He could feel the pressure of the next wave surging beneath his knees, which were pressed into the bottom of the hull, and he judged its mass by the vibrations as it rumbled under him. The poor boat was being cruelly thrust into a tumult her designers never intended. Pitt did not dare put out the makeshift sea anchor as demanded by most sailors’ manuals when traveling through violent seas. With no engine he believed it in their best interests to run with the waves. The drag of the anchor would most certainly pull the boat apart as the immense pressure from the waves drove them forward.
He turned to Maeve. “Try and keep us in the darkest blue of the water.”
“I’ll do my best,” she replied bravely.
The roar of the breakers came with a steady, rolling beat, and soon they saw as well as heard the hiss of the spray as it burst into the sky. Without direct and manual control, they were helpless; the whims of the restless sea took them wherever it desired. The surge was building ever higher now. On closer inspection the slot between the rock outcroppings seemed like an insidious trap, a silent siren beckoning them to a false refuge. Too late to sail out to sea and around the islands. They were committed and there could be no turning back.
The islands and the frothing witches’ cauldron along their malevolent shores became hidden behind the backs of the waves that passed under the boat. A fresh gust of wind sprang up and thrust them toward a rock-walled cleft that offered their only chance at survival.
The seas became more nervous the nearer they approached. So did Pitt when he calculated the crest of the waves to be almost ten meters in height when they curled and broke. Maeve struggled with the rudder to’ control their course, but the boat did not answer her helm and quickly became unmanageable. They were totally caught in the surge.
“Hold on!” Pitt shouted.
He took a quick glance astern and noted their position in regard to the sea’s vertical movement. He knew that wave speed was highest just before reaching its crest. The breakers were rolling in like huge trucks in a convoy. The boat dropped into a trough, but their luck held as the swell broke just after passing them, and then they were riding on the back of the following wave at what seemed like breakneck speed. The surf was torn up and hurled in every direction as the wind whipped off the crests. The boat fell back only to be struck by the next sea as it rose under them to a height of eight meters, curled and collapsed over their heads. The boat did not broach nor did it pitchpole or even capsize. It landed flat and was thrown downward, crashing into the trough with a huge splash.
They were under a literal wall of hydraulic pressure. It felt as though the boat were being transported underwater by an out-of-control elevator. The total submersion seemed to take minutes, but it could not have lasted more than a few seconds. Pitt kept his eyes open and saw Maeve blurred and looking like a surreal vision in the liquid void, her face remarkably serene, her blond hair flowing up and out behind her. As he watched, she suddenly became lucent and distinct as they broke into the sunshine again.
Three or more seas rolled over them with diminishing force, and then they were through the breakers and into calmer water. Pitt snapped his head around, spitting out the saltwater he had taken in by not closing his mouth tightly, his wavy black hair whipping off the water droplets in glistening streaks.
“We’re through the worst!” he yelled happily. “We’ve gained the channel!”
The surge that swept into the channel had been reduced to rolling waves no higher than the average doorway. Amazingly, the boat was still afloat and in one piece. Through the grinding ferocity of the crashing breakers it still somehow held together. The only apparent damage was to the sail and paddle-mast, which had been torn away but were floating nearby, still attached to the boat by a line.
Giordino had never stopped bailing, even when he was sitting in water up to his chest. He sputtered and wiped the salt from his eyes and continued throwing water over the side like there was no tomorrow.
The hull was now completely cracked in two and barely held together by the hurriedly attached nylon lines and the clamps connecting the buoyancy floats. Giordino finally conceded defeat as he found himself sitting up to his armpits in seawater. He looked around dazedly, his breath labored, his mind deadened by exhaustion. “What now?” he mumbled.
Before Pitt answered, he dipped his face in the water and peered at the bottom of the channel. The visibility was exceptional, though blurred without a face mask, and he could see sand and rock only ten meters below. Schools of vividly colored fish swam about leisurely, taking no notice of the strange creature floating overhead.
“No sharks in here,” he said thankfully.
“They seldom swim through breakers,” said Maeve through a spasm of coughing. She was sitting with her arms stretched out and draped over the stern buoyancy tube.
The current through the channel was carrying them closer to the northern island. Solid ground was only thirty meters away. Pitt looked at Maeve and broke into a crooked grin. “I’ll bet you’re a strong swimmer.”
“You’re talking to an Aussie,” she said coolly, and then added, “Remind me sometime to show you my butterfly and backstroke medals.”
“Al is played out. Can you tow him to shore?”
“The least I can do for the man who kept us out of the mouths of sharks.”
Pitt gestured toward the nearest shoreline. There was no sandy beach, but the rock flattened out into a shelf as it met the water. “The way looks clear to climb on firm ground.”
“And you?” She pulled back her hair with both hands, wringing away the water. “Do you want me to come back for you?”
He shook his head. “I saved myself for a more important effort.”
“What effort?”
“Club Med hasn’t built a resort here yet. We still need all the food supplies we have in hand. I’m going to tow what’s left of the boat and the goodies therein.”
