The Skeleton Tree Read Free Page A

abandoned on a sinking boat.
    I squirmed in my sleeping bag. I rolled myself off the bed and sank into ice-cold water that made me gasp.
Puff
wallowed, and I fell, first against the counter and then against the stove before I fled up the ladder to the cockpit. There was no land in sight.
    I turned around and looked toward the bow, and there was Uncle Jack—and Frank as well—trying to free the little red dinghy that really had become our lifeboat.
    Puff
’s bow plunged into the sea, then soared up again with water streaming in silvery sheets. Frank was on his knees, clinging to the rigging as spray flew over him. Uncle Jack slashed at the ropes with a knife, and the waves were enormous.
    Sunlight flashed on the blade. Then the little boat suddenly sprang from its place. Snatched by a wave, it was pulled right over the lifelines, dragged away by the sea until it snubbed up at the end of its tether.
    “Get in!” shouted Uncle Jack. But Frank didn’t move.
    Uncle Jack had to pry the kid’s fingers from the rigging. He picked him up and balanced on the pitching deck, his feet far apart. He looked big and heroic with the sea raging behind him. When the dinghy shot up on a wave, he dropped the kid inside it. Then he turned around and made his way toward me, reaching for handholds as the sea swept over the deck.
    He clambered into the cockpit. “Did you bring the radio?” he asked.
    “No,” I said. The dinghy soared high above us on a passing wave, then dropped below the railing. The kid lay inside it, unmoving.
    “The flares?” said Uncle Jack. “The life jackets?”
    I shook my head. I could hardly think.
    “Wait here.”
    He plunged down the ladder, into the cabin. The water was chest-high and rising fast. Everything that could float was swirling around and around.
    “Uncle Jack, come back!” I shouted.
    He looked right at me for a moment. “Get in the lifeboat, Chrissy,” he said. Then he moved farther into the cabin, pushing his way through a floating mass of cushions and floorboards and blankets.
    The deck that had once seemed so high was now level with the sea. Only the low roof of the cabin stood above the water, and every wave surged through the cockpit.
    “Uncle Jack!” I cried.
    It looked as though a river was flowing through the hatch and into the cabin. I saw Uncle Jack take the VHF radio from its place, but the water pushed against him and he couldn’t get back to the cockpit.
    “Here!” he shouted. “Catch.” He tossed the radio up toward me.
    I tried to grab it. For a moment I had it in my hands. But it fell away. I lunged to grab it again, and nearly tumbled through the hatch myself. I grabbed on to its edges as the radio vanished into the swirls of black water, and I saw Uncle Jack looking up at me. I saw fear and sorrow in his expression—and something else as well. I had let him down.
    The sea gushed through the hatch. It rose right over Uncle Jack, sucking him into the darkness. Then enormous bubbles burst through the hatch, and the deck slipped away from my feet, and I was floating in the sea.
    The top of the cabin vanished. The lifelines dipped into the water. When the little red dinghy swirled over them, I tumbled inside it. The kid was sitting upright now, but he didn’t say a word and he stared straight ahead. His hands clutched like talons to the sides of the boat.
    The sea was full of ropes and sails, of things that had burst loose from the cabin. I saw boxes of crackers, a loaf of bread, some of Uncle Jack’s souvenirs. Then, afraid
Puff
would drag us down, I struggled with the rope that held us. There was a knot too tight to untie, and I went at it with my hands, then with my teeth. The lifeboat tipped up on one end. The bow went under. I could see
Puff
down below, a shadowy thing far under the surface. Then, at last, with a snap, the rope tore away, and the lifeboat slapped flat on the water. We began to drift with the wind, lurching over the waves.
    By then,
Puff
was gone.