Dolphin Child by James Carmody Page A

out what. They were well used to
seeing plastic floating along in the water, though not generally a
piece of plastic this big. When he was still a young calf, Spirit
had taken a bite out of something white that drifted past him in
the water and almost choked on a plastic bag as a result. They let
the thing float on past them. It got caught by a gust of wind and
was blown on to the rocks just out of sight of the beach with all
the people on it. The clear floating plastic thing seemed to snag
on something sharp and then crumpled as the air leaked out of
it.
    Suddenly there was screaming sound from the direction of the
floating thing and Spirit and Dancer glanced back to look at
it.
    ‘ What was that?’ asked Dancer in alarm.
    ‘ I don’t know’ replied Spirit turning back towards the plastic
thing in the water. The airbed sagged and as they looked they
realised that a child had started scrabbling around on top of
it.
    ‘ Is that a human?’ asked Dancer.
    ‘ It looks like a child’ replied Spirit. The human was much
smaller than Lucy and Spirit guessed that the child was about half
her age.
    In fact the girl on the airbed was about six years old and had
fallen asleep as her brothers had played catch with a ball next to
her. Another boy had stolen the ball and her brothers had chased
him down the beach to get it back. Unattended, the airbed had
floated away from the safety of the shallows, seemingly without any
one noticing. Her parents thought she was with her brothers and her
brothers thought she was with her parents. No one knew that she was
out here at all.
    The girl started to shout something and although the two
dolphins could not understand what she was saying, they could
imagine.
    ‘ She must be shouting for help’ guessed Spirit, overwhelmed
with concern for the young girl. Her face was red with tears and
hot with fear. However the sound of her screams and cries would not
carry far and no one on the beach could hear her over the gentle
slosh of waves around them and the noise of the crowds.
    The airbed had got caught on a shelf of rock a few metres out
from the main shoreline, which rose up out of the sea like a small
island. The sea was still coming in though and when high tide came,
the rocks would be fully submerged. They were slimy with seaweed.
The airbed was rapidly losing its air and soon became unable to
support the girl’s weight. She clambered off it onto the rocky
islet. In doing so the airbed got pushed free of the rocks again
and floated away again out of her reach.
    ‘ Look!’ exclaimed Spirit. ‘The girl’s trapped on those rocks.’
The rocks were so slippery that the girl could not stand upright on
them, but instead clung onto them, tears streaming down her face.
The two dolphins swam over to where she was and put their heads
over the surface of the water in an attempt to whistle
encouragement to her.
    ‘ Do you think that she will get on your back like Lucy does?’
asked Dancer. Instead of being encouraged though, when the girl saw
the two dolphins, she shrank back in fear. She’d never seen
dolphins before and was too scared and too upset to appreciate that
they were friendly and wanted to help her. He realised that even if
the girl had wanted to, she wouldn’t have the strength to pull
herself up onto his back.
    ‘ I don’t think there’s any chance of that’ replied Spirit. Just
as he spoke, a slightly larger wave came in and washed over the
legs and feet of the young girl. It wouldn’t be long before the
tide rose higher and larger waves started to batter her. They had
to do something.
    ‘ Well what can we do then?’ asked Dancer anxiously, looking at
the scared child a couple of metres away from them on the rock.
Spirit shook his head. If only he could reach out to Lucy like she
could reach out to him. He could tell Lucy what had happened and
she could fetch help. He had no idea how to do that
though.
    ‘ I’d better swim to the beach and find someone who can come
back