“Sahila?”
“It’s like a chief, or headman, which is why he is here. It’s up to him to decide if we can stay in these waters or if we have to leave.”
The men in the canoes were talking rapidly amongst themselves in a language Larry knew wasn’t Spanish. Every few minutes the one Grant said was the headman turned back to him with a question in Spanish, and Larry did his best to keep up with what was going on.
“They asked why we came here, and I told them it was because we were seeking a place where we could stay in peace, a place where we didn’t have to run and hide. I told them our country has been destroyed, and that we have no place to go. I told them that we were fishermen, and that we didn’t need anything from them, just a place to anchor our boat, and then we could provide for ourselves.”
“What does he have to say about that?”
“Mateo says that all these waters and the fish that are in them belong to the Kuna Yala people. He said that when Americans and other foreigners sailed here before on their boats, that they brought lots of money to buy things from the people, and that they had to pay for every night they anchored. He said most of them didn’t stop in his part of the islands though, so his village seldom received any money or trade goods.”
“What does he want us to pay?” Larry asked.
Grant turned back to the chief and a long back and forth discussion ensued. The longer it went on, the more nervous Larry became, because he could tell there was something about the terms that Grant didn’t like.
“What is it Grant? Is there going to be a problem?”
“I don’t know. That’s up to you, Captain.”
“It is?”
“Yes. He says we can stay and that they have a house for us near the village that is big enough for all of us to live in.”
“Did you tell him we don’t need a house, that we live on our boat?”
“I did, but that’s the problem. He really likes the Casey Nicole, Larry. He wants to trade us a house for it.”
“Did you tell him no fucking way? You did, didn’t you, Grant?”
“Sort of, but I think we’ve worked out something else instead. I told him the boat was special to you because you built it yourself with the help of your friend. He said he understands, but he still likes the catamaran very much. He said the offer to stay here is still good, if you and Scully and the rest of us will build a big sailing catamaran like this one for the village. In the meantime, he also wants to learn how to sail the Casey Nicole. The boat will still be ours, but it will be available for the use of the village too, with you as captain, of course. That’s the best deal we’re going to get. I think we should take him up on it, Larry. That is, if you’re willing to build another boat.”
Thirty-one
CASEY WOKE TO SUNLIGHT filtering through the bamboo slat walls of the elevated hut near the Kuna village to see sudden movement out of the corner of her eye. She leapt to her feet, almost tripping over Grant in a terrified attempt to get away from it when she realized what it was. Her startled cry woke everyone in the room; the entire crew save for Larry and Jessica, who had spent the night on the boat.
“What is it, Casey?” Artie was on his feet almost as quick, and Grant right behind him.
“That!” Casey pointed.
Grant burst into a laugh. A big, hairy tarantula had crawled onto the blanket Casey was using for a bed, and there it had stopped, no doubt frozen by all the commotion it perceived as a threat.
“What are you laughing at, Grant? That thing could have bitten me!”
“Nah. They’re harmless! You might as well get used to them, Casey. They can get in easy enough, and they like the thatch.” Grant glanced up at the vaulted roof of interwoven palm frond overhead.
“Spider no problem,” Casey. “What you got to watch out fo’ is de snake. Got de viper in dese island.”
“I want to go back to the boat! This isn’t going to work!”
“It’s not permanent, Casey. Just remember what I said.”
Grant had explained it all well enough. After they had agreed to help Chief Mateo build a catamaran for the village, they had been shown to this large, empty house in a lovely setting amongst the coconut palms looking out over the lagoon. Grant said it would be rude of them to refuse to accept it, and that if they all stayed on the boat it would be construed as an insult to the Kuna’s hospitality, as if they thought they were too good for this nice house. Larry had only gotten away with excusing himself to the boat because he was the captain, and he had Grant explain that he wouldn’t be able to sleep ashore for worry over his vessel. And since Jessica was his woman, it was essential that she stay on the boat as well.
Casey and all of them had liked the house at first glance. It was really cool looking, with its steep, thatched roof and split bamboo walls. Built on poles with the floor some eight feet off the ground, unwelcome crawling things had been the farthest from Casey’s mind the first time she climbed up the ladder and stepped inside. But she should have known spiders and insects could get in, even if the sleeping area was safe from the roaming village pigs and chickens that ran loose everywhere.
Casey had never been in such a village among people who lived a mostly traditional lifestyle. Grant, however, was right at home here, and loving every minute of it. The Kuna weren’t as isolated as the tribe he’d spent time with in Guyana, but they still lived a simple life. That lifestyle would revert even more to the old ways now that the pulse had further cut them off from the outside world, putting a stop to the stream of eco-tourists and adventurers who had been finding their way here in greater numbers in recent years. Grant was absorbing everything he could from Mateo and the others he was quickly getting to know in the village. He was delighted to serve as the go-between for his little group as they learned the ways of the Kuna and settled in.
