The Great Wide Sea

by M. H. Herlong

  Nearer shore, the breakers were bigger and closer together. We would ride over one, and the next one would break on our stern. “You guys are going to have to jump,” I told Dylan and Gerry. “Just jump in and wade to the beach when I say go.”

  “I can’t,” Gerry said.

  “But when I beach it, I’ll have to kill the engine and tilt it up to keep it from dragging in the sand. I’ll lose control of the boat. You guys have to be out before then.”

  Dylan nodded. He took Gerry’s arm.

  “No!” Gerry cried, and clutched his books and toys.

  “Now!” I shouted.

  As Dylan lifted Gerry, threw him over, and jumped out after him, I spun the boat away and headed straight back out into the breakers. When I turned back toward shore, Dylan was dragging Gerry through the water. Their hands were empty and Gerry was crying, but they were safe on the beach. Nobody hurt—yet.

  My turn. I planned to take the boat in as close as I could, then kill the engine and tilt it up so the prop wouldn’t bang into the sand. Without the prop, I had no way to steer. I’d just have to ride the waves in. If I was lucky, I’d ride all the way in and hardly wet a toe getting out. If I was unlucky, the waves would turn the dinghy upside down and it would beat me to death.

  I kept the speed up going toward the beach so I could control the boat through the breakers. I was watching carefully, trying to gauge the depth of the water and how close I could get, but today the bottom was blurred with stirred-up sand. I tried to remember the slope of the bottom. I tried to measure distance by the size of Gerry and Dylan standing on the beach watching me. I was concentrating. I was careful. But I waited too long.

  Just as I was reaching for the button to kill the engine, I felt it. The dinghy fell straight down. The prop slammed into the sand, grabbing it and holding the dinghy momentarily like an anchor. The motor twisted on the stern. A breaker rolled over the top of the motor and poured into the bottom of the dinghy. Then the dinghy rose up. The motor twisted the opposite way and fell off, disappearing into the waves. The dinghy bobbed free, but heavy. I grabbed the starboard side to throw myself into the water when another breaker hit and shoved the dinghy portside down into the waves. I fell out backwards, splashing uncontrolled into the water. I heard the dinghy inches from my head and furiously pushed against the sand, away from the tremendous rocking weight of the dinghy, now half-submerged and lumbering through the waves toward the beach.

  I righted myself in the breakers and stood to see the dinghy already ten feet away washing toward the southern curve of the beach. I spat out sand and wiped my eyes while Dylan and Gerry stood on the beach, watching the dinghy sluggishly bobbing along until it stopped a hundred feet away in six inches of water. The waves drove its bow into the sand and then washed over its stern to fill it deeper and deeper with water.

  Finally Dylan moved. He walked slowly to the dinghy, picked up the towline snaking around in the water, and pulled. Of course it didn’t move. I sloshed out to join him, but even with both of us it didn’t move. Two people cannot drag a dinghy full of water through the sand. Gerry brought us one of the spare lines from our gear. I tied the two lines together, then tied the longer line to a low tree on the edge of the beach. At least now it wouldn’t wash away. I could worry about salvage later.

  I sat down by Dylan and Gerry and we looked at the dinghy.

  “We didn’t lose it,” I said. “When the tide’s down, we’ll bail and drag it high on the beach. It’ll be okay.”

  “What about the motor?” Dylan asked.

  “Lost,” I said. “And ruined.”

  He nodded.

  “The other stuff?” I asked.

  “All lost,” he said. “And ruined.”

  I touched my pocket and felt the wet stiffness of Mom’s picture. Not lost, I thought. Not ruined.

  Then I remembered and felt at my waistband. Gone. I had meant to put it under my pillow. I had meant to breathe it again. To find the scent.

  I rested my elbows on my knees and looked down at the sand I was sitting on. Zillions of little grains—white and pink and black. Little broken-up shells and tiny branches of coral. All piled here to make an island. And we were on it. The three of us together. Lost in the middle of the great wide sea.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  WE SPENT MOST of our energy the next day digging the dinghy out of the sand, bailing it, and dragging it high up on the beach. I snorkeled for the engine, but the sand had completely buried it. Nobody could remember what happened to the paddles, but it didn’t matter. I told Gerry we could find something to use if we needed to, but I knew we would never get back to Chrysalis. Even the coral reef was too far for us now.

