The Sound of Whales (12 page)

CHAPTER 20

T
he water was cold. It sucked Hayley's breath from her and for a few long seconds she wondered if it was ever coming back. Then her body made an involuntary gasp, she coughed and spluttered and tasted the salt of the sea. As she rose and fell with the ocean she kicked her legs and moved her arms, but this wasn't swimming. Her bulky life jacket restricted any kind of movement, although it was keeping her alive. The sea was too cold and too heaving to allow anything more than floating and keeping your head above water. And then Hayley remembered why she was here: Dunny.

She looked around her and there were only waves and the
Moby Dick
looming large above her. The whales were gone, or were they just circling below, waiting to attack? Walls of water led up to a circle of light far above her head and for a moment she fancied she saw her mom and Fraser Dunbar looking down into the well and shouting words she couldn't hear. It was a lonely place at the bottom of this hole in the sea. The beginnings of a scream gathered itself at the back of her throat, the beginnings of terror and the loss of control. She watched her arm rise above the waves and knew she was only a pounding heartbeat away from frenzied thrashing at the water. And then something touched her arm and held on; when she looked, Dunny was there beside her and he was grinning.

Hayley grabbed hold of him and together they rose out of the trough. As the wave crested, with the two of them on top, they were momentarily as high as the deck of the
Moby Dick
. Her mom stood there, a frantic look on her face, flanked by Fraser. Ben was desperately searching the stern of the boat, for a lifebelt maybe.

Hayley waved. It seemed a silly thing to do, as if she was warming up for a high school swim meet with her mom sitting in the bleachers. Her mom was shouting something, encouragement, presumably, to swim in her direction.

Hayley tried, but she had too much to contend with: the swell, the cold, the bulky life jacket, the tight hold she had on Dunny. She was a strong swimmer – she had been going for state finals – but this wasn't swimming, this was survival. She floated in the water, concentrated on keeping their heads above the waves, hoped the
Moby Dick
would come to them.

Then there was movement and a splash and suddenly Fraser was there, bobbing beside her. He tried to speak but the air had been wrenched from his lungs. Hayley saw he wasn't wearing a life jacket.

How does this help?
she thought.

‘Come on,' Fraser shouted finally, offering no advice on how this might be achieved.

Hayley slapped the water a few times but made no forward progress. The boat was only a few metres away, with Fraser in between, but it could have been moored on Mars for all the hope she had of reaching it. She was tiring already, her arms heavy, her legs encased in concrete and dragging her down. The cold water numbed her brain as well as her body. Panic again swelled within her, matching the swell of the ocean. It was not drowning that troubled her but the fact that her mom would have to watch her drown.

And then she was moving and the
Moby Dick
grew closer very fast. She thought at first it was a wave that was carrying her along but then she saw it was Dunny, pulling on the back of her life jacket. For a moment it seemed that something was pulling Dunny. They swept past Fraser, who looked bluey-pale and astonished. A wave lifted them up and they rode it all the way to the hull of the boat, smacking against the ladder. Ben hung there, an arm reaching out. Dunny released his grip on Hayley and she grabbed on to the ladder. Ben took hold of the top of her life jacket and hauled her up and out of the water as she shakily found a rung with both feet. Water poured off her and a sudden more intense cold hit her as the wind sliced through her wet clothes. At the top, just before she collapsed on the deck in the arms of her mother, she looked down at the sea. Dunny clung to the bottom rung but he was looking down, not up. And beneath him, beneath the water, Hayley thought she saw movement, a dark shadow of something big and alive just beneath the surface. She looked again and it was gone.

CHAPTER 21

F
raser floated in the water and watched first Hayley and then Dunny climb the ladder to safety. Dunny waved towards Fraser, hand signals that Fraser couldn't interpret.
Speak to me
, he thought,
for once in your life
. Dunny had stroked past him with Hayley hanging on but Fraser couldn't swim like that; he didn't know Dunny could swim like that. He kicked for the
Moby Dick
, swam for a few seconds and a few strokes and looked up. The boat seemed further away. He kicked again, tore at the sea, sucked in air and spat out water. He paused, bobbed perilously in the rolling waves, looked again. The gap had not been narrowed. It was only a short distance, on land it would have been a couple of strides, but in the cold water it suddenly felt impossibly distant. Ben still hung from the ladder shouting encouragement. Fraser kicked and pulled again, kept going until the pain in his muscles made him stop. When he looked the boat was further away.

Oh, crap
, he thought.

It was the tide or the wind or the swell or a combination of all three, but Fraser saw that the
Moby Dick
was going in one direction and he in another. As he floated, helpless now, he watched Hayley's mom appear on deck with a life jacket. She handed it to Ben, who launched it in his direction.

It fell short.

It was only then that Fraser realized he wasn't wearing one.

Oh, crap
, he thought again.

Ben pulled himself on to the deck and disappeared in the direction of the wheelhouse. Fraser swam a few weary strokes but the life jacket was drifting out of reach faster than the boat. There was a bang and a clatter from the
Moby Dick
– the engine firing up. Ben was coming to him. The bang and clatter stopped. A few more seconds of feeble bobbing and the banging started up again. It faded just as quickly. The old boat was having trouble starting. Fraser knew what this meant: Ben would have to go down below into the engine compartment behind the small cabin. He would have to hammer a few things and take a wrench to a few others things. It would take ten minutes at least. Fraser didn't have ten minutes.

