Читать книгу Beyond the Barrier Reef - Christopher Cummings - Страница 14

Chapter 7

DESERT ISLAND

For the next twenty minutes Andrew and Carmen remained lying in the shallows on the south side of the sand cay. Only when the game fishing boat was so small that it was hard to make out what type of vessel it was did Andrew crawl up out of the water and kneel on the dry sand while he took off his BCD and air tank. Placing those down he peeked over the low sand ridge to make a final check.

“We won’t take any chances. We won’t show ourselves or walk around until it is out of sight,” he said.

“Suits me,” Carmen agreed as she sat on the beach and rubbed her feet.

Andrew unbuckled his weight belt and took his mask and snorkel from around his neck. Then he lay back on the warm sand and broke into a fit of shivering.

“Are you sick?” Carmen queried anxiously.

“No, just worn out and feeling a bit battered,” Andrew replied. In truth he felt very scared and totally exhausted. For the next few minutes neither spoke. It was only when he heard Carmen stand up that Andrew asked, “Can you still see them?”

“Yes, but they are just a speck on the horizon,” Carmen answered.

Andrew nodded and sighed with relief. But he quickly found that the fear of the men had been replaced by a gnawing sense of apprehension.

Now we have to be rescued, he thought. In the back of his mind was the knowledge that he and Carmen were now in dire peril from the natural environment. We are cast away, he thought, on a desert isle with no food or water.

Carmen was obviously thinking the same thing as she said, “Well, this is the original desert isle. Not even a blade of grass, never mind the coconut tree they always draw in the cartoons.”

Andrew could only agree. “Certainly bare,” he said, his eyes squinting against the glare while he scanned the few metres of white sand.

“No shade,” Carmen added, “Or water.”

And it was the water that most worried Andrew. Already he had a real thirst. If nobody comes along within a day or two we will die from thirst or heat stroke, he thought gloomily.

Two years before, during the Cadet Annual Camp which had been held in Townsville, he and Carmen had done a two day Sea Survival training course on a rocky island in Halifax Bay and it was thirst and heat which had predominated, followed by exposure.

The heat stroke concept was reinforced now by his own bodily discomfort. Lying on the hot dry sand in his wetsuit was now making him sweat. With a groan Andrew rolled over and struggled to his knees.

“I need to get out of my wetsuit for a while,” he said. “It is too hot.”

Carmen agreed, and both stood and unzipped and peeled off their wetsuits. While he did that Andrew scanned the sea to the north and was surprised that he could still see the mast of the game fishing boat as a thin black line against the sky. The inconsequential thought crossed his mind that he had read somewhere that during the age of steam when British warships painted their upper masts black to hide the soot from the coal dust the French had painted their upper masts white to make them almost invisible against the sky.

Having pulled off his wetsuit Andrew laid it carefully beside his other diving gear. Then he twisted to look at his speargun wound. To his surprise it was just a small hole that was almost completely closed up. There was certainly no seepage of blood. Nor was the exit wound bleeding either. But it certainly hurt when he moved.

Carmen came and studied the wound, her fingers gentle as she dabbed around the puffy flesh. “I think being in the sea water so long has caused the flesh to swell and close up,” she said.

“That should be good shouldn’t it?” Andrew asked. They certainly had no bandages or First Aid stores.

“I think so. The salt will have certainly helped as an antiseptic,” Carmen agreed.

“Well I am getting back in the water again for a minute. It is getting bloody hot,” Andrew said. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was five to one. The sun was high overhead and blazing down with tropical intensity.

“I will join you, but only for a few minutes,” Carmen agreed.

Both walked down into the shallow water and crouched to splash water over themselves. It was wonderfully cool for a few minutes but then Andrew began to shiver. Carmen lay face down and said, “Well, what exactly did you see?”

Andrew related all the detail he could remember, adding, “They are obviously smugglers.”

“Smuggling what I wonder?” Carmen mused.

“Something very valuable. Something worth committing murder for,” Andrew replied bitterly. Once again, he shuddered at the images of violent death that swirled in his mind.

“Drugs maybe?” Carmen suggested.

“Or guns or something like that,” Andrew added.

“Why guns? Who would want guns in Australia,” Carmen queried.

Andrew shrugged. “Illegal weapons, like handguns for bank robbers, or automatic rifles for gun nuts,” he suggested. As he talked he felt his skin dry off and then begin to burn. He ducked into the water again and then stood up and limped back up to look around the horizon. Carmen joined him. There was no sign of the game fishing boat.

“Gone,” Andrew said.

“What do you think they will do with the dive boat?” Carmen asked.

