SHE felt cold. But hugging her made him feel warm.
“You’re—you’re alive!” Max screamed. “You’re alive you’re alive!”
“But not ready to party . . . just yet.” Alex blinked. She looked left and right, coughed, and then turned on her side and spat up more water. “We’re here, right? The island at the port side of tourbillon d’eau?”
“Yes.” Max hooked his arms under her shoulders and gently dragged her up the shore, away from the water that lapped over her legs. They rested on a couple of large rocks, not far from the ridge of pine trees that led deeper into the island. The rain had stopped, but the rock was still slippery.
“What are you smelling?” Alex asked.
“The good things,” Max said. “But they’re making me hungry.”
Alex laughed. “I smell seaweed. Max, is Basile here?”
Max shook his head. “I haven’t seen him. Maybe he’s in the woods. He said he was going to make us lunch.”
Alex didn’t nod. Her face grew sadder. She looked out to sea and didn’t speak for a long time. “He was really weak, Max,” she said finally. “His leg wasn’t working. I think he had a pretty serious concussion too.”
“But he told us he was feeling strong,” Max said.
“He was lying,” Alex said. “He wanted us to swim to safety. He checked to see if you had your valuable specimen. He was saying things like he was sure he’d never see us again. He knew that you and I had a chance if we went together. If we’d fussed over him and tried to make sure he was safe, none of us might have made it.”
Max looked out to sea. “He sacrificed himself.”
“I think so. Yeah.”
Her eyes were watery. She held Max close, but they didn’t take their gaze from sea. It was just too hard to believe. Max hoped that somehow the big guy would suddenly surface with a great big “Haw!”
Finally Alex stood and turned to look into the woods. “We need to get warmer, Max. Start a fire maybe.”
“Do you think someone will rescue us?” Max said.
Alex nodded. “We’ve seen settlements up in this area on maps. Which means supplies have to get here. Which means shipping.”
She reached into her wet suit and pulled out the waterproof bag Basile had given her. Inside was a box of matches and some kindling made of specially treated wood. Together she and Max gathered the driest wood they could find, buried under great big deadfalls. They piled it on the rocky shore, just at the edge of the woods.
It took a long time to get the fire going. The wood let off a lot of thick smoke. But it felt good and smelled better than good. As the aroma seeped into their nostrils, Max and Alex huddled together for warmth.
“Are you tired?” Alex asked.
“No,” said Max, before his eyes dropped shut.
Max didn’t realize they’d both fallen asleep until the sun woke him up. He had to squint against the light, shielding his eyes with his arm. The storm had moved on, and the sun was low in the sky, peeking out from behind a scrim of fluffy clouds. “Alex, wake up.”
“I was dreaming about summer vacation,” she moaned. “I’m going back to sleep.”
Max smiled.
She would be starving when she finally woke up. They hadn’t really eaten in twenty-four hours. The thought made him imagine a plate of eggs and bacon, and his mouth filled with saliva. If they were going to survive, they’d need to be like pioneers. Pick berries and catch fish from streams with their bare hands. He had read about how to do those things.
Max stood up and turned toward the island’s interior.
Who knew? There might even be people here. A camp, maybe, or even a small settlement.
In the light, the place was less scary than it had seemed hours ago. They’d fallen asleep at the top of the shore, near a copse of dense bushes. Behind them, the ground rose into a thick growth of low, green-gray scrub brush, dotted with gnarled trees and a few pines.
On the positive side, his legs were no longer numb. On the negative side, some of the thorns had even cut through his wet suit.
He walked to the top of the hill, where the land leveled off. He was now at the edge of a thicker forest that led into the island’s interior. Berries of all sizes dotted the bushes, and his mouth began to water again. Most of them looked like blueberries and raspberries. He had read about how to tell those apart from poison berries.
He pulled the goggles from around his neck and held them by the strap. They would have to be his bucket. As he began picking berries, he tossed some in. And ate some.
There were no paths here, so Max made his own, taking a big stick and whacking away as much underbrush as he could. After a few feet, he looked back and felt a wave of panic. Everything looked the same. He knew that if he went any farther, he’d never find the way back.
