My Search Continues

The ocean has tossed me, but I go on. If there is a God, who is He? This journey has introduced me to Panama again; there I met someone who put many questions into my mind. This Bible from my mother; yes, I have it in my cabin. But that woman, she said too many things that did not make sense. I will read at night. Maybe there are answers. Somewhere. Somehow.

My beard is almost full, yet tomorrow I will shave. For tomorrow, life will come back to me, like a cold night on the ocean. Even as a boy, I knew there was a light coming the next day. But – now – is there really a light?

Captain’s Log
May 20

I have put in at a small public dock at Cape Town. There is a very good restaurant here with a well-stocked bookshop that I know of.

With cup of sweet African coffee in hand, I browsed the shelves in the religious section. My search was for a book called a concordance, Strong’s. I heard Wanda mention it. She said that it has every word in the Bible and their meanings in Hebrew and Greek. I feel I am getting some answers but I still don’t know my direction.

As I was looking at this concordance, a man in a blue business suit approached and immediately broke into conversation. He asked me if I really believed all this “gobblygook” about religion. I did not answer. He went on to say that he had been to many churches, private Bible studies, and listened to many television ministers: they all preach the same thing: one God, one Savior, salvation, and the resurrection of life. This Jesus is just a figure and a fantasy he told me. The Bible, he said, is not the word of God; it is the words of many men. He said there is a God but each man must have his own understanding. It’s whatever each person says God is: that’s what religion is. He kept on rambling about his ideas until I turned away. I used to think that way but something inside of me is changing. I left the shop disagreeing. I am not an expert on religion, but I left there wanting to prove him wrong. If Genesis is true, we are made in his image, not he in ours. That’s what I get out of the first book.

Captain’s Log
May 27

I have been at sea one week since leaving Cape Town, headed northeastward through the Mozambique Channel. To head eastward of Madagascar would be to challenge the horse latitudes. There I would be hard pressed to make any headway because of the lack of good winds. I have Madagascar on my starboard side, Mozambique on my port, both barely visible on the horizon.

I have been reading more in the Bible. It gives me a strange comfort, helping me forget my losses. I still feel a loneliness and that sense of loss, but it does not overwhelm me as it once did. I find myself reading and dreaming and thinking for hours. With the quiet of the night and the sound of the ocean, I am finding rest again. This sailing has been the best thing for me.

There is a passage in the book of Ecclesiastes, third chapter. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. I wonder about my fifty men. What was the purpose of their deaths? I have heard men say when they were faced with death, that their “time is up”. Is there a time appointed for all purposes? Each day I find myself less and less feeling the great loss. I am beginning to feel that there is a much greater purpose in life than the every day. I used to know what my purpose was: my wife, my child, my men. Now? I have not fathomed it yet; something is changing, and it’s in me.

Captain’s Log
May 30

I have altered my course to almost due east. I will head across the Indian Ocean toward the northern point of Sumatra. There I will enter the Strait of Malacca and proceed southward to Singapore. I will have to be careful of the weather. It is extremely unpredictable in this part of the Indian Ocean. Storms have been known to come up within hours. The Indian Ocean is no place for one to find himself adrift, or otherwise encumbered.

There is one other danger in these waters that I need to be watchful of. There are modern day pirates, vicious sea-going robbers and murderers. They forcibly board commercial vessels and steal whatever they can haul. If they encounter resistance, they are known to kill. I have heard they even take women and children. They stay away from the bigger ships protected by their national flag.

They operate out of the thousands of small islands in this region of the world. Using small, fast, armed launches, they are easily hidden in the maze of jungle rivers on some of these islands. I once knew the captain of a small freighter who was relieved of an original Van Gogh that he was foolish enough to hang in his cabin. I learned early on not to carry valuables in these waters. International shipping laws strictly forbid commercial vessels from arming their ships. Many of the ships I have served on were equipped with various weapons that disappeared from view when approaching port. Bending this rule has saved many a ship from coming into port lighter than they left the last one. I will keep my eyes open and watch carefully for any sign of these thieves.

Off my starboard side, I can see the Chagos Archipelago. There is a small village there that depends solely on fishing for its livelihood. It is nothing more than a high spot on the ocean floor, somewhere to anchor. From here to the north point of the island of Sumatra, there is nothing except open ocean, no landfall.

