Annalie was studying the charts too. ‘But maybe there’s a place where a little boat could get through,’ she said.
They put their heads together, searching—and there it was.
‘A channel,’ Will said.
‘Can we make it there?’ Annalie asked.
It was still a long way to their north. They would have to race the destroyer to reach the channel first.
‘We have to try,’ Will said.
He changed course and pushed the engine to full.
They surged forwards on their new heading, the destroyer following implacably. They crossed the open water, heading for the distant reef.
‘I don’t think we’re going fast enough,’ Annalie said, looking back.
‘We can’t go any faster,’ Will said.
‘They’re gaining on us!’
‘You know, that really isn’t helping.’
They pushed on and pushed on, the huge boat in pursuit of the tiny one. The destroyer was soon level with them, easily matching their pace, but then the reef came into view.
‘Water’s getting shallower,’ Annalie said.
‘Shallow enough to lose them?’ Will asked.
‘Not yet.’
They powered up the outer edge of the reef, Annalie watching closely for the gap, the destroyer stalking them from the deeper water.
‘There!’ Annalie shouted.
Will turned the wheel, and they slid into the channel through the reef.
Annalie turned to watch what the destroyer was doing. ‘I think we caught them by surprise!’ she called. ‘They’re still going forwards.’
‘It’ll take them a little while to turn around,’ Will said. ‘Are they launching small boats?’
‘Not yet,’ Annalie said.
Will kept motoring on, determined to put as much distance as he could between them and the destroyer.
‘Wait! I see them! They’re coming!’ Annalie cried.
And they came: two inflatable boats with big powerful motors, very like the ones the submarine pirates had used, each with a complement of marines. The inflatables came bounding across the water, eating up the distance between the destroyer and the Sunfish.
‘Are they armed?’ Will asked.
‘What do you think?’ Annalie said.
‘We got any weapons?’ asked Pod. He had returned to the deck.
‘Spinner doesn’t believe in that sort of thing,’ Annalie said.
Pod made a rude noise.
‘We’ll just have to try and outrun them,’ Will said.
‘Have the batteries got enough juice in them?’
‘I guess we’ll find out,’ Will said.
The inflatables were in the channel now, gaining on them all the time. When they drew closer, they heard a voice distorted by a loudhailer. ‘Attention Sunfish! Turn off your engine and prepare to be boarded.’
‘Like hell,’ Will muttered, and kept right on going.
The voice on the loudhailer repeated the command.
‘Do you think we should do as they say?’ Essie said.
‘Give up now?’ Will said, laughing.
The voice on the loudhailer said, ‘Attention Sunfish! This is your final warning! If you do not turn off your engines, we will board you by force!’
‘You give it a red-hot go,’ Will shouted.
One of the inflatables came surging up alongside them. The marines on board were standing ready with ropes and grappling hooks. ‘Grab an oar!’ Will yelled. ‘Fend ’em off!’
Annalie and Essie both grabbed oars as the inflatable pulled in alongside them. Ladders and grappling hooks swung up, and the girls took wild swipes at the marines, trying to stop them hooking onto the boat. Annalie smashed at one who’d managed to hook a ladder over their railing; the marine fell back into the water and Annalie grabbed the ladder and tossed it over the side as one of the inflatables pulled back to recover their injured comrade.
The second inflatable swung round the other side of the Sunfish. Annalie could see the man with the loudhailer now. His face was turned towards them, his eyes invisible behind mirrored sunglasses. ‘Attention Sunfish, if you continue to resist, we will designate you a hostile vessel and we will use force.’
Annalie shouted at him across the small gap. ‘We’re just kids! Look at us! Do we look like a hostile vessel to you?’
‘Prepare to be boarded,’ said Mr Loudhailer. The second inflatable came in, ladders and hooks at the ready. Then suddenly the inflatable’s engine seized and fell silent.
The marines looked around in confusion. The engine’s operator stood and pointed. ‘Him!’