“Sink it in deep water to get rid of the evidence,” Andrew replied grimly. Horrible images of the bodies of his friends being locked in the sinking vessel rose to cause him to shudder. Once again, he ran his tongue over lips that were starting to dry and crack, wishing he could have a drink. Then he gestured with his hands.

“I feel like we have been cheated. In all the cartoons the castaways on desert islands always have a single palm tree to sit under. We haven’t even got a bush.”

“No, you are right,” Carmen agreed. “But we had better make some sort of shelter or we are going to get horribly sunburnt.”

Andrew glanced at his already red skin and nodded. “Drinking water is more of a problem,” he replied.

“I know, but talking about it won’t help so let’s try to get under our wetsuits,” Carmen suggested.

So they sat on the damp sand rather than on the hotter dry sand and then covered their backs and heads with their wetsuits while trying to hold them up off their skin to provide shade but still allow a cooling breeze. It wasn’t very successful but it was better than nothing. Every ten minutes or so they both stood up and looked in all directions then went and lay in the sea for a minute.

“Tide is going out,” Andrew commented, indicating the numerous coral heads that were now exposed.

He then slowly scanned the whole horizon starting with the west. That showed nothing but a flat horizon line as they were so far from the coast not even the mountains were visible. And it was hard to look towards the west because the afternoon sun was now reflecting off the waves. Looking south across the Boat Passage showed no prospect of help. Beyond the water of the passage there were just the overlapping lines of coral that marked the Feathers Reefs. These extended off as far as he could see, surrounded by rock studded shallows.

No-one in their right mind would sail a ship through that unless he had to, he thought.

Andrew then looked to the east. First, he studied the deep water of the Boat Passage looking for any small spray of water that might indicate a submarine periscope, then for any large shadow under the water.

I’m being silly. They will be long gone, he thought. They would want to be back out in the open ocean beyond the Barrier Reef before the tidal flow got too strong.

His gaze then roved over the huge area of tidal shallows and exposed reefs inside the Longbow Reef. The dark bumps of the two wrecks on the northern end of it showed clearly and he even detected a few spurts of white as large waves broke on the outer reef. What he was really looking for was a ship on the horizon but there was none.

Andrew shook his head with anxiety and then looked at the tiny square of the stone building on distant Prescott Island.

Our base camp is there but I didn’t see any water, he thought.

The camp had been set up to make a change from being on the dive boat. Looking further to the left his gaze followed around the long sweep of reefs that bordered the northern side of the Challenger Channel. Still nothing.

Carmen stood up and joined him as he stared out northwards. “See anything?” she asked.

Andrew shook his head and tried to keep the worry out of his voice and off his face.

“No. I was hoping some ship might pass through the Challenger Channel,” he replied.

“Not much hope of that,” Carmen answered. “All the commercial trade goes through further north.”

Andrew knew that. The only big ships he was aware of that regularly passed eastwards through the Great Barrier Reef out into the Coral Sea were the bulk carriers that brought nickel ore from French New Caledonia to Townsville. They used the Flinders Passage as did most of the other ships like the coal carriers from Abbot Point.

“There might be a tourist launch,” he said.

Carmen shook her head. “Not likely. Not only is this a restricted conservation zone but it is too far from any port where tourists might come from like Townsville or Bowen and any boats from the Whitsunday resorts will go to the reefs just near them,” she said.

Andrew nodded. During their dive course they had gone out to Wheeler Reef from Townsville and it had taken nearly ten hours. He had been told that most tourists went to places like Cairns where the reefs were only one or two hours travel. As Cairns was his home town he was well aware of that and of the rivalry between Cairns and Townsville. But it was very disheartening to contemplate the unpleasant fact that there was a strong possibility that no vessel of any sort might pass near them for many days, even weeks.

We will be long dead by then, he thought grimly.

Carmen shielded her eyes against the glare and scanned the sea to the north and west. “There won’t be any commercial fishermen in this area and probably no recreational fishers either,” she said.

“No, so all we can hope for is another research vessel or some passing tourists,” Andrew replied. It also came to him that their little island was in the wrong place.

It is over half a kilometre to the north edge of the reef near the Challenger Channel. A ship could pass through and not even see us, he thought.

That led to more unpleasant thoughts. To try to reach the north end of the reef would be a painful and difficult undertaking. With the reef exposed it would mean walking across the coral with all the risks of injury that entailed.

And if the tide is in and we have to swim the current will make things really hard and we will be very difficult to spot in the water, he thought gloomily. The thought of going back into that water chilled him as all his usual phobias about sharks resurfaced.

It was demoralising, but he did not want to voice his doubts. But what he was now painfully aware of was that he was not only very hot and thirsty but was getting badly sunburnt. A glance showed his arms, chest and shoulders to be bright red. His skin felt tight and tender and he shivered and knew it was from feeling sick, not from the breeze.

