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Gene had a "deep streak of piety" and organized the trio's regular evening prayers. What bothered him was whether his mother had been able to collect on his life insurance: she needed the money badly. Gene would think it all over and shake his head. "If mother could see me now!" he would say with amazement. . . . Says Dixon: "She wouldn't have liked the look of it."
Tony Pastula, the 24-year-old bomber, came of a Polish family in Youngstown, Ohio. He had a horror of being buried at sea on a rough day. "Perhaps, also," says Dixon, "he had a # Seamen Pastula, Dixon, Aldrich. horror of being eaten [by his mates]." Tony was the thinnest and thought he might be the first to die. Nevertheless, he agreed with the other two that "the survivors should eat the heart, liver and other such organs" of whichever one went first. Says Dixon: "Today I don't believe that any of us had a real intention of stooping so."
Chief Petty Officer Harold F. Dixon was the leader of the three. His story is an astonishing self-portrait. Dixon has no humble streak in his nature. At 41, "a tough old chief petty officer" with 22 years service behind him, he knew precisely what he meant to do with that raft. "I was determined to sail it if I could. And I maintain that I did sail it. I worked like the devil to sail it, and I resent anyone's saying we 'drifted.' " Nor did he ever doubt who was boss. "Naturally I was in command. I took an occasion to remind the boys that I, as captain, held absolute authority." When he tried to teach them navigation, he was not sorry that their sun-dulled minds could not absorb his lessons, "as this left the responsibility for our progress entirely in my hands."
Again & again there are glimpses of the sureness of those hands, and insight into a deeply practical mind. Dixon might have been specially trained for this job. He made an all-important sea anchor out of a life jacket, paddles out of his own shoes. He treated Gene's finger expertly when a shark ripped it from end to end. A superstitious man and an "ardent" spiritualist, Dixon was ready to participate in Gene's daily prayers "because it worked a couple of times . . . and later because it gave us something regular to do." When Tony, who had heard only Polish religious services, begged to hear Bible stories in English, Dixon rationed them, giving him one story a day. ("I didn't want to tell him everything I knew in one night.")
With his own mistakes Dixon has little patience. He bitterly regrets the times when, exhausted with thirst, hunger and desperation, with his clothes washed away to shreds and his skin a mess of huge sun blisters scaled with burning salt, he would lose control and scream at his companions. He confesses with shame that he was afraid to catch a passing shark with his bare hands. But he kept his strength of mind to the end.