‘I have a plan. Not a brilliant one. Very cheeky. With little chance of success. But it’s keeping me occupied.’
She wondered if he was losing it. She could see nothing they could do to prevent the pirates from catching them. Other than suicide.
She looked to their rear again. The dark mass below the light had taken on the form of a boat. She could make out the silhouette of the superstructure on top of a bulky, broad hull.
‘It won’t be long before they’ll be in firing range,’ she said.
Stratton took a moment to check for himself. ‘Yep … You haven’t looked ahead for a while, have you?’
She turned her back to the pirate vessel to see dozens of lights to their front and sides in all shapes and configurations. Each cluster represented a ship of some kind but they were all still so very far away.
‘We won’t reach any of them before the pirates catch us,’ she said.
‘I know. But we must be close to the corridor.’
She felt the optimism in his voice but still couldn’t see why.
He put down the reel and studied the array of equipment he had laid out on the deck. ‘They’ll catch this boat soon enough, but there’s no reason for us to be on it.’
Wherever his mind was, she was nowhere near it. She looked at the collection of life jackets, their use obvious enough. But the rest of the junk made no sense to her. ‘We jump into the sea and let the pirates chase after the empty boat,’ she said. It was all she could think of.
‘That would give us a lot longer to live.’
‘Then we hope one of those boats finds us.’
‘Dawn will be up soon. Now we’re talking hours of survival time.’
‘How many days did you say we could live without water? Three?’
‘Go on. Admit it. You think I’m brilliant.’
She figured it was an option, although nothing more than a delay of the inevitable, another desperate attempt to cling on to life.
‘We might as well get on with it,’ he said. ‘If we leave it too late, they’ll see us in the water. Put on as many life jackets as you can.’
‘They’ll see the bright orange.’
‘Not if we put the sweaters over us,’ he said, pointing to some clothing he had sorted out. ‘They’ll also keep us warm for longer. Truth is we’ll die of hypothermia long before we die of thirst.’
He picked up one of the life jackets, pulled it over his head and tied the lines around his waist and between his legs. She sighed as she watched him. She had come to terms with ending her life there and then and been only minutes away from grabbing a hold of something heavy that Stratton hadn’t already thrown overboard and diving into the water with it. She figured all she needed to do was hang on to it for as long as she could while she sank. Then even when she released it as she began to panic, as the man in Stratton’s story had, she would never be able to reach the surface before succumbing.
‘Don’t hang about,’ he said, pulling another life jacket over the one he already wore.
She picked up a jacket and put it on. He handed her another and helped her fasten it.
‘Put this over the top,’ he said, handing her a large sweater.
‘Is hypothermia as painless as drowning, do you think?’ she asked.
‘It’s even more pleasant. I’ve had it on several occasions. Once you get past the freezing cold stage, it’s fine. Like drowning but without the freaking-out panic phase. Put this on,’ he said, handing her a fishing reel harness.
‘What for?’
‘To hold it all together. If we get through this phase, I have another idea that’ll keep us occupied for a while longer. Keeping oneself busy is the key to longevity they say.’
She thought he was acting a bit weirdly but nothing about him surprised her any more. She pulled the harness on while he donned one himself and after fastening up his buckles he helped her with hers.
When they were finished, the pair of them looked more than twice their normal sizes. She broke into a smile.
‘I’m glad you see the funny side,’ he said. ‘I was beginning to think you’d lost your sense of humour.’
When he looked back at the pirate vessel he could make out the front mast and wisps of smoke from the exhaust stack.
‘We’d better get into the water. I’m going to change the boat’s direction to take them away from where we jump in. Soon as I set the tiller, we go overboard.’
She nodded.
It was an effort for him to bend down to untie the tiller with all the clothing he was wearing.
‘Wait!’ she called out.
He stopped, one hand on the tiller.
She quickly unfastened the drinking water container that was still half full and held it in her arms. ‘OK!’
‘Good thinking,’ he said and yanked the tiller over. The boat turned sharply.
‘Go!’ Stratton shouted as he tied the tiller off with fishing line.
She leaped into the water. He rolled over the side. When he surfaced he watched the boat cruise away from them.
They then turned their attentions to the following vessel to see what it would do.
The mother craft continued straight at them. Stratton couldn’t believe that no one on board was watching the fishing boat. Maybe the lookouts had seen them jump into the water.
Then the vessel turned in pursuit of the little fishing boat.
They bobbed in the water and watched the raiders come on. The ship passed them some distance away. But it was the first time they could really confirm that it had been the pirate mother ship.
‘Won’t they just backtrack when they find it’s empty?’ she said.
‘They won’t know when we jumped off. Hopefully they’ll come to the same conclusion you did about us getting captured and think we’ve killed ourselves.’
They watched the back of the vessel cruise into the distance. Without its lights, it would soon have become invisible in the darkness.
‘I can see your life jacket on your right side,’ Stratton said, inspecting her. She adjusted her sweater to cover it up.
‘How do I look?’ he asked.
She studied him. ‘You’ll do.’
Stratton turned to look in every direction. ‘Quite a few boats about,’ he noted.
‘None within a mile of us, though,’ she said, acting as the voice of doom.
‘Dawn will crack in no time,’ he said, looking to the east where there was a faint glow on the horizon.
She unscrewed the water bottle and took a little sip. ‘Want some?’ she asked.
‘Thanks,’ he said. She passed it to him. He took a couple of mouthfuls and handed it back to her.
‘So,’ she began, leaning back and looking up at the stars. ‘We just wait here for a boat to happen by? Could be a while. But I guess we have all the time in the world.’
‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘My plan is not just to wait here for a boat to happen by. The odds on that would be very small indeed.’
He exposed the large fishing reel attached to the front of his harness. ‘Turn around,’ he said.
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.’