We are really in trouble, he thought. Dread clutched at his insides and he began to quietly pray.

To try to get some shade Carmen suggested they dig into the east side of the sand cay at the steepest part. They tried this but quickly gave it up as the sand was so dry that it kept crumbling into the hole almost as fast as they dug it. As Andrew pointed out the effort was making them sweat more than if they just sat quietly. By this time their arms were too tired to hold the wetsuits up as shade cover so instead they just sat with the suits draped over their head and back and faced away from the sun.

After a while Andrew walked around to the other side of the cay, cooling his feet in the puddles as he went. Once he was out of sight of his sister he relieved himself. To his concern he had very little urine and it was a bright yellow colour.

That is not good, he told himself. It should be almost clear.

The image of the colour chart they had been shown on the Sea Survival course rose to cause more chest-tightening apprehension.

Thinking about the possibility of dying of thirst sent little tremors of anxiety around Andrew’s stomach.

Like rats scrabbling for food, he thought. And then his stomach grumbled as he had not had lunch. It is a long time since breakfast, he thought. But his rational mind told him that food was not critical. People can go for thirty or forty days before they die of hunger. Thirst will kill us in a day or two.

Once again, he scanned the horizon in all directions and found it empty. Then he became conscious again of the savageness of the tropical sun as it burned his skin. After splashing some water on it to cool it he walked back to re-join Carmen. She gave him a smile, but Andrew could see the worry in her eyes and knew she was scared as well.

No sooner had he sat down and pulled his wetsuit up over his shoulders that he heard an aircraft. He went tense and cupped his hand to his ear. Yes, an aircraft! he thought. He sprang up and began searching the sky. Then the sound came more distinctly above the whiffle of the gentle breeze and he scanned the sky to the northeast.

“There it is!” Andrew cried, pointing northwards at a tiny spec that was growing rapidly larger. His hopes went rocketing up and he sighed with relief and began to wave his arms. Carmen joined him and they both signalled frantically.

It was a Coastwatch aircraft—but it was at least five or six kilometres to the east. It appeared to fly directly over Prescott Island and then headed south across the Challenger Channel towards the wrecks on Longbow Reef.

“It isn’t coming this way,” Andrew commented, his hopes clashing with apprehension.

It was quickly obvious that the aircraft was not searching for them. It kept flying southwards in a direct line and was soon over Longbow Reef. Carmen let out a little sob of disappointment and then said, “We need a mirror to attract their attention.”

“Mirror?” Andrew replied, his thoughts now in a jumble as fear began to overwhelm hope.

“Face mask!” Carmen cried.

They both dashed back to where the diving equipment lay. Carmen got there first and snatched up the facemask. Then she held it close to her with her right hand and extended her left hand to arm’s length with a finger upright. She then aimed the finger at the aircraft and began moving the goggles of the facemask to try to get sunlight to reflect off them.

“Get the sunlight on your finger!” Andrew cried, remembering the instructor on the Sea Survival course. He reached towards the facemask, his fingers twitching with anxiety. An almost frantic urge to snatch the facemask from Carmen welled up and he had to consciously restrain himself.

She is a Chief Petty Officer. She has been trained at this stuff too,’ he reminded himself.

“The angle’s all wrong!” Carmen wailed.

Andrew understood the problem. The sun was coming from almost directly behind them and she was finding it very hard to get anything lined up where her own shadow did not block the sun’s rays. Nor could she get any strong reflections and every second the aircraft flew further away southwards.

Within a minute the aircraft was just a speck in the southern sky. Andrew felt a sickening feeling of dread grip his stomach as his hopes came sliding down.

Carmen shook her head and muttered, “Sorry!”

“Not your fault, sis. We will be ready next time and know what to do,” Andrew replied. But it was a terrible blow and they stood in silence and watched until the aircraft vanished. Then the sound of its engine died away. For something to say to try to lift his sister’s spirits Andrew said, “I wish they’d flown over when that sub was here. They might have spotted it. They would certainly have seen the crook’s boat and would have come to fly around it to investigate a fishing boat in a restricted zone.”

“Yes, they would have,” Carmen agreed.

Andrew thought of submarines and things he had read about them. He said, “I read somewhere that during the Second World War the Japanese never sent a submarine inside the Great Barrier Reef. I always used to wonder about that because they certainly sent them to sink ships off the coast of New South Wales and South Queensland.”

“Yes, they sank that hospital ship, the Centaur out from Brisbane,” Carmen agreed.

“Now that I think about it I can see why they didn’t come inside the Great Barrier Reef. It isn’t that the water inside the reef isn’t deep enough. It is. Their problem was navigation. To try to find one of the gaps in the reef at night would be almost impossible, even by sonar and during the day they would have to be at periscope depth to try to spot the waves breaking on the reef and that would make them very visible to our anti-sub aircraft,” he said.