Pitt helped roll Giordino over the half-sunken buoyancy tubes into the water, where he was grasped under the chin lifeguard-style by Maeve. She stroked strongly to shore, pulling Giordino behind her. Pitt watched for a moment until he saw Giordino grin shiftily and lift one hand in a ‘bye wave. The nefarious little devil, Pitt thought. He’s enjoying a free ride.
Splicing and knotting the rigging back into one long nylon line, Pitt attached it to the half-sunken boat and tied the other end around his waist. Then he swam toward shore. The deadweight was too much to simply drag behind him. He would stop in the water, heave on the line, gain a short distance and then repeat the process. The current helped by nudging the boat around in an arc toward shore. After traveling twenty meters, he finally felt firm ground beneath his feet. Now he could use the added leverage to pull the boat onto the rock shelf. He was wearily grateful when Maeve and Giordino both waded in and helped him tow it ashore.
“You recovered quickly,” he said to Giordino.
“My recuperative powers are the marvel of doctors everywhere.”
“I think he suckered me,” said Maeve, feigning hostility.
“Nothing like the feel of terra firma to rejuvenate one’s soul.”
Pitt sat down and rested, too tired to dance for joy at being off the water. He slowly rose to his knees before standing up. For a few moments he had to hold onto the ground to steady himself. The motion of nearly two weeks bobbing about in a small boat had affected his balance. The world spun, and the entire island rocked as if it floated on the sea. Maeve immediately sat back down, while Giordino planted both feet firmly on the rock and clutched a nearby tree with thick foliage. After a few minutes, Pitt rose shakily to his feet and made a few faltering steps. Not having walked since the abduction in Wellington, he found his legs and ankles were unfeeling and stiff. Only after he’d staggered about twenty meters and back did his joints begin to loosen and operate as they should.
They hauled the boat farther onto the rocks and rested for a few hours before dining on their dried fish, washed down by rainwater they found stan
ding in several concave impressions in the rock. Their energies restored, they began to survey the island. There was precious little to see. The whole island and its neighbor across the channel had the appearance of solid piles of lava rock that had exploded from the ocean floor, building over the eons until reaching the surface before being eroded into low mounds. If the water had been fully transparent and the islands viewed down to their base on the seafloor, they might have been compared to the great dramatic spires of Monument Valley, Arizona, rising like island, in a desert sea.
Giordino paced off the width from shore to shore and announced that their refuge was only 130 meters across, The highest point was a flattened plateau no more than 10 meters in height. The landmass curved into a tear shape that stretched north and south, with the windward arc facing the west. From rounded end to spiked point, the length was no more than a kilometer. Surrounded by natural seawalls that defied the swells, the island had the appearance of a fortress under constant attack.
A short distance away, they discovered the shattered remains of a boat that lay high and dry in a small inlet that was carved out of the rock by the sea, evidently driven there by large storm waves. She was a fair-sized sailboat, rolled over on her port side, half her hull and keel torn away from an obvious collision with rocks. She must have been a pretty boat at one time, Pitt imagined, Her upperworks had been painted light blue with orange undersides. Though the masts were gone, the deckhouse looked undamaged and intact. The three of them approached and studied it before peering inside.
“A grand, seaworthy little boat,” observed Pitt, “about twelve meters, well built, with a teak hull.”
“A Bermuda ketch,” said Maeve, running her hands over the worn and sun-bleached teak planking. “A fellow student at the marine lab on Saint Croix had one. We used to island-hop with it. She sailed remarkably well.”
Giordino stared at the paint and caulking on the hull appraisingly. “Been here twenty, maybe thirty years, judging by her condition.”
“I hope whoever became marooned on this desolate spot was rescued,” Maeve said quietly.
Pitt swept a hand around the barrenness. “Certainly no sane sailor would go out of his way to visit here.”
Maeve’s eyes brightened, and she snapped her fingers as if something deep in her memory had surfaced. “They’re called the Tits.”
Pitt and Giordino glanced at each other as if not believing what they had heard. “You did say ‘tits’?” Giordino inquired.
“An old Australian tale about a pair of islands that look like a woman’s breasts. They’re said to disappear and reappear, like Brigadoon.”
“I hate to be a debunker of Down Under myths,” said Pitt facetiously, “but this rock pile hasn’t gone anywhere for the last million years.”
“They’re not shaped like any mammary glands I’ve ever seen,” muttered Giordino.
She gave both men a gouty look. “I only know what I heard, about a pair of legendary islands south of the Tasman Sea.”
Hoisted by Giordino, Pitt climbed aboard the canted hull and crawled through the hatch into the deckhouse. “She’s been stripped clean,” he called out from the inside. “Everything that wasn’t screwed down has been removed. Check the transom and see if she has a name.”
Maeve walked around to the stern and stared up at the faded letters that were barely readable. “Dancing Dorothy. Her name was Dancing Dorothy.”
Pitt climbed down from the yacht’s cockpit. “A search is in order to locate the supplies taken from the boat. The crew may have left behind articles we can put to use.”
Resuming their exploration, it took little more than half an hour to skirt the entire coast of the tear-shaped little island. Then they worked their way inland. They separated and strung out in a loose line to cover more territory. Maeve was the first to spot an axe half buried in the rotting trunk of a grotesquely shaped tree.
