White Dolphin

by Lewis, Gill

  I sit back down in the centre line seat behind Felix as he reefs the jib sail. The wind is stronger, the swell bigger all the time.

  We plough into the breaking waves beyond the headland. The first wave runs across the boat and I take a sharp intake of breath as the water floods across my legs and around my waist. We don’t have wetsuits or warm gear. It suddenly seems so stupid to have followed Jake out here. I turn to look back, but the land is screened from view behind the rain. Ahead, Moana lurches through the waves. I see her buck and jar and slew sideways as the waves knock her off course. We’re catching up, despite smaller sails.

  Jake and Ethan are struggling. The jib sail is flying loose and I can see Ethan putting all his weight on the tiller. Moana dips and pushes on beyond Gull Rock. They will have to turn her to pass round the other side. I hope they know to sail far beyond Gull Rock before they make the turn. If they try to make the turn too soon, the wind and waves will push them too close to the rocks.

  Maybe it’s because they’re scared to go too far out into the sea, or maybe they misjudge the turn, but Ethan swings Moana across the wind and we see her turn sharply around the rock. Jake is leaning far out on Moana’s side, the rope to the mainsail in his hands. I don’t have time to yell to Jake. The wind fills the other side of the sail and pushes it across. The boom swings over, a blur through the air, and I know Jake doesn’t stand a chance. His head flies back as he is knocked in a high arc across the sea, his arms flailing above the foaming surf before he disappears beneath the waves.

  ‘Jake,’ I scream.

  Felix has seen it happen too. He sails towards Moana, sailing close behind the cliffs. The sea is in white chaos. The spray from exploding waves showers us like heavy rain. The recoil from the cliff base swamps us with foaming green water and pearl-white surf. The dinghy lurches side to side, her sails almost slap the water.

  I push wet hair from my eyes to look for Jake. I hold the mast and rise up on my knees to get a better view. ‘He’s gone,’ I yell. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘We’ve got to move,’ shouts Felix.

  We’re too close to Gull Rock. If the long centre-board breaks beneath us we won’t stand a chance. I lean out to balance the dinghy as Felix steers towards Ethan and Moana. I look back one more time towards Gull Rock. I want to wake up from this nightmare. I can’t believe that Jake has gone.

  Then I see his head and arms splash above the water. Another waves sweeps over and he disappears again.

  ‘He’s there,’ I yell. The waves heave and crest into peaks, curling over near the rocks. Jake’s head rises above the water. He claws at the air but sinks under again.

  ‘I see him,’ Felix yells.

  He swings the dinghy towards Jake. The air is filled with flying sea foam. We ride down one wave into the deep trough and rise up the other side. I look down into the water and see Jake again suspended below us, his shirt billowing around him and his arms outspread as if he’s underwater flying.

  He’s rising towards us through the water. I reach out and grab Jake’s shirt as a wave rolls him up and we fall in a mass of tangled arms and legs inside the boat. For one brief moment I thought I saw a flash of white beneath the waves, something beneath Jake pushing him up towards the air. I look again, but all I see is the white swirl of sea foam in the water.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Felix yells.

  Ethan is clinging to Moana’s mast as another wave rolls over her. The sky is black with cloud. There is no horizon. Sea and sky are one. Felix brings the dinghy up on Moana’s seaward side. I help Jake pull a life jacket on. He’s a dead weight. Blood is pouring through his hair and down his forehead. I grab the other life jacket and scramble across, to join Ethan in Moana.

  ‘Get back to shore,’ I scream to Felix. ‘Get Jake back. I’ll bring Ethan in Moana.’

  Another wave lifts us and crunches the two boats together. I give the dinghy a shove.

  ‘Just go,’ I yell.

  Felix pushes the central joystick of his dinghy across and sails away, running with the wind towards the harbour. A gust of wind hits my back and scuds across the ocean. I watch Felix and Jake dissolve into the grainy curtain of rain.

  I feel sick and heavy inside. I don’t know if I will ever see them again.

  CHAPTER 36

  ‘Kara!’

  Ethan stumbles over to me and clings on to my arm. His face is white. His whole body shakes. He pulls his life jacket on and fumbles with the straps.

