The hull was wide open, and the davits were slung outward with their empty pulley blocks waving as if to tantalize him. Through the huge gap that had been opened to pass the lifeboat, fierce gusts of wind were blowing, bringing flurries of spray. The taste of salt was already bitter in Johnny's mouth; soon he would know it only too well.
Sick at heart, he walked to the opening and looked out over the sea. It was night, but the Moon that had seen the beginning of his adventure still shone upon its ending. Only yards below, an angry sea was smashing against the side of the ship, and ever and again a wave came climbing up the hull and went swirling around his feet. Even if the Santa Anna was not shipping water elsewhere, she would soon be doing so here.
Somewhere, not far away, there was a muffled explosion, and the emergency lights flickered and died. They had served him just long enough, for he could never have found his way here in the darkness. But did it matter anyway? He was alone, in a sinking ship, hundreds of miles from land.
He peered out into the night, searching for some sign of the lifeboat, but the sea was empty. The launch could, of course, be standing by on the other side of the Santa Anna, and he would be unable to see it. This seemed the most likely explanation, for the crew would hardly have left the area while the ship was still afloat. Yet they had certainly wasted no time, so they must have known that the situation was serious. Johnny wondered if the Santa Anna was carrying a cargo of explosives or inflammables—and if so, just when it would go up.
A wave slapped against his face, blinding him with spray; even during these few minutes, the sea had crept appreciably higher. Johnny would not have believed that so large a ship could go down so quickly; but hoverships, of course, were very lightly built and were not designed for this sort of treatment. He guessed that the water would be level with his feet in about ten minutes.
He was wrong. Suddenly, without any warning, the Santa Anna checked her slow, regular wallow and gave a great lurch, like a dying animal trying to get to its feet for the last time. Johnny did not hesitate; some instinct told him that she was going down and that he had better get as far away as he could.
Bracing himself for the chill, he hit the water in a smooth, clean dive. Even as he went under, he was surprised to experience not cold, but warmth. He had forgotten that during these last few hours he had passed from winter into summer.
When he came to the surface, he started swimming with all his might, in his clumsy but effective overarm stroke. Behind him he heard monstrous gurglings and crashings, and a roaring sound as of steam escaping from a geyser. Abruptly, all these noises ceased; there was only the moaning of the wind and the hissing of the waves as they swept past him into the night. The tired old Santa Anna went down smoothly, without any fuss, and the backward suction that Johnny had feared never arrived.
When he was sure that it was all over, he started to tread water while he surveyed the situation, and the first thing that he saw was the lifeboat, less than half a mile away. He waved his arms and shouted at the top of his voice, but it was quite useless. The boat was already leaving; even had anyone been looking back, it was unlikely that he would have been spotted. And, of course, no one would have dreamed that there was another survivor to be picked up.
Now he was alone, beneath a yellow, westering Moon and the strange stars of the southern skies. He could float here for hours; the sea, he had already noticed, was much more buoyant than the fresh-water creeks in which he had learned to swim. But however long he stayed afloat, it would make no difference in the end. There was not one chance in a million that anybody would find him; his last hope had vanished with the departing lifeboat.
Something bumped into him, making him yelp with surprise and alarm. But it was only a piece of debris from the ship. The water around him, Johnny noticed, was full of floating objects. The discovery raised his spirits a little, for if he could make a raft, that would improve his chances considerably. Perhaps he might even drift to land, like those men who had ridden the Pacific currents on the famous Kon-Tiki, almost a century ago.
He began swimming toward the slowly swirling debris, and found that the sea had suddenly become much smoother. Oil oozing from the wreck had calmed the waves, which no longer hissed angrily, but rose and fell in sluggish undulations. At first their height had scared him, but now as he bobbed up and down with their passage, he found that they could do him no harm. Even in his present predicament, it was exciting to know that one could rise safely and effortlessly over the biggest wave.
Presently he was pushing his way among floating boxes, pieces of wood, empty bottles, and all sorts of small flotsam. None of this was any use to him; he wanted something big enough to ride on. He had almost given up all hope of finding it when he noticed a dark rectangle rising and falling in the swell, about fifty feet away.
When he reached it, he was delighted to find that it was a large packing case. With some difficulty, he scrambled aboard and found that it could carry his weight. The raft was not very stable, and had a tendency to capsize, until Johnny spread himself flat across it; then it rode the waves with about three inches to spare. In the brilliant moonlight, Johnny could read the stenciled letters across which he was lying. They said: "PLEASE
STORE IN A COLD, DRY PLACE."
Well, he was hardly dry, but he was certainly getting cold. The wind blowing across his wet clothes was making him feel uncomfortably chilly, but he would have to put up with this until the sun rose. He looked at his watch and was not surprised to see that it had stopped. Even so, the time it showed made no sense; then he remembered that he must have crossed many time zones since he stole aboard the ill-fated Santa Anna. By now, his watch would be at least six hours fast.
He waited, shivering on his little raft, watching the Moon go down and listening to the noises of the sea. Though he was worried, he was no longer badly frightened. He had had so many narrow escapes that he had begun to feel that nothing could harm him.
