East of Outback Read Free Page A

to call in distant buoys. In this storm his voice carried three feet at most. “You lahds know what to do if she breaks up. Grahb yourselves anything daht floats, aye?”
    Colin’s arms were ready to fall off, but not in a million years would he dream of letting up! Somewhere above him a loud crack snapped above the howling.
    “Down, lahds! De mahst!”
    The boat shuddered, throwing Colin to his knees. Behind them a horrendous crash hit the deck and cabin. He heard the port gunwale give way with a crushing sound. Suddenly Gracie lurched alist to port, her deck so steep Colin slid into the bilge pump.
    The boat lurched again. Scraping, thudding—the ragged mast end whipped close past Colin, tearing his sleeve. In the darkness Dizzy screamed.
    “We’re broaching! Every mahn for himself!”
    The lugger had cast herself broadside against the sweeping wind and waves. She rolled. Colin felt himself lifting off the deck.
    The captain’s long arm wrapped around his waist. Desperately Colin clung to that arm. They flew through the searing, rain-thick air together.
    Colin choked. He gagged. He was bobbing in the wild water and that robust arm still held him.
    “Grahb on here, lahd! Y’re not done yet.”
    He grasped at nothing, at a straw. His arms hit a spar and he latched on to it. His nose and lungs burned with salt water.
    The captain’s arm disappeared. “I’m gunner cut the cahnvas free; hang on!”
    Colin hung on. His arms, already weakened by that stint at the bilge pump, threatened every second to let go. He wrapped around the spar, crossed his wrists and gripped his forearms. It gave his arms a rest, but the bounding waves kept smashing his face against the boom.
    A voice called out in the blackness, but Colin could not identify it. He heard rushing and gurgling. Something struck his spar heavily and nearly Shook him loose from it. The very waters sucked him under, spar and all. He swirled in the black ocean, clinging. He was on the surface again, his ears so full of water that even the shrieking wind sounded distant.
    How did he manage to stay afloat? He had no idea. How many hours passed? He had no idea. What had become of the others? He had no idea, not even of Captain Foulard’s fate.
    The storm lightened. Although the rain beat harder, the wind seemed to relax a bit. And the sky grew lighter.
    ______

    Just past dawn, Colin saw a man in a snappy little sulky driving across the waves. His pony’s white mane billowed. “Come, lad,” he called. “Get in with me and I’ll take you ashore.”
    “I must bring my spar. Do you think it’ll fit?”
    “No, lad, you must leave that.”
    “No. I think not. G’day.”
    The cart whipped silently away over the leaping water.
    Captain Foulard’s voice behind him called, “Here, lahd! Leave daht boom and take an end of my gahff here. ‘Tis easier to hold on to.”
    “No. I think not. G’day.”
    Time passed unmeasured. Rain. Torrents of rain. Wind. Heaving, cresting, pitching seas. The sky grew dark. Colin bobbed again in a black and formless world.
    “Listen, lahd! Breakers! Y’ hear ’em?”
    He could hear something in the distance, though his sodden ears refused to tell him what.
    “Let loose, lahd! We can swim for it; I’ll help.”
    “No. I think not. G’day.”
    Bobbing. Blackness. Timelessness.
    Something brushed his foot. Colin groped with a toe. Sand! A wave lifted him high, crashing him down—onto sand! Struggling, kicking, he got his feet under him and pulled at his spar, dragged it forward. He must not let loose this boom. Surging surf yanked him about and tossed him up and down, but he would not let go of the float.
    He stumbled, flailing his free arm, and then was upright. He might be on land, wonderful land, or he might be out on a spit at low tide, to be washed away when the tide returned. He must not forsake the spar. He dragged it as far up the sand as he could and collapsed across it.
    The world seemed to laugh at him. A sea gull was