Captain’s Log
June 10

The weather has cooperated. It has been warm with a good breeze filling my sails as I continue on course. I have seen no other vessels since passing within sight of Sri Lanka. During the turbulent days of the sixties and seventies, this was a place where many of the younger generation visited and settled. I was once given an opportunity to start a small shipping concern there. But I could not pull myself away from the sea. It has been my first love, my home. Only Glenda and my Johnny J. could make me consider leaving it.

By my continued reading of the Bible, I have become intrigued with the references to the Holy Ghost and perfection. The two appear to be connected. It sounds as if the baptism of this Holy Ghost is necessary for one to reach perfection. It also appears that perfection is linked to God and holiness; it’s not about not making mistakes.

Captain’s Log
June 15

At a point some hundred fifty nautical miles from Sumatra, I sighted a small craft shadowing my vessel. At first, it made no effort to draw near, but after an hour or two, it began to close the distance with a deliberate swiftness. I knew that it was a rogue vessel out to plunder whatever came its way. I could not outrun it, nor could I outmaneuver it. I was certain that I would be overtaken before I could reach safer waters and robbed of whatever these rogues could find of value. As expected, the scallywags managed to overtake me and ordered me to heave to. The half dozen or so men that manned this craft were of the worst looking lot and were armed with automatic weapons which they displayed openly. Left with no other choice, I began to trim my sails when several of them began to shout and gesture excitedly at something beyond me. To my surprise, they suddenly broke off the engagement and turned tail, fleeing into the distance as fast as they could. Expecting to find an armed gunboat of the Sumatran or Indian Navy approaching, I turned to find only empty sea. There was nothing there that could have frightened these rogues. I kept looking. Nothing. Yet they turned tail and ran as if the devil himself were after them.

There was no logical explanation for their frantic departure. Had they seen something that existed only in their imaginations? Was there something there somehow visible to them and not to me? I have heard tales of their boldness but have never heard of them fleeing from something less threatening than a fully armed gunboat.

I have now rounded the northern point of Sumatra, and have entered the much-traveled Strait of Malacca. My next landfall is Singapore and I am confident of reaching there without further incident.

Since that encounter, I have felt a strange peace within me that I have never before known. I have analyzed this, but it makes no sense to me. I can explain it no further except to say that it is something new and pleasant. It is like what I felt when I first held my new son.

For the first time in weeks, I am able to sleep at night without tossing and turning. I only hope that this peace continues. When I left my mother in Ireland, I stopped praying. What good did it do? In my college days, it was about my fraternity brothers. On the ships, it was the crew and the ocean. When I married, it was about Glenda, and then Carmen. As a captain, it was my men. They were loyal to me, except that boy. But this last week has been completely different. I am finding life again. I am now getting a sense that there is a God. If this God is real, if this peaceful feeling is somehow connected with him… I just don’t know.

While writing in my log, I moved the Bible to one side out of my way. I moved it a bit too far and it fell from the table onto the deck, landing open. Upon retrieving it, my eyes fell on a verse it had opened up to: No weapon formed against thee shall prosper… Immediately my mind went back to that incident off Sumatra. What really scared them off?

Captain’s Log
June 20

Singapore is the same as when I last visited here nearly ten years ago. It is the second busiest harbor in the world. I watched at least two small craft scurrying out of the way of the larger sea going ships to avoid becoming casualties. Several others were nearly swamped by the bow waves and turbulence of these vessels. It appears that all Malaysia is on the move, hurrying to a new destination. In the years that I worked commercial vessels, I was unaware how fragile these small craft were. It is insanity for these tiny bits of wood and fiberglass to dart in and out among the huge tankers and freighters, some over four hundred meters long. There are captains who do not care what happens below the keels of their vessels, as long as they stay on schedule.

All my life, I have concluded that death is the end of the voyage. But I find in the Bible that it is not so. Death is, instead, an enemy. I read that Jesus said, if a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.

I was able to procure a private dock for a fair price and was ashore within half an hour. My first thought was to find a good place to eat. Singapore has many, ranging from Oriental to American to Mexican. I chose a quaint open-air restaurant in the Older Quarter that served excellent food and international coffees.

There is no possible way that I could have recognized the white haired man that approached my table. He entered with a pretty woman – fair and delicate – and was seated several tables away facing me. I was aware of him casting glances my way, but felt no familiarity for him. When he finally approached me, I thought him to be a merchant or a smuggler seeking space on a ship for some sort of goods. Instead, he asked if I recognized him. I searched his features, but was unable to remember him, and I am not a man to forget a face.

He told me his name was Diego Terone, with whom I had an altercation several years ago. He had been in charge of unloading cargo at a particular dock section. Much of his livelihood came from pilfering goods. Fortunately, I had experience with his type before and confronted him. I have always wondered if he was still up to his old tricks.

