Shark Bait Read online

  I shook my head and made the swimming motion. ‘Swim!’ I urged him. ‘Reef, very bad.’

  Michi pointed down. ‘Very bad,’ he said.

  He’d spoken English, but he was simply repeating something I had said. He still hadn’t moved. Frustrated, eager to get to shore, I pointed impatiently towards the beach. ‘C’mon, Michi, we’re almost there!’

  He shook his head and spoke slowly, clearly. ‘Michi, very bad.’

  I hoped he didn’t know what he was saying. But the expression on Michi’s face was chillingly familiar. It was the look he’d had when he said, Bruce. I nervously searched the sea around us for sharks’ fins. There weren’t any, but I still felt nervous.

  ‘Let’s get out of the water, Michi,’ I said.

  He still didn’t move. ‘Very bad,’ he whispered.

  What was wrong with him? Why wasn’t he coming? We could be on the beach in half a minute. I swam out and grabbed one of his wrists and gave it a small tug. ‘Come on, Michi, stop playing games!’

  He didn’t budge. He looked terrified. His eyes became moist and his lower lip trembled as he pointed down at his feet. I couldn’t see anything. The water was cloudy with sand stirred up by the passing waves. There was no blood, as far as I could see. But something was down there – something very bad, if Michi’s English was accurate. Filling my lungs with air, I dived down to have a look.

  Shishkebab! It was very bad, all right – worse than very bad. Michi wasn’t following me ashore, he wasn’t going anywhere – he wasn’t able to.

  I worked out what had happened. When I’d stopped a minute earlier and put my feet down, Michi must have done the same. But rather than touching coral, his feet went straight into the open maw of a giant clam. It had snapped closed like a monstrous Venus flytrap around his ankles. The huge shellfish was a metre wide and must have weighed two hundred kilos. There was no way that I could move it, and no way to prise it open. I would have to go for help.

  When I tried to explain this to Michi, he kept shaking his head and clasping at my arms and wrists. He didn’t want me to leave him.

  ‘Watashi wa okaasann to otoosann ga hituyou desu,’ he said, tears in his eyes.

  I didn’t blame him for being scared. The sea level was halfway up his body and some of the larger waves rose up almost as high as his neck. I wasn’t sure whether the tide was coming in or going out. If it was coming in, Michi would be completely under water in twenty minutes. There was no time to lose.

  I showed him my watch. ‘When that gets to there,’ I said, pointing first at the minute hand, then at the three, ‘I’ll come back and free you.’

  I don’t know how much he understood, but Michi nodded and tried bravely to smile. Then he lifted one trembling hand out of the sea and gave me a high-five.

  ‘In… de… struc… tible,’ he whispered.

  I reached the shore in record time and struggled cautiously upright. I had been worried about my foot – the one that had been in plaster until just a few hours ago – but it seemed okay when I put weight on it. My legs weren’t so good though: they felt weak and wobbly. Jelly legs. It was hard to balance. The beach seemed to tip and sway beneath me. Until now I hadn’t realised how tired I was. How sleepy. When I tripped on a clump of tah-vine, I lay still for several moments. The sand was so soft, so comfortable, so dry, and my body craved rest. But I could rest later, I told myself, scrambling back to my feet. Michi’s life was in my hands.

  I only looked back at him once. The sea was rising, I saw that straightaway. And the sight of Michi’s lonely figure standing chest-deep in the waves was almost too awful to look at. He waved at me as I was about to enter the trees, and I waved back.

  Part of me wondered if that was the last time I would see him alive.

  12

  HOW CAN A RESORT DISAPPEAR?

  It wasn’t there! I had crossed the island, fighting my way through a jungle of trees and palms and tangled undergrowth, only to discover that the resort wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

  Impossible! I thought, running along the curved white beach in a panic. How can a tourist resort just disappear?

  I came to a heavy thicket of mangroves standing on their roots like trees on legs. That was strange. The manager at our resort reckoned there were no mangroves on Utopia Island. I stopped running and turned around, narrowing my eyes because the orange rim of the sun had just appeared above the horizon.

