Dolphin Watch

by John Vornholt

  by John Vornholt

  Contents

  Title Page

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  About the Author

  Visit the Exciting World of Dinotopia

  Milos gulped down his fear...

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER 1

  A gust of wind whipped through the small cabin, banging the shutters against the window frame. The hammock swayed, and the old houseboat creaked a bit—enough to wake up the thirteen-year-old boy who slept there. He immediately rolled out of the hammock and landed barefoot on the wooden deck of the houseboat.

  Milos stepped to the window and grabbed the banging shutters. Outside, the morning sky was streaked with thick clouds. They were colored like the blooms on his mother’s bougainvillea bushes—reddish purple and bright orange. Although the air was warm, it smelled damper than usual, heavy with the scent of salt and seaweed.

  It will probably storm today, thought Milos. I’d better get moving and make my rounds. It was always tough to patrol the beaches in the rain.

  To be on the safe side, the wiry, dark-haired lad pulled on his oilcloth pants and slicker. Then he grabbed his diving mask and snorkel from his driftwood dresser and put them in a net bag. The snorkel was made from bamboo, and the mask was made from the shell of a horseshoe crab, fitted with a glass plate.

  He had found the shell on the beach, along with a lot of other odd objects in his room. Milos had a ship’s bell, a rusty compass, several brass plaques, a bosun’s whistle, two brass lanterns, a pilot’s wheel, and his favorite—a life preserver from a ship called the Milagro.

  A friend had told him that the name meant “miracle,” and it was a miracle that the life preserver had wound up on Crackshell Point. The boy often wondered where the rest of the ship had gone. Probably to the bottom of the ocean.

  The way Crackshell Point jutted into the sea, it caught more debris than anyplace else on Dinotopia. When Milos found anything really valuable, he turned it over to the museum in Prosperine. Sometimes he gave interesting objects to the blacksmith, mason, schoolteacher, or whoever could use them. He only kept a few souvenirs for himself.

  It was always fun to dig up useful trinkets on the beach, but what Milos really wanted to find was salvage that was alive. When the dolphins brought shipwreck victims through the reef, Crackshell Point was often the first place they found. Few people visited the secluded coves and beaches of the spit of land, so it was up to Milos to patrol them.

  The boy heard splashing in the water outside his window, and the houseboat rocked a little. He stuck his head out to see a huge Liopleurodon cruise past, its dark shape splitting the water like a boat. The giant marine reptile—easily forty feet long—was awfully close to shore. That was another sign there would be a storm today.

  “Barnacle!” Milos called. “What are you doing here?”

  The giant beast snorted a reply, then dove underwater, his pointed tail disappearing with a spurt. Milos took that to mean that he was looking for breakfast, which sounded like a good idea. He slung his bag over his shoulder, grabbed his bosun’s whistle, and pushed open the swinging door.

  After passing through the companionway, Milos strode into the galley, where his mother was cooking crab cakes on the stove. Melina was dark-skinned and dark-haired like him—three mothers Greek. That made Milos four mothers Greek. She was also a skilled sail maker with four apprentices in training.

  His father, Dimitri, was already gone, since fishermen woke up early. His two younger sisters were still asleep in their hammocks in the aft cabin. Unlike some converted barges and junks, their houseboat had been built as a houseboat from the beginning.

  “Hello, Mother,” he said cheerfully, reaching into the pan for a crab cake. “I’ve got to eat and run.”

  “Be careful, they’re hot!” she warned.

  But Milos grabbed a fat crab cake and juggled it in his hands while it cooled off. His mother shook her head and smiled. “Just like your father—headstrong, never listen to anyone.”

  “There’s too much to do,” answered Milos. “It looks like it will rain, so I’ll probably be home early.” He headed toward the door.

  “Have you decided about your apprenticeship?” asked Melina.

  The boy froze in the doorway and shook his head. He didn’t want to tell her that he had decided against sail making. “No, not yet. I like the dolphin watch.”

