Douglass was the poet of the group. At least, he was the only one who didn't look out the window during English lit.
And they would be returned to the shore relatively soon, unless they got caught and stranded in kelp, which was all along this coastline stretch of the Santa Barbara Channel, according to the small, laminated chart they had. That would be the final indignity. Three hunky sailors, suntanned and cool, with a busted rudder, chocolate Twix smears on their mouths, and a Hobie Cat with a proud red, orange, and yellow sail snarled in large bundles of seaweed.
The skies darkened, the planets and stars began to show, and the Hobie Cat continued to bob in the right direction. The waters were insistently choppy and Vlaskovitz knew that by the time they got back to shore it would be the land that seemed unsteady. Hopefully-since they'd also left the cell phone in the car-they'd be close enough to a pay phone to call for someone to come and get them and bring them back to their own wheels.
Vlaskovitz consulted the chart by moonlight. The Hobie Cat was now about four hundred feet from shore. They were headed to an area of the beach that was only one fathom deep. As soon as they cleared the mooring buoy, he'd get off the damn Cat and pull it to-
The Hobie Cat shuddered violently and then stopped dead. The trampoline bulged in the center. The three men, who had been more or less lounging, were quickly alert.
"What the fuck?" d'Escoto blurted. He grabbed the forward crossbar, which rested between the pontoons, to keep from being tossed over.
"Submerged rock-" Douglass shouted.
"Shift to port," Vlaskovitz told the others. He wanted to try to alleviate the pressure on the center to keep the fabric from tearing. He held onto the halyard but let it go slack as he moved.
As the men slid to the left side of the vessel, the bulge suddenly sagged and vanished. The sailors stopped moving as the Hobie Cat once again bobbed restlessly on the restless sea.
"Ohhhhkay," d'Escoto said.
The other two sailors continued to watch the trampoline in silence. The slap of the dark water on the pontoons seemed unusually loud and active. It was stronger, Vlaskovitz decided as beads of water popped higher than before as the wavelets struck the pontoons.
Vlaskovitz tightened his hold on the halyard. They weren't far from shore and he wanted to get moving again. He didn't know what they'd hit, but he didn't want to run into it again.
As he began maneuvering the sail to catch the wind, the world flipped over. The Hobie Cat went up on its forward end, dropping the three men in the water, then stood on-end for a moment. The sailors popped back up just in time to see the catamaran pulled straight down. The vessel went under so hard and so fast that the mast bent back and snapped. The sail and heavy guylines whipped around before they submerged and then the catamaran was gone.
The cool waters calmed almost at once. Vlaskovitz dog-paddled in place as he waited for the Cat or some part of it to bob back up. It had to. They were only in ten or eleven feet of water and the vessel was nearly that long. But nothing came back up. Not even the chart.
"We got a fucking shark!" Douglass cried, spitting a mouthful of seawater across his chattering teeth.
They might. Vlaskovitz couldn't think of anything else that would have pulled the Cat down like that.
"Shit!" d'Escoto yelled.
The young man started swimming madly toward shore. Vlaskovitz and Douglass started after him.
"Slow it down, Pancho!" Vlaskovitz screamed. "If it's a shark, the motion may-"
D'Escoto stopped abruptly, straightened, and went down.
Vlaskovitz and Douglass stopped side by side. Moonlight swam across the still-swirling waters where the student had been.
"Shit sticks," Douglass said. "This is bad."
Vlaskovitz looked at his companion. They were vulnerable to attack and their body temperatures were dropping. They had to get out of there.
"Listen," Vlaskovitz said. "It's only about four hundred feet to shore. If we go in about a hundred feet more we can ride the breakers home."
"What about Pancho?"
"Swim," Vlaskovitz said.
"You mean we just leave him-?"
"We leave him or we join him," Vlaskovitz said. "Now let's go-but slowly. Don't kick if you can help it."
Vlaskovitz started out doing a slow, steady breast stroke. Douglass went with him.
"It's going to get us," Douglass said as he gulped down breaths.
"No way," Vlaskovitz said. He kept his eyes on the white-gold sand of the deserted beach. It wasn't that far away; all they needed to do was get there.
Their bodies rose and dipped with the swells, the water chilling them through their black, water-resistant suits. Despite his efforts to concentrate on the shore, Vlaskovitz was thinking about d'Escoto. He wondered if his friend died instantly or if he was alive long enough to realize what was happening to him. Maybe not. He hadn't screamed; he just seemed to freeze. Or maybe he was underwater by the time he figured it out, when it was too late to scream.
Jesus.
The current suddenly picked up beneath him. When Vlaskovitz felt the initial upward bump he thought it was something moving toward him from below. But then the wave began to roll him forward, fast, and he and Douglass were swept closer to shore. When the swell dissipated about one hundred feet from shore, the young man felt a slight undertow as the current pulled back. He resumed swimming slowly. Though the waters were probably only six or seven feet deep here, he didn't want to try and touch bottom yet. They'd get to shore faster if they continued to ride the waves.
He glanced at Douglass. His friend was keeping his head entirely above water, which was an awkward way to swim, with his eyes fixed on the shore. His strokes were stiff and the muscles of his shoulders were tight; he looked like he wanted to erupt But he was keeping it in check.
Another wave caught them, hoisting them up and ahead. Vlaskovitz rode it on his belly. The moonlit beach was reassuringly close, just twenty or so feet away. He wasn't even sure the water was deep enough here for a shark large enough to have done what this one did to the boat.
They were going to make it.
Vlaskovitz let his legs drop. They touched sand before they were fully extended. He stood. The water was up to his waist.
"Yes!"
He shuffled forward, the water sloshing against his backside, the cold grains of sand sliding from under his toes with the backwash. Douglass was beside him and then in front of him and then running way in front of him. The lanky man reached the deserted beach and simply dropped, facedown. He was lifted by an incoming breaker that plopped him down a few feet ahead. He crawled forward and turned his face to the heavens.
"I made it!" he cried. "You gray killing bastard, I made it!"
Vlaskovitz staggered to shore seconds later. He was breathing hard but remained standing. Shivering with relief, he stopped beyond the breakers and turned to look back at the sea.
"What do you see?" Douglass yelled over.
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Nada." Vlaskovitz scowled across the moon-sprinkled sea. He watched the wave crests for flotsam from the Hobie as he looked north along the shore. "It's weird, man. I don't see anything."
Douglass sat, flopped his wrists across his knees, and shook his head. "Pancho. Man, he can't be gone."
Vlaskovitz didn't want to believe it either and kept searching.
"Where the hell are we?" Douglass asked, looking around.
"Loon Point," Vlaskovitz said.
"Right, right," Douglass said. "I see that now." He got to his feet. "Hey, I'm going to find a phone and call for help."
"Solid. There should be one-"
Vlaskovitz stopped suddenly. He squinted to the right as something moved offshore. It was about thirty feet out and to the north.