buoy. They had to fight against the tide, moving at an angle across them. They pulled hard together, the girl leaning over the stern. The distance between the boats quickly shrank as they heaved with the desperation of escaping convicts.
Stratton dropped his oar inside the boat as the gunwales collided and the girl grabbed a line and looped it over a cleat. She leaned back and held on to it firmly and Stratton nimbly cross-decked.
He inspected the working tank attached to the single outboard engine. It was heavy and he carried it over and lowered it into their boat. He searched the vessel for more and found several cans beneath a large decaying canvas.
He couldn’t find anything else of use and climbed back over.
‘What do you think?’ she asked.
‘A wild guess … I’d say we have enough to get a hundred miles, give or take a few. That’s if the motors are working OK,’ he added.
‘How far is this transit corridor?’
He looked at her. ‘I thought you would know that better than me.’
‘Why?’
‘Weren’t you sailing the bloody Gulf?’
‘I knew about the corridor but I didn’t plan on sailing that far north.’
Stratton took a moment to see the map in his head. He thought he remembered the Gulf being around two hundred miles across but the Yemen and Somali coastlines didn’t quite run parallel. ‘I’d say the corridor was around a hundred miles away, give or take.’
‘And when we get there we just wait to be picked up?’
‘That’s about it.’
Trying to break the plan down didn’t look like it had helped her.
‘It’s not going to get any better than this, sweetheart,’ he said.
She knew he was right, once again. If he had asked her to swim back to the beach to try and come up with some other plan, she would have found it very difficult.
‘How long will it take?’ she asked.
He wasn’t sure what she meant exactly. ‘To find a boat once we get to the corridor? Hours maybe. Half a day max, I would’ve thought.’
‘All together? The journey and everything. How long?’ she asked, holding on as a swell rocked the boat. ‘I don’t really care. We’re going to do it. I just want to know that’s all. I want something to aim for.’
‘My advice is to aim to wait for days.’ He walked over to a five-gallon plastic container and unscrewed the top. He sniffed it quickly before picking it up and raising it to his lips. He took a short sip and then a long drink before putting it back down. ‘We can live three weeks without food, three days without water and we have enough here for a couple of days if we ration it. So there’s five days to aim for.’
She didn’t look enthralled with the target.
He set about checking the engines. Whoever had rigged them had done it in a weird way. They were both pull-start with their control arms linked by a wooden pole so that they could be turned in unison by one person. The twist throttle control on each arm had a crude clamp device attached to it made of wood and fishing line. He could find no engine or steerage control of any sort from the small bridge house, the various cables intended for such use having long since gone.
‘We need to get as far away from here as we can before we try and start these up,’ he said, studying the beach and the waters around the cargo ships for any activity.
She picked up her oar again and waited for him to take hold of his. When he was satisfied, he grabbed up his oar. She released the line and they pushed away from the other boat.
Stratton moved to the front, where he could better control the steerage, and paddled hard. She took her position in the rear again. He aimed the small vessel towards the northern edge of the cove, which initially meant getting closer to the nearest cargo ship but it was the most direct route to the open sea.
The waves weren’t very powerful within the cove itself and the pair of them managed to move the boat ahead at an easy pace. Stratton kept an eye on the golden spur of sand visible in the darkness on the starboard side that formed the northern edge of the cove’s mouth. It was difficult to make out where it actually ended and every now and then he pushed his oar down as deep as he could in order to check the depth.
They put their backs into it, as much enthused by the fact they were quickly gaining on the mouth, towards the open sea, as they were by the reality that they were beginning the last major phase of the escape bar finding a rescue ship.
Stratton’s oar suddenly found the bottom. ‘Left,’ he called out.
She did her best to compensate while he edged more to the front to bring the nose around.
The end of the spur was fast coming up.
‘Almost there!’ he shouted, aware she must be tiring.
As they reached the end of the toe of sand, Stratton saw the larger waves beyond it. They were rolling inland from the ocean unchecked and looking heavy.
‘Keep it up!’ he called out. ‘We need to break through that.’
As they came around the end of the toe, the first big wave struck them remorselessly, spray breaking over the bows. The boat seemed to come to a standstill. Stratton increased his effort. The girl was tiring but she fought on, encouraged by the consequences of failure.
The next wave sets came at them relentlessly, raising up the bows each time as Stratton heaved against them, the nose then dropping down into the trough with a thump. His eyes darted to the finger of sand to gauge their progress. To his horror they were not only failing to make any headway, they were going backwards.
He couldn’t put any more effort into it than he was already doing. And if that was the case for him, for her it had to be worse. They would only get weaker while the ocean’s energy remained boundless. They had paddled into the main flow of the swell and at the rate they were going they would end up on the beach. Which was quickly coming up behind them. If that happened, they would get hammered in the surf. They would probably capsize. The brief dream was fast turning back into the nightmare.
There was nothing more for it. ‘I’m starting the engines!’ he shouted. ‘Keep pulling all you can!’
She glanced at him between strokes. Suffering. Exhausted.
He dumped his paddle on the deck and hurried to the engines. She struggled to give him those precious extra seconds he might need, the thought of landing back on that beach more than enough to inspire her. She fought against the awesome power of the waves, putting all she could muster behind each stroke. Her life would be better spent dying of exhaustion trying to escape than getting captured again.
Stratton tilted both engines so that the propellers dropped into the water and squeezed the bubble valves on the fuel tubes attached to fill the carburettor chambers. When the bubble valves had hardened, indicating the fuel was all the way through the lines, he grabbed one of the starter cords and pushed the gear lever into neutral.
When he had planned it, he would be far out to sea before he started the engines. That advantage had evaporated. He had to get at least one of them going now or they were screwed. Stratton knew a bit about outboards, as he should have done being in the SBS. Both engines looked like they had recently been used, which helped his confidence, but not by a great deal. They were old and there was probably no great abundance of spare parts for when they went wrong. Somali fishermen often engineered the most extraordinary techniques for maintaining their engines, many of which would defy the understanding of those who had designed and built them. He prayed that no such method or technique was required to get either of this pair going.
He took a firm grip of the toggle and, as a large swell struck the boat, yanked it. The engine clattered as its working parts ground against each other but it didn’t fire. No indication at all that an internal combustion of any kind had taken place.
The girl looked between him and the engine as she continued to row as hard as she could, snatching a glance at the sandy beach behind her.
The starter return spring was obviously broken and Stratton quickly ripped the cowling away to expose the guts of the motor. He spun the starter cable housing around until the toggle was all the way home and yanked hard on it again. The motor sputtered a little before dying. It was a spark of life, like a tiny glowing ember, though not enough. It showed a potential for life. But that was not enough.
‘Stratton,’ she called out, a warning in her voice.