  “But that’s not a real trade,” she said. “I mean, it’s a neighborly thing to do. As long as I can remember, somebody has kept watch on the beaches, but it’s not like fishing or boatbuilding. Besides, you’ve been patrolling the beaches for so many years now, don’t you want to try something different? You’re so smart, Milos—”

  “Aw, Mama—” he groaned, juggling the hot crab cake and edging toward the door.

  Undeterred, Melina went on, “You’re already thirteen—you’re going to have to make a choice.”

  “I will!” replied the youth cheerfully. He just didn’t say when.

  Milos dashed onto the pier, munching the hot, crunchy cake as he ran. Didn’t they understand that he didn’t want to do anything but patrol the beaches? He’d been doing it since he was nine years old—he was an expert. They wanted him to leave home and have new experiences, he could tell. Well, who said you had to be an apprentice when you were already good at something?

  “Milos!” called a booming voice. “What’s your hurry?”

  A gray-haired man waved to him from the blacksmith barge. Old Nicholas was using the big bellows to fill about a dozen shells with compressed air. A Polacanthus was pushing on the bellows, and the bulky dinosaur hummed to herself as she worked. As he walked toward his friend, Milos gazed at the floating village, shimmering in the golden dawn.

  Abalonia was a tiny seaport village on the west coast of Crackshell Point. It was really nothing but one big marina, with several floating piers all linked together at a central hub. One of the piers anchored the village to the shore in the middle of a beautiful cove.

  His hometown was so small, it wasn’t on very many maps. When the currents changed and the fish migrated elsewhere, the whole village could be moved. That hadn’t happened for five or six years, and Milos hoped Abalonia would stay where it was for many years to come.

  “Are you going to need an air tank today?” asked Nicholas as the lad approached. He quickly capped one valve and grabbed another shell to fill. “I’ve got an extra one for you right here.”

  “I don’t think so,” answered Milos. “I don’t plan to do much diving—not with that sky. What about you?”

  “I’ve still got to check the kelp beds and the oyster beds,” replied Nicholas, surveying the dark clouds. “Yeah, maybe you should get going—it looks like there’s a storm out to sea.”

  Milos nodded sagely and said, “The dolphins might be busy today.”

  The Polacanthus chittered in common dinosaur language, “It looks like it’s going to rain.”

  “I know, I know!” shouted the lad as he hurried toward the sea. Houseboats, barges, and junks were docked together on the inner slips close to the hub. But Milos dashed toward the empty slips on the outer pier, where the fishing boats were usually docked. Those spaces were empty now, because the fleet was at sea, trying to get an early catch.

  Did his mother want him to leave Abalonia? Many youths left the little village for the larger cities on Dinotopia. Milos had been to Prosperine many times, a
nd he could understand why people liked cities. But he wasn’t one of those people. He would miss the wild, pebbled beaches and the stormy seas of Crackshell Point. Milos couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

  The lad strode to the end of the pier and gazed down into the dark depths. Sometimes he could see fish and reptiles swimming beneath the surface, but not this morning. The sky gave off too little light.

  Milos blew on his bosun’s whistle, and it made a high-pitched squeal with two different tones. Nobody else he knew had a whistle like this, because it came from the outside world. When nothing happened, he sat on the pier and slapped his feet in the water. If that didn’t work, he would have to walk to make his rounds.

  Slowly a few bubbles rose from the depths, and he grinned. Seconds later, an arrow-shaped head on a long, sinewy neck emerged from the dark water, and rows of curved, interlocking teeth grinned at him.

  “Good morning, Lilith,” said the boy in the dinosaur tongue. “Are you ready to make the rounds?”

  “Big storm,” replied the Cryptoclidus, snaking her neck toward the dark clouds. Lilith wasn’t really a dinosaur, and speaking the dinosaur tongue wasn’t that easy for the reptile. Milos knew what most of her grunts and hisses meant, and Lilith also liked to use her graceful neck and head in a kind of sign language.

