“Too dark,” replied Will. He sounded sleepy.
“Try!” Luke demanded, wasting precious strength shaking his friend. “It’s around here somewhere! It has to be!”
“There’s nothing,” insisted Will, a little more alertly.
Agony pulsed from every muscle in Luke’s body, from his cramped feet to the aching knuckles that were locked on to Will’s shoulder. It would be so easy to give up right now. There would be no disgrace in that. Who could have expected him to make it this far? The call to quit radiated from the very core of his being. Just let go, it seemed to say, and surrender to the waves …
“Wait a minute,” came Will’s voice. “What’s that?”
Luke kicked like he had never kicked before, as if he had reached down and opened a hidden supply of emergency energy. He screamed as he swam — from pain and rage but mostly from sheer effort.
Whump! His head knocked against something.
“This is it!” he exclaimed. “Will, we found it!”
Luke pushed Will, plank and all, onto the cabin top. Then he scrambled on himself and collapsed, choking and gasping.
“The others? Lyssa?” asked Will.
Luke could only shake his head.
“Nobody?”
They turned to face the Phoenix. It was a floating bonfire. White-hot flames covered every inch of the schooner except the very peak of the foremast. The bow, which had hung so low, was now pointed up like a cannon as water flooded into the ruined stern.
“They abandoned ship,” said Will. “They must have!”
Using the deck plank as an oar, Luke paddled alongside the doomed ship, looking for a path through the burning gasoline that coated the sea.
“Hey!” came a voice. “Over here!”
“Where?” chorused Luke and Will. It was pitch-dark now. The fire was the only light on the moonless night.
Suddenly, Luke saw a faint glimmer of canvas struggling through the waves. And attached to it —
“Ian!” Luke cried. “Drop that sail!”
“We need it!” Ian insisted, panting along.
“For what?”
Luke and Will almost capsized hauling Ian onto their raft. The younger boy was ready to sink to the bottom of the ocean rather than let go of a large piece of half-charred foresail and a yellow rubber rain hat. Quickly, Luke rolled to the far end of the cabin top to restore balance. The raft wobbled dangerously for a moment and stabilized.
“Where are the others?” rasped Luke.
Ian shrugged helplessly. “I was with J.J., but we got separated.”
“What about my sister?” demanded Will.
“I thought she was with you.”
“She was!” Will was frantic. “But she disappeared in the explosion!”
“And Charla?” asked Luke.
“Charla’s — I mean she was — ” Ian’s eyes fell on the flaming hulk of the Phoenix. “Oh, God!”
With an audible groan, the burning schooner seemed to give up the fight before their very eyes. Slowly — agonizingly slowly — the ship slid into the sea, following the angle of its raised bow. A split second before it disappeared beneath the waves, a dark shape plunged off the tip of the foremast.
It was a desperation dive, yet it was perfect. A graceful arc, and then the slim figure slipped into the ocean with barely a splash. It could have only been one person.
“Charla!” they chorused.
Pointing straight up to the sky, the flaming bowsprit of the Phoenix sank out of sight. CNC’s schooner was no more. There was a mournful hiss as the ocean extinguished the blazing wreck. Suddenly, all light was gone, save for the few patches of burning gasoline.
Luke picked up the plank and began paddling toward the spot where the girl had entered the water. “Charla!”
“I hope she knows to splash around and make noise,” Ian said. “Style counts for nothing when you’re being rescued.”
They made their way through the gloom, bellowing her name.
“Over here!” She was plowing through the waves in a textbook freestyle.
Luke had to smile. “Maybe we can tie her to the raft and she’ll tow us home.”
The light mood didn’t last long. As they heaved Charla on board, the cabin top overbalanced, flipping them all into the water. Several more tries gave the same result.
“It’s too much weight!” Ian shouted, treading water. “This thing won’t hold more than three of us!”
“What are we supposed to do?” asked Charla, her voice shrill with panic. “Go eeny-meeny, and the loser drowns?”
