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Medusalogue

Posted by DCA Theater on December 17, 2008 in July-December 2008 Season, INCUBATOR Series: The Plagiarists

By Gregory Peters, Plagiarist, writer & project facilitator

A sample draft of what we’re reading on Monday...

CORRÉARD: It started with the boy. Others will say it started sooner, sitting at anchor for a week, or with the storm as soon as we left port, or with the ridiculous maneuvers around Medeira, but that was all just plain silliness and bad luck. No journey is short on small mishaps, just that we forget them when we arrive safely. We look back on failed enterprises with more care, every tiny thing becomes engraved on our memory and where we find a gap, we fill it in with our imaginations. The storm didn’t matter, everyone acquitted themselves competently. Many thought Madeira would be the end of Richefort’s influence on the Captain and so saw it as a necessary evil. But when we lost the boy, that’s when the air began to grow thin and poisonous, when the crew’s muttering became audible to the passengers. We were all watching porpoises at play and he fell out of one of the portholes. A sailor caught him but couldn’t hold on. He then caught a rope, but we were moving so fast. He could not hold on. He slipped away. He was just fifteen. A signal was made to acquaint the Echo with this accident, but that vessel was at a considerable distance. The we were going to fire a gun to second the signal, but there was not one loaded. However, we threw out the life buoy and then turned the ship and lowered a boat – six-oared barge that they only put three men in. They didn’t even find the buoy. He seemed a strong swimmer, but of course that only means that it probably took him much longer to drown. I found out later that the ship is to be turned the moment one cries, “Man Overboard” but it took us some time. This, and the poorly organized rescue, and our distance from the rest of our convoy, this is what killed the boy. Henry says he was lucky not to be part of the tragedy that followed. I believe that he was the beginning of the story that ended with us out there, abandoned just as he was, and always think on him as the first of us to die.