Survival (6 page)

'I think we did it,' said Li, finally, turning to the others with a hesitant smile.

'We did?' said Amber, clambering shakily to her feet.

Paulo jumped up, punched the air and cheered. He clapped Alex on the back, hugged Amber and Li, then pulled Hex to his feet and hugged him too.

Hex rolled his eyes at Paulo's behaviour, but his usually serious face was creased into a grin. Alex looked at the others, then shook his head and laughed out loud. It was ridiculous to be so happy when they were up to their shins in seawater, adrift in an open boat with only one oar, but he couldn't help it. None of them could. They had pulled together as a team when it mattered - and they had survived.

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SIX

Hex grimaced as Paulo worked on the cut over his eye, but he did not flinch.

'It is deep,' said Paulo as he applied the second butterfly suture from Alex's survival kit. 'But it is clean and there are no ragged edges.'

'Looks as though you know what you're doing,' said Alex, peering over his shoulder.

'I have done this many times,' answered Paulo. 'When we are out with the cattle, sometimes we are days from help. So,' he shrugged, 'we must tend our own wounds.' Paulo finished and sat back to inspect his work. The sutures had pulled the edges of the wound together neatly and the bleeding had almost stopped. He grinned at Hex. 'It should heal with hardly a scar.'

Alex nodded in agreement. 'You'll live,' he said to Hex.

'Are you sure about that?' Hex replied, looking around him with a wry smile.

'Hey, we just won a fight with a shark,' said Alex as he packed away his survival tin. 'Of course I'm sure.'

Li was assigned the first Watch Duty, and she sat in the bows, dividing her time between scanning the sea for any sign of a grey dorsal fin and searching the horizon for land, a plane or a ship. The other four set to work bailing out the boat, using their caps or their cupped hands. They had shipped a lot of water during the shark attack and it was a long, back-breaking job to scoop it all out again. Finally, Alex called a halt and they all stared into the bottom of the boat, watching for any sign of a leak.

'I think we are lucky,' said Paulo as the seconds ticked by and the boat remained dry.

Amber raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows. 'You call this lucky?' she said.

Paulo nodded seriously. 'The shark did not breach the hull. The boat is still watertight. We are lucky.'

'And here's another piece of luck,' grunted Alex as he yanked the rucksacks out from under the stern seats, where they had become wedged during the struggle with the shark. 'We didn't lose our supplies overboard.'

Hex and Alex sorted through the rucksacks while Amber and Paulo hauled the sopping bunk blankets from the stern lockers and wrung them out over the side as best they could. Paulo leaned the remaining oar against the stern seats, wedging the bottom end in the stern locker, then he and Amber draped blankets over the oar to create an awning. They crawled under the blankets and sat down, relieved to get out of the sun at last.

Hex and Alex unloaded the drinks rucksack first. The large plastic bottle of water and two of the lemonade cans were undamaged, but the third can was badly dented. Alex left that out to one side when they packed the other drinks away again. Inside the food rucksack, the cardboard box holding the cereal bars had disintegrated, but each bar was still dry inside its own individual foil wrapper. The apples and bananas were wet, bruised and battered but still edible.

'Could've been worse,' said Alex, looping the painter through the handles of both rucksacks and tying them together with a secure knot. He then clambered from the bows to the stern, looping and securing the painter around each seat as he went.

'Safety line,' he said, briefly, in answer to Hex's questioning look.

'In case of what?' demanded Hex, suspiciously.

'Rough seas. Or another shark attack,' said Amber, smiling when she saw the look of alarm on his face.

'It's just a standard safety measure,' answered Alex, mildly, giving Amber a warning look. 'I should've done it before this, really.'

'Can someone take over the Watch now?' called Li from the bows. She pressed her hands over her eyes. 'I'm getting a bit sun-blind here.'

'Oh, yeah,' muttered Amber from beneath the awning. 'Wait till all the real work's done before you ask to be relieved, why don't you?'

'You think standing watch is easy?' snapped Li, turning to glare at Amber. Everyone could see that her eyes were red and watery with the strain.

Amber opened her mouth to argue, but Alex interrupted her. 'Li's right,' he said. 'Watch Duty is tiring, especially when the sun's reflecting off the sea and there's so much to look out for. We should start a watch rota - half an hour each. Who wants to go next?'

Amber scowled, reluctant to leave her shady spot. 'Well I hope you don't expect me--' she began, then stopped as Hex clambered to his feet. He gave Amber a disgusted look as he pulled a pair of designer frames from his belt pouch and moved into the bows to take over from Li.

