'Hmmm,' she said, finally. 'There's good news and bad news. The good news is, as long as this current doesn't change direction, we should drift very close to the eastern tip of the island.'
Li let out a relieved breath. 'Just as well,' she said, sweeping an arm around the empty horizon. 'Because it's the only land in sight.'
'And the bad news?' asked Hex.
'At the rate we're drifting, its going to take us half the night to get there,' said Amber flatly.
'But it will be dark soon,' breathed Li, pointing towards where the sun was beginning to sink below the horizon.
'We'd better get going, then,' said Alex, scrambling to his feet. 'There's a lot to do before then.'
The island sighting had given them a common aim and they started working as a team again. Amber took over the Watch Duty without complaint, while Li and Hex tied down or stowed away anything that could be lost overboard. Paulo and Alex were in the stern, working as fast as they could in the fading light. They were using a length of rope and the single oar to rig up a sculling mechanism which would power and steer the boat when they reached the island. After a few failed attempts, Paulo came up with a type of flexible, criss-cross lashing which held the oar firmly in place against the stern but allowed him to push the paddle from side to side through the water. He experimented with different paddling strokes and soon worked out the best way to propel the boat forward and even to make it turn from side to side. His teeth gleamed in the growing gloom as he smiled and gave Alex a shadowy thumbs-up.
'Good,' said Alex. 'Well done, Paulo. Now come and sit down. We've done all we can.'
A few minutes later, it was totally dark. For the next two hours all they could do was to drift along through velvety blackness, listening to the sea slapping against the bows of the boat. Every now and then, Amber took out the button compass and checked their direction by the glow of the beta-light crystal. As far as she could tell, they were still drifting north, but the island was a small dot in a very big sea. There was no way to be sure whether the current was still taking them towards the island or gradually edging them away from it. Finally, the moon rose and gave them enough light to see the silhouette of the island, much closer now and still directly ahead of them.
'Right on target,' said Hex and they all breathed a sigh of relief.
Soon they could smell the island on the breeze. It was a rich, cloying scent, a mixture of rotting vegetation, swamp water and fresh, green leaves. Alex breathed in and was reminded of the smell of the compost heap on his grandfather's allotment after rain. The island loomed larger on their left-hand side as they drifted closer and closer, until it was too big for them to take it all in with one look. The boat inched towards the eastern tip of the island, dwarfed by the volcanic slopes which towered over them.
They began to hear the booming crash of waves hitting the reef up ahead and the sea around the boat was becoming choppier as the deep ocean swells suddenly came up against a steeply rising sea bed.
Paulo looked over at Alex and the whites of his eyes shone in the moonlight.
'Now?' he asked. Alex nodded. Paulo moved over to the stern and took a firm grip on the sculling-oar.
'In a minute, Paulo's going to try to steer us in over the reef,' said Alex to the others. 'It's going to get pretty rough, so we need to hunker down low in the boat and hang onto the safety line I rigged up earlier. Even better, anchor it around your waist or your arm if you can.'
'Couldn't we try to find a beach without a reef in front of it?' asked Li, sending a nervous sideways glance at the pounding surf.
Alex shook his head. 'It's too risky. We don't know how well we can handle the boat with only one oar. If we tried to get round the eastern tip of the island, the current might be too strong for us. We might get carried away from the island.'
The four of them got down into the bottom of the boat and each grabbed their own section of the safety line. Paulo began moving the oar back and forth with a smooth, powerful rhythm which made the muscles in his arms stand out in the moonlight. The boat turned sluggishly and started heading slowly towards the reef.
'One more thing,' shouted Alex, over the growing roar of the surf. 'If the boat doesn't make it over the reef, try to use a breaker to body-surf into the lagoon. Don't wait for anyone else. Don't try to turn back. If you get caught on the reef, it'll cut you to ribbons. Just get clear of it as fast as you can.'
The boat began to pitch and roll as the peaks and troughs of the ocean swells became sharper and deeper. They braced their feet against the hull and tightened their grip on the rope. In the stern, Paulo hung onto the oar, sometimes sculling it back and forth, sometimes letting the sea do the work. All the while he was watching the surf ahead and then turning to look at the moonlit swells behind him, trying to judge which one might carry the boat safely over the reef and into the lagoon.
At last, Paulo looked behind him one more time, then began sculling furiously. The boat caught the growing breaker just at the right moment. The bows tilted upwards as it rode the sloping crest of the wave, climbing higher and higher. Seawater poured in on them and the roar of the surf grew deafening.
The breaker, with the boat caught up in it, reached its peak and began to curl over. With a sickening, roller-coaster lurch, the boat turned its nose down-wards and fell with the breaking wave.
Paulo abandoned the oar and crashed down into the bottom of the boat beside Hex, frantically grabbing for a handful of the safety line. The breaker smashed the boat down into the surf and they were lifted helplessly into the air, then flung back down onto the floor of the boat with an impact that knocked all the breath out of their lungs. Before they had the chance to take another breath, they were swamped by the foaming, churning water. Then they were out in the air again, as the bows of the little boat miraculously rose out of the surf.
Alex choked the seawater out of his throat and took a painful breath as the boat lurched forward. He had been totally unprepared for the power of the breaker but, unbelievably, it seemed that the boat was going to clear the reef. Then his hope turned to horror as the boat slowed, stopped and began to slide back towards the reef, caught up in the pull of the retreating breaker.
'Hang on!' he yelled.
The boat hit hard. It juddered backwards across the reef with a splintering scraping noise. A jagged spur of coral punched through the bottom of the boat, missing Li's thigh by a few centimetres. The boat came to a sudden halt and, for a few seconds, it see-sawed back and forth, impaled on the reef with the surf crashing down on top of it. Then, with a crack like a rifle shot, the spine of the boat broke in two and the last thing Alex remembered was being thrown into the tumbling, roaring water.
EIGHT
'There's always a fuse,' croaked Alex, waving his arms weakly as he tried to swim back up to the surface. 'Don't light the fuse…'
Someone took hold of his hands and gently lowered them to his chest. Someone else leaned in so close to his head that he could feel warm breath tickling his ear.
'It's all right,' whispered the voice. 'You're on the island. We all are.'
'Li…?' Alex opened his eyes and bright daylight burned into his retinas, sending drum-beats of pain through his head. He groaned, squeezed his eyes into slits and peered up at the four grinning faces above him.
'Good to have you back,' said Li.
'Are you OK?' asked Paulo. Alex made the mistake of nodding and the drum-beats in his head exploded into dizzying pain. He turned on his side and vomited up seawater.