  Moana heaves and falls over the waves. She’s taking on water fast, heeling far over in the water. Another wave spills in the boat and Ethan and I slip and flounder together while sea foam swirls all around us.

  My mind is white with fear. I have to think. I try to think.

  A tangle of rope and loose sail spreads across the foredeck into the water. I see now why Moana’s heeling in the water. Jake and Ethan have opened the spinnaker sail. It twists under the boat, an underwater parachute, pulling us towards the rocks.

  ‘Help me with this,’ I yell. But Ethan doesn’t move. He just stands holding the mast, as if he’s holding the boat into the sea. I pull and pull on the rope, but the sail is heavy, weighed down into the water. The yawning cliff caves thunder with the breaking waves.

  ‘Ethan,’ I scream. ‘The knife. In the locker.’

  Ethan stumbles forward, and pulls stuff from the locker. He finds the short-bladed knife from the tool box and leans out towards me. I take it in my hands and saw across the spinnaker rope. It cuts loose and the sail billows away, a monster jellyfish escaping back to sea.

  The waves are white-capped mountains now, vast moving ranges, rising higher and higher. The wind is screaming past and the air is filled with flying foam. We’re being pushed towards the breaking surf. Our only hope now is to sail away. I pull on the mainsail and slide back to the tiller, pulling Ethan with me.

  ‘Stay back here with me,’ I yell.

  The sail fills with wind, pulls taut and I feel Moana surge forward.

  ‘KARA!’ Ethan yells.

  I look past him to a wall of dark green water, rising up and up. A freak wave, higher than all the rest.

  Everything slows down.

  Moana ploughs up into the wave. She rises up the wave’s steep side. But the wave is changing. A crest of foam brims at its peak. Moana struggles forward, but the wave is curving inwards and begins to break. She can’t make it now. Moana’s prow twists in the air and the wave curls over us, folding us in a blanket of green surf. And this moment stays freeze-framed in my mind. Moana, on her side, and a thousand tonnes of water stretched out across us, about to push us down.

  I grab Ethan and pull him under one of the seats. Moana rolls and everything goes dark. Seawater rushes in and fills the space we’re lying in. The water thunders all around, and through the roar of wind and waves there is a tearing crack, like a gunshot. I can feel it split the water.

  Moana spins back up, and Ethan and I burst up for air. Moana’s mast is down, ripped apart by rocks beneath the boat. Its jagged end is broken like a stick. But the sail ropes are still attached and anchor Moana to the rocks. The sea is boiling all around us. Moana’s hull protects us from the full force of the waves. But each wave thumps against her and pushes her towards the cliff. I feel her keel grinding on the rocks below.

  ‘Flares,’ I yell. ‘There’s a flare in the front locker.’

  I scramble forward and reach into the locker. I pull the flare from the clips and try to read the instructions but Moana is heaving in the churning sea. The flare is soaked. I only hope it works. I’ve never had to use one before. A wave crashes over Moana, and I fall back against the hard seat. I pull the tag and hold it skywards. At first nothing happens, but then a blast of light explodes from the flare. I watch its trail spiral upwards, and hold there above us, a bright red beacon burning in the darkened skies.

  Another wave crushes us against the rocks. One of the metal stays that held the mast rips from the wood and flies close past Ethan’s head
.

  ‘Get down,’ I yell.

  Ethan lurches towards me and we crouch low under the seats. The sound of splintering wood and tearing metal rips through screaming wind. I feel the hull grind against the rocks below us and know Moana’s keel is being wrenched away. It’s all that’s holding us from being thrown against the cliffs.

  Ethan and I push further under the seat as wave after wave after wave thumps against us. There is nothing we can do now, nowhere for us to go. Ethan takes my hand and I hold his tightly in mine. The waves thud and thud and thud against Moana, and I can’t tell if it’s the waves, or the hammering of my heart.

  But there’s another hammering too, a thudding high above the waves. A beam of light shines down and hits the boat.

  ‘HELICOPTER!’ Ethan yells.

  We scramble out and wave our hands. The beam holds us fast, and above us a helicopter sways in the gale.

  ‘We’re too close to the cliff,’ yells Ethan.

