Shark Bait Read online

  On dry land I’m an orange belt, but that doesn’t count for much under the sea. Under water, a human is very much out of his natural element, whereas a shark is right at home. Rolling effortlessly onto its side, the giant fish opened its bear-trap jaws and my foot went straight in.

  CRUNCH!

  That bite should have killed me. At the very least, it should have taken my foot off at the ankle. But the only pain I felt was a sharp twinge in my knee as my leg doubled back on itself. Next thing I knew, I was being dragged through the water. My foot was locked in the shark’s jaws while the rest of me trailed alongside its brown sandpapery body like a human pilot fish. But pilot fish go forwards, not backwards. And they don’t hurt sharks. I grabbed hold of a big pectoral fin and gave it a sharp twist, sending the shark into a series of crazy barrel rolls. On one of the rolls we broke the water’s silvery surface, but before I had time to breathe I was under water again, back in a world of green, surrounded by bubbles, spinning. There was no feeling in my foot. Perhaps the nerves had been severed. There wasn’t time to think. Finally the shark stopped spinning and began shaking me in its mouth like a dog playing with a kid’s soft toy. Because we were under water, our movements were slowed down, otherwise I might have been shaken to death. I had lost my grip on the fin and dangled by one leg just below the shark’s head. Its big silver and black eye looked down at me. The salt water made everything blurry, but I was close enough to see a snarl of hooked, bristling teeth chewing on my foot.

  I was about to die, yet I felt strangely calm. Shock does that to you: it’s the mind’s natural anaesthetic when all hope of survival is gone and you know your time’s up. But that doesn’t mean I was happy about it.

  You ugly, overgrown anchovy! I thought, and gave the shark a power shuko.

  Okay, it wasn’t much of a strike – karate was never intended to be used under water – but the edge of my hand hit my attacker in the eye. It probably surprised the shark more than hurt it, but as my karate instructor says, Surprise beats size. Distracted by the unexpected blow, the shark lost its grip on my foot. Suddenly I was free. But not out of danger. The huge brown fish circled slowly, as if it was thinking about having a second go at me. Finally it must have decided that there were easier meals to be had in the sea – and more digestible ones. It spat out a big lump of plaster, then went zigzagging silently away.

  5

  SHARK BAIT

  I should be grateful to that shark. It saved my life. If it hadn’t come along when it did and tried to eat me, I would have drowned for sure. Luckily the shark bit down on my plaster cast in the corner of its mouth where the teeth were relatively small and widely spaced, so it couldn’t close its jaw the whole way. It only managed to crack the plaster. When it released me, part of my cast remained in its jaws like the broken half of a walnut shell. The other half was still taped to my leg. All I had to do was rip off the shredded rubbish bag, then I was free to kick my way to the surface.

  Michi grabbed me under the arms and supported me while I recovered. ‘Watashi wa anata ga same ni yarareta to omonoimasita!’ he said.

  But I couldn’t talk in any language, even my own; I was too busy gasping and spluttering and coughing up water. I must have swallowed half the Coral Sea during my battle with the tiger shark.

  Finally I got my breath back. Holding onto Michi’s water wings to keep me afloat, I ducked my head back into the sea and looked around in every direction. There was no sign of the shark. But I saw something else that surprised me: Michi was still wearing his brown leather shoes. No wonder he’d been having so much trouble swimming!

  I was about to surface again and tell him to get rid of them, when I noticed something. There was a reddish brown stain in the water. I came up for air, then ducked my head straight back down. It was blood! All around us, the water was stained with blood. Where was it coming from? I looked at my foot – I looked at both my feet – then I looked at my legs and my arms, but I couldn’t see any cuts or injuries.

  If the blood wasn’t mine, then it must have been Michi’s.

  I gulped more air and ducked my head back under. Sure enough, there was a long jagged gash on one of Michi’s legs.

  ‘Did Bruce do that?’ I asked, gasping for breath.

  At the mention of Bruce, Michi looked set to jump right out of the sea like one of the minnows we’d seen earlier. I quickly shook my head to reassure him that the shark hadn’t come back.

