by Chris Ryan
It was Paulo who recovered first. He took a deep breath and sat up straight. 'It is good we have our boots,' he said. 'We will need them when we make land.'
'There is no land,' said Li, her voice wobbly with tears. 'Anywhere.'
'Yes there is,' said Paulo, reassuringly. 'This whole area is dotted with thousands of islands. We just cannot see any at the moment, that is all.'
Amber leaned over, hooked the little compass out of Alex's shirt pocket and waited for the needle to settle. After a few seconds, she nodded to Alex. 'We were right, this is a northerly current.'
'We're moving at a good pace,' said Alex. 'I reckon if we just let it carry us for a while, we're sure to come across an island group. And when we do, we can row ashore.'
Alex pointed to the oars, which were tucked under the thwarts on one side of the boat and smiled at Li. She tried a wobbly smile in return.
'In the meantime,' said Paulo, calmly, 'we have Amber as our navigator, but we need a leader. Alex, you have a good survival knowledge, yes?'
'My dad taught me a lot,' said Alex. 'He's in the SAS.'
'Then I nominate you as our leader for now,' said Paulo. He looked questioningly at the other three and, one by one, they nodded their agreement.
Alex looked around the little boat. 'First,' he said, 'we need to get organized. Li, store that sack of boots back in the locker. Hex, get that painter coiled and stowed away too. Amber, you fold the bunk blankets and store them with the boots for now. Paulo, you and I are going to unload these rucksacks to see what we have left in the way of supplies.'
'Maybe we could rig up some shade from the sun with one of these blankets,' suggested Li.
Alex looked around, assessing the situation. Everyone was dressed in shirts, shorts and deck shoes and only he and Hex were wearing caps. It was true that they were all well used to the tropical sun after a week on the Phoenix, but an open boat offered no shade at all. Everyone was sweating hard in the humid heat and losing precious moisture. He nodded. 'Good idea. You could wedge the end of one of the oars under the stern thwart and then drape the blanket over it.'
They set about their tasks willingly, glad to be busy. The rucksacks yielded three cans of lemonade, a large plastic bottle of water, a bagful of apples and bananas and a box of cereal bars. Alex put the food into one rucksack and the drink into the other, while Paulo checked the contents of the two storage tins.
'We still have some rice in there,' he said, handing the tin to Alex. 'All the chicken has gone, though.'
Alex bent to pack the rice tin into the food rucksack and Paulo emptied the chicken bones from the other tin into the sea.
'It is a good container,' said Paulo, waving the empty tin. 'I will give it a wash.'
Paulo leaned far out over the side and dipped the tin into the sea. A rush of water gushed in to fill it, taking him by surprise. The tin started to sink and Paulo lunged forward to get a better hold on it. The little boat rocked violently as he lost his balance and started to topple overboard.
'Careful!' said Alex, grabbing Paulo by the back of his T-shirt. Amber plunged her arm into the sea and took hold of the lid of the submerged tin before Paulo lost his grip.
'Gotcha!' said Amber. 'C'mon, Paulo. Pull!'
Together they hauled the tin back to the surface and something huge and grey came out of the depths after it. They both froze, their heads hanging just above the sea as a wedge-shaped snout broke the surface, followed by a gaping mouth with rows of sharp, serrated teeth. They were close enough to see the shreds of white flesh caught up in the teeth and smell the stink of decaying meat. A dead, black eye regarded them coldly for an instant before rolling up into its socket as the shark turned onto one side, preparing to bite. The snout angled upwards, making the mouth gape wider and pushing the upper jaw forward.
'Drop the tin!' yelled Li. 'It's a shark!'
FIVE
Amber heard Li shouting but it seemed to come from somewhere far away. She stared into the gaping mouth of the shark, then closed her eyes and waited to die.
Li grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her backwards at the same time as Alex hauled Paulo out of the way. The shark bit down on the tin, crumpling it like a chocolate wrapper, then threshed violently, shaking the tin from side to side and smashing repeatedly against the little boat.
