Chapter 5

Going down.

Caught on a sinking boat, every particle of Beck’s body wanted to leap off. But common sense told him it still had a few minutes left, and maybe he could do something to help? No survivor ever achieved anything by panicking. You had to stay on top of the situation.

What had they hit? he wondered. Jian had been so confident, and then – crash. But that wasn’t important right now. Survive this, and they would have all the time they wanted to ask why.

His eyes fixed on a pair of life buoys tied to the stern rail, fastened with knots that could be released with a couple of tugs. They were shaped like giant letter ‘U’s, made of plastic-covered foam. Okay, those would be needed. He jumped down into the flooded cockpit and stood on what used to be the doors of the side lockers beneath the benches, so that the water came up to his knees. He pulled the life buoys free and carried them with him as he clambered back up onto the side of the yacht.

Ju-Long was speaking rapidly to Jian in Chinese, with gestures at the water. Jian nodded. Ju-Long knelt and pushed her face into the water while she fumbled with something below the surface. Jian waited, seething with impatience and his useless arm.

“She is trying to get the life raft,” he said by way of explanation to Beck, and Beck understood. The raft was in a hard plastic shell the size of a water barrel, tied to the roof of the cabin. Once it was released it would open up and inflate itself automatically.

But the buckles that fastened the straps were on the other side of the boat – underwater. Ju-Long reared her head up suddenly, with water streaming from her face. She gasped, took a deep breath and plunged herself back under before either Beck or Jian could say anything. She would be doing it all by feel – Beck knew what it was like trying to see underwater without a mask, with the salt turning your eyes raw. It was next to impossible. But he also knew she wouldn’t stop trying. She was never one to panic – she analysed what was needed, with a cool head, and went for it. In the jungle she had been the first one to say out loud that they had to go for help. Her first thought was always for how she could help others.

The sea washed over his shoes. They still stood on the side of the cabin and almost all the boat was under. Ju-Long suddenly brought her head up again, gasping for breath.

“I can’t reach…”

“Never mind,” Beck said quickly, grabbing her before she went back for a third, futile effort. He cocked an eye at the island – it couldn’t be more than a hundred metres away. “We can swim it – right, Jian?”

Jian was the captain and the final decision to abandon ship had to be his. Jian gazed helplessly at the island, and at the boat sinking beneath his feet, and nodded without speaking.

“Here…” Beck said. He pushed one of the U-shaped life buoys under Jian’s armpits. The older boy hissed with pain as he was forced to raise his broken arm up, but then it was done.

“Just lie down,” Beck said, giving him a gentle push to back up his words. Jian struggled to resist at first, until he realised what Beck was doing. He sat back and the buoy simply floated him off Dolphin’s hull.

Beck chucked the other buoy into the water, and he and Ju-Long dived in after it. If he had been wearing anything bulky then he would have stripped it off first, but the clothes and shoes he had were light enough not to matter. What counted was getting off the boat before it took them down with it.

The water was cool – under any other circumstances it would have been refreshing. They popped up beside Jian and grabbed hold of the buoy between them. They trod water and turned to look back at the yacht.

Heavy bubbles heaved around the sinking boat. By now, only the tip of the mast – the crosstrees that jutted out on either side, and the radar reflector – stuck out of the water, not quite level with the surface. The angle of the mast slowly grew steeper again as the boat sank beneath it. It stopped moving with about three metres showing, sticking up at an angle that was about twenty degrees off the vertical. Dolphin must have settled on the bottom at a depth of about ten metres.

Jian was still in a daze, staring at the top of the mast. Ju-Long and Beck, not feeling much better, clung onto their buoy and gazed at where the yacht had been.

Concentrate, concentrate, Beck told himself. It wasn’t the first time calamity had struck suddenly. He made himself run through the options in his head.

There was a radio in the cabin, but everything had happened too quickly to send off a distress call. And there were distress flares in the cockpit lockers which could have been used to get the attention of rescuers – but, again, too quickly. Even if they could dive down to the boat – he would have to think about that – the radio would be useless by now. The flares, probably not so much. They were in sealed metal tubes, watertight. If he could get at them.

He glanced over at the island. It had looked closer when he was still on the boat. At sea level, with his eyes only a couple of inches above the water, it looked a lot further. But it was where they had to be. It was so close that it was the obvious destination to get to, and they should do it before the tide turned and swept them away.

“Let’s get moving,” he said. Ju-Long nodded, and spoke to Jian in Chinese. Then she said it again, more sharply to get his attention. He seemed to snap back into the real world.

“Can you swim?” Beck asked. Jian’s face was taut and pale, and he still held his teeth together unless he absolutely had to say something. But he nodded.

“I still have legs.”

“Okay… Hang on…”

There were rope handles around the edges of the buoys so that multiple survivors could hang onto each one. Beck untoggled one from his buoy, threaded it through a handle on Jian’s, and reattached it to his own. Now the two buoys were linked and no one would be left behind.

“Let’s go, then.”

Jian gave a last look back at the tip of the mast, still poking bravely above the waves. Then he started to kick his away from the wreck with firm thrusts of his legs. His face was set in agony but he never made a sound.

It took a long time for the island to draw near. Salt water splashed against Beck’s face and into his eyes. He could feel the surges of the waves through the water, half the time pulling them closer to the island, half the time pushing them back, so that it felt like they were making no progress at all. The steep sides that Beck had seen from the boat looked even harsher from surface level, and the island towered out of the water above them.

But, over the sound of their splashing feet, Beck’s ears picked up the sound of water hitting rocks. They were drawing closer, bit by bit, and he could feel the invisible force of the swell, picking him up and letting him down again. He craned his neck, trying to make himself as high up as he could to get a better view of what lay ahead, and saw a wave dashing itself into foaming pieces on the boulders around the island’s base. He remembered the layers of rocks and boulders. They would be harsh and unforgiving. They could tear the bottom of a boat out, just as easily as break bones.

He saw the look of calculation on Jian’s face – the grim set to the older boy’s jaw as he squared up to the near certainty of his broken arm bashing against the rocks, and a lot more pain.

“Okay,” Beck said grimly. “We’re going to have to time this just right…”

Even as he spoke, he felt the next wave lifting them up and towards the island.