  ‘You’re hurt,’ I said, pointing down.

  Michi’s eyes bugged out. He hadn’t been aware he was injured. It must have happened when the monster wave hit – a piece of sharp coral must have sliced Michi’s leg open. That explained the shark attack. Normally sharks leave humans alone, but blood in the water will make them aggressive. The tiger shark must have been attracted by the smell of blood and mistaken me for its source. Which was lucky for Michi. And lucky for me, too, as things turned out.

  But now the blood was a problem. Not only because Michi was losing it, but because of what it might attract. A bleeding wound in the open sea is like an invitation to every marine predator and scavenger for kilometres around, telling them there’s a feast on. If we didn’t stop the blood in a hurry, Michi and I were shark bait.

  There was still a strip of tape stuck to my leg where I’d ripped away the remnants of the rubbish bag. I peeled it off and held it up to show Michi. Then I pointed at his leg. He nodded in understanding and helped me position it over the long bleeding gash on his calf. The tape was no longer very sticky, but it stopped most of the blood. As long as it stayed in place, we would probably be okay. Now our only problem was getting back to the island.

  It was a big problem. The island was six or seven hundred metres away. Most of the time we couldn’t even see it. It only rose into view when we floated over the largest swells. And each swell carried us a little further out to sea. Or in to sea, I suppose, because the current was pushing us back towards the Australian mainland.

  ‘Take your shoes off,’ I said to Michi. ‘We’ll try to swim back to the island.’

  He gave me a blank look.

  ‘Shoes,’ I repeated, pointing down. I mimed undoing shoelaces, but Michi shook his head.

  ‘Bruce,’ he said.

  I tried to explain that shoes would be no help at all if another shark attacked, but I couldn’t get the message across. Michi kept shaking his head. He was determined to keep his shoes on, so I gave up arguing. Part of me knew it would make little difference whether Michi kept his shoes on or not. The island was too far away and the current was too strong. We would have to wait to be rescued. Our families would have noticed we were missing by now. They would send boats looking for us. There were several powerful speedboats at the resort. It would only take ten minutes to reach us. I hoped with all my heart they would find us before nightfall.

  At least there was no longer any danger of drowning. I clung to Michi’s water wings and wriggled my toes in the water. My foot felt okay. A big old rodeo bull had stomped on it six weeks earlier. The doctor planned to remove the cast when we got back from our holiday, but Bruce the tiger shark had saved him the bother.

  Thoughts of the attack sent a rash of goose bumps tingling across my skin. Don’t think about sharks, I told myself. But it was hard not to, surrounded by all that sea, our legs dangling in the water in full view of whatever might be down there.

  ‘Bruce,’ whispered Michi, as if he could read my thoughts.

  I was about to say, Don’t even joke about it, when the words died in my throat.

  Because Michi wasn’t joking.

  6

  NO MERCY

  There seemed to be about four of them, although it was difficult to be sure. Seldom was more than one fin visible at a time. The darting grey triangles broke the surface for just a second or two, then disappeared. They were circling us, never coming closer than about twenty or twenty-five metres, but that was still too close for comfort.

  I couldn’t see what kind of sharks they we
re. They looked smaller than the tiger shark that had attacked me earlier, no more than two or two-and-a-half metres long. Reef sharks, I hoped, because they’re not supposed to be dangerous. But whatever kind they were, the circling sharks were obviously interested in us. They must have smelled Michi’s blood. The strip of tape was still in place, but its edges looked bubbled and loose. I got Michi to scrunch up his knees against his chest and put both hands over the tape to keep it in place. It would have been easier without the weight of his sodden leather shoes, but now I kind of envied him for having something on his feet.

  I pulled my own legs up, too. That’s supposed to be the best defence against shark attack. My brother Nathan is a tour guide with an adventure company in the Northern Territory and he told me about it once. Don’t dangle your feet; and if there are more than one of you, bunch together so you won’t be mistaken for a fish or a seal. But holding your legs up, even under water, even when you’ve got a pair of inflated water wings to hold onto, is pretty tiring if you have to do it for a long time. My muscles started quivering. The sharks had been circling for about an hour and it was growing dark. Where was the rescue boat?

