by Jill Barnett
He grunted something noncommittal.
She folded her hands in her lap. He saw that she clasped them so tightly that her knuckles were white. She bent and lifted the blanket tented over the sleeping kids.
Theodore woke and sat up. He rubbed his eyes, then looked at Hank. He blinked a few times, then he pointed skyward. “Look! It’s a seagull!”
Hank glanced up, then turned back to Smitty just as she did the same double look. They stared at each other, then both said, “Land!”
He scanned the north.
She looked toward the south.
“There it is. Look!” She pointed toward the southeast.
Hank turned.
At first glance, the island looked like the dark edges of the oncoming storm, brooding purple and gray and misty. But as the winds picked up and the small boat cut through the rising swells, there was no doubt that there was land ahead.
Land. An island.
They could survive.
Hank stared at the horizon. Yes, there it was. He could see the high volcanic mountains rising from the sea like an angry bruised fist.
He looked up at the sky. Between the island and their boat was a storm—dark and roiling and high as the eye could see. That meant only one thing in the tropics. It was one helluva storm.
The lifeboat pitched into the air and slammed back on the wake of a swell. Margaret’s stomach lurched. Lydia screamed.
Margaret held her hand more tightly. “It’s okay. We’re okay.” But as the boat pitched again, she wondered whether she was reassuring the children or herself.
She, the children, and the goat lay in the bottom of the boat. Oilskins covered them, and the tarp cover was snapped closed over their section of the lifeboat, an attempt to keep the children as safe as possible.
She could see Hank’s knees just a few feet in front of her. He had tied himself to the plank seat with a piece of rope and was trying to keep the boat afloat with the oars. She couldn’t see his face, only a glimpse of his forearms jamming an oar forward as another big swell sent the boat into the air.
A barrel and the garbage can clanked together in the bow and some tin cups floated in the rain and seawater pooled in the bottom of the boat. There was enough water to slosh over her and the children and to slap repeatedly at the sides of the lifeboat.
She was really scared.
The waves kept hammering at them. The storm roared and rushed around them while Hank cursed and swore. The goat cried out and tried to stand up. Lydia and Theodore pulled it back down and clung to the animal’s neck.
Margaret buried her head under the oilskins and tried to logically think the situation through. Don’t panic, she told herself.
Hank was shouting. Then he kicked her hard in the backside. “Woman! Are you deaf?”
She turned around just as he shouted her name again.
“Come here, dammit!”
She turned to the frightened children. “Lydia! Theodore! Here!” She put Annabelle between them. “Hang on to each other and stay down under this seat!” She slid along under the tarp. “I’m coming!”
He grunted something.
She had to poke her head up in between his splayed knees. The rain pelted her cheeks, stinging. The wind howled and whipped her wet hair against her face.
She heard a roar that seemed unreal. She turned and looked around them. She didn’t know if the sound was from the ocean or the storm, but it was loud and doubly frightening. She could see swell after cresting swell coming toward them and little else.
Hank bellowed her name again, and she whipped her head back around. “We’re close to land! I need you to watch for rocks ahead!”
Still kneeling, she turned back and scanned the horizon but couldn’t see much, only the rising sea and sheeting rain. Another swell hit and sent the boat into the air again.
Her stomach rose. Sea spray washed over her, and rain stung her cheeks and neck.
She heard Hank curse. He shoved the handle of one oar beneath his hip and grabbed her by the shoulder. “Hang on to my leg!”
She clasped one of his thighs in both arms and held on. He locked the other oar. The boat slammed back into the trough of the wave. Saltwater slapped her hard in the face, burning into her nose and eyes. Momentum sent both of them upward.
The rope that anchored his hips to the seat held, and they slammed back down. She clung onto his leg with all her strength, then she felt him grip her shoulders with one hand. He shoved her down. Her knees hit the boat bottom so hard she cried out.
“Sit!” he yelled, forcing her down lower until her backside hit and she was sitting on the boat bottom.
She could hear Lydia and Annabelle crying underneath the tarp. “The children!” she screamed and tried to move toward them.
“No!” he shouted and held her down.
Another swell hit. An angry squall. Harder and higher and stronger than the last time.
Above the roar of the sea and storm she could hear the crash of water. She spun around, bracing her hands for another swell. More water doused her and foamed into the boat. She swiped it from her eyes, and for a second, the driving rain let up. She stared ahead for a frozen moment.
“The rocks!” she screamed. “Oh, God . . .”
The boat shot across the curl of a huge wave straight at a sheer wall of black, jagged rocks.
Chapter 6
Smitty screamed at him, then buried her head in her knees.
Hank looked up and saw the rocks.
This was it. Good-bye . . .
He closed his eyes and waited for the impact.
A wall of water smacked the boat so hard it snapped his neck back as if he’d been punched by God. He shook the water from his head and looked where that last wave had come from. It had ripped in from the opposite direction.
Before he could think, another wave hit, its foam spilling over the tarp. The rocks were still ahead, but the cross waves had shoved them back. The boat rose with the scend of a new wave, then jerked back as if a giant hand had just grabbed it.
