right or left. Normally it was a darned nuisance but nothing more. If the harbour had been used for commercial fishing it might have been dynamited away but because this was a fair-weather harbour built for pleasure craft only, it wasn’t worth the expense to remove it.
‘It almost got through.’ Tom Conner was literally wringing his hands. ‘I saw him come and I was yelling, “Damned fool, go back” but he didn’t hear. Then a wave picked him up and threw the boat like it was a bath toy. I still thought he was going to make it but the wave surged into the island and it hit hard and the guy was thrown out. He’s still there.’
He was. Horribly, he was.
The boat was a splintered mess, half in and half out of the water. Its glossy red fibreglass hull was smashed into three or four pieces and as they watched it was being sucked down into the water.
There was a body on the rocks.
‘He’s been thrown further up,’ Tom told them, and the old man was close to weeping. ‘He hasn’t moved.’
The man-whoever he was-looked like a limp rag doll. He was wearing yellow waterproofs and he was sprawled like a piece of debris across the rocks. While they watched, a wave smashed across the tiny island. The water surged almost up to his neck, shifting him, and they thought he’d slip.
He didn’t. He must be wedged.
‘Hell.’ Joss said what they were all thinking. The island was about two hundred yards out. Impossible to reach him.
‘He’ll drown before the chopper reaches him,’ Jeff said, and he sounded as sick as they all felt. ‘That is, if he’s not dead already.’
‘Was he the only one on board?’ Joss asked, his eyes not leaving the limp figure.
‘Yeah,’ Tom told him. ‘The boat didn’t have a cabin, and it was him doing the steering. I would have seen if there was someone else.’
Another wave crashed into the rocks and Amy’s hand went to her mouth as the body shifted slightly in the wash. She felt sick. ‘I can’t bear this.’
‘We need rope,’ Joss said, and they all stared.
Jeff was the first to recover. He shook his head. ‘Rope? No way. You go in that water and you’re a dead man. You can’t swim against that current.’
‘I’m not going in that water,’ Joss snapped. ‘How much rope can we find? I want a rubber dinghy and I want five hundred yards of rope-or more-and as many able-bodied people as we can find. Are there any families living within calling distance on the other side?’
‘There’s a few farms,’ Jeff told him.
‘Contact them and tell them I want as many people as possible on the opposite shore. Then I want Lionel and his biggest kite.’
‘Lionel’s kite…’ Amy stared at him, seeing where his thoughts were headed. ‘But…’
‘But what?’ His eyes met hers, challenging her to find objections.
She was starting to see what he was thinking. ‘The wind’s a south-easterly,’ she said slowly. ‘It’d take a kite straight across the river.’ Her eyes widened. ‘Maybe it could carry a rope. Maybe.’ Despite the drama of the situation Amy felt a twinge of pleasure. Using Lionel’s kites for such a plan… The old man would be delighted.
If it worked.
‘Will a kite hold that weight?’ Jeff sounded as if he thought the idea was crazy, but Amy was nodding.
‘I bet it will. Lionel reckons a big box kite would hold a man, and in this wind…well, maybe the wind can work for us rather than against us.’
And at least it was a plan. It was something! Better than sitting waiting helplessly for the body to slip.
Jeff needed no more telling. Like them, he was desperate for action. Any action! He was already reaching for his phone.
‘Great. Let’s move.’
One thing Iluka was good at was mobilising. It was a small community. Most people were indoors because of the filthy weather. Jeff made one call to Chris and in ten minutes the telephonist had organised half the population of Iluka at the river mouth with enough rope to fence a small European country. Plus there were three rubber dinghies, one enormous box kite-Lionel attached-and ten or so men and women standing on the other side of the river.
‘How much weight can that kite hold?’ Joss demanded, and Lionel scratched his chin and looked upward. There wasn’t a trace of his dementia.
‘In this wind? As much rope as you like. I reckon it could lift me.’
‘That’s what I’m counting on,’ Joss told him, and he managed a grin. ‘No, Lionel, I’m not planning to sky-ride on your kite. But I’m depending on it just the same.’
There was a delay of a few minutes while ropes were securely knotted together-a delay where all eyes were on the prone figure sprawled on the island rocks. Maybe he was already dead. Maybe this wasn’t worthwhile.
But… ‘I think I saw him move.’ Someone had brought binoculars and Amy was focussing on the yellow waterproofs. ‘I think his hand moved.’ She couldn’t see his face. She could see very little but a mass of yellow.
It was enough. ‘Then we try,’ Joss told her. He’d been deep in discussion with Lionel. Lionel had shed his years like magic and was talking to him as an equal.
Amy was still confused. ‘I don’t know how…’
‘Just watch. Lionel and I have it under control.’ He hesitated and then conceded a doubt. ‘I think.’
The kite was launched. In this weather it was dead easy. Lionel and a couple of his mates simply held it to the wind and it lifted like magic, its huge trail of rope acting as if it were a piece of string. It soared skyward, a dozen men feeding the rope out. Lionel held a lighter string, as if he needed to anchor it to himself.
They needed a stronger anchor than Lionel. They’d fastened the end of the heavy rope to rocks-just in case the men couldn’t hold it. In weather like this they could end up with the kite sailing on to Sydney.
‘How do we get it down?’ Amy asked.
But Joss and Lionel had the operation under control. The kite was over the river now, sailing past the heads of the crowd gathered on the other side. Lionel motioned to the lighter cord he was holding-a cord that on closer inspection turned out to be a loop. ‘We tug hard on this and she collapses,’ he said diffidently. ‘Watch.’
They watched. He pulled the cord and the fastening on the kite came unclipped. The box kite soared upward- next stop Queensland-and the snake of rope and the looping cord crumpled across the river, the ends coiling downward to be seized by the people on the opposite bank.
They had a rope bridge now, with men and women on either end pulling it tight.
‘With teams holding the rope over the island, I reckon I can reach him,’ Joss told them. At Amy’s horrified look he shook his head. ‘I’m not swinging Tarzan style. I might be brave but I’m not stupid. Lionel and I worked it out. I fasten the dinghy using a slider that moves along with me. I loop a slider around my belt and I fasten the dinghy to me. The lighter cord Lionel was holding forms a loop so we can use it as a pulley, with the teams at both ends controlling as I work myself along the heavier rope. Easy. When I reach the rocks I haul whoever he is into the dinghy. I take a couple more ropes with me to make him safe on the way and Bob’s your uncle.’
Amy was just plain horrified. ‘And if you fall in?’
‘I told you,’ he said patiently. ‘I’m attached to the rope and I’m attached to the dinghy. If worst comes to worst I can come back hand over hand-but if it’s all the same to you I’ll stay in the dinghy.’
‘If it’s all the same to me, you’ll stay here.’
‘And let him drown? I can’t do that.’ He stared into her appalled eyes, and something passed between them. Something.
That something was deeper than words. He put out a hand and lifted her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his. Their gazes locked for a long, long moment. Someone was looping a rope through Joss’s belt but he had eyes only for Amy.
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘You’d better be.’ Her voice was choked with emotion and he thought, What the hell-if he was going to be a hero, surely he was allowed to kiss a fair maiden?
In truth he didn’t feel all that brave.
But he was here. The body on the rocks was about to be swept out to sea. The average age of those around