  In the afternoon we sat under the waving spinnaker and looked out to sea. After a while, Gerry curled up on his side and fell asleep and Dylan wandered away to look at the sea grapes. I was thinking numbers. We had been on the island seven days. We had drunk two of our bags of water and eaten almost half our stash of food. Maybe we were in good shape. Maybe a plane would fly over tomorrow or a boat would sail up two or three days later. With the spinnaker flying and Chrysalis wedged in the rocks, our situation would be obvious to a boat passing on the east or north or to an airplane flying overhead.

  Or maybe that wouldn’t happen. Maybe no planes ever flew over. Maybe no boats ever passed by. We hadn’t seen anything for the last seven days. Unless—

  Dylan suddenly sat down beside me. “It’s too early,” he said. “I don’t know when they’ll be ready.”

  “What?”

  “The sea grapes. They’re edible, you know. People even make jelly out of them. But I don’t know when they’ll be ready.”

  I nodded. Then I pointed to Gerry sleeping and whispered, “I want to talk.” Dylan quietly followed me down the beach to sit in a patch of shade under a palm.

  “Dylan,” I said, “we need to see what’s on the other side of this island.”

  He sat a minute, then asked, “What do you think is there?”

  “I don’t know, but maybe there’s another beach—without the coral reef.”

  I looked at him closely. Dylan never seemed to squint or tighten up his eyes when he was thinking. They weren’t especially big eyes, but they were always round and dark. And he had small, neat ears like Mom’s. Little ears that barely showed now under his ragged hair. And his hands were still—not fingering the grass or digging in the sand. They were quiet beside him while he looked at me and knew what I meant.

  “You mean maybe there’s a place on this island where a big boat would actually choose to anchor,” he said.

  “Yes.” I looked out at the water. “Coral reef to the north and west. Cliff and rocks to the east. Apparently cliff to the south. That leaves the southeast.”

  “Maybe there’s a boat there right now,” Dylan said.

  I nodded. “But how would we know? We have to go see what it’s like.”

  So we decided to explore the rest of the island. On an almost gray day when clouds were scudding overhead and we thought we felt a drop of rain every now and then, we put on the shoes we had brought off Chrysalis and packed the last three breakfast bars, a knife, and a jar of water in a shirt tied around my waist.

  I made Gerry leave Blankie, so he started the trip crying and dragging behind. Dylan and I were already scrabbling through the rocks at the western tip of the beach while Gerry was still wandering around camp. “Sit down,” I told Dylan. “We’ll wait here where he can’t see us. That’ll make him catch up.”

  We waited and the silence grew. Dylan lifted his head slightly and looked. “He’s still dragging that stick in the sand. He hasn’t noticed yet.”

  Then Gerry’s voice carried to our hideaway. “Ben? Dylan?”

  We didn’t answer.

  “I wish we had the EPIRB,” Dylan said quietly. “It would send a signal.”

  “Dad sure didn’t need it,” I said.

  “He did need it. I wish we’d had two.”

  I shoo
k my head. “You have to accept it, Dylan. He drowned himself and left us to die in the storm.”

  “He didn’t know about the storm. The storm came later.”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it. “Okay,” I said. “The storm came later. But he went over on purpose. And he took the thing we need most to get us off this island.”

  “Dylan! Ben!” This time it was a little more shrill.

  “Someone will have found Dad,” Dylan said. “And now he’ll find us.”

  “Dylan, be reasonable,” I said.

  “If there’s a boat over there,” he continued, “it’ll be a lot easier.”

  “And if there isn’t—or if there isn’t anywhere for one to anchor? What’s the plan then? Just to wait?”

  Dylan nodded. “And stay alive,” he said.

  We sat looking at each other.

  “Don’t leave me, guys!” Now there was fear in Gerry’s voice.

