Pirate - Duncan Falconer [81]
She didn’t bother to ask why.
He pulled out a length of the line, looped it through the back of her harness and tied it off several times.
She turned to face him again, finding the line that went from her back to the reel on his chest. ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘We won’t lose each other.’
‘That’s part of the idea. It’s to keep us together, but from a long way apart.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m going to go for a swim. Due north. You’re going to stay here. There’s about two kilometres of fishing line here. When I get to the end of the line, we’re going to keep it nice and tight.’
‘You’re going to be two kilometres away?’
‘Yes. Any boat that passes in between us will snag us. That gives us quite a large catchment area.’
She thought about the concept, trying to see the operation in her mind’s eye. ‘What do we do if we get snagged?’
‘We get dragged behind the ship,’ he said, like it was obvious.
‘Yes, but. Then what?’
‘Well. We try and get the attention of someone on board.’
‘But if the ship snags the middle of the line, we’ll be a kilometre away from the back of it.’
‘Hence the reel,’ he said, raising it out of the water for her to see. ‘I reel us in, or me.’
She continued to stare at him, trying to see the plan.
‘It has to be better than just floating here together,’ he said.
She decided it was insane. But he was doing what he had done from the moment she had met him. He moved seamlessly from precarious step to precarious step with one perilous plan followed by another impossible one. This one was the craziest yet but he had pulled it out of the rubbish found on a beaten-up Somali fishing boat.
‘It’s brilliant,’ she said. ‘No, I really think it’s crazy brilliant.’
‘May I have another drink of water?’
She handed the container to him and he took a long slug before giving it back to her. He looked at the pirate vessel. The lights appeared to be the same size as they had been a few minutes earlier. He suspected they had caught up with the fishing boat.
‘If this doesn’t work out, we probably won’t see each other again,’ he said, his tone serious.
She looked into his eyes. She suspected it wasn’t the first time he had said such a thing to someone.
‘Hypothermia is as pleasant as drowning,’ he reminded her.
‘Without the panic.’
‘And you wake up in another life.’
She found a little smile. She had been so close to death so many times in the last few days it no longer had such a disabling effect. She felt sad because he was finally leaving her. She had come to rely on him completely.
‘I’ll be on the end of the line if you need me,’ he said, like he had heard her. ‘Good luck.’
He decided he was going to miss her in a way. Companionships made in these kind of circumstances were unlike any others. They had forged a bond between them. If they both were somehow to survive this, they would never forget each other.
He leaned back, looked up at the night sky and kicked his feet.
‘You too,’ she said, though he couldn’t have heard her. His hands joined in the stroke and he rode the swell as he moved away.
She never took her eyes off him. He remained visible all of the time at first, then only when he rode the peaks of the swell. Every few seconds she felt a tug on the line. Soon he had disappeared completely and she was all alone.
She looked around for signs of the pirate boat but could see none. The horizon was brightening, the sun about to emerge any moment.
She felt like she had passed through another significant porthole in her life. Maybe because she was on her own again. As she looked around her, she believed in her heart that it would be the final chapter in her story. She wasn’t going to be surrounded by a loving family like she had always imagined. It was an ending she would never have predicted.
The fishing line tugged on her harness and she smiled. She wasn’t quite alone. Not yet.
Stratton went into a zone as he lay back and kicked his legs while paddling his arms. He watched the reel slowly turning as the line paid out. He thought he might still see