  As the rest of her sleek body floated to the surface, she rolled over and waggled her four mighty fins. With his feet, Milos rubbed her glistening tummy, and Lilith gave him a toothy smile. She was small for a plesiosaur, only about twelve feet long, but she was as fast as any of the bigger ones.

  It was hard to imagine that the outside world didn’t have plesiosaurs, such as Lilith. Their marine reptiles were few—the great sea turtle, crocodile, alligator, and the like. And they didn’t have any dinosaurs at all! What a sad place it must be.

  Milos put his whistle into his net bag and pulled out his snorkel and mask. Now that he was sure he would be in the water instead of walking, he took off his slicker, rolled it up, and put it in the bag. Then he tied the bag to his waist. Wearing only his swimsuit, the boy slid off the pier into the water.

  It was chilly at first, but Milos spent half his life in the water and quickly grew used to it. Once the storm began, it would be warmer in the water than in the air. Lilith rolled back onto her stomach, and Milos grasped her neck just above her front fins.

  He didn’t use a harness on Lilith unless he knew they were traveling far or diving deep. Milos’s arms and legs were strong enough to keep their grip during even the fastest ride, and he figured this would be a short day.

  With a little click of his tongue, he told her that he was ready. The reptile gave a powerful thrust of her fins, and they were off. Lilith used her fins to fly through the water—like a bird with four mighty wings. She could skim close to the surface, allowing Milos to breath through his snorkel while he kept watch below. He could often spot predators or a salvage before Lilith could.

  The boy and the Cryptoclidus had worked out hand and flipper signals for everything—from diving and surfacing to alerts for danger and fun. On a dive without a breathing tank, Lilith knew from experience how long Milos could hold his breath, and she seldom needed to be told to surface. After all, she had to breathe air, too. When Milos had a breathing tank, he could stay down fifteen or twenty minutes with the plesiosaur.

  A school of small, silvery fish scattered ahead of them, and a Mixosaurus swam alongside them for some time. It was hard to gauge time underwater. The minutes seemed to melt by, especially when he had a graceful escort, such as the Mixosaurus. The reptile was about three feet long and had a dorsal fin and beaklike jaws, which made him look very much like a small dolphin.

  Soon they were out of the harbor and curling around the breakwater, which cut down on the waves in the cove. The Mixosaurus spotted some shellfish beneath them and dashed off to get breakfast.

  After a few more minutes of furious swimming, Milos and Lilith reached the first beach on their inspection tour. It wasn’t broad and sandy like the beaches Milos had heard about in the south of Dinotopia—it was rocky and rough, strewn with pebbles and yellow-green kelp. Big dragonflies swarmed around the bulbs of drying kelp.

  Normally, Milos might have taken his time, looking for driftwood or neat objects, like his bosun’s whistle. But with a storm brewing, he looked for only one thing—shipwrecked survivors, brought to shore by the dolphins.

  No one but the dolphins and smaller reptiles like Lilith could make it through the ring of treacherous reefs that surrounded Dinotopia. They knew the secret openings and passages, and they were very strong swimmers.

  Around the jutting spit of Crackshell Point, the reef was closer than it was near other Dinotopian shores. It was only a mile from the rocks, and even the experienced fishermen of Abalonia had to be careful when they rounded the point. The great forests of coral were invisible from the surface, but they lay just inches beneath the waves, and they stretched for miles. On both sides, the reef was a trap waiting to catch the unwary.

  Lilith swam on the surface, paddling slowly, while Milos surveyed the rugged beach—with its rocks and tufts of spear grass. Normally, he would have taken the time to walk the beach, but not today.

  “No one here,” said the lad to his companion. With that declaration, Lilith took off again.

  A few minutes later, they were bobbing in the waters of another small cove with another pebbly beach. Here there was an old wooden pier, where a small boy was fishing with a pole. He was helped by a small pterosaur, a Dimorphodon, who dove at the water and tried to drive the fish toward the pier.

  “Hullo, Billy!” called Milos with a wave. “Any sign of dolphinbacks?”