  We glanced back toward the sound of Gerry’s feet, then stood at the same instant. There was Gerry about twenty feet away, picking his way through the rocks.

  He looked up at us and understood we had been hiding. “That was mean,” he said, and lifted a corner of Blankie to cover his mouth.

  “You brought Blankie,” I said.

  He nodded, still holding the corner to his mouth.

  “Well, don’t lose him. And keep up.”

  With Gerry right behind me now and Dylan bringing up the rear, we climbed over the pile of rocks at the end of our beach. There we found another, much smaller and very different beach. If any beach could have been more beautiful than ours, this one was. Here the rocks rolled into the water like a low landslide. Right up next to the land was a broken-up sort of beach where sand had sifted in among the fallen rocks. The tide was low now, but we could see from the line of sea wrack where the high water came. Big, bathtub-size rocks lay scattered in the sand and glistened with algae and snail tracks where the water lapped at high tide. Some kind of mussel the size of a marble lived among the smaller rocks where they lay in piles kept damp by the tides. Steps away were tumbled rocks that had captured seawater and held it even at low tide. And beyond that were rocks that lay permanently half underwater with coral beginning to grow on the bumpy surfaces and sea urchins hiding in the crevices.

  I closed my eyes and listened. The rocks softened the sound of the waves and blocked the wind. The birds were silent. I could hear Dylan and Gerry breathing beside me and the cuddling move Gerry made to nestle a corner of Blankie against his face.

  Then I turned to climb the pile of rocks at the end of the tiny beach. Before the others moved, I could see over. The wind tore at my hair and the roar of the waves filled my ears. I saw that I was standing on the southwestern tip of the island. To my left the island turned sharply back to the east. The wild ocean pounded at the rocks that had broken off the landmass and dropped into the sea. To my right, the landslide of rocks holding the secret beach lay like stepping stones out into the ocean all the way to the coral reef where it turned southward. Along the rocks’ seaward side, the water looked deep and still, until it met the pile at my feet. There the waves crashed and turned back on themselves in flying sheets of spray. I climbed back down as Dylan and Gerry waited.

  “Can’t go that way. Nothing but ocean and rocks. No beach.”

  Dylan’s face clouded.

  “Let’s go straight up here.” I pointed toward the summit. “We’ll be able to see the whole island from there and get a better idea.”

  “A better idea of what?” Gerry asked.

  I waited for Dylan to jump in with an answer, but he didn’t. “Of how the island’s shaped,” I said, and charged off toward the trees.

  The band of trees lasted for only about ten minutes of climbing. Then we started pushing our way through scrub bushes and cactuses. I was leading the way, trying to find gaps and spaces that weren’t there. The clouds overhead were shifting and the sun broke through occasionally, hot and intense. When I heard a rattle low in the bushes ahead of us, I froze. “Snake!” I whispered.

  Gerry stopped instantly just behind me.

  “Snake?” Dylan asked, easing up behind Gerry.

  “I heard a rattle.”

  “There aren’t any rattlesnakes in the Bahamas—or even any poisonous snakes.”

  “Are we in the Bahamas, Ben?” Gerry asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.”

  “But we’re close,” Dylan said. “And there are no poisonous snakes here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I read it.”

  “And you’re sure you remember it right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure enough to lead the way?”

  “Yes.” He started to step forward.

  “Never mind. I need you in back to keep Gerry moving.”

  We started off again. I went a little more slowly. I looked more deeply into the bushes. The sun broke through completely, and my head was instantly hot through my bandanna. I saw no snakes.

  “Stop,” Dylan said. “There he is.”

  I felt a hot rush along my back.

  “Who?” Gerry asked, and we looked where Dylan was pointing.

  An iguana sat sunning on a low rock ten feet farther up the hill.

  “There’s your snake, Ben,” Dylan said.

  The iguana was fat, with a body about a foot long and a tail dragging behind him another eighteen inches. He looked more like a dinosaur than a lizard. His leathery skin hung on him in folds. His feet spread out in claws on the hot rock. He waited with his back to us, his eyes staring forward. He blinked.