Even though he had no food or water, he was safe for several days. He refused to think further ahead than that.
The Moon slid down the sky, and the night grew darker around him. As it did so, he saw to his astonishment that the sea was ablaze with floating particles of light. They flashed on and off like electric signs, and formed a luminous lane behind his drifting raft. When he dipped his hand in the water, fire seemed to flow from his fingers.
The sight was so wonderful that for a moment he forgot his danger. He had heard that there were luminous creatures in the sea, but he had never dreamed that they existed in such countless myriads. For the first time, he began to glimpse something of the wonder and mystery of the great element that covered three quarters of the globe, and which now controlled his destiny.
The Moon touched the horizon, seemed to hover there for a moment, and then was gone.
Above him the sky was ablaze with stars—the ancient ones of the old constellations, the brighter ones that had been put there by man in the fifty years since he had ventured into space. But none of these were as brilliant as the stars that flashed beneath the sea in such billions that the raft appeared to float upon a lake of fire.
Even when the Moon had set, it seemed ages before the first sign of dawn. Then Johnny saw a faint hint of light in the eastern sky, watched eagerly as it spread along the horizon, and felt his heart leap as the golden rim of the sun pushed up over the edge of the world. Within seconds, the stars of sky and sea had vanished as if they had never existed, and day had come.
He had barely time to savor the beauty of the dawn when he saw something that robbed the morning of all its hope. Heading straight toward him out of the west, with a speed and purpose that chilled his blood, were dozens of gray, triangular fins.
Chapter 4
As those fins sliced toward the raft, cutting through the water with incredible speed, Johnny thought of all the gruesome tales he had read about sharks and shipwrecked sailors. He drew himself up into as little space as possible, at the center of the packing
case. It wobbled alarmingly, and he realized how small a push would be needed to turn it over. To his surprise, he felt little fear, only a kind of numbed regret and a hope that, if the worst came to the worst, it would all be over quickly. And it seemed a pity, too, that no one would ever know what had happened to him…
Then the water around the raft was full of sleek, gray bodies, switchbacking along the surface in a graceful roller-coaster motion. Johnny knew almost nothing about the creatures of the sea, but surely, sharks did not swim in this fashion. And these animals were breathing air, just as he was; he could hear them wheezing as they went by, and he caught glimpses of blowholes opening and closing. Why, of course—they were dolphins!
Johnny relaxed and no longer tried to hide himself in the middle of his raft. He had often seen dolphins in movies or on television, and he knew that they were friendly intelligent creatures. They were playing like children among the wreckage of the Santa Anna, butting at the floating debris with their streamlined snouts, making the strangest whistling and creaking noises as they did so. A few yards away, one had reared its head completely out of the water and was balancing a plank on its nose, like a trained animal in a circus act; it seemed to be saying to its companions; "Look at me—see how clever I am!"
The strange, unhuman but intelligent, head turned toward Johnny, and the dolphin dropped its plaything with an unmistakable gesture of surprise. It sank back into the water, squeaking with excitement, and a few seconds later, Johnny was surrounded by glistening, inquisitive faces. They were smiling faces, too, for the mouths of the dolphins seemed to be frozen in a kind of fixed grin—one so infectious that Johnny found himself smiling back at them.
He no longer felt alone; now he had companionship, even though it was not human and could do nothing to help him. It was fascinating to watch the leathery, dove-gray bodies moving around him with such effortless ease as they hunted among the debris of the Santa Anna. They were doing this, Johnny soon realized, purely out of playfulness and fun; they were more like lambs gamboling in a spring meadow than anything he had ever expected to find in the sea.
The dolphins continued to bob up and to look at him from time to time, as if making sure that he had not run away. They watched with great curiosity as he pulled off his sodden clothing and spread it to dry in the sun, and they seemed to be giving the matter careful thought when Johnny asked them solemnly: "Well, what shall I do now?"
One answer to that question was obvious: he had to arrange some shelter from the tropical sun before it roasted him alive. Luckily, this problem was quickly solved; he was able to build a little wigwam from some pieces of driftwood which he lashed together with his handkerchief and then covered with his shirt. When he had finished, he felt quite proud of himself, and hoped that his audience appreciated his cleverness.
Now he could do nothing but lie down in the shade and conserve his strength while the wind and the currents carried him to an unknown fate. He did not feel hungry, and though his lips were already dry, it would be several hours before thirst became a serious problem.
The sea was much calmer now, and low, oily waves were rolling past with a gentle, undulating motion. Somewhere Johnny had come across the phrase, "Rocked in the cradle of the deep." Now he knew exactly what it meant. It was so soothing, so peaceful here that he could almost forget his desperate position; he was content to stare at the blue sea and the blue sky, and to watch the strange yet beautiful animals that glided and swooped around him, sometimes hurling their bodies clear out of the water in the sheer joy of life…
Something jolted the raft, and he awoke with a start. For a moment he could hardly believe that he had been sleeping and that the sun was now almost overhead. Then the raft jerked again—and he saw why.
