A ship rocked slowly upon the greasy seas. Its sails were tattered, its masts spliced, and its hull leaky with worm-eaten planks, but still it stayed afloat. It had been sailing for many years—for generations actually. Many years ago it had been loaded with food and medicine, and dispatched to find and to help the people of a lost colony. As it traveled far and wide, all its original crew except one had died, their places being taken by their children. In the prow an old woman, the last of the original crew, sat upon a coil of rope, her watery eyes struggling to pierce the fog.
Below decks men, women and children sat down to eat. Although the fare was meager, it was adequate, and all their faces shone with health.
The meal was almost over when both doors of the messroom were thrown open with a loud noise and a rush of wind. In the opening stood the old woman, strange and wild, stronger than they had ever seen her, shouting, “We’re here! We’ve arrived at land!”
“Land?” they asked not moving from the table, “what land?”
“Why the land we were sent to when this voyage began. And the lost colony is there waiting. I can hear them shouting from the shore!” shouted the old woman, stamping her feet with impatience. “Quick! Let’s make for shore and unload the food and the medicine!”
The old woman turned to run back up the gangway, but stopped halfway up when she realized there had been no movement in the messroom. Slowly she returned to stare at them with wide, incredulous eyes, her mouth agape. “Didn’t you hear me? Were none of you listening? I said we’re here! The people we were sent out to help are only a few hundred yards away. But we must hurry, for they are all hungry and sick.”
“I’m sure we’d all like to help those people,” said one of the men, “but—as you can see—there’s hardly enough food and medicine here to take care of us and our children.”
“Besides,” said one of the women, “we don’t know what kind of people they are. Who knows what might happen if we landed and went among them?”
The old woman staggered back as if she had been struck across the face. “But…but…it was for them that this voyage began in the first place so many years ago, for them that the ship was built, for them that the food and medicine were stowed aboard!”
“Yes, old woman, I’ve heard many stories of our launching from my parents and from the other elders who are now dead,” replied one of the younger women, “but there were so many different accounts that how can we be sure which one is right? Why risk our stores and provisions, perhaps even our lives, on something we may not even be supposed to do?”
“She’s right! She’s right!” shouted many of the others now quite excitedly involved in the conversation.
“But look,” said the old woman, trying very hard to contain herself, “it’s all very simple! As far as there not being enough food for us and them, much of what we have left is meant for seed. If we go ashore and plant it, then there will be more than enough for all. And on the matter of why the ship was launched in the first place—you have merely to look in the logbook. It’s all there.”
The old woman, hoping she had settled the question, looked anxiously from face to face around the tables. There was a long, thoughtful silence.
Finally, a man who had gravitated to a position of leadership among them stood up, picking his teeth and frowning thoughtfully.
“Perhaps the old woman is right,” he said, loosening a juicy morsel from between two teeth. “At any rate, her suggestion merits investigation. What I propose is this: let us select from among ourselves a representative committee which will see if they can find the old logbook, and then go into a thorough study of it, to see if they can determine whether we should land or not.”
“A sensible idea!” they all cried, except the old woman. “Let’s do it!”
The old woman, now frantic with hearing the cries from the shore, shouted, “What is this? What are you doing? Oh!” she said, backing away from them with horror in her eyes, “I can see that you do not really expect to do anything at all!” Her back against a bulkhead, she clutched at her chest and slid weakly to the floor.
“Let me warn you then,” she gasped. “The food will not last. It was meant to stay preserved only for the time it would take to get here. Now the food will begin to molder, and the medicines will not separate and lose their strength. If you do not take the provisions ashore and share them, they will soon no longer feed or cure even you!” With this, she died.
As the days and weeks passed, the ship continued to lie offshore. The committee continued to search the logbook, which they had soon found, hoping to come up with a report “in the near future.” A few of the younger women and men, maddened with the waiting and lured irresistibly by the cries of hunger and pain from the shore, slipped away one night in the jolly boat with a few provisions, and were listed sorrowfully next day as “lost at sea.”
True to the old woman’s dying prophesy, the food on board began to grow all manner of weird and exotic fungi, and the extensive stores of medicine seemed less and less able to cure the ills of the people. Also, the cries from the shore began to grow so much louder that even the hardest of hearing on board had to stuff their ears with cotton in order to sleep.
But no one seemed to be able to decide what to do.
Story adapted from G. William Jones, The Innovator: And Other Modern Parables, “Lying Offshore,”(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1969), 35-38.
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