  The sun shouldn’t be over there, I thought. It should rise in the east, not in the south.

  Then the truth hit me. I wasn’t on Utopia Island! The current that had swept Michi and me away from the island must have changed course during the night. Instead of continuing in a westerly direction, we had floated in a huge semicircle around the back of Cowrie Island and out to sea again, ending up far to the southeast. From that perspective, Cowrie Island would have appeared on the left of Utopia Island, instead of the other way around. And Utopia Island would have looked smaller because it was further away. The whale shark had brought us to Cowrie Island!

  In the distance, the Navy Orion was still flying in wide, slow circles over the sea near Utopia Island. There was no doubt in my mind that they were looking for Michi and me, but they weren’t going to find us over there. We were over here. We were the ones on the wrong island. And if I didn’t think of something quickly, Michi was going to drown.

  Suddenly I remembered the man on the beach. He had a boat. He could save Michi! But he and his boat were halfway down the island, and on the other side. I should have gone there first, instead of running around looking for a resort that didn’t exist. Now it would take me at least fifteen minutes to reach him, then ten more minutes for the boat to reach Michi. I looked at my watch. Already fifteen minutes were gone. Michi had only six or seven minutes left!

  I charged back across the island, crashing through the bushes and vines and dangling branches like a stampeding buffalo. When at last I came belting out of the trees, only Michi’s head was visible, a tiny black dot in the wide turquoise sea. He saw me and cried out, waving both hands desperately above his head. I waved back and ran down the beach. What was I going to do?

  My brother gave me some advice once about dealing with emergencies in the outdoors. He said to treat your surroundings as a friend, not an enemy. That way, Nathan reckons, you can make nature work for you, rather than against you.

  I looked around for something that would work for me. What I needed was a strong stick to prise the clam open so Michi could get his feet out. There was driftwood all along the beach, but most of it was the wrong shape, or badly eroded by sea worms. There were also some bits of rubbish – an old thong, part of a polystyrene float from a fishing net, a red drinking straw. None of it was any use to me, so I ran back up to the edge of the forest.

  I found a broken branch dangling from a tree. It looked exactly right for what I needed. I began wriggling it from side to side to break it free, but I was interrupted by a choking scream. When I turned around, Michi was gone! Suddenly he reappeared, but only for a moment, then another wave rolled over him. Between the waves, which came every five or six seconds, Michi gulped desperate mouthfuls of air. He was drowning before my eyes!

  I pulled and twisted at the branch. A strong sinew of white wood attached it to the tree. It would take another minute or two to break it off. Michi might drown in that time. I looked around helplessly for other broken or fallen branches. There weren’t any. Michi screamed my name. I ran back down the beach. Make your surroundings work for you, Nathan had said. Scooping up the drinking straw, I ran into the sea and hurled myself headfirst into the waves.

  When I reached him, only Michi’s face was above water. His head was tipped right back so he could breathe. Every few seconds, he had to hold his breath and close his eyes as another glassy green wave swept over him. He gasped in surprise when I poked the straw into his mouth.

  ‘Michi, breathe through it,’ I said, making blowing and sucking noises so he would understand.
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br />   He nodded and closed his lips firmly around the straw. Now he had a snorkel. It would keep him alive for a few more minutes. Enough time, I hoped, for me to return to shore, twist the branch off the tree and swim back with it.

  As I set off for the beach once more, I was not at all confident that the branch would do any good. The giant clam was huge. To prise it open would take more than a branch. It would take an iron crowbar, or a stick of dynamite.

  Or a miracle, I thought.

  13

  ONE CHANCE IN A HUNDRED

  I was only part way back to shore when something brushed across my belly in the gap between my T-shirt and shorts. Something cold and leathery. Something that gave me goosebumps all over.

  I stopped swimming and carefully searched the sea around me. Bingo! About four metres to my right, a large patch of water roiled and churned with sea snakes. It must have been the same snake island that Michi and I had been caught up in earlier. This time I didn’t swim away from them, as any sensible person would have done. I was remembering my brother’s advice: Make your surroundings work for you. And thinking: What I’m about to do is totally crazy. It had about a one percent chance of success. But if I didn’t try it, Michi had a one hundred percent chance of drowning. Taking a deep breath to settle my jittery nerves, I kicked my feet up to the surface and swam straight towards the writhing spaghetti of deadly sea snakes.