  A man drops down towards us, silhouetted by the light. He drops down on a wire, his feet whizzing past above our heads. I duck, but Ethan lunges at his boots. He swings back again and drops into the boat. He loops a harness over Ethan and grabs me as a wave swamps over us. We plunge off the side into the foaming sea. Water rushes into my mouth and nose. The wire pulls tight and I feel the lightness of air as the wave passes over and we rise up above the water. The wind catches us and spins us round and round and round as we lift up into the sky. I look down and see Moana far below.

  I want to lift her with us too, take her away from here. But as I watch, a wave folds over, lifts her and explodes against the cliff. In the spinning kaleidoscope of sea and spray, all that’s left of her is twisted metal and flying fragments of splintered wood.

  CHAPTER 37

  ‘Have you got the others?’ I yell.

  The winch-man is trying to get me to lie down on a stretcher, but I sit back up. ‘Have you got them? Have you got Felix and Jake? They went in the other boat.’

  He speaks into his mouthpiece and holds the headphones tight to his head so he can hear.

  ‘Where were they heading?’

  ‘To the harbour,’ I shout. I feel a pit of fear rise in me, because he’d have told me if they’d been found.

  He speaks again into the mouthpiece and then the helicopter changes direction, veering sideways.

  ‘We’ll take you to the town and get an ambulance for both of you. Then we’ll go back out to look for your friends,’ he shouts.

  I’ve lost Moana, but it feels nothing to losing Felix and even Jake. Ethan doesn’t say anything. He’s lying on the stretcher under blankets, eyes closed tight. I wrap my blanket around me and look out beyond the open doorway to the sea below. It’s a heaving mass of grey-green surf. I want to see the white sails of Felix’s dinghy skimming across the waves below. But rain sweeps across the sky and we are folded in a cloak of cloud, and it’s impossible to see anything out there at all.

  My ears pop as we descend onto the playing field outside the town. The sky is black. The streetlights glow dull orange, and cars have their headlights on, even though it’s only early evening. The blue light of an ambulance flashes along the top road, coming this way. The winch-man helps us out, guiding us under the turning helicopter blades to the cars parked on the road.

  I see Dad running through the rain.

  ‘Kara!’ He folds his arms around me and pulls me in. I feel his warm breath in my hair. He holds me tightly to him. His whole body shakes and when I look up at him, his face is crumpled into sobs.

  ‘Kara!’

  A hand holds me by the shoulder and I turn to see Felix’s mum.

  ‘Where’s Felix?’ Her hair is plastered to her face and her mascara has run into long black streaks.

  Felix’s dad and Dougie Evans are there too.

  Dougie Evans crouches down beside me. His eyes are wild with fear. ‘Where’s my boy, Kara? Where’s my boy?’

  The last time I saw Jake, he was stretched across the dinghy coughing seawater out of his lungs.

  ‘They’re in Felix’s dinghy,’ I say, ‘on their way to harbour.’

  Lightning flashes across the sky. Felix’s mum grasps my arm.

  ‘They could be back by now,’ I say. It’s a wild impossible thought, but maybe they could. Maybe Felix has got them safely in. ‘Let’s go there,’ I say.

  And it’s as if they’ve been jolted out of sleep.

  ‘Come on,’ says Felix’s dad, ‘in my car.’

  Dad wraps me in his coat. ‘You need a doctor, Kara.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say. I pull away and start running after Felix’s mum and dad, and we all crowd in the car, Dad, Dougie Evans, and me along the back seat.

  Felix’s dad pulls up on the pavement by the harbour and we spill out and run to the harbour’s edge. The flags above the chandlery are flapping hard and the mast lines of the yachts are screaming in the tearing winds. I scan the harbour. All the fishing boats are in, lined up in the deep-water moorings. The yachts and motor boats are secure against the pontoon. I see the space where Moana had once been, and it hits me all over again, that she is gone. I won’t see her again.

  But there is no dinghy in the harbour, no sign of Felix or Jake.

  A plume of spray rises over the wall and scatters across a figure looking out to sea. Her black cloak and long hair are flying in the wind. I clamber up on the higher stone ledge next to Miss Penluna. She reaches for my hand, but doesn’t take her eyes off the sea.