  “None here,” said the boy. “Go away—you’ll scare the fish!”

  Milos smiled and shook his head. Billy was definitely a fisherman in training. Sometimes Milos wished that he liked to fish. That would sure make life simple, because then he could apprentice to his father on the family boat. But he much preferred to be under the water, observing the fish, than above it, trying to catch them.

  The third beach was rather sandy and sported several purple tide pools full of spiny creatures. At the moment, there were a couple of oviraptors snorting about in the pools, looking for sea urchins or other delicacies. Two young oviraptors raced through the surf, kicking up the sand with their long legs.

  No half-drowned survivors on this beach.

  So it went, as Milos and Lilith made their rounds of a dozen small inlets and beaches until they reached the very tip of Crackshell Point. Here there were towering bluffs covered with scraggly, wind-blown bushes and clumps of long grass. The wind was blowing in fits and starts, and there was sand in the air. Unofficially, this was where the lad’s area of responsibility ended. Besides, the eastern side of the spit of land seldom got interesting wreckage.

  They hadn’t found any shipwreck victims washed up on shore, but Milos wasn’t disappointed. That was actually a rare occurrence; the last time they had found a dolphinback was ten months ago. But he knew the one day he failed to make his rounds would be the day when someone really needed him.

  Besides, now they were done early and had the rest of the day to play!

  “Want to find the dolphins?” he asked Lilith. Milos didn’t use words to ask this question—instead he made leaping and diving motions with his hand. The dolphins were the only residents who moved easily between Dinotopia and the outer world. So they were often gone, or hard to find.

  Lilith knew exactly what he meant, and she slapped her fins playfully in the water. Milos barely had time to get a grip around her sinewy neck before she took off like a giant squid. Somehow the Cryptoclidus always knew where to find the local dolphins.

  They rounded Crackshell Point and swam out to the first ridge of coral formations. Just inches below the surface of the water was another world, set off from both the world above and the rest of the sea. Older scrolls called the reef around Dinotopia the “Great Belt of Jewels.” Although bea
utiful, the endless branches of coral were dangerous and impenetrable.

  Even with the dark sky, it was easy to spot hundreds of colorful fish and Devonian sea creatures feeding along the sparkling reef. Scooting among the lion and parrot fish were trilobites and nautiloids. They looked like hand-painted shells with tentacles.

  Since the tiny coral polyps were alive, the reef itself was alive—a million filmy fingers reaching, contracting, and waving in the current. The living coral came in all the colors of the rainbow and then some, with vibrant hues to rival the tropical fish.

  Beyond this shimmering wall, Milos could see the dead coral stretching into the distance under the surface. It was bleached white, except for faded pastel shades and dancing shadows. Sea anemones were spouting from the nooks and crannies, giving it corsages of color. Even these glistening remains of the coral polyps were beautiful.

  It was hard to believe this fragile wall kept Dinotopia apart from the outside world, but Milos knew there were miles and miles of it. And ships that ran aground on the coral did not find the Great Belt of Jewels all that fragile.

  Lilith made a few happy squeaks, and her long neck went as stiff as a spear. Milos peered through his mask and could see a dozen sleek shapes headed toward them. With their powerful tails, they jetted through the water, swimming side by side. Milos marveled at the way the pod of dolphins moved through the sea the way a flock of pterodactyls flew in the air.

  When they suddenly darted upward, Lilith quickly followed. The boy and the reptile reached the surface just as the bottlenose dolphins shot from the sea, leaping together in a high, graceful arc. It’s the Sky Jumpers! thought Milos with excitement. The pod was led by that old rascal Smiley, who waved at them with his tail as he plummeted down.

  Lilith also tried to leap into the sky, but the Cryptoclidus was no match for the dolphins. She dropped like a rock with a huge splash, knocking Milos off her back. At once, he was surrounded by dolphins, nudging and poking him. He knew that it was their way of saying that he was “it” in a game of tag, which the dolphins called “Shark.”