“Your people are sure of this%”
“Absolutely,” Sandecker said flatly.
“There is always the possibility of a mistake.”
“No mistake,” Sandecker said firmly. “My only concession is a less than five percent chance the convergence could take place a safe distance away from the island.”
“I hear through the congressional grapevine that you’ve approached Senators Raymond and Ybarra on this matter but were unable to get their backing for a military strike against Dorsett Consolidated property.”
“I failed to convince them of the seriousness of the situation.”
“And now you’ve come to the President.”
“I’ll go to God if I can save two million lives.”
Hutton stared at Sandecker, head tilted to the side, his eyes dubious. He tapped a pencil on his desktop for a few moments, then nodded and stood, convinced that the admiral could not be ignored.
“Wait right here,” he commanded. He stepped through a doorway that led to the Oval Office and disappeared for a solid ten minutes. When he reappeared, Hutton motioned Sandecker inside. “This way, Jim. The President will see you.”
Sandecker looked at Hutton. “Thank you, Will. I owe you one.”
As the admiral entered the Oval Office, the President graciously came from around President Roosevelt’s old desk and shook his hand. “Admiral Sandecker, this is a pleasure.”
“I’m grateful for your time, Mr. President.”
“Will says this is an urgent matter concerning the cause of all those deaths on the Polar Queen.”
“And many more.”
“Tell the President what you told me,” said Hutton, handing the report on the acoustic plague to the President to read while the admiral explained the threat.
Sandecker presented his case with every gun blazing. He was forceful and vibrant. He believed passionately in his people at NUMA, their judgments and conclusions. He paused for emphasis, then wound up by requesting military force to stop Arthur Dorsett’s mining operations.
The President listened intently until Sandecker finished, then continued reading in silence for a few more minutes before looking up. “You realize, of course, Admiral, that I cannot arbitrarily destroy personal property on foreign soil.”
“Not to mention the taking of innocent lives,” Hutton added.
“If we can stop the operations of only one of the Dorsett Consolidated mines,” said Sandecker, “and prevent the acoustic energy from traveling from its source, we could weaken the convergence enough to save nearly two million men, women and children who live in and around Honolulu from an agonizing death.”
“You must admit, Admiral, acoustic energy is not a threat the government is prepared to guard against. This is completely new to me. I’ll need time for my advisers on the National Science Board to investigate NUMA’s findings.”
“The convergence will occur in sixteen days,” said Sandecker darkly.
“I’ll be back to you in four,” the President assured him.
“That still leaves us plenty of time to carry out a plan of action,” said Hutton.
The President reached out his hand. “Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention, Admiral,” he said in official jargon. “I promise to give your report my fullest attention.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” said Sandecker. “I couldn’t ask for more.”
As Hutton showed him out of the Oval Office, he said, “Don’t worry, Jim. I’ll personally shepherd your warning through the proper channels.”
Sandecker fixed him with a blistering glare. “Just make damned sure the President doesn’t let it fall through the cracks, or there won’t be anyone left in Honolulu to vote for him.”
Four days without water. The sun’s unrelenting heat and the constant humidity sucked the perspiration from their bodies. Pitt would not let them dwell on the empty vastness that could depress all physical energy and creative thought. The monotonous lapping of the waves against the boat nearly drove them mad until they became immune to it. Ingenuity was the key to survival. Pitt had studied many shipwreck accounts and knew that too many shipwrecked mariners expired from lethargy and hopelessness. He drove Maeve and Giordino, urging them to sleep only at night and keep as busy as possible during daylight hours.
The prodding worked. Besides serving as the ship’s butcher, Maeve tied lines to a silk handkerchief and trailed it over the stern of the boat. Acting as a finely meshed net, the handkerchief gathered a varied collection of plankton and microscopic sea life. After a few hours, she divided her specimens into three neat piles on a seat lid, as if it were some sort of salad-of-the-sea.