Annalie turned to see Pod holding Will’s speargun. To her utter astonishment, she realised that Pod must have fired a spear into the engine and scored a direct hit. He was already loading a second spear into the gun and ducking over to the other side of the boat to take aim at the other inflatable.
‘Hostile!’ someone shouted.
Shots rang out.
Annalie dropped to the deck, not believing the marines would actually fire on them, and saw Essie and Will do the same.
Only Pod stayed on his feet. He shot again, and missed.
‘Pod, get down!’ Will called.
But Pod took no notice. As the second inflatable came after them, Pod put one more bolt in the speargun. More shots rang out. Pod fired. Incredibly, he hit his target. The second engine sputtered into silence.
The Sunfish, still at full speed, kept motoring on. The inflatables, both engines damaged, quickly dropped behind. Will jumped to his feet and took the wheel again. The channel through the reef was narrow and twisty. It would be a poor sort of victory if they outran an Admiralty destroyer, only to run aground on the reef.
Pod let the speargun fall to the deck. ‘We’re safe now,’ he said. He seemed dazed.
Annalie got to her feet, a strange light-headed feeling coming over her, as if the world was moving too fast. ‘Is everyone okay?’
‘We’re going to be in so much trouble,’ Essie said, scrambling to her feet.
Will looked at Pod, giggling giddily. ‘I can’t believe you took on the Admiralty with a speargun,’ he said.
‘Will,’ Annalie said, ‘why are you bleeding?’
Will looked down questioningly. There was blood streaming down his leg and running into rivulets on the deck. He found a tear at the bottom of his shorts; below it, his thigh had been laid open and was gushing blood. ‘I think I’ve been shot,’ he said.
Holed
Seeing the blood made the bullet wound a reality. Will’s legs gave way beneath him and he slumped to the deck, groaning.
The others ran to him.
‘How deep is it?’ Annalie asked. ‘Is it serious?’
There was so much blood it was hard to tell.
‘We should take him below and clean up the wound a bit so we can see what we’re dealing with,’ Essie said.
Will seemed to be going into delayed shock, but his mind was still on the job. ‘Is someone steering the boat?’ he asked.
‘I’ll steer,’ Pod said.
Pod took the wheel. Essie and Annalie helped Will down into the saloon. For a moment Annalie was shocked to see there was almost a foot of water sloshing around down there. Then she remembered they’d been holed. She felt her brain begin to freeze with panic as she struggled to decide what to deal with first. The gunshot wound? The hull? The need to get away from their pursuers?
‘Are we sinking?’ Essie asked in a frightened voice.
‘I don’t feel so good,’ Will groaned.
Annalie wanted to burst into tears. But then she reminded herself that there was no one else who could get them out of this now. It was all on her shoulders. And the first thing she had to do was convince the others that she knew what she was doing, otherwise everyone would start to panic.
‘Essie,’ she said, in the calmest voice she could manage, ‘can you take a look at Will’s wound while I work out what to do about the hole?’
&
nbsp; Together, the girls hoisted Will on the table, then Essie went to fetch the first-aid kit while Annalie went back to the starboard cabin for another look.
The water was still pouring in through the rip in the cabin wall, surging with the swell. It was scary seeing the water rushing into the boat. She knew that a hole this size could take on enough water to sink it very quickly, and if they were forced to abandon ship here it would be disastrous. She stood there for a little while, trying to gauge how much water was coming in. The pump was puttering away, pumping the water back out again. If it was coming in faster than the pump could pump it out, then they had a problem. She decided that the water didn’t seem to be getting a lot deeper; the pump would hold it for now.
She came out of the cabin and went to see how Will and Essie were doing. Essie had washed the excess blood off Will’s leg, although more kept pouring out.
‘I think the bullet’s hit him in the thigh, gone through the muscle, and come out the other side,’ Essie said. ‘See, there’s a smallish hole here and then—’
‘A big mess out the back,’ Annalie finished grimly.
