a word of prayer wouldn’t hurt anything

Before evening, the three of us were sitting dejectedly silent. Then Gene made a suggestion.

“It might be a good idea,” he said, not meeting our eyes, “to say a prayer.”

We discussed this seriously. We found that we had all been reared in some religious atmosphere, but that we had all drifted away. It had been many years since I had been inside a civilian church, but I sometimes attended Sunday services held by the chaplain aboard ship, when my duties permitted and I was not going ashore.

We all concluded that a word of prayer wouldn’t hurt anything.

So we sat in the steaming little cup that our boat had become, and bowed our heads beneath the cruel tropic sun. We each mumbled a few words of our own awkward choosing, calling on our God to bless our loved ones back home, over whom we were more concerned than ourselves, and asking for a little rain.

We were all quite skeptical about the possibility of answer to our prayer.

“Well, now we done all we could,” Tony said.

“Gee, give it a chance,” Gene answered impatiently.

I called on my store of proverbs.

“God helps those that help themselves,” I said.

“Well, come on, rain,” Tony challenged. “Or maybe it ain’t gonna rain no mo’, no mo’.”

We lifted our voices lustily at that and sang, “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No Mo’,” as far as we knew the words – which wasn’t far – as if by our false cynicism we could put a reverse hoodoo on the elements.

At least we were all laughing again, which we hadn’t done for some time.

Despite our elaborate irreverence, there was no denying that the prayer had made us feel better. Gene, who had more piety in his nature than either Tony or I, took evident satisfaction. His mind now was obviously clean of worries or self-reproaches.

For a time we made a game of flinging handfuls of salt water on each other to cool our chafing bodies, but soon in the quivering heat we again fell silent, and welcomed the evening.

That night it rained.



The Raft: The Courageous Struggle of Three Naval Airmen against the Sea by Robert Trumbull. 1942. United States Naval Institute. p. 56-58