and burned from strain and wind and salt and sun. And he had seen it, he knew, he had seen land, and he had been the first to sing out, “Land! Land ho!” But it turned out to be a trick of light, an illusion. “He’s only spotted Cape Flyaway,” growled the boatswain. He thought of the storm that had come later and how he had slipped from the crosstrees to be gulped by the sea. He had surfaced gagging and spitting and heaving. The sight of the ship sailing onward, gone so fast over a tower of water, made him doubt that the ship had ever existed, that he had ever been the ship’s boy who had grown to manhood aboard her. Then, after the endless hours struggling to stay afloat, he had found himself lying on a beach, crawling to the dune, and watching the waves.
He narrowed his eyes. A mark on the horizon had appeared. He watched it move with excruciating deliberation toward him. As he watched he kept counting the waves. At the thousandth wave he saw that the ship was Perseverance, the bark he had sailed on. He rose to his feet. He fell into a frenzy of waving and calling, and he forgot to keep counting, and then he lost count, he lost everything but the hope that he was saved, until the ship came sailing so close to shore he was certain she would hole herself on the reef and founder. “Come about!” he yelled. “Drop anchor!” But the ship sailed on and reached the surf and passed cloudlike over the beach and swept in silence over the dune.
He watched the apparition pass into the blue till it was a speck and then nothing.
The waves rolled on, folding over themselves with their unchanging thud as the realization came to him that he had reached Cape Flyaway, a mirage. He had reached a place of numberless waves, numberless days. Who was the apparition now?
He lowered himself to the sand again to watch the waves glide in. One … two … three … four … they rolled toward him one after the other, breaking with a thud, a procession with no number. Four … five … six … seven …
He knew there was no need to keep counting them. No need at all.
Eight … nine … ten … eleven …