‘It’s too far!’ Blossom cried, looking down at the drop to the garbage barge below them. It was easily ten metres down.
Pod looked behind them; the wall of garbage was getting bigger and bigger and it would collapse on them at any moment. ‘Jump!’ he cried, and yanked her.
They jumped—
They fell through the air—
They landed on soft bags of rubbish which burst wetly beneath them, breaking their fall.
Pod grabbed Blossom as soon as they’d landed and they rolled out of the drop zone, creeping to the edge of the huge barge as the sliding pile of garbage grew to a torrent.
‘Someone’s going to see us for sure,’ Pod said.
‘We should hide.’
They found some broken bags and draped them over their heads, peering out through the gaps. Blossom looked at him from her dark cocoon of plastic like a bright-eyed creature looking out of its burrow. ‘Now what?’
‘I don’t know,’ Pod said. ‘Let me think.’
The garbage chute was on the ocean side of the Blue Water Duchess, but even so, the dock was probably only fifty metres away. If either of them knew how to swim, they could have simply swum ashore. But that wasn’t an option. He couldn’t see anything on the barge that they could steal to help them float ashore, and there was always the risk that someone from the Blue Water Duchess might spot them and have them arrested and taken back to the ship.
He turned to look at the bridge of the barge. The crew were in there, but no one seemed to be looking in their direction. He hoped that meant no one had seen them drop.
Above them, they heard a new sound: the outer hatch on the Blue Water Princess was closing. Radio voices scratched and rumbled from the bridge. The idling engines began to spin. The barge was leaving.
‘Where does this go?’ Blossom said.
‘I don’t know,’ Pod said. ‘We’ll just stay on it till we’re clear of the ship. Then we’ll get off.’
‘Okay,’ Blossom said. ‘How?’
But he didn’t yet have an answer to that.
The barge pulled away from the ship. Pod hoped it would motor somewhere along the side of the harbour, but to his dismay, it turned and headed straight out toward the mouth. Wherever the barge dumped its load, it wasn’t anywhere nearby. He hoped the garbage men didn’t just take it all out to sea and dump it there.
‘I think we need to get off this thing,’ he said. ‘And soon.’
He looked around, hoping for inspiration. The barge was moving at quite a clip and they were headed for deep water, the land receding rapidly into the distance. They had no hope of swimming for shore. What if they jumped overboard near another boat and signalled for rescue? But there were no other boats berthed nearby. They were travelling up a wide shipping channel; it was not a place for swimmers to be, especially when they were swimmers who couldn’t swim. Big ships could run them down without ever seeing them.
He heard a shout. He turned; a crewman had appeared from the bridge. They’d been seen. The crewman was clambering along a catwalk, moving purposefully towards them.
‘They’ll make us go back!’ Blossom hissed.
Desperately, Pod looked around for something, anything, that would help them escape.
A marker buoy floated not too far off, marking the edge of the shipping lane. It wasn’t much, but it was afloat. ‘Jump!’ he said in desperation. ‘Make for that thing!’
‘You know I can’t swim!’ Blossom cried.
‘Jump!’ Pod shouted.
He leaped, and after a moment, Blossom leaped after him. He scrabbled in the water, paddling frantically until his fingers brushed something solid. He grabbed for it—it was the rope holding the buoy in place—and held on, breathing a sigh of relief, but then Blossom landed on him, a clambering, panicking wild thing, pushing his head under as she struggled to stay on the surface. Pod almost lost his grip on the rope as he tried to right himself, Blossom fighting him in her fear.
‘Grab on to the buoy!’ he spluttered. She floundered and fought until she managed to get a hand onto the buoy, then wrapped her arms around it, and only then did she relinquish her grip on him.
Pod turned to see what the barge was doing. To his relief, it was moving on, although the crewman was still standing there watching them.
Pod gave him a half-hearted wave, not sure what else to do. The crewman crinkled his brow, shaking his head, but made no further move towards them. The barge continued on its way.
Pod watched it until he was sure it was not coming back for them, then tried to work out what to do next. He scanned the harbour, and to his huge relief, spotted theSunfish lying at anchor. It was still a long way away but they were at least on the right side of the shipping channel. Now all he had to do was get there.
‘I wish this thing had a motor,’ Blossom said.
That gave Pod an idea. ‘We’ve got legs,’ he said.
Using his pocket knife, he cut the rope holding the buoy in place, turned it toward the distant shape of the Sunfish, and began to kick.
It was not easy and the buoy did not steer very straight, but slowly and patiently, Pod kicked the two of them and their buoy towards the boat. Just as he was thinking he could not go on much longer, something splashed near him.
It was a life preserver. He looked up and saw a wonderful sight: Will standing on the deck, holding the other end of the rope.
‘Who wants to go first?’ Will said.
The Lucky Lady
Pod scrambled onto the deck. Blossom had climbed up ahead of him and was standing on the deck of the Sunfish, looking around her. She turned to him and said, ‘This boat is