Waves washed over them, one after another. But the boat didn’t move forward. It sloshed back after each swell drove past them.
Hank shook more water from his face and turned around.
He caught a glimpse of a rock reef behind them. And the trunks—Smitty’s trunks—one of which had caught like a grappling hook in the rocks. He turned back around and stared at the wall of dark rock in front of them, the headland on the island, then he looked back at the trunk line, not believing what he saw.
The waves must have been high enough to send the boat over instead of into the natural breakwater. And the trunks, still chained to the lifeboat, had snagged on the reef.
“No shit . . . ” he muttered as the next wave filled his mouth and nose.
The boat twisted, almost turning over.
He cut the rope that anchored him to the seat and heard Smitty scream something and felt her grab at his leg.
There wasn’t time to stop. He crawled toward the chain that held the line of trunks. Hold, baby, come on, hold . . . just a few more minutes . . .
He stretched forward and gripped the line, then braced his feet against the plank seat. He pulled, hand over hand, using his strength to try to pull the boat toward the rock reef.
His hands gripped the slippery chain, pulling inches at a time. The swells hit again and again. He didn’t know how long the line would hold. If the line would hold. If the trunk would stay snagged. One wave could slam them loose and send them crashing into the headland.
The boat banged against the rocks, and another swell washed over them. He coughed and gasped for air.
His hands slipped. The chain slid like kelp through his palms. He cursed and shouted and yelled. Anything. Everything. He held it as tightly as he could.
Then Smitty was there beside him, her hands gripping the chain behind him. She pulled and screamed, “Don’t stop!”
They pulled together harder in spite of the surging swells. H
and over hand to bring the boat in closer.
A breath later the boat knocked into the rocks again. Another swell hit, but they held tight. Hank pulled his body over the edge of the boat, onto the rocks. He turned and gripped the cleats on the stern. A swell lifted the lifeboat just as he jerked back with a bloodrush of power that came from the sheer need to survive. The last punch of a fight.
The lifeboat surged forward and wedged into a cleft in the rocks.
“Grab the kids and get out!” he shouted, trying to fight the sea for control of the boat.
Smitty shoved a screaming Lydia at him.
Two threats from him and the girl crawled out and into a protected nook in the rocks. “Stay down there and stop blubbering!”
Smitty pushed Theodore, who clung to the braying goat, toward him. Hank swore and reached for the kid, who shoved the goat in his face. He jerked the goat out and dropped it next to Lydia. The kid crawled out onto the rocks and went down into the crevice beside his sister and the goat.
Smitty moved closer and held the baby in her arms. Another wave hit hard. He held onto those cleats with every bit of strength in his body. He couldn’t see anything but heard the screams—Smitty and Annabelle’s garbled cry.
He shook the water from his head. They were still in the boat, lying flat, half under the tarp and half covered in water. The baby was screaming and coughing.
“Smitty! Get up!”
She moved upward, Annabelle hugged to her chest. Come on, sweetheart.
She crawled—he didn’t know how—over the edge. A second later she was huddled between the rocks with the children.
Another swell hit, and he jerked the empty lifeboat back. It shot over them, twisted on the wave. Upside down, it jammed to a stop on the rocks.
The anchor flew past him. Cold, wet metal hit his head. Pain shot through his forehead and scalp. Something warm flooded his right eye.
He swiped it away only to see the rusted links of the anchor chain hanging down before his eyes. He looked down, still stunned, and picked up the anchor, raising it over his shoulder like a sledgehammer. With every ounce of his strength, he slammed it into a rift in one of the rocks.
The boat sat over them like a cocoon, protection, small as it was, from the angry churning of the storm.
The waves battered into the lifeboat, rocked it hard, rattled it against the rock, but the anchor and the trunk chain held the boat in its place.
Hank fell back against the jagged edges of the rock, his breath tight and fast, bloodrush speeding through him. He swiped at his eye again and looked up.
Rain pelted the boat bottom, sounding like shots from the prison Gatling gun. But under the protective cover of the boat, nothing hit them but some sea spray and the foam that swelled between cracks in the rocks.
He turned toward the others, huddled safely down between the rocks. He saw looks of horror on their faces as they stared up at him.
“You’re bleeding!” Smitty shouted, her hand reaching toward him.
Then everything went black.
Margaret pulled hard on the anchor. It wouldn’t budge. She stared at it, then dropped the chain and wiped her hands on her dress. She didn’t have the strength to loosen the anchor or the trunk line. She crawled back into the crevice where Hank was still unconscious and the children were huddled with the goat.
The storm had stopped sometime earlier, but she had no idea when. She had no concept of time past. All she knew was that she needed to do something. They couldn’t just stay there.
She needed to think.
Lydia was playing with Annabelle. She stopped and looked up. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. I can’t move the anchor, so we’re stuck here.” Margaret settled down next to the children and put Hank’s head in her lap.
The children were staring at the small stream of dark blood dribbling from the gash in his forehead. She dabbed at it with the ragged hem of her dress. “I think he’ll wake up soon, then we’ll be fine.” But she was only reassuring the children. She wasn’t sure they would be fine, but at least they were alive. And though Hank was bleeding, he was alive, too.