Giordino used the harder steel of the Swiss army knife to notch barbs into the hook fashioned from Pitt’s belt buckle. He took over the fishing duties, while Maeve put her knowledge of biology and zoology to work, expertly cleaning and dissecting the day’s catch. Most shipwrecked sailors would have simply lowered the hook into the sea and waited. Giordino skipped preliminary fish seduction. After baiting the hook with the choicer, more appetizing, to fish at any rate, morsels from the shark’s entrails, he began casting the line as if he were a cowboy roping a calf, slowly reeling it in over his elbow and the valley between his thumb and forefinger, jiggling it every meter to give life to the bait. Apparently, finding a moving dinner acted as an enticement to his prey, and soon Giordino hooked his first fish. A small tuna bit the lure, and less than ten minutes later the bonito was reeled on board.
The annals of shipwrecked sailors were rife with tales of those who died of starvation while surrounded by fish, because they lacked the basic skills to catch them. Not Giordino. Once he got the hang of it and sharpened his system to a fine science, he began to pull in fish with the virtuosity of a veteran fisherman. With a net, he could have filled the entire boat in a matter of hours. The water around and beneath the little craft looked like an aquarium. Fish of every size and luminescent color had congregated to escort the castaways. The smallest, vibrantly colored fish came and drew the larger fish that in turn attracted the larger sharks that made an ominous nuisance of themselves by bumping against the boat.
Menacing and graceful at the same time, the killers of the deep glided back and forth beside the boat, their triangular fins cutting the water surface like a cleaver. Accompanied by their entourage of legendary pilot fish, the sharks would roll on their sides as they slid under the boat. Rising on the crest of a swell when the boat was in a trough, they could actually stare down at their potential victims through catlike eyes as lifeless as ice cubes. Pitt was reminded of a Winslow Homer painting, a print of which had hung in a classroom of his elementary school. It was called the Gulf Stream. In the scene a black man was shown floating on a demasted sloop surrounded by a school of sharks, with a waterspout in the background. It was Homer’s interpretation of man’s uneven struggle against natural forces.
The old tried-and-true method devised by castaways and early navigators of chewing the moisture out of the raw fish was a feature of meals, along with the shark meat dried into jerky by the sun. Their sushi bar was also enhanced by two fair-sized flying fish they found flopping in the bottom of the boat during the night. The oily flavor of fresh, raw fish did not win any gourmet awards with their taste buds, but it went a long way in diminishing the agony of hunger and thirst. Their empty stomachs were appeased after only a few bites.
The need to replenish their body fluids was also lessened by dropping briefly over the side every few hours while the others kept a sharp eye’ out for sharks. The cooling sensation generated by lying in wet clothes under the shade of the boat cover helped fight the misery of dehydration as well as the torment of sunburn. It also helped to dissolve the coating of salt that rapidly accumulated on their bodies.
The elements made Pitt’s job of navigating fairly simple. The westerly winds out of the Roaring Forties were carrying them east. The current cooperated and flowed in the same direction. For determining his approximate posi
tion, a rough estimate at best, he relied on the sun and stars while using a cross-staff he’d fashioned of two slivers of wood cut from the paddle.
The cross-shaft was a method of determining latitude devised by ancient mariners. With one end of the shaft held to the eye, a crosspiece was calibrated by sliding it back and forth until one end fit exactly between either the sun or star and the horizon. The angle of latitude was then read on notches carved on the stag. Once the angle was established, the mariner was able by crude reckoning to establish a rough latitude without published tables for reference. To determine his longitude-in Pitt’s case, how far east they were being driven-was another matter.
The night sky blazed with stars that became glittering points on a celestial compass that revolved from east to west. After a few nights of fixing their positions, Pitt was able to record a rudimentary log by inscribing his calculations on one end of the nylon boat cover with a small pencil Maeve had fortuitously discovered stuffed under a buoyancy tube. His primary obstacle was that he was not as familiar with the stars and constellations this far south as he was with the ones found north of the equator, and he had to grope his way.