'Here, Li. Sit here,' said Paulo, giving up his place in the shade for her.

'Thanks,' said Li gratefully, sitting down with a sigh and working the knots from her shoulders.

'You can have the first drink, Li,' said Alex, nodding to the dented lemonade can.

Li picked up the can and the others all turned to watch, suddenly aware of how thirsty they were. She tapped the top a few times to make the bubbles subside, then eased back the ring-pull until the seal cracked with a hiss. Once she was sure the drink was not going to foam out uncontrollably, Li pulled the ring all the way back.

'How much?' she asked, glancing at Alex. 'A couple of mouthfuls?'

Alex nodded. Li licked her lips as she watched a tiny fountain of bubbles fizz out of the top of the can, then she closed her eyes and took two deep swallows. She would never have believed that warm lemonade could taste so wonderful. Quickly, she handed the can on to Paulo before she was tempted to take more than her share. The can was passed from hand to hand as carefully as though it were a golden chalice. Amber was last. She drained the can then held it upside down over her open mouth, shaking out the last drops.

'That was nowhere near enough,' she announced, dropping the can in the bottom of the boat. 'We should crack another one.'

Alex shook his head as he picked up the empty can and stowed it away in the rucksack. 'We need to ration our drinking, until we're sure we can get more,' he said.

'OK,' sighed Amber. 'Food then, I need some food.'

'It's best not to,' said Alex. 'If you eat, then you have to digest the food - and that uses up more fluid.'

Amber scowled. 'I said, I need some food! C'mon! We can eat the fruit. There's plenty of fluid in fruit. And anyway, it won't last, all battered and bruised like that.'

Alex hesitated, looking around at the others. They were all gazing at him uncertainly and sending hungry glances at the food rucksack. Too late, he realized he should have explained all this earlier, instead of assuming they would all go along with a rationing system. Besides, Amber had a point about the bruised fruit. He felt his own stomach clench with hunger at the thought of biting into an apple.

Amber saw the indecision on his face and moved in for the kill. 'C'mon, Alex! Hand it over! We only made you captain, not the boss of, like, the whole world.'

'I'm not the boss--' began Alex.

'Well, then. Give.' Amber held out her hand, palm upwards, and waggled her fingers at him.

'- but I do know about survival situations,' continued Alex, ignoring the interruption. 'And my advice in this situation is that we don't eat and we ration water.'

Amber lunged for the rucksack and Alex shoved it further behind him. She glared at him furiously. 'OK. Great. You think you're such a Boy Scout? You think you know what you're doing? Did you ever even look at the nautical charts on the
Phoenix?
I don't think so.'

'What are you getting at, Amber?' asked Li.

'If he had looked at the charts, he would know we're in big trouble here.'

Alex yanked open the rucksack and pulled out the bag of fruit. 'You win,' he said tightly, dumping the bag at Amber's feet. 'Just shut up and eat, will you?'

'So,' said Amber, softly. 'You do know.'

'I said, shut up!' snapped Alex.

'Hang on a minute,' said Hex. 'We're not babies here. If there's bad news, we need to be told.'

Alex folded his arms and glared at Amber. She lifted her chin defiantly. 'I sail a lot. I'm a good navigator,' she said. 'Charts are my thing. I studied those charts on the
Phoenix
pretty closely and, well, the thing is, the further north we drift, the less likely we are to see a ship or a plane. We're drifting into a dead zone, see? No regular plane traffic, no shipping lanes, no trade routes. Nothing.'

'There are islands, though,' said Alex, looking around at the scared faces of the other three.

'All uninhabited,' retorted Amber.

'That's enough,' said Alex, watching Li's eyes grow big with fear, but Amber could not seem to stop.

'And in case you hadn't noticed,' she said, her voice high with barely controlled panic, 'the sun is getting lower in the sky. It'll be dark in another two hours. Even if we do come close to an island, the chances are we'll drift right by it without even realizing!'

'Well done, Amber,' sighed Alex. 'I'm sure everyone feels much happier for knowing all that.'

Amber did not bother to answer. Instead she reached forward and pulled a banana from the bag. Alex shook his head.

'Like I said,' insisted Amber, looking at her watch, 'I really need to eat now.'

Paulo watched hungrily as she peeled away the skin and took a bite of the sweet, white flesh of the banana. With a shame-faced look at Alex, he took a banana from the bag for himself and passed an apple to Li.