Swimming to Antarctica by Lynne Cox Page A

that thought away. It wouldn’t help me at all in my effort to swim across this channel. But I knew the way we were swimming, we sounded more like food than swimmers.
    In the distance we could barely see the lead boat. It looked like a star on the water. The paddlers and kayaker were not visible, but I could hear them saying, “You’re doing a great job. Keep going.”
    I lifted my head to find the tiny light on the dory and tried to maintain a constant distance from it, hoping that I could establish a pace this way. After perhaps an hour, it was hard to tell whether this plan was working; there were no reference points to help me determine the distance we had covered or the time it had taken to arrive at that point. Still, it seemed like we were settling into a pace, beginning to stretch out our arm strokes and slow our rapid breathing. Thensomeone squealed and adrenaline shot through my body, and I felt myself swimming on the upper inches of the water. Worse were those moments of not knowing. There was a delay between the scream and finding out what happened.
    “It’s okay; it’s just seaweed. Don’t worry, relax—just reverse your stroke and you’ll untangle yourself,” one of the paddlers reassured us.
    “There’s a problem,” someone said. There was a discussion, but it was hard to catch the conversation with my head underwater, so I swam with my head up.
    “The lights on these boards are fading,” one paddler shouted. “So is the one on the dory. Look, it’s fading to orange. The batteries are dying. Mine’s nearly gone.”
    “We don’t have much time before they both go,” said the other paddler.
    “Does anyone have extra batteries?” someone shouted.
    I heard Stockwell on the walkie-talkie in the dory talking to someone in the lead boat. “They’re searching,” his deep voice boomed across.
    “Have them move closer together.”
    Then someone whistled loudly and said, “Hey, hold up for a minute.” It was Mr. Yeo. “You guys are going to have to stop for a minute. We need to put some new batteries in our flashlights so you can see us.”
    “Ahhhhhh! Shoot!” we said, treading water. “How long are we going to have to wait?” When we stopped swimming, we couldn’t hang on to anyone or anything or we would be disqualified.
    “This is really dumb. How could they have forgotten the batteries? Are we going to have to stop the channel swim because of this?” Andy said.
    “I’m getting awfully cold just treading water,” Nancy said.
    When we were swimming, we were generating heat, but once we stopped, our heat production diminished substantially. In a swimming pool, where water temperatures usually ranged from seventy-six to eighty degrees, we wouldn’t have lost body heat very quickly, but the cool sixty-five-degree seawater began leaching heat from our bodies. Nancy sucked her teeth, making a shivering sound.
    Someone was saying something on the radio. It was garbled. Stockwell translated: “They found them. It will only be a couple more minutes. They’re going to turn the lead boat and bring the batteries here. That way you can also have a feeding.”
    We had the plastic ketchup bottles on the lead boat, along with thermoses filled with warm tea, coffee, and apple cider, and with fresh water.
    While the paddlers fixed the flashlights, the crew in the lead boat tossed us the fresh water first. We rinsed the salt water from our mouths, tossed the bottles back onto the deck, and then were thrown our choice of beverage. Floating on our backs, we drank the warm liquids as the crew shouted words of encouragement. I heard my father say, “Good job, sweet.” I smiled. I was happy he was with me on the swim. He always seemed to know the right thing to do whenever someone needed to make an important decision.
    We tossed our empty bottles to one of the lifeguards and the lead boat pulled ahead, becoming once again a small white light on the black horizon.
    “All right, let’s get