The first jolt knocked Alex, Hex and Li off their feet and they fell on top of Paulo and Amber in the bottom of the boat. For a few, nightmare seconds, all they could do was lie in a tangle of arms and legs, clinging on as the boat bucked and tilted with every wood-splintering impact. Seawater poured in on them as the gunwales dipped below the surface of the sea. They scrambled to brace their feet against the side of the boat and threw their weight backwards, desperate to stop the boat from capsizing and tipping them into the water. For what seemed like an age, the boat hung in the balance, then it slammed back down into the water and instantly began tilting the other way, towards the shark.
The gunwales dipped down and more water poured in on them as the shark threshed the sea into a churning foam. It seemed certain that the boat would go over, throwing them to their deaths.
Then suddenly, the threshing stopped. The boat righted itself and wallowed low in the water as the great dorsal fin of the shark rose out of the sea and glided past. It was close enough for them to pick out the scars and nicks and parasitic worms that were scattered across the fin. The tough hide of the shark scraped against the boat like sandpaper as it swam past. They lay in the shuddering boat, holding their breath and listening as the whole length of the shark scraped against the wood. Just as it seemed the shark would go on for ever, the scraping stopped.
Slowly, they sat up, then kneeled in the water-filled boat and peered over the side. The shark – and the storage tin – had completely disappeared. Shakily, they clambered to their feet and collapsed onto the wooden seats. Everyone was dripping wet and shivering with shock. Hex was bleeding from a cut above his eyebrow and the red blood stood out sharply against his white face.
'Dios Mio,' whispered Paulo.
'Carcharodon carcharias,' said Li, faintly.
'What did you call it?' asked Alex.
'That's its Latin name,' said Li. 'It was a great white shark.'
'A great white?' moaned Amber.
'It was a big one,' said Li. 'Must've been over four metres long.'
'Where on earth did it come from?' said Hex, scanning the empty sea. 'And where did it go?'
'I'm not sure it has gone,' said Li, grimly. 'They come to hunt in warm-water currents like this one, because there's always plenty of food here. My guess is, it's been following us, trying to decide what we are. When Paulo emptied the chicken bones over the side, it caught the scent of meat and decided we must be food.'
'I think I'm going to be sick,' gulped Amber, scrabbling for the side of the boat.
Li's eyes sharpened. She grabbed Amber by the shoulders and turned her away from the side. 'No! You mustn't be sick. Not into the sea. Sharks have a fantastic sense of smell. They can pick up the tiniest trace of something interesting, even if it's miles away.'
Li stared into Amber's eyes, willing her not to be sick. Amber swallowed convulsively several times, then her shoulders relaxed and a look of relief crossed her face. 'I'm OK now,' she said.
'Well done,' said Li, giving Amber a smile. 'The last thing we want is that monster coming back.'
'Yeah,' said Alex, leaning over the side to look at the damage to the boat. The bows were dented and splintered and the paint had been scraped away all along the side. 'I don't think we would survive a second attack.'
'Oh, that wasn't a proper attack,' said Li. 'It was going for the storage tin, not the boat.'
'But what about the way it was bashing against the side?' asked Paulo.
'That's instinctive,' said Li. 'Once a shark clamps its teeth down on something, it shakes its head from side to side. The teeth act like a saw, cutting through the flesh so the shark can tear off a big chunk—'
<
br /> 'Whoa! Too much detail!' protested Paulo.
Li blinked. 'Sorry,' she said. Sifting through her vast knowledge of wildlife and pulling out shark titbits had kept the shock at bay. Now, with nothing to fill her mind, the fear came flooding in and she shrank down in her seat, hunching her shoulders.
'What if it comes back?' demanded Amber.
There was a silence as they all thought about that. Alex stood up to get a better view of the surrounding sea while Hex sat in his place and leaned over the side of the boat to inspect the damage.
'What are the odds?' asked Alex, looking questioningly at Li.
'It probably won't,' said Li, finally. 'That tin must've been disappointing food for a shark – and there's nothing else here to attract it. . .'