The boat drifted still further away. Fraser wasn't scared and it surprised him. He was glad that Dunny was safe, miffed that it was the American girl who had saved him again, or at least had made the first move to save him. In truth it was Dunny who had done the rescuing. Now Fraser was the one in trouble and there seemed no one able to save
him
.

He rose and fell with the waves, moving his arms and kicking his legs to keep himself afloat. He admired his calm demeanour, his lack of panic, as if he was watching someone else struggle in the water, as if it was some other boy whose head was only just above the surface. He could sense fear lurking around the corner but for the moment he was thinking clearly and rationally. He was about to drown. It was the sad, inevitable result of jumping into a stormy sea without a life jacket.

The boat drifted further away. He moved in the same direction, just not as fast. He could still see Dunny, Hayley and her mother on the deck but couldn't tell if they were moving or shouting or perhaps only weeping. He hoped somebody was weeping. There was no sign of Ben, but the engine of the
Moby Dick
remained silent, so Ben had to be down below whacking it with a hammer.

Fraser was barely able to keep himself above the water. Both he and the boat were drifting towards the shore. He looked in the direction of the beach and the cliffs. They were drifting towards the shore!

It wasn't that far. He might not be able to reach the boat but he could work with the tide and the waves and swim to land. With a sudden surge of energy that came with hope, he kicked his legs, hauled his arms in and out of the water, focused only on swimming and breathing. For every two strokes forward the swell bounced him back one but he made progress. After a couple of minutes, which felt like hours, he looked up. The shore was closer – not much, but closer. He saw a dark shadow move beneath him, remembered there had been whales in the water. He kicked out again, not to swim but to scare. The shadow disappeared, had probably been a figment of his waterlogged imagination.

His world narrowed to this small patch of salty sea. He could hear only his breaths, see only grey water. The waves became friends and foe. One wave would pick him up and push him forward. Another wave would move him back or break across his face, making him gasp and splutter. He looked again. The cliffs were not so distant but not yet close. He could have walked there in a minute, run it in seconds, but swimming was so much harder. The water felt thick and was in constant motion. The wind was in his face. His legs were made of stone but ached like flesh. He couldn't feel his arms, knew they must still be moving or he would be underwater by now. He pushed himself on, his breathing laboured, his arms still stroking but to no real purpose. He groaned with the effort and coughed out sea water. The waves were spiteful; the friendly ones had deserted him. He was pushed back two strokes for every one forward. He kicked again but there was no response. A breaker rolled over his head and he only just managed to come out the other side.

So close and yet so far. He had given it a go, had tried his best – it had just been beyond him. Weariness washed over him with the next breaking wave and he knew he was done. Hayley would get a medal and her picture in the paper. He would get a wreath of flowers thrown from the beach and a mention at school assembly. Fraser began to cry. He didn't want it to end this way but he had nothing left in him. He wanted to see his mum and dad again, wanted their protective arms around him. He wanted to see his brother again, would have given Dunny a hug and apologized for being such a poor older brother. He wanted to see the whales again. The whales had been amazing.

He felt himself slip slowly under the water.

CHAPTER 22

H
ayley clung to the rail of the boat. Her shivering was painful; she had never been so cold. Her wet clothes stuck to her flesh like jagged ice and every gust of wind was an electric shock. But she wouldn't move. Her mom had pleaded with her to go below and get warm and dry but she refused to budge. Not while Fraser was still in the water. Her mom was pacing the deck, yelling at Fraser, yelling at Ben down below, yelling at her for being wet and cold.

She watched the gap between the boy and the boat grow bigger. She shouted at him and urged him to swim harder but the gap only increased. Then she watched him turn and head for the shore and she shouted at him some more to keep going. Her mom ran to the cabin hatch and disappeared below. Dunny stood beside her and though he also shivered, he didn't shout. He shifted his weight from side to side, he rubbed the rail with his hands like he was polishing the rusting metal, his head was moving up and down and left and right, but he made no sound. Hayley wanted to shout at
him
, to snap him into life, to force him to give encouragement to his brother. If Fraser could hear his brother shout, it might help him. But Dunny said nothing and together they watched Fraser slow down, tread water and begin to flounder.

She opened her mouth to shout again but knew it was pointless. The wind was too strong and Fraser was too far away. She started to cry and when she looked Dunny was crying as well. No sobs or wails, just tears that ran down his cheeks and mingled with the sea water and rain.
At least he will cry for his dead brother
, she thought, and when she looked again Fraser was gone.

The engine of the
Moby Dick
banged and rattled and kicked into life but it was too late. Hayley stared at the spot on the ocean and saw rolling waves and breaking whitecaps and sea spray. It was a malevolent sea and a nice Scottish boy had been no match for it.

And then she saw an arm. It burst from the water as if hauling itself out by grabbing at the sky and beside it was a second arm. It took her a moment to realize that the second arm was different from the first, and that they were not connected to the same body.

Fraser's face appeared above the waves, his mouth sucking at the air. In the water beside him, holding him and pulling him and saving him was Jonah. Beside her Dunny began to wail, a joyful wail like someone on a roller coaster might make, and he clapped his hands together in applause. Hayley raised her arms into the wind and gave a cry of jubilation.

Fraser was saved.