But the Diego Terone that now stood before me was changed, a completely different person, (the old Diego would have easily made his presence known to all in the club within minutes with his swaggering, boastful ways). I was speechless.

He had, he reported as he seated himself, had a run-in with the law enforcement officials shortly after our altercation. He was sentenced to ten years in the local prison for smuggling and extortion. It was while in this hellhole of a prison that he was changed. A fellow prisoner, whom Diego tried to bully, introduced him to Jesus Christ (everywhere I turn, that name crops up). He went on to say that, for the first time in his life, he began to see the sordidness of his existence. From that time on, he began to change. He renounced his former ways, and began to study the Word of God. Instead of the ten years he was sentenced to, the prison board released him after four due to good behavior. He sold all he had and opened a mission to help the poor in the islands, of which there are quite a few.

At this point, he motioned over the woman he had been with, introducing her as his wife, Ivana. He said that she helped him through many a hard time. Together they spread the word of God throughout Singapore and were, even now, opening up another mission in the jungle. They invited me to stay with them for a spell, but I felt uneasy with the prospect of living in a mission in the middle of the jungle and declined.

I am pleased with the course that Diego’s life has taken. He has found what life has in store for him. But I am convinced that my journey’s end is not to be found in a mission school in the jungle. Had Diego not approached my table, I would have never known him. How can the words of this book change a man’s life so much? It shakes the very foundations of the life I have lived. It makes me wonder all the more what this life is truly about. I never expect to see Diego again, but I will always have a picture etched in me of the change in the man that once was a thief and a liar. He is no longer a crook. I tested him, as I have done others, by leaving $17 in small bills and some American quarters on the table, then excusing myself to the men’s room. I left it tucked under the tab. When I returned, the right amount of change was there. Diego even declined when I offered to buy them wine.

My vessel restocked, I bade farewell to Diego and his wife, who had accompanied me to the docks. I departed from Singapore that afternoon with the feeling that there is something good in this world. Diego is proof of it. I left there with a renewed hope and an even stronger yearning to discover the mysteries in this Bible that makes others different.

Captain’s Log
June 27

I have set my course northeastward toward Manila. I had considered setting course for Borneo, but the memories that lie there must stay there undisturbed. I will put into Manila for a few days to visit a few of my old haunts and look over my craft. Then the long journey from the Philippines to Hawaii.

There is another old friend of mine, Charles, living in Kailua on the island of Oahu, who I want to visit. I find myself flexible, unlike the other times when I have been on a strict schedule. For the first time since I left home, I am able to come and go as I please. I am not used to it – I lived for my men. I have trained myself through the years to awake without help and to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. It is the way of a captain. It has been the way of my life.

It has been many years since I last visited Manila. After the loss of my Glenda and my son, I wanted nothing to do with this part of the world. It held too many painful memories, too many familiar streets and places we sat down at, to laugh and then walk. Manila was the first place I took Glenda after we were wed. We watched the first star appear at night from the roof of our hotel. We walked the beach along Manila Bay for hours talking and laughing. We swam in the warm waters of the bay. It was a happy, carefree time and the world seemed so very far away. It was the first time away from the sea that I was ever really content. I wanted it to last forever.

It was in the hospital here in Manila that I first learned that I would be a father. We were on a short excursion from our home in Borneo. I remember the look on Glenda’s face when she told me. She knew how much I loved the sea and was nervous in telling me of something that could keep me from it; the birth of our son, our Johnnie. “Or if a daughter,” she said, “I’ll still name her Johnnie after your father.” How she loved me. She knew how to make me laugh and she filled my heart with pride. How I longed for her on those lonely nights when the sea would whisper her name to me. And my Johnnie J., my Johnnie Jr.; no man could have wanted a more beautiful son, so beautiful with those deep blue eyes. Glenda’s eyes. My eyes are blue, but Glenda’s….

It was hard to leave that first time after he was born. It was the only time I had ever considered letting the shipping company find a replacement. But Glenda would have none of it. She insisted they would be there when I returned, that she would write or call me every day. It was that last letter, telling of my son taking his first steps, that they found in her purse after the tsunami struck. If only I had stayed, if only I had taken them with me. They would still be here, still filling my life with laughter. I miss her funny little laugh and the way her eyes would sparkle when she teased me. I miss her and my Johnnie J. every second, every minute, every hour of the day now. I have not laughed since our last night together. I only hope that someday when I am about to go to my final rest, that I can look at their pictures and say to myself, “I have lived a good life.”

