Shipwreck (8 page)

“The extinguisher!” cried Ian, reaching down the companionway and yanking the small tank from its mounting on the bulkhead. He pulled the pin and sprayed foam at the blaze. J.J. picked up a bucket and began bailing water from the cabins and sloshing it into the firestorm. The heat was unbearable, and they stumbled on the ruined deck, which was a tangle of twisted planks and splinters.

“It’s no use!” bawled JJ. “We might as well be throwing Dixie cups of Kool-Aid!”

The blast had knocked Charla out of her post atop the foremast, landing her upside down in the ratlines. It took every ounce of her gymnastics training to right herself again. Through the waves of heat and smoke that billowed over her, she spotted JJ. and Ian. But when she looked aft, she saw only the boiling orange of the blaze.

“Where are the others?” she called down.

“In the stern!” shouted Ian.

“Thereis no stern! It’s all fire back there!”

With a terrible creaking sound, the flaming stump of the mainmast toppled over in a shower of sparks. It crushed the cabin top, cutting the younger boy off from JJ.

“Ian!” JJ. cried.

Ian jumped back, stumbling on an upended deck board. The extinguisher dropped from his hands, rolled into the fire, and exploded in a whoosh of compressed gas.

The blazing mainmast ignited the foresail. JJ. sloshed water onto the smoldering sail, but flames quickly licked up the canvas, forcing Charla back atop the mast. The fire soon spread to the sheets and rigging.

“Ian, can you hear me?” called J.J.

“Get out of there!” came lan’s voice from the inferno.

J.J. spun around. “To where?!”

There were only two choices: Either stay on the burning boat or take his chances in the vast, inhospitable, and terrifying sea.

Monday, July 17, 1825 hours

Luke paddled like a four-year-old at his first swimming test. Just keeping his upper lip above water seemed almost impossible. This was crazy! He had a bronze badge from the Red Cross — why was he so helpless?

Panic and shock, he thought. And fear. He was trembling all over.

Stay close to the boat. That was the first rule for a man overboard. But a widening pool of burning gasoline was spreading around thePhoenix , making it look like the waves themselves were on fire. Luke found himself drifting farther and farther from the ship. If he got separated from the others, only the fish would find him.

“Luke!” It was a faint call from the gloom.

Will. The voice seemed to be coming from miles away, although Luke was sure Will couldn’t be very far. “Will, are you okay?” he shouted.

No answer.

Luke looked around, fighting hysteria. The sun was down. Detail disappeared against the incandescent orange of the fire. He saw nothing. Except—

There it was. A flash of color a few yards away. He made for it, splashing wildly.

In the pool at the Y, it would have been a ten-second swim. But now, buthere — a distance marathon.

“Will!” Luke’s voice was breathless, unsteady.

Nothing.

And then his flailing arm smacked right into it — a six-foot piece of the Phoenix’s cabin top, floating in the water. The corner glowed like hot coals. Luke used his weight to submerge the smoldering portion. With a puff of steam, the fire was out. He hauled himself on top and lay back, gasping.

“Ow!” His head banged against something hard. He rolled over to find himself staring at a steel-gray smoke-head vent. This was the galley ceiling! It must have been broken off and thrown free when the explosion launched the stove overboard. That’s why it was still in one piece when most of the deck and cabin had been blown to toothpicks.

“Will!” he called again with growing urgency.

ThePhoenix was completely engulfed in flames now. As he watched, a large charred section of stern broke off and disappeared below the waves. The rest of the schooner resettled herself, rocking to and fro into a new balance. Could there be anybody alive on there? Surely he wasn’t the only one left?

“Will!” he bellowed. “Lyssa! Ian! Charla!” A pause. “J.J.!” He’d even be happy to see J.J. at this point.

“Luke!”

It was Will. No question about it this time. Careful not to lose his balance on the cabin top, Luke rose to his knees. It was almost completely dark now.

Then he saw it — a flailing arm. He stood up — did he dare stand up? There, twenty yards away, someone — Will? — was rolling in and out of the waves, clinging desperately to a mangled deck plank.

Luke flung himself back on his stomach and began to paddle. He looked up. Will wasn’t an inch closer. Here in the open ocean, the wave action canceled out whatever progress he could manage. To save Will, he would have to swim for it.

Swim for it? Was he nuts? He was weak — could hardly force his arms into a dog paddle. A few minutes ago, he’d barely made it to the cabin top ten feet away. This was five times that distance — at least! And the same again coming back, dragging Will, who might be hurt or burned. It was insanity. He’d drown the both of them.

“I can’t hang on much longer!” Will called.

The decision was made. A slim chance was better than no chance at all. Luke threw himself off the cabin top and hit the water. He drove each stroke deep into the waves, fighting the sea and his own exhaustion. His eyes stung from salt, but he forced himself to keep them open. Can’f losehim. Can’t lose him. He tried to call Will’s name and came up choking on seawater.

Alone/ Where was Will? Oh, no! He’d lost Will and — a frantic look backward — he could no longer see the floating cabin top!

He’d given up his raft — his one chance at survival — for nothing.

And then a wave broke, and Luke saw him, still clinging to the piece of deck —

“Will?” Luke blurted.

The boy’s face was completely blackened with soot.

Will blinked in amazement. “Luke?” In that instant, Luke realized he must look the same.

He struggled to focus his racing mind on what was important. “Can you swim?”

“I — I’m not sure.” Will seemed aimless and confused. “I found a piece of wood — “

“Hang on to it,” Luke commanded. “It’ll help us float.”

Grabbing Will Red Cross style — oh, how he wished he’d paid better attention in that lifesav-ing class! — Luke started back in the direction of the cabin top.We’ll find it , he told himself. If they didn’t, they would both drown. Sidestroke — shuttle-kick. Will’s deadweight threatened to drag him down.

“There’s a cabin top floating up ahead,” Luke managed to say between tortured breaths. His paddling arm throbbed with pain. “Can you see it?”

“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, andsurrender 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 musf 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.

“Forwhat ?”

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 shewas — ” lan’s eyes fell on the flaming hulk of thePhoenix . “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 wasperfect . 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 thePhoenix 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!” Ion 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. “LyssalJJ.!”

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.

Tuesday, July 18, 0700 hours

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 thePhoenix — not even a toothpick.

She checked lan’sNational GeographicExplorer 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 thePhoenix 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 thePhoenix , 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.”