Now Gabriel was really worried. What if Tom was in trouble? He knew that being three or four or even seven days late was no reason to panic, but his mind was filled with all sorts of bad thoughts. Tom had never had his appendix taken out. What if it ruptured? What if Tom had slipped and fallen and hurt his head? What if…
Stop it Gabriel, he chided himself, Tom is okay. He’ll call Syd tomorrow or the next day and all will be well. I’m worried about nothing.
Chapter Twenty
How many days had passed since the storm hit? Two? Three? It couldn’t be more than three, Tom was confident of that. While the storm had passed, the glassy seas were gone. There was a steady five knot breeze now, at least during the day. Tom was grateful for the light wind because the wind cooled him down, at least to a small degree.
Tom looked at his water bottle and gently shook it. There was only one tiny swig left. Once he consumed it that was it. The food was gone too. He ate the last bite of his final energy bar a few hours ago. Tom leaned back and swallowed the last of his water. He tipped the bottle up and tapped it on the bottom, hoping to shake free any lingering drop of liquid. He stuck his tongue inside and slurped up whatever moisture remained. Then he thought about tossing the bottle over the side, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to do that so he tucked it neatly back in his emergency pack.
When he stored the bottle, he noticed the flare gun. He hadn’t been too diligent about scanning for boats or ships over the past day or so. Mostly he’d stayed as still as possible. Now his mind had another thought – perhaps there was another use for the flare gun.
Three days from now, four at the most, Tom would breathe his last. He would die from a nasty combination of dehydration, starvation and exposure. Before he passed on he would lose his mind too. He would very likely hallucinate as his brain and body shut down from lack of sustenance and from baking hour after hour, day after day in the intense tropical sun.
Tom had used all of the aloe vera gel and sunscreen from the emergency pack. His skin was now almost charred, especially on his legs. Sun blisters were forming on his face and hands and they hurt like hell. As if the second degree burns weren’t enough, his ribs were still on fire, more so the last couple of days.
So why not eat a flare? Tom asked himself. It wasn’t the same as a bullet, but he had no doubt it would do the job. In his weakened condition a good knock on the head would probably end his life. Sure, it would hurt like hell, unimaginable pain, but only for a few seconds. Then it would be over. At least he could go out on his terms and not be a raving maniac when he died.
Over the years, Tom had known a few people who had committed suicide. While he was not judgmental, he felt nothing but sorrow for the victims and their families. He had vowed to himself that he would never go out like that. Tom believed that life was precious and should not be wasted for any reason.
That promise was an easy one to make from the cheap seats, but when you’re lying on flotsam in the middle of the Pacific, burnt to a crisp with no food or water you begin to seriously contemplate ending your life in the least horrible way possible.
Stop it, Tom. Just stop it, he said silently to himself. No matter what I will fight to the end. I promised Jonas and Jessica I would do that. If nothing else, I’ll keep my word.
Then off in the distance he saw something. It wasn’t a boat or a ship, but it was moving. Then he saw it again. It was a whale, or rather a pod of whales all heading north. He couldn’t see them clearly enough to identify the species, but they were large. He guessed they might be humpbacks on their way to Alaska to feed in the summer waters of the Artic Sea.
For a few minutes Tom lay there on his side and, shielding his eyes with his hands, watched as the whales swam by. He guessed that they must be close to a mile away from him. When they dove or simply swam out of range, Tom resumed his fetal type position on the raft.
He knew that the middle of the ocean, especially the Pacific Ocean, was like a desert. There was simply not enough food available here to sustain life, so the only creatures that were present were likely on their way to somewhere else. He had not seen even one shark since he’d been floating on the fiberglass.
At times, sometimes for an hour or more, he would look down at the water with his face almost in it. He couldn’t put his face all the way in the water because if he did the salt water would cause his already sun blistered skin to burn like fire. When he looked down he saw the occasional fish swim by, all ocean going types. What appeared to be a rather large school of tuna had passed underneath him the day before the storm hit.
Why did this happen to me? That’s the question Tom asked himself over and over again. He wondered if anyone would ever discover how Sydney blew up, or even that she did blow up. Yes, he had carved the simple inscription, “Tom Campbell was stranded here” onto the fiberglass, but would this chunk of fiberglass ever reach the shore? If it did, would anyone notice the words he spent hours carefully carving into the gel coat with the utility knife from the emergency pack?
The truth was he was going to die out here alone and there would likely be not a shred of evidence as to how or why. By now whatever was left of the debris field had sunk or was so scattered that no one would recognize it as the possible remains of a sailboat.
Over and over he thought about the same things. Why hadn’t Stem to Stern been more diligent? A leaky propane tank or gas line should have been fairly easy to spot or, at a minimum, if the tanks were old or the lines were in poor condition the outfitter should have noticed this and replaced them.
He’d left his EPIRB hanging in the galley. He wanted to know exactly where it was in case Sydney went down. Now he understood why it was strongly recommended that sailors on solo voyages wear their EPIRB night and day because you never know. With the EPIRB activated, it would have sent out a signal that amounted to an SOS, a satellite monitored indicator of his GPS position. EPIRBs were noticed by the Coast Guard and, especially since he was mid-Pacific, an EPIRB signal from this location would have triggered a rescue operation.