Four dolphins, swimming side by side, were pushing the raft through the water. Already it was moving faster than a man could swim, and it was still gaining speed. Johnny stared in amazement at the animals splashing and snorting only inches away from him; was this another of their games?
Even as he asked himself that question, he knew that the answer was No. The whole pattern of their behavior had changed completely; this was deliberate and purposeful.
Playtime was over. He was in the center of a great pack of the animals, all now moving steadily in the same direction. There were scores, if not hundreds, ahead and behind, to right and left, as far as he could see. He felt that he was moving across the ocean in the midst of a military formation—a brigade of cavalry.
He wondered how long they would keep it up, but they showed no signs of slackening.
From time to time, one of the dolphins would drop away from the raft, and another would immediately take its place, so that there was no loss of speed. Though it was very hard to judge how fast he was moving, Johnny guessed that the raft was being pushed along at over five miles an hour. There was no way of telling, however, whether he was moving north, south, east, or west; he could get no compass bearings from the almost vertical sun.
Not until much later in the day did he discover that he was heading toward the west, for the sun was going down in front of him. He was glad to see the approach of night, and looked forward to its coolness after the scorching day. By this time he was extremely thirsty; his lips were parched and cracked, and though he was tantalized by the water all around him, he knew that it would be dangerous to drink it. His thirst was so overpowering that he did not feel any hunger; even if he had some food, he would be unable to swallow it.
It was a wonderful relief when the sun went down, sinking in a blaze of gold and red.
Still the dolphins drove on into the west, beneath the stars and the rising Moon. If they kept this up all through the night, Johnny calculated, they would have carried him the best part of a hundred miles. They must have a definite goal, but what could it be? He began to hope that there was land not far away, and that for some unknown reason these friendly and intelligent creatures were taking him to it. But why they were going to all this trouble he could not imagine.
The night was the longest that Johnny had ever known, for his growing thirst would not allow him to sleep. To add to his distress, he had been badly sunburned during the day, and he kept twisting and turning on the raft in a vain attempt to find a comfortable position. Most of the time he lay flat on his back, using his clothes to protect the sore spots, while the Moon and stars crept across the sky with agonizing slowness.
Sometimes the brilliant beacon of a satellite would drift from west to east, traveling much more swiftly than any of the stars, and in the opposite direction. It was maddening to know that up on the space stations were men and instruments that could easily locate him—if they bothered to search. But, of course, there was no reason why they should.
At last the Moon went down, and in the brief darkness before dawn the sea once more came alight with phosphorescence. The graceful, superbly streamlined bodies all around the raft were outlined with fire; every time one of them shot into the air, the trajectory of its leap was a glowing rainbow in the night.
This time Johnny did not welcome the dawn; now he knew how pitiful his defenses were against the tropical sun. He re-erected his little tent, crept beneath it, and tried to turn his thoughts away from drink.
It was impossible. Every few minutes he found himself picturing cold milk shakes, glasses of iced fruit juice, water flowing from faucets in sparkling streams. Yet he had been adrift for not more than thirty hours; men had survived without water for much longer than that.
The only thing that kept up his spirits was the determination and energy of his escort.
The school still drove on into the west, carrying the raft before it with undiminished speed. Johnny no longer puzzled himself about the mystery of the dolphins' behavior; that was a problem that would solve itself in good time—or not at all.
And then, about midmorning, he caught his first glimpse of land. For many minutes he was afraid that it was merely a cloud on the horizon—but, if so, it was strange that it wa
s the only cloud in the sky and that it lay dead ahead. Before long he could not doubt that it was an island, though it seemed to float clear of the water, and the heat haze made its outlines dance and shimmer against the skyline.
An hour later, he could see its details clearly. It was long and low and completely covered with trees. A narrow beach of dazzling white sand surrounded it, and beyond the beach there seemed to be a very wide, shallow reef, for there was a line of white breakers at least a mile out at sea.
At first Johnny could see no signs of life, but at last, with great relief, he spotted a thin stream of smoke rising from the wooded interior. Where there was smoke there were human beings—and the water for which his whole body was now craving.
He was still several miles from the island when the dolphins gave him a bad shock; they were turning aside as if to by-pass the land that was now so close. Then Johnny understood what they were doing. The reef was too great an obstacle; they were going to outflank it and approach the island from the other side.
The detour took at least an hour, but Johnny's mind was at rest, now that he felt sure that he was nearing safety. As the raft and its untiring escort swung around to the western side of the island, he saw first a small group of boats at anchor, then some low white buildings, then a collection of huts with dark-skinned people moving among them. There was a fairly large community here, on this lonely speck in the Pacific.
Now at last the dolphins seemed a little hesitant, and Johnny got the impression that they were reluctant to go into the shallow water. They pushed the raft slowly past the anchored boats, then backed off as if to say, "It's up to you now."
Johnny felt an overwhelming impulse to say some words of thanks, but his mouth was too dry for speech. So he stepped quietly off the raft, found himself in water only waist deep, and waded ashore.
There were people running along the beach toward him, but they could wait. He turned toward the lovely, powerful creatures who had brought him on this incredible journey, and waved them a grateful farewell. Already they were turning back toward their home, in the deep water of the open sea.