The light boat was sensitive to the wind’s touch and often swept over the water as if it were under sail. He measured their speed by tossing one of his rubber-soled sneakers in front of the boat that was tied to a five-meter line. Then he counted the seconds it took the boat to pass the shoe, pulling it from the water before it drifted astern. He discovered that they were being pushed along by the westerly wind at a little under three kilometers an hour. By rigging the nylon boat cover as a sail and using the paddle as a short mast, he found they could increase their speed to five kilometers, or an easy pace if they could have stepped out of the boat and walked alongside.
“Here we are drifting rudderless like jetsam and flotsam over the great sea of life,” Giordino muttered through salt-caked lips. “Now all we have to do is figure out a way to steer this thing.”
“Say no more,” said Pitt, using the screwdriver to remove the hinges on a fiberglass seat that covered a storage compartment. In less than a minute, he held up the rectangular lid, which was about the same size and shape as a cupboard door. “Every move a picture.”
“How do you plan to attach it?” asked Maeve, becoming immune to Pitt’s continuing display of inventiveness.
“By using the hinges on the remaining seats and attaching them to the lid, I can screw it to the transom that held the outboard motor so that it can swing back and forth. Then by attaching two ropes to the upper end, we can operate it the same as any rudder on a ship or airplane. It’s called making the world a better place to live.”
“You’ve done it,” Giordino said stoically. “Artistic license, elementary logic, idle living, sex appeal, it’s all there.”
Pitt looked at Maeve and smiled. “The great thing about Al is that he is almost totally theatrical.”
“So now that we’ve got a particle of control, great navigator, what’s our heading?”
“That’s up to the lady,” said Pitt. “She’s more familiar with these waters than we are.”
“If we head straight north,” Maeve answered, “we might make Tasmania.”
Pitt shook his head and gestured at the makeshift sail. “We’re not rigged to sail under a beam wind. Because of our flat bottom, we’d be blown five times as far east as north. Making landfall on the southern tip of New Zealand is a possibility but a remote one. We’ll have to compromise by setting the sail to head slightly north of east, say a heading of seventy-five degrees on my trusty Boy Scout compass.”
“The farther north the better,” she said, holding her arms around her breasts for warmth. “The nights are too cold this far south.”
“Do you know if there are landfalls on that course?” Giordino asked Maeve.
“Not many,” she answered flatly. “The islands that lie south of New Zealand are few and far apart. We could easily pass between them without sighting one, especially at night.”
“They may be our only hope.” Pitt held the compass in his hand and studied the needle. “Do you recall their approximate whereabouts?”
“Stewart Island just below the South Island. Then come the Snares, the Auckland Islands, and nine hundred kilometers farther south are the Macquaries.”
“Stewart is the only one that sounds vaguely familiar,” said Pitt thoughtfully.
“Macquarie, you won’t care for.” Maeve gave an instinctive shiver. “The only inhabitants are penguins, and it often snows.”
“It must be swept by colder currents out of the Antarctic.”
“Miss any one of them and it’s open sea all the way to South America,” Giordino said discouragingly.
Pitt shielded his eyes and scanned the empty sky. “If the cold nights don’t get us, without rain we’ll dehydrate long before we step onto a sandy beach. Our best approach is to keep heading toward the southern islands in hopes of hitting one. You might call it putting all our eggs in several baskets to lower the odds.”
“Then we make a stab for the Macquaries,” said Giordino.
“They’re our best hope,” Pitt agreed.
With Giordino’s able help, Pitt soon set the sail for a slight tack on a magnetic compass bearing of seventy-five degrees. The rudimentary rudder worked so well that they were able to increase their heading to nearly sixty degrees. Buoyed by the realization that they had a tiny grip on their destiny, they felt a slight optimism begin to emerge, heightened by Giordino’s sudden announcement.
“We have a squall heading our way.”