Captain’s Log
July 7

I have tied up away from the busiest part of Manila Bay. I have a small berth near the northern limits of Manila proper. It will suit my purposes while I go into the city to purchase what I need, and find, of course, a good place to eat. Not that I am a bad cook, but one gets rather tired of providing for himself after a while. I do know of several good establishments where one can get a good meal for a fair price. I recall a fine restaurant on a hill overlooking the bay. The first time I visited, it was on my first trip as Captain of my own vessel.

It was in Manila that I met Lace. She had come in on a freighter from San Francisco. She filled the position of chief cook and bottle washer for a chap that missed his ship due to a run-in with the local police. Little did the captain of that tramp freighter know how good a sailor she would turn out to be. She could hold her own with the most experienced seaman I have ever shipped with. Better than many. I miss her laughter and carefree manner, her whimsical humor. I feel, at times, that she is watching over my shoulder in the long, lonely evenings when the quiet seems to melt into a man’s very being. It is still those times that are the hardest, when I remember those that have been lost, when I most frequently wonder about this life and death. Yet she is not there. It is my imagination grabbing for a voice or a sound of life. Is there more to it than we are aware? In this Bible there is mention of life after death, and a life that is unending and everlasting. How can this be true? I have not yet seen a man that has faced death and not been conquered by it. I still wonder, what about my fifty, my Glenda, my Johnnie J., the others that have gone on? Is there hope in this collection of 66 books that I will see them again? I know not.

As I was leaving the restaurant, I rounded a corner and bumped into a woman heading in the opposite direction. Such was the collision that she dropped a small bag and its contents spilled out. I stooped to help her retrieve them. There, on the sidewalk was a small Bible, the same one I had seen being read by the woman in Panama City. In surprise, I raised my head and found myself staring into the eyes of the woman I had encountered at the start of my journey. I had not noticed how beautiful she was.

I asked if we might have a few words. She replied that she had but a few moments since she was expected at a small church in the hills overlooking Manila. She did invite me to accompany her to a meeting at this church. I stated that I had other plans and would only take a few moments of her time.

As I reentered the restaurant with her, she asked me if I had thought about what she said back in Panama City. I told her that I had, indeed, thought on it, and though I was not totally convinced, I was studying the Bible to learn more. She laughed a funny little laugh and said that if I kept an open mind and really wanted to know more about God, I would surely find it. “Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you,” she said. At one point, a local photographer looking to make a little extra money, stepped into the café and asked if we would like our picture taken. My lady friend agreed to it.

As he exhibited the finished product a few minutes later, I pulled a bill from my pocket and handed it to him. My companion reached for the picture, but I snatched it from the photographer’s hand before she could.

Captain…” she began to half-heartedly protest with a smile.

I slipped it into my pocket insisting that my cabin on “Reason” could use something to dress it up. Later, I decided to use it as a bookmark in my Bible, instead.

I had quizzed her, nicely, with some questions. And her answers had drawn me into a half-smile. I felt her enjoining way: her hair and the color of her lipstick. She had beautiful white teeth. I noticed her shapely, lean legs, but it was the red leather belt at her waist that gave away her athletic strength and immaculate beauty. Why hadn’t I noticed her in Panama?

As she was stepping out the door, she turned back to say that she hoped we would meet again. She was leaving tomorrow for Portland. She said if I did get up that way to look up a place called “The Church of Jesus Christ of the Firstborn.” And then, just as quickly as she had appeared, she was gone.

I am even more intrigued by what she spoke. Although I still do not understand much of what she said, I no longer feel her beliefs are so strange. Much of what she spoke, I have, in my own reading, found reference to. But, this perfection that she speaks of is something that puzzles me. I must study it further.

Captain’s Log
July 12

Manila was a good place to rest up for a few days. However, it brought back too many memories. Too much hurt. I didn’t need that. I had to leave. The sea is my home, the only real home I have ever known. It is more than a friend: it is a part of me. I have sailed it from the west coast of America to Cape Town; from Japan to the Straits of Magellan. I have seen its gentle swell, been sung to sleep at night by the sound of its waves, have fought its savage storms. Have been shipwrecked in it, and rescued from it, three times.

I have carried everything from bananas to iron ore, from passengers to crude across its endless horizons. It is unpredictable, unmanageable, and, in many ways, I shall never know her. Her currents cast down the mighty. Her depths hold more darkness than what I see above me. She is my last fascination: the epic of light, of blue, of green and teal. Her charm has emboldened men; boys have conquered adolescence listening to her rhythm and song. Many have returned to land, but only for a night; their shoes locked in her dance, her wondrous glow. Except for the love of a tender and faithful wife, there is no greater woman than the sea.