Carmen nodded. “Even in daylight it would have been pretty tricky finding an opening,” she said. “They would really need to be good navigators and pick the tides because there are some really strong currents through some of these channels.”

An idea came to Andrew and he clicked his fingers and pointed. “You’re right! They would’ve needed a visual reference. No GPS navigation in those days. That’s why they’ve chosen this place.”

“Why?” Carmen asked.

“Because there are some very good visual references. There is the stone building on Prescott Island and the two wrecks on Longbow Reef. They would give very good markers to get accurate approach bearings. They could then come into the Challenger Channel on the sonar and change course to come up the Boat Passage on the top of the tide using the smuggler’s boat as a leading mark,” Andrew explained.

“I think you might be right,” Carmen agreed. “But the tide would need to suit.”

“The Coastwatch aircraft would be their biggest worry,” Andrew went on.

Carmen frowned. “Are you suggesting that they might have a spy inside the Coastwatch organization to tell them when the flights are due?” she suggested.

“Maybe, but they could also do it with less risk by having a couple of small boats with radios, one to the south and one to the north to give them warning,” Andrew answered.

“Possibly. I wonder how big their organization is and where they base the sub for refuelling and repairs,” Carmen said.

“One of the Pacific islands, in a failed state like the Solomons or Bougainville maybe,” Andrew suggested.

“That’s possible. It is about five hundred nautical miles across the Coral Sea. If they can do about twelve to fifteen knots they could cover the thousand miles there and back in about… er… um.” she did a mental calculation. “In about thirty to forty hours one way.”

“A couple of days to cross,” Andrew added. “And you said that Ivanoff said something about five days. That figures. They could do that. They could be back in five days’ time.”

Carmen pressed her lips into a hard line then said, “They might be, but if we don’t get rescued or don’t find water we are not likely to be alive to see them.”

Andrew swallowed as fear churned his stomach. “I know,” he replied. “But I didn’t want to frighten you by saying it.”

“We need to face facts little brother,” Carmen answered grimly. “Now, let’s cool off in the water and then sit and try to stay calm and try not to sweat too much.”

So they did. For the next few hours they sat with their backs to the afternoon sun. Neither talked much, trying to prevent their mouths from drying out. Andrew became more and more sunburnt and so did Carmen until both were lobster red. That caused shivering and a general feeling of sickness. Allied to that was the effect of shock and apprehension. Andrew was really scared and knew it.

The sun sank ever so slowly, burning at them with a horrible intensity. As much as possible they hunched under their wetsuits to gain a little shade. Time dragged. 1500 slowly changed to 1600. The tide ebbed further and further until all of the reef stood dry, a dark brown and black mass. The surrounding reefs also showed clearly.

This will be really dangerous to walk on if we have to,

Andrew thought, appreciating that he could not possibly walk on coral wearing his swim fins. The thought of trying to hurry over that jagged coral in bare feet made him shudder.

But there was no need. No vessel of any kind appeared. Andrew became thirstier and more uncomfortable and stopped sweating. His head ached and he felt nauseous. His tongue felt furry and seemed to fill his mouth and his eyes became sore. It took an effort of willpower not to rub at them as he knew that the dried salt in the corners would scratch the eyeballs. Blurred vision began to bother him and he knew he was entering serious heat stress.

Not heat exhaustion yet, he told himself, But by this time tomorrow it will be heat stroke.

Surreptitiously he studied Carmen to see how she was coping. She looked badly sunburnt and tired. Her face was drawn but it was the haggard look in her eyes that bothered him the most.

She is really hurting over Ella and Tristan, he decided.

That gave him a series of morbid flashbacks of death and rotting bodies. A crawly, sickening dread of dying crept within him until he felt he could not endure it any longer.

You’ve seen death before and you have faced death, he told himself. So get a grip and face up to it like a man.

That helped steady him and he settled to waiting and hoping. A glance at his watch told Andrew it was 1700.

Low tide, he told himself. The tide will start to come in now.

With that came the frightening thought that it would soon be dark—and that high tide was just before midnight. Andrew now wished he had studied the tide tables more carefully, but he was sure that the tide that night would be higher than the tide during the day.

The day tide was only about three metres, but I think tonight’s is nearly four metres.

With that he looked around and tried to estimate how high the sand cay was above the level of the earlier tide. To his dismay he decided that the dry sand stood only about half a metre above that level.

Oh, bloody hell! This might be a challenge! he thought.

The fear tightened its grip on his chest and stomach and he licked his lips and looked anxiously around the horizon.