‘That’s good though, isn’t it?’ Essie said. ‘You don’t want the bullet to be stuck in there. I don’t think it hit the bone either.’
‘Do you know first aid?’ Annalie asked hopefully.
‘No,’ Essie said. ‘But I love doctor shows. Did you ever watch Frontier Hospital? People are always getting shot in that.’
‘Do you think you can stop the bleeding?’ Annalie asked.
‘I’ll disinfect the wounds and keep applying pressure, then get a dressing on it. Hopefully that’ll do the trick,’ Essie said.
‘Okay,’ Annalie said, already moving towards the stairs so she could go and talk to Pod on deck. Then a sudden silence fell.
‘What was that?’ asked Essie.
‘The engine just stopped,’ Annalie said. ‘We’ve run the battery down.’
‘Does that mean the pump’s out of power too?’ Essie asked.
‘It has its own,’ Annalie said, ‘but I don’t know how long it will last.’
She hurried up on deck. Pod turned to her anxiously.
‘We need sails,’ he said.
Annalie set the sails and the Sunfish began to move again, more slowly than before.
She picked up the binoculars and looked back the way they’d come. The two inflatables were still in sight, dead in the water, and further off she could see the shape of the destroyer on the horizon. They would certainly be sending more boats to recover their comrades; whether they would send more boats after the Sunfish was another question.
‘Do you think they’ll keep coming after us?’ Annalie asked.
‘I would if I was them,’ Pod said.
‘Yeah,’ Annalie sighed. ‘Me too.’
‘We got to keep going,’ Pod said. ‘Get some distance between us and them.’
‘I agree,’ Annalie said, ‘only we’ve got a hole in the boat.’
‘Oh,’ said Pod. ‘Yeah.’
He began to look sick as he remembered the hole and the water gushing in.
‘I’ve been down for another look,’ Annalie said. ‘There’s a bit of water coming in, but the pump’s still managing to keep up. We could stop now and try to patch the hole. Or we could just keep going until we find a safe place to stop on the other side of the reef, and hope the pump doesn’t break down in the meantime.’
If Will had been at the helm he would have had very certain views about what they should do next; they could have discussed it, argued, and then thrashed out a solution. But this was Pod, and the look he was giving her made it clear that he expected her to know the answer.
‘What do you think we should do?’ Pod asked.
Annalie hesitated for only a moment longer. ‘I think we should keep going.’
They sailed on through the narrow channel in the reef. The water below them was so shallow they could see the sandy bottom. The reef stretched out around them, bleached, white, broken, a desert beneath the water. But as they came towards the end of the channel, and the far side of the reef, Annalie began to see signs of life: a few sprays of colour, shoals of fish. She wasn’t sure why conditions on this side might be different, but here there were glimmers of the old beauty. Perhaps life was returning after all? She hoped so.
Essie came hurrying up from below. ‘The pump’s stopped working!’ she cried.
‘The battery must have run out,’ Annalie said. ‘We’ll have to pump it manually.’ She ran down and found the water was rushing in through the hole. The water level had risen alarmingly. She fitted the manual arm to the pump and began pumping. ‘This is what you have to do,’ she told Essie. ‘Pump as hard as you can.’
Essie, wide-eyed, took her place and began to pump.
Annalie had hoped they might be able to run to an island to take stock and deal with the damage, but that would not be possible now. They had taken on too much water to risk continuing and pumping it out manually would be slow. They were going to have to deal with the hole right now, or there was a good chance the boat might actually sink.
Before she went back on deck, Annalie went forward to check on Will. She found him sitting on the bench seat, his injured leg propped up, wrapped in a thick wad of bandages. He was very pale and he was obviously in pain. The water slopping around their calves was tinted with blood.
‘How do you feel?’ she asked.
‘Bit terrible actually,’ he said.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Well, what do you reckon?’ Will said.
‘Have you had any painkillers?’
‘Yeah, but they’re piss-weak.’
‘Do you think the bleeding’s stopped?’ Annalie asked.