He had a state of the art life raft at the ready too, carefully stored on deck. He’d spent nearly five grand on the thing. It even had a portable VHS radio with a 100 hour battery life.
What good did these items do him now? None. He had not prepared for an explosion. How do you prepare for an explosion on a sailboat anyway? The only thing you can do is be sure that….
I’ve got to stop doing this, Tom said to himself. I made a big mistake, not checking the propane tanks and gas lines, and a minor mistake, not wearing my EPIRB at all times. In general, I have always been a very careful sailor, never doing anything stupid.
Until now. It only takes once, Tom reminded himself.
It was sunset. How many more sunsets will I see? Tom asked himself. Knowing that he might not get many more chances, he lay there facing west. The wind died down as the sun slid into the water. He’d always wanted to see a green flash – a rare event that occurs only near the equator when the sun sets into the water. As the sun disappears, a green flash lights up the horizon.
But when the sun set there was no green flash. Better cross that off my list, Tom thought. Better cross everything off my list. Life will soon be over.
He didn’t move at all as the night fell. He was gearing up for the switch from being too hot too being too cold. He knew the best thing he could do was sleep, so he did.
Chapter Twenty One
Time had no meaning now. It was either daylight or nighttime that was all he knew. Tom was either too hot or too cold. Any degree of physical comfort was only a memory. He tried to think about how long it had been since he had consumed water or food, but he had no idea. What he was sure of is that he would be breathing his last very soon. He wondered how he had survived this long.
His stomach was in a perpetual state of cramps. Every few seconds his gut reminded him that it was empty with painful contractions. He was almost used to this torture now, as if for his entire life he had b
een starving and dying of thirst. His lips were blistered and his mouth felt like it was made of sandpaper.
Sometime back – was it a week, day or an hour ago? – Tom tried to drink seawater. Not only did he feel as if he had ignited his mouth and lips, the minute the salt water hit his stomach he wretched with dry heaves. He could not stop vomiting for minutes. From then on he only used sea water as a cooling agent, but even that was now hard to do because the salt water burned his roasted flesh.
He thought, dreamed and regularly hallucinated. Tom saw his father walking on the water towards him, but when his dad reached the fiberglass raft he vanished like a soap bubble popping in the air. At times, Tom was sure that Sydney was on the raft with him. He had conversations with her. She reassured him that Jonas and Jessica would be alright that she would look after them and they would thrive and become healthy and happy adults. Once or twice Tom even felt Syd’s arm around him, the way she would hold him when they spooned after making love. Yet somehow Tom knew that she wasn’t real. He wanted to be with Syd, but he was horrified by the thought that she was out here with him. When her ghost vanished he was sad, but part of him was also relieved.
From time to time Tom thought about the flare gun. But despite the agony, the minute by minute excruciating hell he was enduring, he chose not to end his life literally in a flash. The instant escape of suicide was a temptation, but the thought of his children somehow learning that he had killed himself was simply too devastating to contemplate.
As the sun was setting, Tom thought he heard something. He could not be sure if anything he saw or felt was real, but he swore that he heard the sound of a boat or something floating near his raft. He looked up but saw nothing other than a disturbance in the water a few yards away. He assumed that it was a school of fish or a dolphin pod. He was too far away from land for a bird to be nearby. He thought that he probably imagined the whole episode.
When Tom woke up, the sun was rising in the east. He could barely move his head; much less his arms or legs. Breathing was difficult. He was facing west, but now he used his last bit of energy to look to the east. The sun was peaking over the horizon.
‘It’s so beautiful,” Tom mumbled. He could barely speak because his mouth was dry, cracked and burned like fire.
Something told him it was time. He could barely see now, his vision was blurry at best. His stomach had stopped cramping as if to say, what for? There was simply no point in going on any longer.
Summoning all the strength he had left, which wasn’t much, Tom inched his way down the fiberglass. The makeshift raft had been his home now for nineteen days, although he didn’t know exactly how long it had been. Now he was saying goodbye to the raft, goodbye to the world.
When his foot hit the water it burned from the salt, which energized his brain just enough to make him a bit more consciously aware. He was expecting this. Tom hoped that the pain would be so intense when he slipped into the Pacific that he would pass out and just drift down into the depths.
When he managed to get his entire body in the water, he felt for an instant like he was being dipped in acid. He screamed in pain. Suddenly he was aware of where he was and what he was doing. Part of him wanted to try and climb back on the raft. There was still life left in him! But he just lay there on his back looking up at the bright blue sky.
Then Tom felt something underneath him. He assumed it was a pelagic fish or maybe a shark that had been trailing him waiting for an inevitable meal. Tom was certain that he was hallucinating. He told himself that he wasn’t looking up at the sky and the clouds, he was drifting into the deep. He’d probably breathed in a lungful of seawater and was sinking. These were no doubt his last conscious thoughts…
But Tom could not shake the sensation that something was propping him up. He wasn’t floating and now… it seemed impossible… he was moving. Then he felt water falling all over him as if it was raining. He reached down with his hands and felt rubbery flesh. What was happening?
