East of Outback
Authors: Sandra Dengler
| East of Outback |
| Australian Destiny [4] |
| Sandra Dengler |
The splendid and limitless horizons of the dry outback held blessings and curses, and the blessings were far between.
Cole and Samantha Sloan have enjoyed several years of steady prosperity and their four children are reaching adolescence. Colin, the eldest son, has always been one to question everything and always has been ready for adventure. Approaching full independence, Colin wants out from under his parents' standards and expectations.
East of Outback
is the quest of Colin Sloan as he finds his way into the responsibilities of manhood and the outback of Australia. Venturing out on his own, Colin works the gold mines of Kalgoorlie, shears sheep in the Darling River country and at times simply tries to survive. But he's not prepared to take on the responsibility for his younger sister, headstrong Hannah. Reluctantly, he must take her back home.
Embarking on an odyssey of discovery, little does he know the journey will become a search for meaning.
AUSTRALIAN DESTINY SERIES
Code of Honor
Power of Pinjarra
Taste of Victory
East of Outback
Cover illustration by Dan Thornberg,
Bethany House Publishers staff artist.
Copyright © 1990
Sandy Dengler
All Rights Reserved
Published by Bethany House Publishers
A Ministry of Bethany Fellowship, Inc.
6820 Auto Club Road, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55438
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-6257-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
C
ONTENTS
C
HAPTER
O
NE
L
EVIATHAN
P
LAYING
1925
Laughing, splashing, dancing ripples of light pierced the ocean surface and splintered across the shallow world below. They burned away a bit of the blue-green and let hints of color flash here and there among the endless coral, the outcrops of dark, stolid rock, the shifting sand. Then they fell upon a gray form ranging, and the laughter ceased.
With the chill arrogance of a hunter born at the top of the food chain, the shark cruised sinuously, its seventeen feet of power undulating. Two fathoms above, the water’s restless surface broke up the light, creating unusual shadows and patterns. Such patterns might confuse an untuned eye, but this one did not hunt by eye. It read its waters by taste and smell, and hearing. Not even the tiniest waterborne vibration, the faintest aquatic odor, escaped detection.
It caught a vague essence of sea turtle drifting up from near the ocean floor three fathoms below. Vibrations. There. Ahead. A sea turtle struggled in the grasp of an unfamiliar predator. The predator stood erect, vertical against the sea floor, less than a fathom tall. Its head was encased in a huge shell, its torso and appendages in soft skin. A cascade of bubbles followed two endless antennae toward the surface.
The shark circled warily. Although half the shark’s size, the predator was dangerous. This very shark had once been struck on the snout by such a predator—an experience not to be repeated.
And yet, the turtle—that rich, meaty turtle. . . .
The predator’s head moved inside its shell, watching the shark. A sudden burst of bubbles roared out of its appendages. Startled, the shark veered away.
It turned. Again it came arcing in. Turtle blood! The scent called; it tantalized; it commanded. Nothing else mattered now. The shark rolled onto its side, its maw wide open, and rushed past predator and prey. Its ten-score teeth sheared meat and bone. Blood! It came whipping around into another pass.
Amid a howling, vibrating cloud of bubbles the predator ascended through the crystal green. The bubbles shook the shark, confused its senses. It tilted away and swung around again. Another smaller shark approached, drawn by the blood. They spiralled upward together in a deadly helix toward predator and prey.
______
“Fahster, lahds!”
Colin gave up trying to roll the air hose onto its reel. He hand-over-handed it up over the side, blindly letting it fall on the deck behind him. Beside him Dizzy cranked mightily at the winch as Captain Foulard dragged in the lifeline.
A brass dome exploded out of the churning froth of the sea surface. Colin and the captain together lunged over the side, grasping. Colin gripped a random handful of the canvas diving suit and pulled. He hooked his other hand under the diver’s arm and leaned back, lest the weight pull him over the side.
Dizzy grunted, the line on his winch as taut as a guitar string. With clangs and clunks, Sake the diver came up over the
Gracie’s
gunwale helmet first. Colin reached for a leg, for the final tip up and over, and froze. A pink maw, followed by a white belly, broke the surface and slid by, missing Sake’s diving boots by inches.
Colin stared numbly. “That thing’s half the length of the boat!”
Dizzy hit the rail beside him for a fleeting glance as the shark melted into the green. Rapidly he crossed himself. He looked wide-eyed at Colin and shook his head slowly. “This place ain’ no place for me, Col. Goin’ home. I swear to you I’m goin’ home.”
“Yair.” Colin couldn’t always sift out Dizzy’s tortured Spanish accent, but he understood that speech. He clapped.his chum on the shoulder and turned to the more pressing problem at hand—Sake.
Captain Foulard and Ariel, the Koepanger cook, had propped the slight, stocky little pearl diver in a half-sitting position against the hatch cowling. They wrenched the spherical diving helmet loose and lifted it away.
For a few moments, Sake Tamemoto studied infinity with vacant eyes. His skin, normally the warm yellow ochre of the sun-tanned Japanese, had paled to dirty ashes.
“Sake!” Captain Foulard shook him. “The beast bite you?”