‘Mostly,’ Will said.
‘He needs to rest,’ Essie called from the cabin. ‘I tried to make him go and lie down but he wouldn’t.’
‘Cabin’s full of water,’ Will reminded her.
‘There are two cabins,’ Essie reminded him back.
‘We’ve taken on a lot of water,’ Will said.
‘I know,’ Annalie said. ‘But I’m going to deal with it. Don’t worry.’
‘We should be bailing the boat out. I’ll get a bucket—’ He was already levering himself off the bench. Annalie pushed him back into place, noticing a fresh bloom of blood welling onto his dressing.
‘I’ve got this,’ she said. ‘Stay put. We need you to get better.’
She hurried back up on deck. ‘Okay,’ she told Pod. ‘Let’s have a look at this hole.’
They anchored and furled the sails, then rigged up a little platform on ropes, and Pod lowered Annalie over the side to see the damage.
The rock had gouged a rip into the hull as long as her forearm, and the area around it had been pushed in by the impact. It was a substantial hole. She put her fingers into it and felt the water rushing past them. She thought she’d better check that this was the only hole. She took a deep breath and dived under the water, the salt making her eyes sting. There were a few scrapes in the paintwork lower down, but no more holes.
She surfaced. ‘Pull me up!’
Pod hauled her back on deck. ‘How’s it look?’
‘Not great. There’s a tear in the hull. It’s about this long.’ She measured with her hands.
‘Can you fix it?’
Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. What did you do when you were holed, alone, in the middle of the ocean?
A story came back to her. She wasn’t sure if she’d heard it as a sailor’s yarn, or read it in a book, but she remembered a story about a holed boat, miles from anywhere, with little hope of rescue. ‘I heard a story once about someone who wrapped their hull in a sail. It kept enough of the water out for them to get to the next port.’
‘How, wrapped in a sail?’
‘I mean they got a sail and swam under the boat with it,’ Annalie said. Even as she said it, her stomach churned at the thought of it: the great hull, the huge, wet fl
apping sail, the risks of getting tangled as you tried to swim under the boat. The price of failure.
Pod turned to look at the sails. ‘Would that work?’
‘They wouldn’t be telling the story if it didn’t,’ Annalie said. ‘But I wonder if there’s something else that might work better than a sail . . .’
Ideas were coming to her piecemeal, half-remembered bits of conversation, things she’d read. ‘I think we’ve got some waterproof sheeting somewhere,’ she said. ‘Useful for all sorts of emergencies.’
She went to the locker, opened it, and discovered that there was indeed a large piece of plastic sheeting folded there.
‘Now we just need to attach some lines to it and get it in place,’ she said. Pod and Annalie hurried to attach lines to the corners of the plastic sheet. Pod’s fingers were shaking; he was having trouble fitting the lines through the cringles and tying them. ‘It’s going to be okay,’ Annalie said, noticing this. ‘As soon as we get this in place, and get it pulled tight over the hole, I can start making some repairs and we’ll be absolutely fine. The boat’s not going to sink.’
Pod nodded, still attaching his ropes.
‘Ready?’ Annalie asked.
‘Ready,’ Pod said.
They went forward with the tarp and dropped it into the water, then hauled on the lines to try and drag it into place. It stuck and wouldn’t spread out.
‘Haul her up,’ Annalie said, ‘let’s try that again.’
They dragged it back up, threw it out once more, and tried to haul it into place. Again, it tangled and stuck. They tried poking it with boat hooks and oars but could not get it into place.
‘This is not working,’ Annalie said.
‘It’ll work,’ Pod said. ‘Try again.’
‘Annalie!’ Essie’s voice floated up from below. ‘There’s a lot of water coming in now and my arms are getting really tired!’
‘This is hopeless,’ Annalie said. ‘I’m going in.’
Pod looked helplessly at her, his face twisted with fear and something more. ‘I should go,’ he said.
Escape to the Moon Islands: Quest of the Sunfish 1 Page 20