Think Tom, think! he urged himself. What if this wasn’t a hallucination? What if this was real?
Tom closed his eyes and opened them again. He managed to lean back on his elbows and sit up a bit. He was indeed riding on something, a large creature that was dark grey in color. He saw lighter spots on the creature’s back…
“My God!” Tom screamed, but it came out as a squeak. “I’m riding on a sperm whale!”
This had to be a hallucination; he must surely be dead or dying floating on the surface or slipping into the depths. But part of his brain was desperately trying to convince him that this creature, a whale, was taking him somewhere. The whale must have surfaced underneath him when he slipped into the water and balanced him on his back. The whale was moving slowly in a specific direction. Where was he going? Tom wondered.
The amazing experience of being picked up and carried by a whale revitalized Tom, at least to the small degree that was possible given his proximity to death from exposure. His brain began to work again, at least minimally. He decided to accept the possibility that he wasn’t dreaming this, that he was actually being taken for a ride on the back of a …
No, it couldn’t be, Tom thought. It simply wasn’t possible. Tom managed to turn around enough to see the whale’s giant fluke as it emerged from the water.
There was a piece missing from the whale’s tail, where obviously a shark or an orca had taken a bite out of it many…
“Henry!” Tom yelled. This time he managed more than a squeak. “It can’t be! Henry! Is it really you?!”
As if he heard him and wanted to respond, Henry sent a shower of seawater out through his blow hole drenching Tom.
For whatever reason, Tom decided to go with this version of reality. If he was imagining Henry picking him and carrying him away then what a beautiful dream! If he was dying or dead he wanted to go out this way, on the back of his beloved Henry. For a few moments, Tom did nothing more than sit there and ride as Henry moved north, or at least Tom imagined that he was moving north.
All of a sudden Henry stopped swimming. The whale did not try and shake Tom off or dive under the surface; he just floated there as if he was waiting for Tom to do something or for something else to happen.
Still in the euphoria of the moment, when Henry stopped moving Tom’s body and brain reminded him that he was dying, fast. The initial surge of energy he felt was now gone. He wasn’t sure what he would do next, but when Tom looked to his left he saw them.
Two of the red emergency packs from Sydney were floating right next to him and Henry! Tom again rubbed his eyes and opened and closed them. The packs were still there!
Acting on instinct, Tom slid off of Henry’s back and into the water. He ignored the pain and reached for the packs. In a second he opened the first pack, grabbed a bottle of water and slugged it down. He reached inside for an energy bar and grabbed that and ate it in two bites. There was aloe vera lotion in here too and aspirin and…
Then Henry disappeared. Tom was floating using the backpacks as life preservers, but for a second or two he was once again terrified and confused. He was certain now that he was not imagining this because he could feel the water and food go down his throat. The pain from his skin burning in the salt water was intensifying as his senses were being revitalized.
Did Henry just take him to the emergency packs and drop him off? Where did he go? Was he…
Then Henry did what he had done before, he rose directly under Tom and floated to the surface. Now Tom was on Henry’s back, nearer this time to the whale’s small hump, and he had two emergency packs of supplies at his disposal. The whale did not move, as if he knew that Tom needed time to use the materials in the backpacks to bring him back to life.
Chapter Twenty Two
When the light from above was most intense and the water was very warm, Henry and some of his male sperm whale cousins knew that it was time to swim west toward the small areas of land that rose out of the sea. The whales did this once a year, as sperm whales had
done for countless generations.
As Henry and two of his bull sperm whale cousins swam west, they were thinking about the food that was waiting for them at their destination – plentiful squid and octopus and demersal fish. They would not eat as much as normal on their journey. The ocean between California and Hawaii was largely barren, although the whales knew that if they dove deep enough they could probably find some food. But the long trek was worth it because the waters off of Hawaii teemed with life when the light from above was most intense.
Making their way west, the whales noticed familiar sights and sounds. At certain points of their long swim they saw many of the objects that floated on top of the water. The whales knew that the small creatures that walked on land were in these floating objects. One of the bulls swimming with Henry was very afraid of these floating objects and sent out the coda, “Predator, predator, predator” whenever one appeared. Henry and the other bulls were not as afraid, but they were wary.
The memory of how his mother died was very vivid in Henry’s mind. But along with that horrible memory was also the idea that the small land creatures who floated on the objects that moved on top of the water did not intend to harm him or his mother. His memory was that these land creatures tried to help him. Especially the land creature he met when he swam onto the sand in panic.
Henry thought about this land creature from time to time, especially when he encountered the smaller objects that floated on the water. When Henry got close to these smaller objects he saw many of the land creatures looking at him and making joyful noises. Every time Henry encountered land creatures in this way he listened for the sound of the special land creature he knew and trusted, but he never heard his sound.
Henry and Tom: Ocean Adventure Series Book 1: Rescue (Ocean Adventures Series) Page 9