The sudden plunge into the cold gray sea had filled the youth with such terror he thought his heart would burst from his heaving chest. Now, minutes later, he furiously worked his arms and legs as he struggled to ride up and over another mountainous wave. As he crested, needles of spray ripped from the sea by the howling wind stung his beardless face. Bone-penetrating cold was already sapping his strength he had been in the frigid water for too long. As he struggled to ponder his fate, the cruel specter of death seeped into his thoughts, pushing any remaining hope of rescue from his mind.
Could it be? he thought. Have they really left me behind? Surely, someone must have seen me; heard my cries for help. He yearned for his two older brothers, Giovanni and Pietro, out there somewhere in the dark, beyond his reach. But too much time had passed by since the lone flickering yellow lantern on the stern of the last ship had faded into the misty blackness. As the ships had passed him, one after another, no one on board could hear his pitiful cries for help as he desperately splashed his arms in the water, shouting vainly against the raging storm. Young Marco Soranzo was alone.
How wild the sea is, he thought, as another relentless wave crashed into his face, burning his nose and throat with its briny taste. Back in Venice, where the shimmering waters of the Grand Canal gently kissed the very stones of his family's stately palazzo, he had never imagined the sea could be so violent. Again, he strained his burning eyes to see a ship's lantern through the mist. He tried with all his might to will one to appear but none did. Marco no longer suffered from the seasickness that had driven him to disobey orders and sneak up onto the slippery deck, where the monstrous wave had surprised him as he was vomiting over the rail. Now, as he fought to stay afloat his stomach was filled with the nausea of fear.
He had become no more than a piece of debris, gripped by the sea in all her power. He struggled to slowly turn in place as he surveyed his watery domain. Towering waves rolled by in the darkness, silhouetted against the misty sky, like grim executioners searching for their next victim. He thought about what it would be like to drown. He shuddered as he thought about being engulfed in a cold, black, silent coffin of water, with his heart still beating, while his mind struggled to deny the inevitability of his fate. But where will I go when I am dead? Is the church right about salvation? Is there really life beyond death? Or is it a cruel fairy tale? What if there is nothing?
Suddenly, another wall of water crashed over him, this time driving him under with its terrible force. He instinctively fought his way back to the frothy surface as he coughed salt water from his lungs, gasping for a life-sustaining breath of air. He had reached the limit of his human endurance. He could not take any more pounding.
"I will choose my own time!" He vainly screamed at the relentless sea.
Finally, with his eyes and lungs burning and his heart broken, too cold to go on treading water, his exhausted body surrendered to the irresistible force of nature, dooming his still defiant mind, imprisoned within. As he recalled a few words of a simple prayer his mother had taught him, he slowly filled his lungs with one last deep draught of moist air. Then, with the roaring storm as his only requiem, in the final conscious act of his short life, young Marco Soranzo kicked his feet high above the waves and dove down into the dark, peaceful, eternal deep.