  At one stage we heard the faraway burble of an engine. Both of us started yelling as loud as we could – me in English, Michi in Japanese – but as soon as we stopped, our voices thin and scratchy from shouting, the only sound left was the splash and lick of the sea. And the occasional swirl of a shark’s fin breaking the surface.

  The sun had gone down. As daylight faded, the sharks were growing bolder. A dark triangle zipped past no more than ten metres away. Another went sliding by in the opposite direction. Then a third fin broke the surface a few metres beyond the other two. Just its tip was visible. It carved a wide semicircle through the black water, turning slowly in our direction. Then, suddenly, it accelerated. Michi gasped and his skinny fingers dug into me as the shark came straight at us, its fin going down as it approached until all we could see was a long V-shaped ripple coming towards us like an arrow. We pulled our feet up and tensed ourselves. I wished I could jump out of the sea like a minnow. I felt a flurry in the water just beneath the soles of my feet, but no head butt, no crunch of teeth, no white explosion of pain.

  One after another, all the sharks began these mock attacks. They would come darting towards us flat out, then veer away at the very last moment. They seemed to be building up courage, egging each other on. If one got bold enough to actually snap at us, that would be it – there’d be a feeding frenzy.

  Michi and I held onto each other, teeth chattering (though not from cold), legs scrunched up beneath us, totally helpless. We were completely at the sharks’ mercy. And mercy, to a shark, is an unknown concept.

  Night falls fast in the tropics. Within two or three minutes, we could see nothing but a wide scatter of stars in the sky and their dancing reflections on the water around us. With the onset of night, a stillness had settled over the sea. It had become calm. And completely silent. Where were the sharks? I could no longer hear the swirl and hiss of their fins. All I could hear was Michi’s shallow breathing and the racing thump of my pulse in my ears.

  Splosh!

  In the light of the rising moon, I saw the dark silhouette of a fin rise out of the water less than a metre away. It was so close I could have touched it. But no way was I going to touch it. I pulled my legs up until my knees nearly bumped my chin. The big curved fin rolled back into the water, glistening in the moonlight as it disappeared.

  Slurp!

  Another fin appeared on the other side of us, then another, and another after that. They were all around us. There must have been ten of them, and none was further away than about six or seven metres. The night was filled with their splishing and splashing and slurping.

  Then – Shishkebab! – one actually brushed against me. When I felt its long slippery body go sliding past my arm, I jerked away so violently that I bumped heads with Michi.

  ‘Okay! Sam, okay!’ he said breathlessly.

  Okay? How could I be okay? We were surrounded by sharks!

  Michi gripped both my shoulders. I could just make out a big goofy grin on his face. ‘Not Bruce,’ he said.

  Was he blind? Was he deaf? I held my breath as a tall black fin slid past my ear.

  ‘There’s a whole pack of Bruces!’ I gasped.

  Michi shook his head. He was still smiling. I couldn’t believe it. How could he be smiling at a time like this?

  Releasing my shoulder, Michi pointed at a long black shape that curled out of the water three metres to our right. ‘Sokoni iruka ga iru.’

  ‘I don’t understand Japanese,’ I whispered.

  Then one of the sharks made a loud whuffing sound. As if it was… breathing.

  Hang on, sharks don’t breathe, I told myself. And suddenly I realised what Michi was trying to tell me: these weren’t sharks.

  ‘Not Bruce,’ I said, nodding excitedly. ‘Dolphins!’

  7

  TOP 40

  The dolphins must have chased the sharks away. They seemed quite friendly, but perhaps it was just curiosity causing them to mill around us. Apart from the one that had brushed against me in the beginning, they wouldn’t let us touch them. They stayed with us for another four or five minutes, then swam off into the night.

  It was sad to see them go. Sad and scary. I’d felt safe in their company (once I knew what they were!) and I reckon Michi had felt the same. Now we were on our own again. In the middle of the Coral Sea. In the dark.