  “Do they bite?” Gerry asked.

  “Of course they bite,” Dylan said. “But not people.”

  “He looks like he’d bite,” Gerry said.

  “Well, don’t get close to him,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Dylan said, and held up his hand. “Maybe we could catch him.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “To eat,” Dylan said.

  I took another step, then I stopped. I looked at Dylan again. “Okay. How do you catch them? Or clean them? Or cook them?”

  “I don’t know,” Dylan said, not shifting his eyes from the iguana.

  “Well, that’s a lot of help,” I said.

  “But, Ben,” Gerry said. “I’ll bet we could figure it out.”

  “Now? This very minute? In this roasting sun?”

  “No.” Dylan looked at me. “Let’s go on. I need to think about it.”

  We stepped forward, and the startled iguana hobbled off the rock and into the shadows under the bushes.

  I started up the hill again. “Figure it out quick,” I said. “I’m getting hungry.”

  I shouldn’t have said that. It made the sun hotter, the land drier, the bushes thornier. When Gerry walked too close to a cactus and got a shower of spines in the back of his hand, we found another rock and sat down. I started pulling the spines out of Gerry’s hand while he screamed and tried to yank his hand away. Dylan worked on Blankie, which naturally had dragged through the cactus along with Gerry’s hand. When we had done the best we could and Gerry was just sniffing, I took out the jar of water and the breakfast bars. The water was good, but when we bit into the bars, they were stale and tasted moldy. Gerry wanted to spit his out, but I wouldn’t let him.

  “You’ve got to eat it,” I shouted. “There’s nothing else!” I clamped my hand over his mouth. “Swallow!”

  He looked up at me with round, drowning eyes, and I was rocked by the memory of Dad holding him underwater at Honeymoon Harbour. I jerked my hand away and watched him let the wet, brown blob roll out of his mouth and drop into the sand.

  I covered my eyes. “I’m too tired to keep going,” I said. “Let’s go back.”

  “Wait,” Dylan said. He picked up the knife and cut off a pear from a prickly pear growing five steps away. He carried the pear gingerly to the rock, scraped off the spines, and sliced it ope
n. He cut out a piece of the red pulp, slid it into his mouth, and started chewing. We watched and waited. He worked hard at swallowing, then shivered a little.

  “Not great,” he reported, “but it will do.”

  I held out my hand for a piece, and then Gerry’s little hand appeared beside mine, palm up and open. It’s funny what you’ll do, I thought, when you run out of choices.

  And I had to admit that when we were finished I felt better. Maybe it was the handful of calories zooming around in my bloodstream. Maybe it was the way the breeze had come up and was cooling us in spite of the sun. Maybe it was the way the cactus looked different to me now. Anyway, I felt strong enough to keep going, and so did the others. I packed the jar and knife back into the shirt, tied it around my waist, and led the way.

  When we reached the top of the island, we felt the wind hit us and push against us, as if it were trying to shove us back down the hill we had just climbed. But we braced ourselves, bending slightly forward and ignoring its roar in our ears. We turned together, like filings reacting to a magnet, and faced the rocks where Chrysalis had foundered.

  There they were, rising up out of the moving, breaking water. There were the shallows where the colors of the coral were visible even from up here. And then the eight jagged rocks. And then the fathomless blue of the ocean, like the deep blue of space, spreading out toward the horizon and broken in the near distance into a reflective confusion of ridges and hollows where the waves rolled and twisted under the sun.

  But there was no Chrysalis.

  I don’t know what I expected to see. Did I think Chrysalis would still be there? Did I hope she would? Did I hope at least to see her shape, white and ghostly under the water, or a gouge in the rocks or a shroud still trailing across the shallow coral—anything to prove that she once had been there?

  I guess it was the complete blank that opened a hole in my chest and made me feel as if the wind were blowing through me and sucking away my breath. I watched the waves breaking on the rocks and began to forget which rocks were the ones we had hit. They started to shift in my memory, and for a second I panicked. Then I remembered clearly. Those two right there, of course. No others were close enough together to have caught the bow and held it like a vise the way those two had done.