the captain high-fived each other and headed back to the house, just as the satellite phone connected to the line Sarah had dialed. One ring. Two. Three. On the fourth ring an answering machine picked up and a recorded voice offered to take a message.
A TALL SEA LIFTED THE CANOE. THE SUN HAD BURNED OFF
the morning haze and the air was crystal clear. The triple strands of palm tops brushing the horizon were unmistakably Pulo Helena. Stone cursed the miles lost and the time he had wasted.
How far had the Dallas Belle steamed in eighteen hours? Gas carriers were much faster than most freighters. Twenty knots service speed? Twenty-two? He conjured the chart in his memory, drew upon it a distance-madegood circle of three hundred and sixty sea miles. Were the ship still headed north, it had passed the Palau Islands by now—Angaur, his own goal, already a hundred miles in its wake.
Well, Michael. Where do we stand?
Up the same creek we started, sweetheart.
Spilt milk.
He turned his back on the atolls and headed north again.
But when he tossed a coconut shell into the water to judge his speed, the Dutchman's log confirmed that the canoe was a pig upwind. For every mile he gained north he slipped an equal distance to the west. He'd be lucky to make twenty real miles a day. Built to run before the trade winds, the canoe carried too much sail forward to beat efficiently. The wind kept levering the bow off course. Slacking the sail made things worse: it flapped like laundry. But trimming it to stop the luffing promptly pushed the bow downwind again.
He decided to tear down the rig and rebuild it, using the Swan as a model. He struck the mast, removed the rice-bag sail from the boom, and cut a long triangle out of the cloth with his surgical scissors.
The gaff was the longest spar. With the sail still attached, he stepped it as a new, taller mast, standing it just ahead of the middle of the boat. He stayed it fore and aft and both sides with the old man's sennit rope. Then he fashioned a rope gooseneck to attach the stubby old mast horizontally as a boom. He stitched the triangular strip around the forward stay as a jib, attached lines to control both sails, and sheeted them in. The canoe heeled. He threw his weight on the outrigger, and she darted off on a starboard tack. He tossed another Dutchman's log. Four knots, he'd swear in any yacht club bar in the South Pacific. Nearly a hundred miles a day. He rigged the sheets to the rudder paddle so the canoe would steer itself and set a course at a sixty-degree angle to the seas. The tropic sun was nearing its zenith and sending down a brutal light that burned his skin and seared his eyes. He sorted through the items that had survived the swamping, and cobbled together a sun shade. Then he drank from a coconut and ate several chewy mouthfuls of salt fish the old man had stowed in breadfruit leaves. He ate and drank again before nightfall and stayed on the port tack until after the sun had plunged into the sea, and he was suddenly in the dark. A breaking wave he couldn't see overrode the primitive self-steering and knocked the bow upwind. The wind caught the boat aback, suddenly, and filled the sail from the other side. Stone ducked. The boom whizzed overhead, missing him by inches.
The canoe felt smaller and more vulnerable in the claustrophobic darkness. But as it deepened, the Milky Way grew brighter and brighter, until it illuminated the ocean like moonlight. When he could see the shape of his sail and the gleam of breaking seas, he began to feel hope again. If he could average only three knots north he would make seventy miles a day: Angaur in three days.
Hope, or at least the lessening of despair, opened his
mind to bleaker avenues he had not yet explored—the awful leisure to ponder why they had taken Sarah and Ronnie. If they were merely afraid of pursuit, of his radios, it would have been simple to tow Veronica behind and scuttle her. But they had taken trouble to hoist
A TALL SEA LIFTED THE CANOE. THE SUN HAD BURNED OFF
the morning haze and the air was crystal clear. The triple strands of palm tops brushing the horizon were unmistakably Pulo Helena. Stone cursed the miles lost and the time he had wasted.
How far had the Dallas Belle steamed in eighteen hours? Gas carriers were much faster than most freighters. Twenty knots service speed? Twenty-two? He conjured the chart in his memory, drew upon it a distance-madegood circle of three hundred and sixty sea miles. Were the ship still headed north, it had passed the Palau Islands by now—Angaur, his own goal, already a hundred miles in its wake.
Well, Michael. Where do we stand?
Up the same creek we started, sweetheart.
Spilt milk.
He turned his back on the atolls and headed north again.
But when he tossed a coconut shell into the water to judge his speed, the Dutchman's log confirmed that the canoe was a pig upwind. For every mile he gained north he slipped an equal distance to the west. He'd be lucky to make twenty real miles a day. Built to run before the trade winds, the canoe carried too much sail forward to beat efficiently. The wind kept levering the bow off course. Slacking the sail made things worse: it flapped like laundry. But trimming it to stop the luffing promptly pushed the bow downwind again.
He decided to tear down the rig and rebuild it, using the Swan as a model. He struck the mast, removed the rice-bag sail from the boom, and cut a long triangle out of the cloth with his surgical scissors.
The gaff was the longest spar. With the sail still attached, he stepped it as a new, taller mast, standing it just ahead of the middle of the boat. He stayed it fore and aft and both sides with the old man's sennit rope. Then he fashioned a rope gooseneck to attach the stubby old mast horizontally as a boom. He stitched the triangular strip around the forward stay as a jib, attached lines to control both sails, and sheeted them in. The canoe heeled. He threw his weight on the outrigger, and she darted off on a starboard tack. He tossed another Dutchman's log. Four knots, he'd swear in any yacht club bar in the South Pacific. Nearly a hundred miles a day. He rigged the sheets to the rudder paddle so the canoe would steer itself and set a course at a sixty-degree angle to the seas. The tropic sun was nearing its zenith and sending down a brutal light that burned his skin and seared his eyes. He sorted through the items that had survived the swamping, and cobbled together a sun shade. Then he drank from a coconut and ate several chewy mouthfuls of salt fish the old man had stowed in breadfruit leaves. He ate and drank again before nightfall and stayed on the port tack until after the sun had plunged into the sea, and he was suddenly in the dark. A breaking wave he couldn't see overrode the primitive self-steering and knocked the bow upwind. The wind caught the boat aback, suddenly, and filled the sail from the other side. Stone ducked. The boom whizzed overhead, missing him by inches.
The canoe felt smaller and more vulnerable in the claustrophobic darkness. But as it deepened, the Milky Way grew brighter and brighter, until it illuminated the ocean like moonlight. When he could see the shape of his sail and the gleam of breaking seas, he began to feel hope again. If he could average only three knots north he would make seventy miles a day: Angaur in three days.
Hope, or at least the lessening of despair, opened his
mind to bleaker avenues he had not yet explored—the awful leisure to ponder why they had taken Sarah and Ronnie. If they were merely afraid of pursuit, of his radios, it would have been simple to tow Veronica behind and scuttle her. But they had taken trouble to hoist
Similar Books