  Most of the metre-and-a-half-long reptiles were twisted together in a single floating mass, but one or two swam free of the group like guards patrolling its perimeter. It must have been one of these guards that had brushed against my belly. Now another one came wriggling through the water to meet me. Who knows what its intentions were – perhaps it was merely curious – but I didn’t wait to find out. As soon as the snake came within reach, I grabbed it behind the head. Or tried to. But in the rise and fall of the sea, I missed my mark and caught hold of it too far back.

  The glistening olive-green sea snake twisted its head around and bit me.

  Luckily it struck my watch strap, otherwise I might have been dead within minutes. I didn’t give the snake a second chance. Grabbing its neck with my other hand, I yanked it off my watch. This time I had a secure hold just behind its small, grey-green head. The snake went psycho. It coiled itself into a writhing green football around my wrist and arm, its mouth biting and snapping in my tightly clenched fingers. I trod water, holding the angry creature well clear of the rest of me, and began backing cautiously away from the other snakes. But one of them had seen what was going on. It came threading through the water towards me like a wobbly, living arrow.

  There was no mistaking this snake’s intentions: it meant business. I swam backwards as fast as I could, but the reptile caught up with me in seconds. It darted past my kicking feet and swam up alongside my body. My head was above water and I couldn’t see the snake properly, so I rolled over and ducked beneath the surface. The snake swam in a circle and came at me from behind. Spinning around, I used the arm holding the other sea snake to fend it off. The attacking snake came looping around it and lunged at me, missing my elbow by millimetres. It didn’t slow down. With a quick flurry of its long, slightly flattened body, the reptile came sweeping under my arm and snapped its jaws closed on the trailing edge of my T-shirt. Before it could let go, I grabbed the second snake with my left hand, just behind the head, and pulled it free. Its fangs tore two long jagged holes in the fabric.

  Holding my two writhing captives well clear of my body, I bobbed back to the surface. The other snakes were eight or nine metres away. I nervously searched the water between them and me. With a snake in each hand, I would be totally defenceless if another one attacked. There was no sign of any more guards. As fast as I could, I began swimming backwards away from them.

  Only when I was far enough away from the snake island to feel safe, did I look out to sea. For a moment all I could see was water, and my heart skipped a beat. Then I saw a dark shadow beneath a glassy green wave; above it, poking out of the water, was the tip of a red drinking straw.

  I couldn’t swim normally with a snake in each hand. I had to float on my back and kick myself along. It was slow going. Every passing wave pushed me back half a metre. When I finally reached Michi, only about three centimetres of the straw cleared the surface. Waves rolled right over it. But after each wave had passed, a small fountain of water would shoot out of the straw, followed by a desperate suck of air.

  Michi was completely under water, but he was still breathing, still fighting to stay alive. It was a fight he couldn’t win. The tip of the straw would be completely under water in about a minute, and then…

  It wasn’t something I wanted to think about. Everything depended on the two snakes in my hands.

  Michi’s eyes were closed. He didn’t know I was there. Both my hands were full, so I touched him with one foot to let him know I’d returned. His eyes snapped open, but he could barely look at me because his head was tipped right back. That meant he couldn’t see the snakes, which was probably a good thing. I nodded to him, as if to say, I’ll have you free in a moment, then jackknifed my body and dived down to the coral bed at his feet.

  My first attempt didn’t work. I couldn’t manoeuvre in the water because I had a writhing sea snake in each hand. The undertow swept me two metres from where I wanted to be. I surfaced and allowed the snakes to breathe, then tried again. This time I made allowance for the undertow and dived a couple of metres inshore from Michi. As I neared the coral bed, the current carried me towards him. I hoped. There was a lot of stirred-up sand and my eyes were stinging from the salt water. I couldn’t see where I was. Then a blurry shape drifted into view. A pair of blue shorts, two pale skinny legs, and the massive, rounded bulk of the giant clam.