Giordino pulled it loose and held it up. “This should come in handy.”
“Odd-looking tree,” said Pitt, eyeing its trunk. “I wonder what it’s called.”
“Tasmanian myrtle,” Maeve clarified. “Actually, it’s a species of false beech. They can grow as high as sixty meters, but there isn’t enough sandy loam here to support their root system, so all the trees we see on the island look like they’ve been dwarfed.”
They continued to search around carefully. A few minutes later Pitt stumbled onto a small ravine that opened onto a flat ledge on the lee side of the island. Lodged in one side of a rock wall, he spied the head of a brass gaff for landing fish. A few meters beyond, they came to a jumbled stack of logs in the form of a hut, with a boat’s mast standing beside it. The structure was about three meters wide by four meters long. The roof of logs intermixed with branches was undamaged by the elements. The unknown builder had raised a sound dwelling.
Outside the hut was a wealth of abandoned supplies and equipment. A battery and the corroded remains of a radio-telephone, a direction-finding set, a wireless receiver for obtaining weather bulletins and time signals for rating a chronometer, a pile of rusty food cans that had been opened and emptied, an intact teakwood dingy equipped with a small outboard motor and miscellaneous nautical hardware, dishes and eating utensils, a few pots and pans, a propane stove and other various and sundry items from the wrecked boat. Strewn around the stove, still discernible, were bones of fish.
“The former tenants left a messy campground,” said Giordino, kneeling to examine a small gas-driven generator for charging the boat’s batteries, which had operated the electronic navigational instruments and radio equipment scattered about the campsite.
“Maybe they’re still in the hut,” murmured Maeve.
Pitt smiled at her. “Why don’t you go in and see?”
She shook her head. “Not me. Entering dark and creepy places is man’s work.”
Women are indeed enigmatic creatures, Pitt thought. After all the dangers Maeve had encountered in the past few weeks, she couldn’t bring herself to walk into the hut. He bent under the low doorway and stepped inside.
After being exposed to bright light for days on end, Pitt’s eyes took a minute or two to become accustomed to the interior darkness of the hut. Except for the shaft of sun through the doorway, the only illumination came from the light seeping through the cracks between the logs The air was heavy and damp with the musty smell of &l and rotted logs.
There were no ghosts or phantoms lurking in the shadows, but Pitt did find himself staring into the empty eye sockets of a skull attached to a skeleton.
It lay on its back in a berth salvaged from the sailboat. Pitt identified the remains as a male from the heavy brow’ above the eye sockets. The dead man had lost teeth. All but three were missing. But rather than having been knocked out of their sockets, they appeared to have’ fallen out.
A tattered pair of shorts covered the pelvis, and the bony feet still wore a pair of rubber-soled deck shoes. There was no flesh evident. The tiny creatures that crawled out of the dampness had left a clean set of bones.
The only indication of the dead man’s former appearance was a tuft of red hair that lay beneath the skull. The skeletal hands were crossed above the rib cage and clutched a leather logbook.
A quick look around the interior of the hut showed that the proprietor had set up housekeeping in an efficient manner, utilizing the fixtures from his stranded boat. The sails from the Dancing Dorothy had been spread across the ceiling to keep out any wind and rain that penetrated the branches laced in the roof. A writing desk held British Admiralty charts, a stack of books on piloting, tide tables, navigation lights, radio signals and a nautical almanac. Nearby there was a standing shelf stuffed with brochures and books filled with technical instructions on how to operate the boat’s electronic instruments and mechanical gear. A finely finished mahogany box containing a chronometer and a sextant sat on a small wooden table beside the bunk. Sitting beneath the table was a hind bearing compass and a steering compass that had been mounted
on the sailboat. The steering helm was leaning against a small folding dining table, and a pair of binoculars was tied to a spoke.
Pitt leaned over the skeleton, gently removed the logbook and left the hut.
“What did you find?” asked Maeve with burning curiosity.
“Let me guess,” said Giordino. “A humongous chest full of pirate treasure.”
Pitt shook his head.’ “Not this trip. What I found was the man who sailed the Dancing Dorothy onto the rocks. He never made it off the island.”
“He’s dead?” queried Maeve.
“Since long before you were born.”
Giordino stepped to the doorway and peered inside the hut at the remains. “I wonder how he came to be so far off the beaten track.”
Pitt held up the logbook and opened it. “The answers should be in here.”
Maeve stared at the pages. “Can you make out the writing after all this time?”
“Yes. The log is well preserved, and the hand wrote boldly.” Pitt sat down on a rock and scanned several pages before looking up. “His name was Rodney York, and he was one of twelve yachtsmen entered in a solo nonstop race around the world, beginning in Portsmouth, England, and sponsored by a London newspaper. First prize was twenty thousand pounds. York departed Portsmouth on April the twenty-fourth, 1962.”
“Poor old guy has been lost for thirty-eight years,” said Giordino solemnly.
“On his ninety-seventh day at sea, he was catching a few hours’ sleep when the Dancing Dorothy struck” Pitt paused to glance up at Maeve and smile— “what he calls the ‘Miseries.’”
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