Free Frankenstein's Monster by Susan Heyboer O'Keefe Page B

despair resign’d
,
And question’d thus his yet unconquer’d mind
.
    With what a cloud the brows of heaven are crown’d;

What raging winds! What roaring waters round!

At length, emerging, from his nostrils wide

And gushing mouth effused the briny tide
.
    On reaching shore, Odysseus pressed on, while I stop to write.
    A short time ago I was in France, at the port of Calais, where the Strait of Dover is at its narrowest. I stood on the top of Cape Gris Nez outside the city and stared across the strait. The fog lay too thickly to be pierced. Still, I fancied that, in the distance, Dover’s sheer white cliffs could be seen, a denser white looming just beyond the white of the fog.
    In Calais, the weather prevented all ships from sailing, and I was too impatient to wait for it to clear.
    “Could the strait be swum?” I asked.
    “Absolutely not,” said the garrulous seaman whom I questioned.
    He explained that what is but a quarter inch on a map has killed some and humiliated more. The waves slap back and forth between the cliffs of the two countries. Sandbanksthroughout make more waves. Worse, there are shallows and headlands and breakwaters, and the waves crisscross each other at canted angles. A swimmer could be battered to death from all sides. Even if he survived the waves, he could not fight the tide.
    “The tide is much too strong here,” the man concluded. “With fog and with the wind up, like today, not even the ships sail.” He must have seen resolve in my posture and said, “Don’t attempt it today! The water is too cold; the fog, too thick; the tide, all wrong!” Without answering, I tossed him my last coin for his information.
    Late that afternoon I stood on the quiet beach. On a chain round my neck, I wore a compass I had stolen in the market. I had already tossed my cloak to the side, refusing to worry how to replace it once I was in England. But my boots! They were something of a prize, and I wanted to keep them. Several years ago, I had happened upon two tremendously tall brothers with matching boots, but of different sizes. Only then was I able to adequately cover my own differently sized feet. I felt, at least from the dry vantage point of the shore, that the boots were worth carrying.
    So I took them off and made a slit in each one up near the top. Then I removed my shirt, threaded it through the slits, and tied the shirt around my waist by the sleeves. Thus fastened, the boots sat like holsters on a belt. I tucked the oilcloth with my journal into the toe of one. I had at first thought to remove Mirabella’s necklace and pack it with my journal, then decided against doing so. If I lost the boots, I would lose everything at once. Letting the necklace remain on my wrist gave it its own chance of survival.
    At last ready, I looked out for a moment toward England, still invisible in the fog. Then I jumped in and began to swim. What I was attempting was sheer folly. Had revenge driven me past reason?
    Letting the water numb body and mind, I concentrated on the act of swimming. Stroke and stroke and stroke—my legs kicking, my arms reaching ever forward. The elements became more destructive than my thoughts: the wind, the tide, the waves, the deathlike cold of the water. The fog was an impenetrable wall mere feet away. Its white was the white of the Arctic: a perfect, deadly white. Muffling sight and sound, it annihilated the rest of the world. As the hours passed, I felt that I was the only creature left on earth. If I survived to land on the shores of England, I would find it deserted.
    Gradually at first, then, in the end, all at once, the white became soot gray as the sun set. I stopped swimming and looked at the compass. Darkness and condensation obscured which way the needle pointed. I could just make out its direction and realized I had been swimming southwest, for how long I did not know. Left unaltered, my path would have taken me out into the ocean. I needed a more northerly course.
    As