  Felix’s mum and dad and Dougie Evans join us, leaning on the granite wall staring out into the waves. Lightning flashes and a crack of thunder tears the air apart. The tide is high, pushed up further by the wind and waves. People are lined up all along the wall to watch the storm. It draws people, this sort of power, to see what it can do. Massive waves curl and cross over each other. Foam and spray are flying past.

  The helicopter clatters past above our heads.

  ‘They’ll find them,’ Dad shouts.

  But I wonder how, because we can’t see anything through the driving rain.

  The waves roll in, one after another, massive mountains of moving water, spray flying from the tops like wind-blown snow. I doubt Moana could have sailed in this.

  Dougie stands right up on the wall. ‘MY BOY!’ he yells. But the gale flings the words back in his face. ‘WHERE’S MY BOY!’

  He runs his hands over his head. His eyes are red and wild. He clutches on Dad’s arm. ‘I’ve lost them, Jim. I’ve lost both my boys.’

  Dad puts his arm around him. ‘Come on. Let’s go back and wait for news.’

  I turn to look at Miss Penluna. She’s standing sentry-like, looking out to sea.

  Dougie Evans pulls her round to face him. ‘I want him back.’

  Miss Penluna stares into his eyes.

  ‘He’s all that’s left,’ he sobs.

  Miss Penluna pulls her shawl around her. ‘What is he coming back to, Dougie? What world are you leaving him?’

  Dougie Evans searches her face and I hear Miss Penluna’s words despite the wind and rain. ‘He’s in the company of angels now.’

  Dougie’s knees buckle and he stumbles to the ground.

  A wave slams against the wall, soaking us with freezing spray.

  ‘Come on,’ says Dad. He pulls my arm.

  I look back into the storm one more time.

  And it feels my heart has skipped a beat, because I saw something, out there, I’m sure I did.

  I strain my eyes into the grey veil of rain.

  There it is again.

  A sail.

  A mast and sail rising up behind a wave, and then I see the white hull of Felix’s dinghy rear up into sight.

  ‘I SEE THEM!’ I yell.

  Felix’s mum and dad clamber up beside me and Dougie pulls himself to his feet.

  Dougie grabs my shoulder. ‘Where?’

  ‘There!’ I look but the boat has disappeared behind a wall of surf.

  It rises up again.<
br />
  ‘It’s them,’ shouts Felix’s dad, ‘it’s them.’

  The boat is so small against these waves. I see Felix in his cockpit seat and Jake slumped in the seat behind.

  They are running with the wind. It’s on their backs, driving them towards us. They are faster than the waves, outrunning them. The dinghy’s bow is well out of the water, and they are skimming across the surface. They dip and ride up another wave. But closer in, the waves are breaking, pounding on the harbour wall. The helicopter clatters through the rain above them. But Felix can’t stop now or turn into the wind. They only have one choice and it looks as if he’s chosen it without a second thought. He’s heading for the narrow gap between the harbour walls. It seems impossible to aim for in the raging sea.

  I glance at Dad but his eyes are fixed on Felix. Beyond Dad, the crowds along the sea wall are frozen still, just watching. There is nothing anyone can do.

  The dinghy is hidden again behind a huge wave. It rides up the back but the wave is changing, beginning to curl. I want them to miss this wave, let it break without them, but they are past the point of no return and they slide down the breaking wave, faster and faster, surfing with it, a curling wall of water chasing them in. Too fast, I think, they can’t make the narrow gap. The wave is pushing them sideways along the line of breaking surf. Felix throws his weight on the side of the boat. The dinghy’s bows swing as the wave crashes over them. I see her mast go down, and all of her is lost in the white foam of the running sea.

  The wave explodes against the wall and I look away. I don’t want to see them break against the granite blocks. A foaming wall of surf surges between the harbour walls in a strange and muffled silence. The whole harbour has held its breath, it seems. I clutch Dad and press my head into his chest. But Dad pulls me away.

  ‘Kara, look!’

  I look down into the harbour. Through the foaming wall of surf shoots the dinghy. Its sails are shredded and the mast is a wreck of twisted metal. It slews in an arc and comes to rest, rocking gently in the sheltered water. Two figures are slumped inside, motionless.