Later that morning after Casey’s fright with the big spider, Larry and Jessica joined them when Mateo and some of the men who’d been with him that first day came over to discuss the new boatbuilding project. They weren’t putting any pressure on Larry to begin, but they were excited about the prospect and wanted to have a closer look at the Casey Nicole and discuss how Larry might build a similar craft from local materials.
“Tell him that it won’t be possible to build it exactly like our boat, unless he knows where we can trade for some marine plywood and epoxy,” Larry said.
Casey had seen plywood in the village. Maybe it wasn’t boat grade material, but many of the houses were an eclectic mix of modern and primitive building materials and methods. Some had plywood walls and even floors, and a few had tin roofs instead of the traditional thatch. Larry had noticed all this too, and he told Grant to suggest to Mateo that perhaps some of the materials in these houses could be borrowed for the new boat.
“I know all that plywood and other lumber was brought in from the mainland when the supply boats were running and there won’t be any more coming, but tell him it would be harder to build two hulls like this from trees in the jungle than it would to replace the houses that we take the plywood from.”
Grant explained all this to Mateo and more discussion among the men in their language followed, as well as many smiles and nodding of heads. Some of the women might not like it, Mateo said, but for the good of the people, yes, they could take away whatever plywood they found. The men would build new houses the old way, using bamboo and thatch just like the one Casey and her friends had been staying in. Larry was happy to hear it, because it would make his commission so much easier. He could nail together two plywood hulls using simpler wooden boatbuilding methods that didn’t require epoxy to hold the parts together. The designer of his boat had done the same on the beaches of Trinidad back in the early days of his career, after completing the first successful crossing of the Atlantic by catamaran. Larry said the cross beams could be carved from natural-grown trees, as could the masts, if Mateo knew where suitable timber for such parts might be found. Mateo said he did, and it was decid
ed that they would go on a sailing expedition aboard the Casey Nicole the very next day to have a look at it. The place was a heavily forested island farther west in the chain and closer to the mainland. Hearing Grant’s interpretation of Mateo’s description of it, Casey thought it sounded like a jungle paradise.
“You’ve got to take me with you!” she begged. “I know you are going, because you have to translate, but please, take me too!”
Grant talked it over with Larry and the others. They couldn’t all go because Mateo and three of his men were going. But seeing how bad Casey wanted to go, Artie agreed to stay behind, as did Mindy and Scully. Even Jessica said she would remain in the village so Casey and Grant could sail with Larry, the three of them handling the boat and showing the Kuna men the ropes along the way. Mateo said that if they left early in the morning and the wind was favorable, they could reach the island with the special forest in time to look over the timber and still be back before dark the same day.
Because they were leaving at daybreak, Casey had a good excuse to spend the night aboard the catamaran instead of in the thatched hut with that awful spider. She trusted Grant when he said they were harmless, but the thought of them crawling around near her was going to take some getting used to.
When the Mateo and the other Kuna men that were sailing with them arrived, they were accompanied by most of the villagers, including the children, who gathered around to watch them depart. The breeze was light that early in the day, especially in the semi-sheltered lagoon in front of the village. The Casey Nicole ghosted along at less than three knots under full sail until they reached more open waters. Getting to the timber island turned out to involve slow and frustrating sailing, with lots of tacking as Larry did his best to play the light breezes and make progress to windward. By the time they arrived, it was already afternoon, but the trades had filled in and Larry said returning to the village downwind would be much faster.
From the water, this island looked much the same as the dozens of others they’d already passed in the archipelago, but Mateo explained through Grant that it was much larger than it looked, with higher ground in the interior that wasn’t apparent from palm-fringed, empty beaches. Larry brought the Casey Nicole in all the way to waist-deep water, setting one anchor off the stern and then carrying another to the beach before they all waded ashore. The Kuna men had machetes and rifles, so they led the way into the forest with Casey and the others following closely behind.
“This is amazing!” Casey said, the deeper they penetrated into the interior. She had never seen anything like it. The vegetation that surrounded them made it feel as though they were walking through a greenhouse of exotic plants. The farther inland they traveled, the bigger the trees became, many of them supported by immense, flaring root systems much larger than the diameter of the trunks.
“Welcome to the rainforest, Casey!” Grant said.
“How old are these trees? They must be hundreds of years old at least!”
“I’m sure,” Larry said.
“I hope they don’t want to cut these down for the boat. That would be a shame.”
“No, we don’t need anything that big. We just need some tall and straight timber for spars and beams. I think Mateo understands that.”
They came to a steep slope where the forest changed character and soon found themselves walking through the grove the men had spoken of. Casey had no idea what kind of trees they were, but she could tell her Uncle Larry liked what he saw.
“I don’t know the species,” Grant said, “but I remember seeing these in parts of Guyana too.”
“It’s hardwood, whatever it is,” Larry said, straining to see the foliage far overhead in the canopy. “Normally not ideal for spar-making, but I suppose there’s not a lot of choice.”
“Mateo says the wood is lightweight and strong. He says they have always used it for boats.”