My larder is full; my log is up to date. My sails are filled with a wind that will carry me across the south Pacific to Hawaii. There I will look up my old friend Charles. Together we made the record run from Lima, Peru to Singapore, a record that remains unbroken. He was a good friend and I hated for us to part company. Charles decided to point his life in a different direction. He gathered together every penny he had and invested in a classic sailing ship from the 1800’s. Though it was over a hundred years old, it was in near perfect condition and one of only a few in the world. Naming it the “Albatross Blue”, he leased it out to different adventure clubs. It was an immediate success. I heard he had expanded his enterprise to four more.

The last I knew of him, he had married a local woman in Hawaii, retired and settled down in Kailua on the windward side of Oahu. I was told several months ago that he had built an elaborate house near the Pali overlooking Kailua and was growing fat and lazy enjoying retirement. But that was before I heard of him two days ago in Manila.

An old sailor I knew saw me preparing “Reason” and came over to have a few words. He told me that Charles had been diagnosed with inoperable cancer and had only a short time left. He had tried unsuccessfully to locate me, wanting to see me one last time before he passed away. It was luck that this old salt had seen me. Or was it? An hour later and the old sailor would have missed me. I phoned Charles. He is resting. The doctors say he has six weeks. I am leaving tonight.

I have charted a direct course for Hawaii. I will reach Oahu and Kailua before it is too late.

Captain’s Log
July 22

The trade winds and current continue to carry me toward Hawaii and my old friend. I crossed the international dateline late yesterday afternoon. My charts prove my position. I passed within sight of Wake Island the day before.

During the night, I woke with the strange feeling that I was not alone. Though I heard no sound and could not see anyone, I felt an almost overwhelming fear come over me. Arising, I made my way up on deck with the Bible and, in the soft glow of a small lantern, began to read. Thumbing through a few pages, my eyes fell on a particular verse about the devil. Then I felt the words come into me, All fear is of Satan. Through my reading, I have come across various references to the devil, but have paid little attention to them. And yet, the fear I felt was real, almost something I could reach out and touch. I recalled reading in the book of Job that when the sons of God appeared before his throne, Satan was there with them. But he was forced to obtain permission from God before he could afflict Job. It sounds like this devil has less authority than he leads one to believe. Further reading confirmed it, for, in another place, it states, Resist the devil and he will flee from you. With all this in mind, I have come to two conclusions: one, that this fear was no less than a visitation from the devil himself, strange as it sounds; two, that it is not so much this devil that keeps man from finding his way to God, but the stubbornness and unwillingness of man’s own mind. (Still, those words, All fear is of Satan. What was that?) This must be what it means when it mentions this overcoming; conquering one’s own mind, one’s own will. And, I think that it is accomplished through much fasting and prayer. I have never before had any kind of visitation, so it makes me wonder, why now? Am I drawing too close to the real truth of this God that endangers this devil, or is it something else? I am leaning toward the former.

The woman in Manila visits my memory. The laugh. The questions. Her answers. She was real. Like Glenda. But….

In the further course of my reading, I have come across a verse that says this man Job was perfect. Further, I found that there were others, Noah, for instance. These men were much like myself in many ways. So the matter seems to be not if one can be perfect, but what exactly is being perfect. What were these men really like? What was it that made God consider them to be perfect? One thing I have begun to realize is that this perfection concerns doing everything perfectly, or as perfectly as possible. An intriguing proposition that wise men cannot solve. But she, in some way, did.

Captain’s Log
July 26

In the early morning I have noticed porpoises swimming alongside “Reason”. Now and then, they break the surface to arc their sleek, slender bodies through the air before plummeting back into the sea. It is as if they enjoy their existence to the fullest. It lifts my spirit to see their antics and hear their squeals. Ah, to be as free and as unhindered as they are. “To become as a little child,” it says. To leave all my cares behind and to enjoy life once more.

I have also, several times, sighted dorsal fins of large sharks cruising by. They are aware that here, on board, there may be a meal for their eternally hungry jaws. Fortunately, when my porpoise companions appeared, the sharks are nowhere to be seen. Thank God for porpoises.

There is, in the book of Acts, a place where it speaks of the twelve disciples of Jesus being baptized in the Holy Ghost; tongues of fire being seen over their heads as they spoke in tongues. I have heard of tongues and both Jorgenson and the young woman in Panama mentioned it. I have had no experience with it.

