After a while, he became aware that his hands were sticky. He knew why. He pushed himself away from the mast and made his way aft, knelt on the deck, and put his hands in the water. There was no sensation of movement other than a side-to-side rocking motion.
He washed his hands and arms as well as he could, and tried not to think what his chest must look like. Then he pulled himself back in the boat and brushed up against something hard, which moved. After a moment, he realized it was the tiller. There was no life to it, which confirmed his belief that they were sitting dead in the water.
If that's the case, the bodies we put over the side are likely to be floating around right next to us. We have to get out of here.
Where the hell are we?
The flashlight came on, and Everly directed it at the mast. The sail was down, which explained why they were dead in the water.
The light went out. After a moment, there was a creaking sound, and Wes-ton sensed, rather than saw, that Everly was raising the sail. Confirmation of this came a moment later, when he heard the sound of the sail filling. A mo-ment later, he felt a faint suggestion of movement.
He put his hand to the tiller, put it amidship, and felt life come into it.
Everly came aft.
The flashlight came on, and he saw Everly studying a compass.
"We're pointing north," Everly said. "We want to go southeast. You know anything about sailing a boat, Mr. Weston?"
"Only what I learned at camp when I was a kid."
"Can you turn us around, point us southeast?"
"Where are we going?"
"Mindanao," Everly said. "It's five hundred miles or so to the south-east."
"We don't have any food or any water," Weston said.
"There's a bunch of little islands between here and Mindanao. We'll just have to try to get food and water."
"I'll bring us about," Weston said. "Watch the boom. And I think you better give me that compass."
Everly handed him the compass. Weston started pushing on the tiller.
The boat began to turn.
"At least we got our money back," Everly said. "That's something."
And our lives. We 're alive, Weston thought, but said nothing. "Plus what looked like another three, four hundred," Everly added. "I don't think we were the first people these fuckers took for a boat ride."
[THREE]
When the sun came up, they were out of sight of land, alone on a gently rolling sea.
Everly's Marine Corps-issue compass showed them on a southeasterly course. Weston wondered if that were actually the case, or whether steel or iron somewhere on the boat was attracting the compass needle. On the other hand, they were not headed in the wrong direction. If the sun rises in the east, and you are headed directly for it, then south is ninety degrees to the right.
Since he was steering somewhat to the right of the rising sun-east and south (in other words, steering southeast), and this corresponded to the com-pass indications, they were probably headed on a generally southeastern course. But they weren't navigating. For the moment, of course, that was a moot point, since navigation presumes a destination, and they didn't know where they were going-except in the most imprecise terms, "to Mindanao."
Everly searched the boat as soon as there was light enough for that, but found nothing of value except two cans of pineapple slices and a bottle of Coca-Cola. No charts, no other food, and no water.
He found a bucket, too, and used it to flush the blood from the deck. But cleaning up the compartment where they were hiding, where the Filipinos tried to kill them, was impossible. He could have poured water into the compart-ment, but there was no way to pump it out.
When a sickly sweet smell began to come from below, Everly closed the hatch and they tried to ignore the odor.
They shared the Coca-Cola and the two cans of pineapple slices.
Weston thought that perhaps it wasn't wise to eat all the pineapple at once. Maybe they should have saved half for later.
Then he decided it didn't make any difference. They had to find more food and water, or they were finished.
By ten in the morning, the heat from the sun grew uncomfortable. Using a foul-smelling piece of worn canvas, they rigged an effective sunshade. But that was too late. They were already, badly sunburned.
A few minutes after three in the afternoon, they saw on their left horizon what could be land.
The question was, if it was land, and not their eyes just playing tricks on them, what was it?
It very easily could have been part of the island of Luzon, the far side of the entrance to Manila Bay. The Japanese were supposed to be all over that part of Luzon. Was that true?
Was it worth it to go through everything they'd gone through just to find themselves prisoners of the Japanese... even before that would have happened if they'd stayed on The Rock instead of deserting in the face of the enemy?
But the alternative to making for what was probably land on the horizon, Weston decided, was to continue on a course he had very little confidence in, and without food and water. For all he knew, if he kept on his present course, he could very easily be heading out into the South China Sea, with no landfall possible until long after they were dead of dehydration.
Twenty minutes later, they could see enough to know that it was indeed land on the horizon. A half hour after that, they were close enough to make out surf crashing against a solid wall of vegetation. There was no sign of civiliza-tion.
It was now getting close to five p.m.
"We don't have an anchor, and we can't get through that surf," Weston said.
"Go to the left. Maybe we'll find something," Everly replied. As they approached the beach, the western end seemed to recede and then disappear.
"What is this?" Weston asked.
"I think we got a little fucking island," Everly said, pleased.
"Holding two reserve divisions of the Imperial Japanese Army," Weston replied.
Everly looked at him with genuine concern in his eyes. "Why would you say that, Mr. Weston?" he asked.
"I was making a joke."
"Oh."
The sun was low on the horizon when they finally saw a break in the surf. As they approached it, Weston saw that it was a passage between a very small island and the first island they'd found.
There was still no sign of human life, and the only sounds were the distant rustle of the surf and the waves splashing against the bow of the boat. The war that they had so recently left on Corregidor and Bataan-the smells of burned fuel and supplies, the never-ending muted roar of cannon, the dull crump of explosions-could have been happening at another time on a distant planet.
As they entered the passage between the islands, Weston saw a small beach on the larger island. There was no surf.
"We could try to put in there," he said, as much to himself as to Everly. "I don't know how shallow it is. We're likely to go aground."
"Do we have any choice, Mr. Weston?"
Weston steered for the small beach.
They made it all the way to the shore without scraping bottom. As Everly leapt ashore, carrying a rope with him, Weston decided the current flowing through the passage had scoured it clean of sand.
Tying the boat up was no problem. Trees and thick vegetation came right down to the water. Everly looped the line around a thick, twisted tree trunk. The current pulled the boat against what Weston presumed was the solid rock of the shoreline.