He put down his berry-filled goggles, unzipped his wet suit, and felt a rush of freezing cold. Quickly he reached into his pants pocket and found a few slightly soggy receipts left over from the shop at Piuli Point. He could rip them into small pieces and use them as markers—jamming each piece into a tree along the way with a stick. Even small white markers stood out. This was a smart idea.
As Max walked, the tree cover grew thicker. His goggles filled with berries, and so did his stomach. He had no idea how much time had gone by, but by now he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to find people.
At least he had enough for both him and Alex to eat.
As he turned to go back, he noticed a shift of light in the woods just ahead—the soft yellow glow of a clearing. His heart thumped. A clearing could mean an encampment.
He pinned his last paper marker to a tree, leaned the walking stick against it, and balanced the goggle-pail on the stick.
Another minute wouldn’t hurt.
Trudging through the brush, he stopped at the clearing’s edge. It wasn’t an encampment, but an almost perfectly round circular area at the top of a ridge. There wasn’t much special about it. But looking beyond, he could see the sea winking at him through the tree cover. He had reached another shore.
He turned, deciding what to do. He could follow the markers back through the trees and brambles, or he could instead go down to the shore and follow it around, back the way he’d come. Either would bring him to Alex. He liked the shore idea better. Lots of rocks, but no thorns.
He began walking across the clearing toward the water. The ground was sunken, the soil gravelly and sparse. It was as if a house had been in the clearing and suddenly disappeared from sight. His foot clipped something hard, and he tripped, landing hard on his left hip.
Groaning with pain, he sat up. He kicked the rock that had tripped him.
But it wasn’t a rock. It was a piece of metal, jagged and broken.
He looked around the clearing. There were other pieces of metal lying around, rusted and corroded. On all fours, he began digging around the piece at the center, the one that had tripped him. It was a part of something bigger, but what?
A crashed plane, maybe. In which case there might be food aboard. Cookies, peanuts, or pretzels. Or even the stuff you had to pay for.
His mouth began to water as he grabbed one of the loose shards of metal. It was about the size of a shovel. He began digging.
And digging.
The bigger piece of metal, the one that had tripped him, went deep. At its base, it widened into what looked like the metal frame of the plane. The deeper he got, the softer the soil was. He worried about Alex. She might be awake now. She would be wondering where he’d gone. But he was curious. Just a few inches more . . .
“Max? What are you doing?”
Max looked up with a start. Alex was standing on the rocky shore by the water, looking up at him.
“Alex!” he blurted. “Sorry. I was trying to get us something to eat—”
“I thought you were taken by wolves!” she said, trudging up to meet him.
“I found something! Come up here, this is so weird.”
Alex’s eyes widened when she saw Max’s excavation. She grabbed another small metallic shard, knelt by his side, and dug in.
They worked silently, concentrating, focusing all their strength. Neither of them knew how much time had gone by, but it felt like days. Every few minutes revealed something new—a wire like an antenna, a section of a rounded hull, the broken remains of a long pipe with broken pieces of glass.
“This looks like a telescope,” Max said, holding the pipelike thing up to the sun.
Alex was digging furiously. “Max, look at this!” she cried out.
Her tool was uncovering a section of the hull that contained the rusted remains of white lettering. Max jumped in to help, digging like crazy, until they both had to stop to catch their breath.
They sat back, staring at the word that glinted against the golden rays of the low-slung sun:
NAUTILUS
“I don’t believe this . . .” Max said. “So . . . a plane crashed here that was named after the Nautilus. What kind of coincidence is that?”
Alex shook her head slowly. “I don’t think it’s a plane, Max.”
“What else could it be?” Max said.
“Jules Verne sent us here. He did that for a reason.”
Max stared at the word. “You think this is the submarine from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea? But that’s a work of fiction.”
“Verne was here, Max,” Alex said. “And so was the real Nemo. If Nemo existed in real life, then maybe the Nautilus did too. It was a real submarine. It had to be.”
Max sat back, catching his breath. “But then what’s it doing here, buried on dry land?”
Alex smiled. She held up her little digging utensil. “Cousin, there’s only one way to find out.”