If I were in charge of staging Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan and I only had the album to go off of, no direction or notes from John or whatever, I would make the Narrator a poor swimmer (Fishing Boat: Learning to float/swim/tread water) who in the wreck is clearly doomed. He's just a kid (Fishing Boat: 16 on a fishing boat/Just once before you're grown) and he's going to die and it's all Balkan's fault (Your Glow: You lost your feeling for the waves before we ran aground). Of course storied Captain Peter Balkan is a mighty swimmer. He sees what's happening, and he goes after the kid. Maybe he even abandons the spar he's holding onto or whatever in order to reverse Titanic the lad to it.
And in the process, in saving the Narrator, that's when he gets bashed in the head by debris. That's the source of his injury. Peter Balkan, in saving a child from the doom he wrought, sows his own destruction and, thereby, his apotheosis.
