The itinerary, lavishly laid out in the cruise line’s brochure, had us at sea for a fortnight, with ports of call at Hong Kong, Taiwan, Phu My and Sihanouk City, among others, locales where the 2,666 of us could absorb Asia through our five senses and browse the wares of the local artisans and trinket purveyors. When the passengers boarded the Beryl Empress in Yokohama Harbor, none of them-none of us-expected to be there longer than it would take for everyone to settle into their staterooms and the massive engines to crank the screws and compel the shore to fall away behind the taffrails of its fourteen decks. In port-and it was in port now, indefinitely-its vast hull attracted the attentions of mollusks and crustaceans and its decks the loose-boweled gulls whose excreta would have buried them knee-deep but for the unceasing attentions of the ship’s crew. Whales bobbed up like corks to salute its monumentality, then dove deep to escape the crushing impact of its bow.
The waters calmed to make way for it and when it slashed across the horizon, the pelagic creatures appeared in their slippery legions to disport themselves in its wake. The ship was monumental, like Atlantis risen from the depths, its own island, its own nation, a miracle of every kind of human labor and ingenuity.