“We’ll take his word for it then. It’s not like I can order a shipment of Doug fir or Sitka spruce to be delivered from the lumberyard. Tell him this will do, but that we’re going to need his help figuring out how to get what we need back to the village.”
When Larry had finished looking over the timber, Mateo and the other Kuna showed them some of the island’s other secrets, including an extensive grove of the largest bamboo Casey had ever seen. It was the kind they used to make the walls in the house like the one in which they were staying, and Larry said it would be an ideal substitute for the fabric trampoline decks at either end of the Casey Nicole. It was lightweight and strong, and when split and lashed into place the way it was done for those walls, would effectively drain excess water from boarding seas in much the same way as the tramps.
They left the island satisfied that their mission had been accomplished, and there were smiles all around as Mateo and his men realized that Larry was confident he could build them the boat they wanted. Mateo said they might need more than one when the Kuna people from other parts of the islands saw it. Larry was going to be busy, but that was good. Honest work was far preferable to staying on the run, always watchful and never knowing when they would have to fight for their lives again. They returned to the village and relayed the details of their excursion to Artie, Jessica, Scully and Mindy. The work would begin soon, but there was no pressure and no deadline. Anything they did from now on would be done on island time.
* * *
Tara Hancock felt like she had just crawled into her bunk when Rebecca shook her awake. There was no way she’d been sleeping four hours, and she knew at a glance that it couldn’t be time for her watch as the sunlight in the cabin told her it was still mid afternoon.
“Mom! Brian said to come quick. He’s spotted land!”
Tara was wide-awake now. If they were in sight of land today then their dead reckoning was way off. Working out their estimated position on the single big chart with Charles that morning, they calculated that they would make landfall in the San Blas sometime tomorrow, not today. She rushed up the companionway steps to the cockpit, where Charles and Holly were sitting together at the helm. Brian was all the way forward in the bow pulpit, the binoculars in hand as he studied the horizon.
“I think we’re slightly ahead of schedule,” Charles said.
Tara could see several small humps of blue-green in the distance, the outlines of what had to be islands.
“Is it really the San Blas?”
“It’s got to be,” Charles said. “Unless we were even more messed up with our navigation than I thought. But according to the chart, there’s nothing else on the rhumbline between us and the mainland but the San Blas Islands.”
Tara made her way forward to join Brian and when he handed her the binoculars; she could see that the islands were lush and green, unlike those of the Bahamas they’d left behind. So they had made it! They had crossed the Caribbean to Panama, and she was certain that somewhere among those islands ahead they would find Larry Drager and his crew on the Casey Nicole. With some 380 islands to search among, it might take some time, but that didn’t matter. They were close enough find a place to anchor for the night, and tomorrow they could decide where to begin looking.
* * *
Thank you for reading Horizons Beyond the Darkness. I hope you enjoyed it. Please turn the page to learn more about the rest of the Pulse Series and what’s coming next.
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IF YOU MISSED ANY of the first four books in The Pulse Series, they are available on Amazon here:
The Pulse
Refuge After the Collapse
Voyage After the Collapse
Landfall: Islands in the Aftermath
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More by Scott B. Williams
THE FOLLOWING LINKS WILL take you to the Amazon Kindle versions of my most popular books that are available now. New books are coming all the time so stay up to date by signing up for my book alerts via my New Release Updates
Feral Nation Series (New for 2017)
Feral Nation - Infiltration (Book 1)
Feral Nation - Insurrection (Book 2)
Feral Nation - Tribulation (Book 3)
The Pulse Series:
The Pulse: A Novel of Surviving the Collapse of the Grid (Book 1)
Refuge After the Collapse (Book 2)
Voyage After the Collapse (Book 3)
Landfall: Islands in the Aftermath (Book 4)
Horizons Beyond the Darkness (Book 5)
The Darkness After Series:
Enter the Darkness (Series Prequel)
The Darkness After (Book 1)
Into the River Lands (Book 2)
The Forge of Darkness (Book 3)
The Savage Darkness (Book 4)
Apocalypse Series:
Sailing the Apocalypse: A Misadventure at Sea
Nonfiction:
On Island Time: Kayaking the Caribbean
Bug Out: The Complete Plan for Escaping a Catastrophic Disaster Before It’s Too Late
About the Author
SCOTT B. WILLIAMS HAS been writing about his adventures for more than twenty-five years. His published work includes dozens of magazine articles and twenty-two books, with more projects currently underway. His interest in backpacking, sea kayaking and sailing small boats to remote places led him to pursue the wilderness survival skills that he has written about in his popular survival nonfiction books such as Bug Out: The Complete Plan for Escaping a Catastrophic Disaster Before It’s Too Late. He has also authored travel narratives such as On Island Time: Kayaking the Caribbean, an account of his two-year solo kayaking journey through the islands. With the release of The Pulse in 2012, Scott moved into writing fiction and has written several more novels with many more in the works. To learn more about his upcoming books or to contact Scott, visit his website: www.scottbwilliams.com
Horizons Beyond the Darkness Page 21