The man suddenly returned. His eyes changed focus from infinity to the rail before him. “No. No, he did not. The turtle, though—he bit the turtle.”
“Turtle!” The captain exploded. “How many times I tell you, leave dem turtles alone! Cause nutting but trouble, like now. You cahn’t be daht sick of salt pork, you gotta risk your neck for turtle!”
The crackling eyes twinkled. Sake was back again. He smiled. “Oh, yes I can.” He looked at Ariel. “A cup of tea, please, to soothe the nerves. Then I go back down. Thank you.”
Ariel left, shaking his head.
Colin glanced at Dizzy. “Sake, you’re really going back down? When you know what’s down there?”
“There are two sharks there, lad. They will tear apart the turtle. Then they will go on. Good shell remains. We must not leave this place yet.” His color was starting to return; Colin watched it seep back by degrees.
“Yes, but—”
Sake raised a slim, almost feminine finger. “Captain Foulard is correct. Except for the turtle I would be in small danger. A shark comes, you release some air from the cuff of your diving suit. The bubbles repel him. Boot him on the nose if he passes by. But sharks love turtle meat even better than I. They will not so mildly go away if you have a turtle. Still, sharks are not the danger; whales are.”
“Whales?” Dizzy shook his head. “Sharks, they eat people, eh?
Muy peligroso
. Whales they don’ eat people, dangerous alia same.” Dizzy was as small and slight as Sake, and quite a bit thinner. Yet, he could lift any weight, perform any feat of strength. Immense power. When he rested he went completely flaccid; when active, he bounded about, swift and smooth, ever moving.
If mankind could somehow harness the energy in Desiderio Romales, Colin thought, we could get along without the sun
.
“Why are whales dangerous?” Colin settled onto the deck beside Sake. Ariel delivered the tea.
Sake sipped a few moments. “So big. Just so big. When they panic, nothing you can do. One time, a time I will not forget: we were diving off Adele Island when a pod of humpbacks came among us. Playful. They were playful. I was young then, like you, Colin. Young enough to know everything. You are how old?”
“I’ll be seventeen in July.” Colin felt his cheeks grow warm.
Sake nodded, sipped. “You are very strong for one who is young. I was not strong, but clever. Ah, so clever. Other divers in the area rose, went aboard to wait until the whales left. Not I. I was winning much good shell, and as you know, Dizzy, whales are harmless. I would complete my task.”
The wind was picking up. Colin jammed his fingers into his brown hair and shoved it up off his face. The breeze tossed it right back again. If Mum knew how badly he needed a haircut. . . .
“A big bull came along, a humpback bigger than our boat. As he passed overhead it was like night descending, to be in his shadow. I stood in awe, my whole body arched back that I might watch the monster glide by. Those flukes! Each bigger than a dinghy.”
Colin glanced at Dizzy. The little man was probably pushing thirty, yet he sat rapt as a child of six.
Sake drained his cup. “A crosscurrent caught my line just then, and drew it out wide. It hooked on the passing flukes. Instantly, the whale panicked. He shot forward. He broached. And with each great flap of his flukes I was yanked thus! And so! I was jerked from the water. I was dragged through the water.”
“Your air line couldn’t have stayed together with all that.”
“True, Colin. Yes. One moment I can hear the
click-clack, click-clack
of the pump. Then, silence. Of great fortune, I thought to close my air valve just as the fluke caught. Air came into my suit, but air did not leave it, you see.”
“Sort of like blowing up a balloon?”
“Just so! And when the line broke, I closed the other valve to keep out the water. Like a fool the whale began to run, perhaps three fathoms deep. I am dragged along behind, turning rapidly like a propeller. I managed to free my knife. I cut the lines and came up on my own air. The lugger had given chase. It rescued me, and just in time before my air was gone.”
“And now you come up as soon as there’re whales around.”
“Too right.” Sake lurched to his feet. “Too right. You will be wise to learn from your mistakes, young Colin. And much wiser if you learn without making them!”
It took Colin a while to sort the air line and reel it up properly. Then Sake’s lead-weighted boots clunked their way down the outboard ladder; his great round diving helmet disappeared below the gunwale.
Dizzy manned his station. His was an exacting task, nearly as glamorous and specialized as Sake’s, for Dizzy was the diver’s tender, and Sake’s life lay in his hands. Dizzy minded the diver’s air line and kept the air pump working. Much more intricate was the task of handling the lifeline properly. If the diver traversed areas of the sea bed devoid of pearl shell, he kept his boots off the ground and let the lugger’s gentle drift carry him along. Should he spot shell or cross a promising area, he would signal, and Dizzy must correctly interpret the signal. Urgent signals such as “up quickly,” “shark,” and “stage,” in which the diver, working deep, wished to rise by stages, required that he give the diver the proper amount of slack when working, yet not so much that the line might become tangled in coral.
Amidships on the little boat, Colin returned to his own task—that of shell opener. With a flick of his knife he opened each oyster, casting the valuable shell onto a pile, groping through the slimy-soft body for the one-in-a-thousand chance of a pearl, then throwing the meat overboard. Over and over again. His fingers were stained greenish and crisscrossed with dirty, dry cracks, like weathered wood. There were worse ways to earn a quid, but Colin couldn’t think of any.