She watched the heave of his chest just to make certain. The gash ran from one black eyebrow, up his forehead, and disappeared into his hair. The deepest part of the wound was near his hairline. His tanned skin was too dark to be pale, but his lips were grayish and she felt that wasn’t good.
Then he groaned softly.
“Mr. Wyatt?”
Nothing. No response.
“Hank?”
He moaned again.
“Can you hear me?”
He turned his head so his mouth was against her midsection. Through her thin wet dress she could feel the heat of his breath.
She glanced at the children, then back at him. If he was unconscious much longer, she would have to do something. Think of something. “Hank?”
His breathing was slow and even.
She pressed her hem at the trickle of dark blood, then pressed harder, worried that she needed to apply pressure to stop the bleeding.
“I don’t know what your profession is, sweetheart, but you’re sure no Florence Nightingale.” His nose was about three inches below her bosom, and his eyes were locked on the thin white pintucks of her bodice. Her thin cotton dress was the only thing between his face and her skin.
“I was right.” He gave an exaggerated squint. “You can see right through this cotton stuff.” His sly gaze shifted to her face from her bosom, and he winked.
“You have two seconds to move your head.”
“Or what?” He didn’t move but just grinned up at her.
She leaned down a bit closer and whispered, “Or I’ll punch you in the nose.”
“You know what, Smitty? I believe you would, too.” He laughed in that wicked way he had. The sound of it gave her the same sensation she got when she banged her crazy bone.
He sat up quickly and winced. He grabbed his head and muttered something vile. He pulled his hand away and scowled at the blood on it. “What hit me?”
“The anchor,” she said, taking Annabelle from Lydia and rocking her. “Luckily, it hit you in the head, otherwise it might have killed you.”
He gave her a narrowed look that promised retribution.
She smiled innocently and rocked the baby.
He looked around for a moment. “When did the storm stop?”
“I’m not certain. It’s been a while.”
She watched him brace his feet on the rocks and push hard on the lifeboat. It rocked, and he kept rocking it until the anchor she couldn’t budge began to loosen. He gripped the chain in two hands and pulled the anchor free almost too easily, then tilted the boat over to one side.
A snatch of pinkish sky was all she could see, but it was a welcome sight. Not too long before, she’d been certain that wall of rocks was the last thing she’d ever see.
While Hank crawled up onto one of the high rocks, she turned to the children. Theodore and Lydia were in deep conversation with the goat, assuring it like worried parents that everything was safe.
“Hey, Smitty.”
She turned back and looked up. The sunlight grew a little brighter, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. She could hear the waves against the shore, the caw of gulls. She caught the sweet tropical scent of something wet and green.
“Take a look at this,” Hank called down to her. She crawled up the rocks, hugging Annabelle to her chest. She knelt on a flat rock and froze. Everything froze—her ability to speak, her breath, for an instant, her heartbeat.
Spread out before her was the broad cove of a tropical inlet, entirely arched in a thick rainbow of pink, purple, blue, and yellow. Beneath the rainbow were lush green hills. In the distance was the high, dark cone of a volcano. A small cloud of mist ringed that tall peak and made the island look as if it touched heaven.
The water in the cove bled from deep aqua blue to pale green to a brilliant silvery color just before i
t foamed like spun sugar into the wet sand. Spiky pandanus palms and bushes thick with flowers the color of the tropical sunset spread from the green hills all the way down to the edge of the beach, where the white sand took on pink tints from the cast of the slowly setting sun.
Even the sky was different here. The late afternoon sun was a yellowish-pink ball in the west, where clouds strolled by wearing colors of gray and lavender. It was the same sky, the same earth, yet it seemed too brilliant to be earthly. Perhaps it was because this island’s beauty was something she had never before experienced.
Like yesterday’s dream, the rainbow faded. A cloud blocked the sun, but there was still enough tropical warmth to cause steam to rise up from the sand and from the lush green ferns and bushes behind the beach. Tall coconut palms waved in the trade wind like welcoming hands. Their color turned from green to violet to purple while the gleam of the sea blended from silver to pink.
Surprised that something could touch her as deeply as this place did, Margaret stared at the changing colors so real, yet so unreal. She had seen islands, had seen the setting sun and pink skies after a storm. She’d seen many beaches. The northern coast of California was one of the most majestic sights in the world.
But this was so different it was hard to believe it was the same Pacific Ocean that she had known all of her life. There was more than just a sense of peace about this island. More than a place saturated in beauty. It was untouched, isolated, as though the world had passed it by. Not forsaken, but hidden. A treasure so precious, nature had protected it.
Silently, the children joined them, first curious, then chattering. They pointed at the flowers and birds and shoals of bright swimming fish spread before them. Annabelle tugged on the neck of her dress and tried to squirm her way down. Margaret hugged her tighter.
Annabelle patted her shoulder to get her attention, but Margaret couldn’t bring herself to look away at that moment. All she could do was whisper, “This is paradise.”
Chapter 7
“This is stupid.”
Margaret raised her chin and looked Hank in the eye. “What is stupid? The fact that I made a suggestion or that you don’t agree with it?”