  I spent the next half-hour stressing about the sharks. Where were they? Would they come back? But as time passed, I began to feel more confident they were gone for good. It was fully dark now. The sharks wouldn’t be able to see us. They had probably gone back down to the reef or wherever they’d come from.

  ‘The Bruces have gone,’ I said to Michi.

  He didn’t understand me. I could feel him shivering even though the tropical sea water felt as warm as a bath.

  ‘No Bruces,’ I said slowly.

  ‘No Bruce,’ Michi repeated, his voice small and scared.

  ‘Michi and Sam okay.’

  ‘Michi, Sam, okay,’ he whispered bravely.

  Poor kid, I thought. He only looked about ten and probably came from a big city where the scariest thing that could happen would be the power going off. His school shoes suggested he wasn’t the outdoors type. So did the water wings. What self-respecting ten-year-old would wear water wings?

  A live one, I thought. One I owed my life to. If it wasn’t for Michi’s water wings, both of us would have drowned hours ago.

  I wished we could communicate better. ‘Are you from Tokyo?’ I asked, pronouncing each word slowly.

  He shook his head. ‘Nagoya,’ he said. Then he pointed to me. ‘Anata wa Sydney kara kita no desuka?’

  I guessed he was asking if I was from Sydney. ‘Crocodile Bridge,’ I told him.

  Michi’s eyes grew big in the moonlight. ‘Crocodile!’ he whispered. Obviously that was a word he understood. But it wasn’t a good subject to think about when you’re floating in the middle of the Coral Sea at night. Saltwater crocodiles do sometimes visit the reef. And during a cyclone last summer I’d tangled with enough saltwater crocodiles to last me a lifetime.

  ‘Crocodile Bridge. It’s a town near Darwin,’ I explained.

  ‘Ah, Darwin,’ Michi nodded.

  He knew more about my country than I knew about his. Where was Nagoya? Was it a city or a town? The language barrier was so frustrating. If only we’d been able to talk, we might have distracted each other from scary thoughts of saltwater crocodiles and sharks, and whether or not we would ever be rescued. Talking would have helped pass the time, too. According to my watch, which was waterproof and had a light-up dial, it was only 9.30 p.m. We were swept off the reef at about five, so we’d been in the water for four-and-a-half hours. It seemed like we’d been there forever. Daylight was still nine hours away. Nine more hours!

  I glanced up at the sky, which was filled wi
th tiny blinking stars. It gave me an idea. Clearing my throat, I began – hesitantly – to sing: ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are…’

  I sang it all the way through to the end, feeling embarrassed and silly. I’m probably the world’s worst singer. I’d been hoping Michi might sing along with me in his own language. I thought for sure there’d be a Japanese version of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’.

  I heard Michi clear his throat. Then he began singing. It wasn’t a nursery rhyme, but it was a song I knew – Kelly Clarkson’s latest single. And he was singing in English! At the start of the second verse, I joined in. Or tried to. I couldn’t hit the high notes like Michi could, and I stumbled in some places where I’d forgotten the words, but Michi led me through. He knew the song better than I did.

  It turned out that Michi could sing nearly every song in the Top 40, and lots more besides. They must have a radio station in Nagoya that plays overseas hits, and Michi must listen to it all the time.

  We sang for half the night. Michi was an unreal singer; he could hit all these impossibly high notes like a choirboy on TV. Compared to him, I sounded shocking. My voice was breaking and kept switching from low and raspy one moment, to high and squeaky the next. But I didn’t care. There was nobody to hear us and complain, and singing kept our minds off being lost at sea. It also helped us to forget how scared and hungry and thirsty we were.

  Most important of all, it kept us awake. I was worried about drifting off to sleep. Our survival depended on staying awake and alert throughout the night.

  But we couldn’t go on singing forever. By two in the morning, after going through all the songs we knew about fifty times, it became increasingly hard to concentrate. I found myself repeating the same lines over and over. Sometimes I switched from one song to another without realising it. Michi lapsed into Japanese. His voice grew quieter and quieter. Finally he fell silent and his head tipped slowly sideways until it rested on one of the pale, squashy water wings. He was asleep. I didn’t wake him. The water wings would keep him afloat.