She tailed off and stared in horror at Hex, who was still leaning over the side of the boat, looking at the damage. Time seemed to slow down as she watched a bright bead of blood fall from the cut above his eyebrow and drop into the sea. A second bead dropped, then a third as slowly, slowly, she drew a breath and opened her mouth to shout.
'Hex! Get back!' she screamed.
Hex jumped and pulled back into the boat, looking about him wildly.
'Blood!' shouted Li. 'Blood from your head! In the water!'
Hex lifted a hand to his head, then stared at his fingers wonderingly as they came away red. 'I didn't know,' he said.
'But it was only a few drops,' said Paulo. 'A few little drops in a great big sea. The shark, it will not notice—'
'Oh, yes it will,' interrupted Li. 'A shark is a – a hunting machine and it hunts by smell. Most of its brain is devoted to picking up and tracking the scent of prey. To a shark, a few drops of blood are like a very loud dinner-bell.'
'And we're the dish of the day,' said Hex.
Silence fell as they huddled together in the water-logged boat. Nobody moved, except for the constant turning of their heads as they scanned the water. The sea remained empty and quiet.
'I think we got away with it,' said Alex, eventually. He took off his cap and was about to start bailing out the boat when there was a splash behind them. Alex felt his heart jump as he turned to face the stern. The crushed storage tin was bobbing on the surface. Amber began to moan and Paulo put an arm around her shoulders, trying to comfort her.
Any advice, Li?' said Alex, getting to his feet and searching the water around the boat.
Li reached down and pulled the oars out from under the seats. She threw one to Alex and gripped the other firmly with both hands. All her earlier fear had disappeared now that she had something to do.
'If it comes for us, try to whack it hard across the snout,' she said. 'Their snouts are like one big radar device for picking up vibrations, pressure changes and magnetic fields. A good whack might just deter it.'
'OK,' said Alex.
'Oh, and if we can, we should wait until it turns onto its side,' said Li. 'Then aim for the underside of the snout. That's the most sensitive part.'
'There it is,' said Hex, tightly, as the triangular dorsal fin rose out of the sea, cutting a path through the water. Under the surface, they could just make out the huge, grey bulk of the shark in the clear water as it circled closer and closer to the boat. Li groaned as she watched the circling pattern.
'What?' asked Alex.
'That circling is classic hunting behaviour. It means the shark is going to attack the boat,' said Li. 'This time, it's for real.'
'Then let's be ready for it,' said Alex, simply.
Alex and Li took up their positions, one in the bows and one in the stern, and stood with their feet apart for balance. The other three braced themselves across the bottom of the boat, feet against one side and shoulders against the other. The shark circled in, coming closer and closer.
Li pushed her oar out over the side of the boat and began smacking the water with the flat of the paddle. She knew that if the shark decided to charge the stern or the bow of the boat, they wouldn't stand a chance. Their only hope was that it would come alongside to attack.
'It's working!' she gasped as the shark turned slightly, heading towards the smacking noise. 'Get ready!'
The shark suddenly picked up speed and lifted its head out of the water as it came alongside. Again, they found themselves staring into its dead, black eye before it rolled and opened its jaws wide, preparing to bite.
'Now!' yelled Li. She brought the oar down across the snout of the huge shark with a resounding crack. An instant later, Alex did the same. The shark shuddered, then reared its head and clamped down on Alex's oar, ripping it out of his hands. They all heard the crack of splintering wood as the shark's teeth sliced the oar into three pieces. Then the shark dived, leaving the broken pieces of oar floating on the surface. The boat rocked in the wake of the shark's passing then gradually settled back into a heavy-bottomed wallowing.
They waited.
And waited.
The surface of the sea remained undisturbed.
'I think we did it,' said Li, finally, turning to the others with a hesitant smile.
'We did?' said Amber, clambering shakily to her feet.
Paulo jumped up, punched the air and cheered. He clapped Alex on the back, hugged Amber and Li, then pulled Hex to his feet and hugged him too.
Hex rolled his eyes at Paulo's behaviour, but his usually serious face was creased into a grin. Alex looked at the others, then shook his head and laughed out loud. It was ridiculous to be so happy when they were up to their shins in seawater, adrift in an open boat with only one oar, but he couldn't help it. None of them could. They had pulled together as a team when it mattered – and they had survived.