“Nobody’s going to drown!” panted Luke. “You three climb on; I’ll hang off the side!”
Charla was aghast. “Are you crazy? You’re shark bait!”
“We’ll switch every few hours,” Luke decided. “It’s only going to get more crowded when we find the others.” He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Lyssa! J.J.!”
But his calls went unanswered. And when the last of the gasoline had burned itself out, the cabin top bobbed and rolled in a silent world of limitless black.
Morning found the makeshift raft still adrift in the middle of nowhere. Luke, Will, and Ian slept the sleep of the exhausted side by side on the tight cabin top. Only Charla, who hung in the water, was awake. She scanned the dawn-gray waves, hoping against hope for some sign of Lyssa and J.J.
Nothing. Less than nothing. No debris from the Phoenix — not even a toothpick.
She checked Ian’s National Geographic Explorer watch — a cheap mail-order thing, but hey, it was the only one that still worked.
Gently, she shook Will’s arm. “Will, wake up.”
“Lyssa?” murmured Will.
“No, it’s me. Your turn for shark-bait position.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” he complained.
“It’s seven A.M. Two hours, same as always.”
“No fair,” grumbled Will, sliding himself over the side.
The switch had to be made carefully to avoid flipping over, but after the long night, they were getting better at it. Charla squeezed herself gingerly on board. Before she lay down, she got her first real look at the cabin top. It was the galley roof, all right, just like Luke had said. The name of the Phoenix had been painted there. Now all that remained were three letters: NIX.
A rueful laugh escaped her lips.
Luke opened a bleary eye. “What?”
She pointed. “We’re the S.S. Nix.”
“It figures,” he groaned. “Come on, get some sleep.”
But as the tropical sun rose higher and higher in the cloudless sky, sleep became difficult and finally impossible. On board the Phoenix, the sails had provided comfortable shade. Now the blazing heat was almost unbearable.
That’s when Ian explained why he had risked his life to save a charred piece of the foresail. “It’s sun protection,” he explained. “We dip it in the water and then pull it over us. See?”
Luke had to admit it was a lot cooler under the dripping canvas. He repositioned the scrap of sail so that it covered Charla, who was once again in the shark-bait spot.
“What’s the hat for?” asked Will.
“To collect rain,” replied Ian. “It’s rubber, so it won’t leak. We can’t drink the ocean water because of the salt. We need freshwater.”
Charla was amazed. “How did you think of all this in the middle of a burning boat?”
Ian shrugged. “I once saw this show on shipwrecks on the Discovery Channel. The big difference between who survived and who didn’t was thirst and sunburn.”
“Geez, that’s smart,” commented Will. “I sure hope Lyssa thought of that when she — I mean, if …” His voice trailed off.
“Did anybody see her last night?” asked Luke.
“No, not Lyssa,” Charla said slowly. “I remember J.J. trapped on the foredeck. But once the sail caught fire, I lost him in the smoke.”
“I was with him for a few seconds,” Ian added. “Then the mast came down and we g
ot split up. But he was definitely okay. I heard him calling for me.”
“Did you see him after that?” asked Luke.
Ian shook his head. “But I don’t think he went down with the ship. I mean, the heat was unbelievable. The fire was spreading — there was no-where to stand. Sooner or later, he would have had to jump.”
Charla looked alarmed. “Then why didn’t we see him in the water? Or at least hear him? And what about Lyssa?”
There was a sober silence, broken only by the slap, slap of the water lapping at the wooden platform.
Then Will spoke. “Aw, Lyss, I knew you’d bust it.”
Luke gazed at him in concern. “Will? You okay?”
“That’s the last thing I said to her,” he replied quietly. “She rebuilt the engine on guts alone, and that was the thanks she got from me.”
Nobody could offer a single word of comfort.
