Pirate - Duncan Falconer [82]
The reel still looked pretty full. With the tide and the swell he had no way of knowing how far he was from her. He amused himself with the thought of the possibility that after several hours he might even bump into her, having swum in a huge circle.
He looked to the east. The sun would be up very soon.
He dropped his head back and maintained an easy, relaxed stroke. It was a good time to think and take his mind off the problems. But as soon as he did, the same thoughts came nagging at him, the first of them being about Hopper.
He concentrated on clearing his head and focusing on his stroke as he moved easily through the water. It worked, for a while at least. He had no idea how much time had passed since he drifted off into a kind of trance. When next he looked at the reel, it was halfway empty and the sun had begun its slow rise above the horizon.
Then something else blew him out of his semi-dazed state of mind. He saw the silhouette of a vessel in the distance.
He let his feet drop below him and sat up in the water and stared at it, trying to figure out what type of craft it was and in which direction it was heading. After studying it for a good minute, he decided it wasn’t getting any smaller and was in fact growing in size, quite possibly heading towards him.
He felt a rush of adrenaline. Their first chance. He suddenly felt confident that even if they missed it there would be others. It couldn’t be much more than two or three hours since he had left the girl and a ship had already come into their vicinity.
The plan might not be as crazy as it seemed after all.
14
Stratton kept his eyes on the boat. It came on towards him. He realised he was seeing just a little more of the starboard side. Which meant it would pass by his right side, where the line stretched out towards the girl. He looked at the reel, still turning on his chest. It was about three-quarters empty.
There was a good chance the line would snag.
As the sun rose higher into the sky, Stratton could make out the shape of the superstructure. The bridge wings stuck out of the sides near the top like a stumpy crucifix. It had to be a cargo ship of some kind, a bulk carrier. Quite a large one.
He dropped his head back and paddled, deciding not to look at the boat for several minutes and just swim. Longer gaps between assessing its progress would provide a better picture.
He felt parched, not helped by the sea water that constantly splashed into his mouth. Sea water could turn a person insane before they died of thirst. If he missed this boat and all went wrong, he hoped the night cold would take him before that happened. There were so many ways to die in such a short period of time.
Another of which he was well aware of. He hadn’t overlooked the possibility that he and the girl wouldn’t be detected once they were trailing behind a snagged boat. He knew what it was like on board carriers like that. Minimal crew, and those on duty would usually be too busy to take the time to look outboard. The few people whose job it would be to look out to sea, namely those on the bridge, would concentrate forward. He hoped that this crew would be security conscious and have a lookout to the rear while transiting through hostile waters. But even then, if Stratton and the girl were being towed hundreds of metres behind the boat, they would be difficult if not impossible to see. And he wasn’t as confident as he had sounded about being able to reel them in closer. He did not expect either of them to last very long if they were being dragged. The water would constantly pass through their clothing, sucking the heat from their bodies. They could succumb to hypothermia in a short time indeed. They might also drown while being towed.
Nothing about it was going to be easy.
But he would rather die making an effort than lying around in the water doing nothing.
When he looked for the vessel again it had closed the distance a great deal more. He could make out individual