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SIX
Hex grimaced as Paulo worked on the cut over his eye, but he did not flinch.
'It is deep,' said Paulo as he applied the second butterfly suture from Alex's survival kit. 'But it is clean and there are no ragged edges.'
'Looks as though you know what you're doing,' said Alex, peering over his shoulder.
'I have done this many times,' answered Paulo. 'When we are out with the cattle, sometimes we are days from help. So,' he shrugged, 'we must tend our own wounds.' Paulo finished and sat back to inspect his work. The sutures had pulled the edges of the wound together neatly and the bleeding had almost stopped. He grinned at Hex. 'It should heal with hardly a scar.'
Alex nodded in agreement. 'You'll live,' he said to Hex.
'Are you sure about that?' Hex replied, looking around him with a wry smile.
'Hey, we just won a fight with a shark,' said Alex as he packed away his survival tin. 'Of course I'm sure.'
Li was assigned the first Watch Duty, and she sat in the bows, dividing her time between scanning the sea for any sign of a grey dorsal fin and searching the horizon for land, a plane or a ship. The other four set to work bailing out the boat, using their caps or their cupped hands. They had shipped a lot of water during the shark attack and it was a long, back-breaking job to scoop it all out again. Finally, Alex called a halt and they all stared into the bottom of the boat, watching for any sign of a leak.
'I think we are lucky,' said Paulo as the seconds ticked by and the boat remained dry.
Amber raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows. 'You call this lucky?' she said.
Paulo nodded seriously. 'The shark did not breach the hull. The boat is still watertight. We are lucky.'
'And here's another piece of luck,' grunted Alex as he yanked the rucksacks out from under the stern seats, where they had become wedged during the struggle with the shark. 'We didn't lose our supplies overboard.'
Hex and Alex sorted through the rucksacks while Amber and Paulo hauled the sopping bunk blankets from the stern lockers and wrung them out over the side as best they could. Paulo leaned the remaining oar against the stern seats, wedging the bottom end in the stern locker, then he and Amber draped blankets over the oar to create an awning. They crawled under the blankets and sat down, relieved to get out of the sun a
t last.
Hex and Alex unloaded the drinks rucksack first. The large plastic bottle of water and two of the lemonade cans were undamaged, but the third can was badly dented. Alex left that out to one side when they packed the other drinks away again. Inside the food rucksack, the cardboard box holding the cereal bars had disintegrated, but each bar was still dry inside its own individual foil wrapper. The apples and bananas were wet, bruised and battered but still edible.
'Could've been worse,' said Alex, looping the painter through the handles of both rucksacks and tying them together with a secure knot. He then clambered from the bows to the stern, looping and securing the painter around each seat as he went.
'Safety line,' he said, briefly, in answer to Hex's questioning look.
'In case of what?' demanded Hex, suspiciously.
'Rough seas. Or another shark attack,' said Amber, smiling when she saw the look of alarm on his face.
'It's just a standard safety measure,' answered Alex, mildly, giving Amber a warning look. 'I should've done it before this, really.'
'Can someone take over the Watch now?' called Li from the bows. She pressed her hands over her eyes. 'I'm getting a bit sun-blind here.'
'Oh, yeah,' muttered Amber from beneath the awning. 'Wait till all the real work's done before you ask to be relieved, why don't you?'
'You think standing watch is easy?' snapped Li, turning to glare at Amber. Everyone could see that her eyes were red and watery with the strain.
Amber opened her mouth to argue, but Alex interrupted her. 'Li's right,' he said. 'Watch Duty is tiring, especially when the sun's reflecting off the sea and there's so much to look out for. We should start a watch rota – half an hour each. Who wants to go next?'
Amber scowled, reluctant to leave her shady spot. 'Well I hope you don't expect me—' she began, then stopped as Hex clambered to his feet. He gave Amber a disgusted look as he pulled a pair of designer frames from his belt pouch and moved into the bows to take over from Li.