  I couldn’t stop myself in the current and my shoulder bumped into Michi’s legs. I felt him struggling for balance, but I shut my mind to his panic. The huge wavy jaws of the clam shell were passing directly beneath me. This was my one and only chance. Bringing both hands forward and down, I plunged the sea snakes headfirst into the clam, one on either side of Michi’s trapped feet.

  Then the current swept me and the snakes away.

  Did it work? Did the snakes even bite the clam? I had no idea whether their venom would have any effect on the monster shellfish, nor how fast it would act if it did. I hoped it would stun the clam rather than kill it – stun it just enough to make it relax its grip on Michi. But the undertow had dragged me away before I could see what happened, and nor could I see anything else. I was surrounded by cloudy green water. My lungs were bursting. With a sea snake in each hand, I fought my way to the surface. Blinking sea water from my eyes, I looked back expectantly in Michi’s direction. And saw nothing but empty water all the way to shore. It hadn’t worked.

  I had known all along it was a crazy idea, but even a one percent chance had been worth trying.

  Fighting back tears, I carefully unwound the sea snake from my left wrist using the two free fingers of my right hand, then tossed it as far away from me as I could. I was about to unwind the second snake when a cloud of bubbles broke the surface three metres away. And Michi popped up!

  He was still wearing his yellow water wing, and the red drinking straw was still in his mouth. He spat it out and coughed a few times. Then he turned in my direction and gave me a wet thumbs up.

  ‘Indestructible!’ he gasped.

  14

  HUNTED

  I helped Michi to shore. He was shaking and very weak, and I had to half carry him for the last ten metres. We collapsed side by side on the beach.

  ‘You’re still wearing your shoes, you dag!’ I laughed. But secretly I was annoyed. I’d spent half the night kicking my feet to help us stay afloat, and Michi’s heavy leather shoes had made my job that much harder.

  But I stopped being annoyed when Michi took off his shoes and socks and I saw the livid purple bruises the clam’s jaws had made on his heels and lower ankles. Without the protection of his shoes, who
knows how bad his injuries might have been. The piece of tape I’d used as a makeshift bandaid on his leg was gone, but the gash looked clean and was no longer bleeding.

  ‘Can you walk?’ I asked, and mimed a walking motion with my fingers.

  I helped him to his feet. Michi let go of me and grinned. ‘Michi… walk… okay,’ he said softly. He took two shaky steps, then flopped forward in a dead faint.

  He wouldn’t wake up. It was a combination of exhaustion, lack of sleep and dehydration. I didn’t feel very strong myself, and my eyelids were droopy, but Michi was small and light. I carried him past the high-tide mark to a grove of small coconut palms that would shade him from the rising sun. As I made Michi comfortable in the cool white sand, tucking the water wing under his head like a pillow, I got the strange feeling again that I knew him from somewhere. He looked so familiar. But there was no time to think about that now – I had to go for help.

  It took me longer than I expected to reach the bay where I’d seen the launch. There were a lot of mangroves further along the beach and getting through them was like negotiating an obstacle course. Finally they forced me away from the shore and into the lush forest that covered most of the island. It was hard going in my bare feet, but easier than crawling through the mangroves. I heaved a big sigh of relief when finally I heard voices through the trees ahead.

  It sounded like two men. I couldn’t hear what they were saying above all the squawking and chatter of birds. Up to that point I hadn’t noticed many birds on the island, but I didn’t give it more than a passing thought.

  The men would get a big surprise to see me. In my head I began rehearsing what I’d say. First I’d ask for a humungous drink of water and maybe something to eat. Then, as we motored around in the launch to pick up Michi, I would tell them about my fight with the big tiger shark, and how some dolphins had saved us from the reef sharks, and about the whale shark that had dinked us to Cowrie Island. I couldn’t wait to see the looks on their faces when I told them how I’d freed Michi from the giant clam with the help of two deadly sea snakes. I reckoned they would think I was a bit of hero.