I have much time to simply sit back and study about this Holy Ghost, this perfection. The book of Joel says that in the last days, God will pour out his Spirit on all mankind and they will prophecy and dream dreams and see visions. It also says that his Spirit will lead them. This must be what Jorgenson and the others were talking about. Again I wonder, how is one led by a Spirit? Does it speak audibly or is it a feeling? I suspect it is both. It is all very interesting and intriguing, this Holy Ghost, this being led. My life is missing something. There is an emptiness inside that needs to be filled. It is like a hunger that cannot be satisfied with food. Even the variety of reading material I have on board does not satisfy this hunger. As much as I have rejected this Bible, I find that the hunger, the emptiness, seem to lessen only when I am studying its words.

Captain’s Log
August 2

Dawn was breaking when finally I closed the Bible that I had opened after supper last night. Sitting at the table in the galley below deck, I forgot about the time. I was shocked when the light from the rising sun peeked through the porthole opposite the cabin from me. So involved had I become. I noticed the picture of my lady friend; I wonder if I will ever see her again.

I have researched, with the help of this concordance, all I could on this idea of perfection. It does, indeed, seem to be linked with the baptism of the Holy Ghost. I am convinced that Jesus Christ was exactly like us, born a mortal man, tempted in every way, yet he did not sin. It says that all disobedience is sin. Therefore, if one obeys in every thing that he is told and knows to do, there is no sin. Jesus, as far as I have been able to tell, obeyed in all things. Whatever his Father told him to do, he did it. Therefore, he did not sin. And to be without sin, is to be perfect. Job and Noah followed their God in all that they knew to do and were told to do. Imagine being told to build a boat because it was going to rain when it had never before rained. And yet, Noah did what he was told, despite all those around him. I wonder if, at times, his wife and sons thought he had lost his sanity.

Captain’s Log
August 15

I am in Hawaii. I rented a berth in Kaneohe Bay and found transportation to Charles’s house. Greeted by Charles’ wife, Nell, I was led to a large bedroom with windows overlooking Kailua and the bay. I found Charles lying in a bed looking out at the sea. Beside him on the bed was a Bible.

We spoke of old times, of old acquaintances, of Glenda and Johnnie J., both of whom he was very fond of. I told him of losing my ship and my men, of my second wife leaving with that rogue captain and of my decision to sail anywhere since then. When I mentioned my reading and studies of the Bible, he suddenly grew excited and tried unsuccessfully to sit up.

“If I had it to all over again,” he stated, “I would give up sailing, making my fortune, everything, to find what I have now found. Faced with death, I have turned to the Lord and this book and have found peace and comfort. I know that all the things I have done wrong are forgotten and I am forgiven. It took me too many years of wandering and carousing to discover that there is nothing else in life but God and his son Jesus Christ. Fortunately, now, in the end, I have found him. Do not pass up your chance to turn your life around. I met a man from a small town on the mainland, a place called Oregon, Illinois, who told me all about my life, things that only I knew. He introduced me to the one person I have been searching for all my life. He showed me the Lord Jesus Christ.”

I am astounded by what he said, because I have known Charles to be a heavy drinker and a man who liked to have a good time. He was a very good man with a good heart, but nonetheless, a man who knew every bar, every tavern, from Tokyo to Rio. While I have never been a drinker myself, I took a liking to Charles because of the things he did for others. For instance, he once met a tourist in Morocco who had been robbed of everything and was stranded there without the resources to return home. Charles took him to the airport, bought him a ticket home and sent him away with every penny he had with him. And then he returned to the ship, himself penniless, but happy and smiling all the way.

I stayed with Charles for two days talking mostly about his relationship with God. On the third day, he passed away quietly in his sleep. I made plans to stay for his funeral, but Nell said that Charles had told her I must keep going. But before I could return to “Reason”, Nell gave me an envelope with my name on it. Inside was the address of a church in this little town in Illinois, five thousand dollars and a small gold cross that the tourist in Morocco had given him. On it was the inscription, “Continue in my love.” I tried to give the money back. Nell insisted, saying that Charles had wanted to do something for me since we had been so close. She would stay in the Islands.

I left Kailua missing a good friend, and yet feeling as if I had passed a milestone in my journey. I do not know if I will visit this Oregon, Illinois; I have always been a man of the sea and this place is far from any sea. But I will always remember Charles and what he spoke to me.

The Captain’s Log continues…