The Pillars of Hercules

In the course of our little conversation the weather had grown much worse. Spray flew into the windows and salt grains frosted the glass. Sea-water ran across the upper decks, and the lower decks were awash. Now and then you hear about a storm sinking a ferry, because they are not built for storms. But you don’t remember those news items until you are on a ferry, in a serious storm.

“I have lived around here my whole life. I cross to Morocco a lot. I have never seen it this bad,” Antonio said.

“We ought to be there soon.”

“No. It’s many hours away.”

“It’s only a seven-hour trip, and we’ve been sailing for five.”

“Going slowly,” he said.

“Maybe the weather is better in Melilla.”

“With the wind in this direction it will be worse. The Levanter blows against it.”

The fury of the sea, the height of the waves, the screaming wind—they all defied me, author of the words “junk waves,” “mush-burgers,” “slop and plop of the Mediterranean.” It was a maddened sea and this huge ferry was having trouble negotiating it. From the hold came the sound of clanking chains, the creak of cars and trucks, the rolling clatter of steel barrels and the rattle of loose bolts on the steel gangways.

Antonio said, “I am afraid about my car. I think it will crash into another one.”

I stayed on deck. True, it was cold and windy on deck. But it was stifling in the cargo hold. It was nauseating in the lounges. Now and then someone would stagger out to the deck to practice projectile vomiting. I held on, pressed into a corner, tried to read an old fluttering copy of the Guardian I had found in Málaga.

I thought: When we get to Melilla this will just seem like a bad dream.

Soon after, as it was growing dark, the captain made an announcement: “Because of the wind and the poor conditions we are not proceeding to Melilla. We are returning to Málaga.”

The vast squarish bulk of the ferry turned clumsily into the wind, twisting as it went, the sea-spray flying, and then the vessel was in full retreat from the storm.

The phlegmatic Spaniards, used to bad news, took this well. The Muslim Moroccans, contrary to all the teachings of Islam, took the announcement badly and shouted and threw things and argued and slammed the hatchways. Their children cried. The menfolk ranted. The women sulked. They did not want to go back to Spain.

Hours later, in darkness, we were back in Málaga. I was frustrated by the return, but I was also relieved. The captain knew these seas; he would not willingly abandon the voyage if he had confidence in his ship. So he had feared for the ship. The port was closed. All further ferries were canceled.

Antonio gave me a lift to the bus station. He said, “These Levanters usually last three days.”

Perhaps there would be more of it. My response was to go in full retreat myself, back to where I had begun my trip. It was only an hour and a half from Algeciras to Ceuta, the southern Pillar of Hercules. I was disappointed that I had not been able to sail from Tunisia, but it was interesting, was it not, that I had been forced to go all the way back to the Straits of Gibraltar to make my crossing? It had not really spoiled my plans, because—always improvising—I had never had much of a plan.

The coast was stormy all the way to Algeciras. This time Torremolinos was wild and windblown, and so was Torreblanca, the sea gray and the heavy surf smashing thick suds onto the deserted beach. I was heading back to where I had begun, and the signs went from Spanish, to bilingual, to English as we traveled south. Then it was Liquor Shop, Property Brokers, Video Rental, Hairdresser, Music Cafe, Insurance Broker, Real English Breakfast, the Sun on the newspaper racks, Iron Monger’s Shop, Legal Advice.

This was the sort of coast that had inspired the witty last line in Harry Ritchie’s book about the Costa del Sol, Here We Go. Looking up from the deranged coast of hooligans and package tourists, and seeing the sunset on the mountains, the author reflects, “Spain. It looked a beautiful country. Someday, I thought, I really must go there.”

To Fuengirola again—Everything for Your Pets, Real British Pub—and then on to Marbella via trailer parks and the hills of white condos, beside the white raging Mediterranean, reminding every frail dwelling on shore that this old sea, the actual water that had been described on the first page of the Bible, was not to be underestimated, and nature was greater than anything man-made. Good-bye to your beach umbrellas and your ridiculous signs and your awnings and your gimcrack fences; good-bye to your condos and your haciendas; good-bye to the very shoreline of fragile soil. Nature was also the Sunderer of Delights and the Destroyer of Dreams.