The surge that swept into the channel had been reduced to rolling waves no higher than the average doorway. Amazingly, the boat was still afloat and in one piece. Through the grinding ferocity of the crashing breakers it still somehow held together. The only apparent damage was to the sail and paddle-mast, which had been torn away but were floating nearby, still attached to the boat by a line.
Giordino had never stopped bailing, even when he was sitting in water up to his chest. He sputtered and wiped the salt from his eyes and continued throwing water over the side like there was no tomorrow.
The hull was now completely cracked in two and barely held together by the hurriedly attached nylon lines and the clamps connecting the buoyancy floats. Giordino finally conceded defeat as he found himself sitting up to his armpits in seawater. He looked around dazedly, his breath labored, his mind deadened by exhaustion. “What now?” he mumbled.
Before Pitt answered, he dipped his face in the water and peered at the bottom of the channel. The visibility was exceptional, though blurred without a face mask, and he could see sand and rock only ten meters below. Schools of vividly colored fish swam about leisurely, taking no notice of the strange creature floating overhead.
“No sharks in here,” he said thankfully.
“They seldom swim through breakers,” said Maeve through a spasm of coughing. She was sitting with her arms stretched out and draped over the stern buoyancy tube.
The current through the channel was carrying them closer to the northern island. Solid ground was only thirty meters away. Pitt looked at Maeve and broke into a crooked grin. “I’ll bet you’re a strong swimmer.”
“You’re talking to an Aussie,” she said coolly, and then added, “Remind me sometime to show you my butterfly and backstroke medals.”
“Al is played out. Can you tow him to shore?”
“The least I can do for the man who kept us out of the mouths of sharks.”
Pitt gestured toward the nearest shoreline. There was no sandy beach, but the rock flattened out into a shelf as it met the water. “The way looks clear to climb on firm ground.”
“And you?” She pulled back her hair with both hands, wringing away the water. “Do you want me to come back for you?”
He shook his head. “I saved myself for a more important effort.”
“What effort?”
“Club Med hasn’t built a resort here yet. We still need all the food supplies we have in hand. I’m going to tow what’s left of the boat and the goodies therein.”
Pitt helped roll Giordino over the half-sunken buoyancy tubes into the water, where he was grasped under the chin lifeguard-style by Maeve. She stroked strongly to shore, pulling Giordino behind her. Pitt watched for a moment until he saw Giordino grin shiftily and lift one hand in a ‘bye wave. The nefarious little devil, Pitt thought. He’s enjoying a free ride.
Splicing and knotting the rigging back into one long nylon line, Pitt attached it to the half-sunken boat and tied the other end around his waist. Then he swam toward shore. The deadweight was too much to simply drag behind him. He would stop in the water, heave on the line, gain a short distance and then repeat the process. The current helped by nudging the boat around in an arc toward shore. After traveling twenty meters, he finally felt firm ground beneath his feet. Now he could use the added leverage to pull the boat onto the rock shelf. He was wearily grateful when Maeve and Giordino both waded in and helped him tow it ashore.
“You recovered quickly,” he said to Giordino.
“My recuperative powers are the marvel of doctors everywhere.”
“I think he suckered me,” said Maeve, feigning hostility.
“Nothing like the feel of terra firma to rejuvenate one’s soul.”
Pitt sat down and rested, too tired to dance for joy at being off the water. He slowly rose to his knees before standing up. For a few moments he had to hold onto the ground to steady himself. The motion of nearly two weeks bobbing about in a small boat had affected his balance. The world spun, and the entire island rocked as if it floated on the sea. Maeve immediately sat back down, while Giordino planted both feet firmly on the rock and clutched a nearby tree with thick foliage. After a few minutes, Pitt rose shakily to his feet and made a few faltering steps. Not having walked since the abduction in Wellington, he found his legs and ankles were unfeeling and stiff. Only after he’d staggered about twenty meters and back did his joints begin to loosen and operate as they should.
They hauled the boat farther onto the rocks and rested for a few hours before dining on their dried fish, washed down by rainwater they found standing in several concave impressions in the rock. Their energies restored, they began to survey the island. There was precious little to see. The whole island and its neighbor across the channel had the appearance of solid piles of lava rock that had exploded from the ocean floor, building over the eons until reaching the surface before being eroded into low mounds. If the water had been fully transparent and the islands viewed down to their base on the seafloor, they might have been compared to the great dramatic spires of Monument Valley, Arizona, rising like island, in a desert sea.
Giordino paced off the width from shore to shore and announced that their refuge was only 130 meters across, The highest point was a flattened plateau no more than 10 meters in height. The landmass curved into a tear shape that stretched north and south, with the windward arc facing the west. From rounded end to spiked point, the length was no more than a kilometer. Surrounded by natural seawalls that defied the swells, the island had the appearance of a fortress under constant attack.
A short distance away, they discovered the shattered remains of a boat that lay high and dry in a small inlet that was carved out of the rock by the sea, evidently driven there by large storm waves. She was a fair-sized sailboat, rolled over on her port side, half her hull and keel torn away from an obvious collision with rocks. She must have been a pretty boat at one time, Pitt imagined, Her upperworks had been painted light blue with orange undersides. Though the masts were gone, the deckhouse looked undamaged and intact. The three of them approached and studied it before peering inside.
“A grand, seaworthy little boat,” observed Pitt, “about twelve meters, well built, with a teak hull.”
“A Bermuda ketch,” said Maeve, running her hands over the worn and sun-bleached teak planking. “A fellow student at the marine lab on Saint Croix had one. We used to island-hop with it. She sailed remarkably well.”
Giordino stared at the paint and caulking on the hull appraisingly. “Been here twenty, maybe thirty years, judging by her condition.”
“I hope whoever became marooned on this desolate spot was rescued,” Maeve said quietly.
Pitt swept a hand around the barrenness. “Certainly no sane sailor would go out of his way to visit here.”
Maeve’s eyes brightened, and she snapped her fingers as if something deep in her memory had surfaced. “They’re called the Tits.”
Pitt and Giordino glanced at each other as if not believing what they had heard. “You did say ‘tits’?” Giordino inquired.
“An old Australian tale about a pair of islands that look like a woman’s breasts. They’re said to disappear and reappear, like Brigadoon.”
“I hate to be a debunker of Down Under myths,” said Pitt facetiously, “but this rock pile hasn’t gone anywhere for the last million years.”
“They’re not shaped like any mammary glands I’ve ever seen,” muttered Giordino.
She gave both men a gouty look. “I only know what I heard, about a pair of legendary islands south of the Tasman Sea.”
Hoisted by Giordino, Pitt climbed aboard the canted hull and crawled through the hatch into the deckhouse. “She’s been stripped clean,” he called out from the inside. “Everything that wasn’t screwed down has been removed. Check the transom and see if she has a name.”
Maeve walked around to the stern and stared up at the faded letters that were barely readable. “Dancing Dorothy. Her name was Dancing Dorothy.”
Pitt climbed down from the yacht’s cockpit. “A search is in order to locate the supplies taken from the boat. The crew may have left behind articles we can put to use.”
Resuming their exploration, it took little more than half an hour to skirt the entire coast of the tear-shaped little island. Then they worked their way inland. They separated and strung out in a loose line to cover more territory. Maeve was the first to spot an axe half buried in the rotting trunk of a grotesquely shaped tree.
Giordino pulled it loose and held it up. “This should come in handy.”