Black clouds had materialized and were sweeping out of the western sky as quickly as if some giant above were unrolling a carpet over the castaways. Within minutes drops of moisture began pelting the boat. Then they came heavier and more concentrated until the rain fell in a torrential downpour.
“Open every locker and anything that resembles a container,” ordered Pitt as he frantically lowered the nylon sail. “Hold the sail on a slant with one end over the side of the boat for a minute to wash away the salt accumulation, before we form it into a trough to funnel the rainwater into the ice chest.”
As the rain continued to pour down, they all tilted their faces toward the clouds, opening wide and filling their mouths, swallowing the precious liquid like greedy young birds demanding a meal from their winged parents. The pure fresh smell and pure taste came as sweet as honey to parched throats. No sensation could have been more pleasing.
The wind rushed over the sea, and for the next twelve minutes they reveled in a blinding deluge. The neoprene flotation tubes rumbled like drums as the raindrops struck their skintight sides. Water soon filled the ice chest and overflowed on the bottom of the boat. The life-giving squall ended as abruptly as it had begun. Hardly a drop was wasted. They removed their clothes and wrung the water from the cloth into their mouths before storing any excess from the bottom of the boat in every receptacle they could devise. With the passing of the squall and the intake of fresh water, their spirits rose to new heights.
“How much do you figure we collected?” Maeve wondered aloud.
“Between ten and twelve liters,” Giordino guessed.
“We can stretch it another three liters by mixing it with seawater,” said Pitt.
Maeve stared at him. “Aren’t you inviting disaster? Drinking water laced with salt isn’t exactly a cure for thirst.”
“On hot, sultry days in the tropics, humans have a tendency to pour a stream of water down their throats until it comes out their ears and still feel thirsty. The body takes in more liquid than it needs. What your system really needs after sweating a river, is salt. Your tongue may retain the unwanted taste of seawater, but trust me, adding it to fresh water will quench your thirst without making you sick.”
After a meal of raw fish and a replacement of their body liquids, they felt almost human again. Maeve found a small amount of grease where the engine controls once attached under the console and mixed it with oil sh
e had squeezed from the caught fish to make a sunburn lotion. She laughingly referred to her concoction as Fletcher’s Flesh Armour and pronounced the Skin Protection Factor a minus six. The only affliction they could not remedy was the sores that were forming on their legs and backs, caused by chafing front the constant motion of the boat. Maeve’s improvised suntan lotion helped but did not correct the growing problem.
A stiff breeze sprang up in the afternoon, which boiled the sea around them as they were flung to the northeast, caught in the whim of the unpredictable waves. The leather jacket sea anchor was thrown out, and Pitt lowered the sail to keep it from blowing away. It was like racing down a snowy hill on a giant inner tube, completely out of control. The blow lasted until ten o’clock the next morning before finally tapering off. As soon as the seas calmed, the fish came back. They were seemingly maddened by the interruption, thrashing the water and butting up against the boat. The more voracious fish, the bullies on the block, had a field day with their smaller cousins. For close to an hour the water around the raft turned to blood as the fish acted out their never-ending life-or-death struggle that the sharks always won.
Tired beyond measure from being thrown about in the boat, Maeve quickly fell asleep and dreamed of her children. Giordino also took a siesta, his dreams conjuring up a vision of an all-you-can-eat restaurant buffet. For Pitt there were no dreams. He brushed all feelings of weariness aside and rehoisted the sail. He took a sighting of the sun with his cross-staff and set a course with the compass. Settling into a comfortable position in the stem, he steered the boat toward the northeast with the ropes attached to the rudder.
As so often when the sea was calm, he felt aloof from the problems of staying alive and the sea around him. After thinking and rethinking the situation, his thoughts always returned to Arthur Dorsett. He stirred himself to summon up his anger. No man could visit unspeakable horrors on innocent people, even his own daughter, and not suffer a form of retribution. It mattered more than ever now. The leering faces of Dorsett and his daughters Deirdre and Boudicca beckoned to hum.
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