Will looked out over the miles of empty sea. I should have been an only child. How many times had he said it? How many more had he thought it? And now …
If Lyssa’s okay, he vowed, I’ll —
Automatically, his mind sorted through the dozens of promises he might offer up. Suddenly, they all seemed so meaningless — a collection of tacky New Year’s resolutions.
He finally settled on the one he feared he might not get the chance to make good on:
If Lyssa’s okay, I’ll never be mean to her again.
Night was the worst. The darkness closed in like an endless canopy of absolute blackness. With no moon, Luke couldn’t even see Charla a few inches away.
“Ian, what time is it?” came Will’s voice from the void.
“It’s twelve-thirty,” Luke said irritably. “We just checked two minutes ago.”
“I don’t really care about the time. I just want to see the light.” He was talking about the tiny light on Ian’s watch. “Every time I fall asleep, I dream that I’ve gone blind. I need to see something.”
“Try looking at the stars,” suggested Ian from the water beside the raft.
“I can’t sleep on my back.”
Luke was growing impatient. “You might have noticed this isn’t the Hilton. Make do.”
As Will struggled to roll over, he kneed Charla in the thigh. Reacting in shock, she elbowed Luke in the ribs. And as he jackknifed in pain, the edge of the raft dipped, dunking Ian underwater. The tiniest move had a ripple effect through the whole group. It was that close and uncomfortable.
Sputtering, Ian checked his watch. “Twelve-thirty-three,” he reported.
“Do it again. I missed it,” said Will.
Although the temperature never dropped below seventy degrees, the night felt almost bone-chilling after the burning heat of the day. Taking turns in shark-bait position kept the castaways soaked to the skin, and the six-hour shifts out of the water did little to dry them off. The seas had picked up, and even the smallest waves washed over the cabin top.
They had tried again to find an arrangement where all four of them could sit on the raft at the same time. But after repeated dunkings and one real scare — the raft had almost bobbed away — they had decided that three riders and one shark bait was the only way to go.
Secretly, Luke didn’t mind his shifts in the water, especially at night. While the air cooled down, the ocean stayed warm. It also provided protection from the wind. In fact, the only problem with shark-bait position was exactly what the name implied: sharks. Dangling there, you were a sitting duck for any sea creature that wanted to take a bite.
They had seen fins cutting the surface around the raft, but Ian insisted they were dolphins. “A shark fin is larger and more triangular, with a small slot near the bottom.”
The kid was an endless fountain of information that nobody wanted to hear. “Carcharadon carcharias, the great white shark, could destroy this raft in a single bite. A really big specimen can swallow a person whole.”
“Let me guess,” said Will. “They did sharks on National Geographic Explorer.”
“Don’t knock it,” mumbled Luke. “Those guys make one heck of a watch.”
“I’m more afraid of the tiger shark,” Ian went on seriously. “They’re pack hunters and they can go into what’s called a ‘feeding frenzy — ’ ”
“Enough,” interrupted Charla, who was in shark-bait position at the time. “I don’t want to hear another word about it until you’re hanging down here like a worm on a hook.”
* * *
With the heat of the second day came thirst — thirst beyond anything they had experienced before in their lives. It was a familiar feeling at first — like the desire to hit the water fountain after a long boring class on a steamy June afternoon. But then it transformed into something deeper and stronger. There was no water fountain; there never would be. Throats burned. Lips cracked and bled.
Charla held the empty rubber hat. “Did that show about shipwrecks mention what to do if it doesn’t rain?” she asked Ian.
“It’ll rain,” the boy promised.
The other three noticed, though, that this was one statement with no backup research from television.
There was hunger too — they hadn’t eaten for a full forty-eight hours. The hunger mingled with the thirst to produce a never-ending dull ache that gripped each survivor from head to toe. It was a pain that radiated lack — lack of water, lack of food, lack of sleep, lack of comfort.
As the afternoon progressed, a few clouds appeared overhead. The castaways cheered them on as if the Super Bowl were being played out in the sky above them. A cool wind picked up, creating a chop on top of the water.
“All right, rain!” croaked Will. “Let’s see what you’ve got!”
“We should trap water in the sail and drink it as it runs over the sides,” Ian lectured. “Get as much as you can while it’s still raining, because the hat won’t hold a lot.”
Luke had his hands out, palms up, waiting for the downpour.
It didn’t come. Or, at least, not to them. They could see it raining a quarter-mile ahead of them, but they didn’t get a single drop. There was genuine agony on the cabin top when the overcast thinned out and the sun broke through once again.
“No fair!” Will moaned, addressing the clouds. “Come back! Come back! Where’s our rain?”
That night, Luke hung over the side, drifting in and out of an uneasy world of half-dreams. You never really slept in shark-bait position for fear of slipping off the raft and being lost forever. Suddenly, he heard a strange gurgling noise. It sounded like — drinking?
Will had edged his way forward and was now lying with his head over the side, swallowing greedily.
Aghast, Luke grabbed him by the collar and pulled his face out of the water. “Don’t do that, Will! It’s suicide!”
It was so dark that all Luke could see were Will’s eyes. They seemed dazed, glassy, and feverish. “It’s water, man! Who cares if there’s salt in it?”
Luke shook him angrily. “That salt dehydrates you worse than going thirsty. You might have just cut a whole day off the time you can hold out! Maybe more!”
“No, it’s okay!” Will insisted urgently. “Listen, I figured out why we never found Lyssa and J.J. — they’ve been rescued already!”
“It doesn’t make sense, Will,” Luke argued. “How could rescuers spot them and miss us?”
“J.J. was right all along!” Will explained. “The captain and Radford are watching us! The others were in trouble, so they moved in and saved them. They haven’t saved us yet because we’re doing okay.”
“Okay?” Luke repeated. “You call this okay? We’re starving — dying of thirst! One of us has to hang in the water or we all drown. Think! A shark could bite me in two this minute, and the rescue boat would get here in time to save three and a half people. There is no bigger trouble than what we’re in right now. If there were rescuers out there, they’d be rescuing us!”
Will looked at him pityingly. “Take it easy, Luke. Everything’s under control. Don’t p
anic.”
Luke stared back at him in growing horror. The kid was totally serious. There was only one explanation for this: Hunger, thirst, grief, and fear were causing Will Greenfield to lose his grip on reality.
How long would it be before the same thing happened to the rest of them?
When it finally rained, everybody was unprepared. Luke and Charla both pulled the sail canvas in opposite directions, spilling most of the water onto the raft, where it rolled off into the sea. Will had the shakes and the dry heaves from drinking salt water. He tried to stand up and catch the drops in his cupped hands but succeeded only in tumbling off the cabin top headfirst into the ocean. By the time they managed to haul him back on board, the tropical cloudburst was over. The rain hat held about an inch and a half of water. It was enough for two mouthfuls each.
The water was warm and tasted a little salty — the rain hat, along with the raft and everything on it, was crusted with sea salt. But it was freshwater — their first in three days.
“Every little bit helps,” muttered Luke in disgust. “What a joke! It’s better to have nothing than a thimbleful.”
“This was just enough to remind us how much we need and we’re not getting,” Charla agreed mournfully.
Will’s stomach was in such bad shape that he couldn’t even keep his share down. He took one gulp and spit up over the side.
The other three looked on in agony. To them, nothing could be sadder than the thought of wasted water.
* * *
Boredom became as much of a problem as hunger and thirst. Minutes rolled into hours, which rolled into days with a dreary gray sameness. The overwhelming dullness canceled out every other emotion — even, at last, fear. It teamed up with the body’s weakness to sink Luke into an almost sleepy fog.
A couple of days before, his every thought had been of rescue. Now it seldom crossed his mind. He didn’t expect to be rescued; sometimes he was so numb that he couldn’t have cared less whether he was rescued or not. There were moments when the Coast Guard could have rear-ended the cabin top and he probably wouldn’t even have noticed.
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