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Silence.
Tai eyes us all.
“What’s happening?” Lacey asks.
“Have to wait a minute for it to go through,” he says.
It’s the longest minute of my life.
Finally.
“Can you…repeat…” A garbled voice comes through and then is buried by static.
“Fuck,” Tai swears and then switches the radio to another channel.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is the sailing vessel Atarangi. Do you copy?”
We wait. No one dares to move or breath, all of us straining to hear any response over the constant roar of the ocean, the hull slamming against the waves.
Tai repeats the call again, louder this time.
“Uh,” Richard says, and we follow his gaze to the portholes. All we see outside are waves, but the difference is now you can actually see the waves instead of the blackness of before.
Richard turns and runs up the stairs to the deck, while the rest of us wait for an answer from the radio.
Tai sighs, getting visibly frustrated, his hand gripping the mouthpiece so hard I’m afraid he’s going to break it. He makes the call again.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday.”
“Comrades?” Richard says, and I look at Lacey as if to say, What is wrong with your husband? Comrades? Can’t he say, you guys?
“You’re going to want to see this,” he adds.
“I’ll keep trying,” Tai says quietly. “Be careful.”
Lacey and I quickly head up to the top.
Richard is standing on the side of the ship, holding onto the railing for balance, facing forward.
Neither Lacey or I stray far from the hatch, instead we peer through the clear dodger at the horizon.
There is a horizon now. Somewhere in the east the sun is rising, breaking through low dark clouds in some places, making the faintest grainy light shine across the ocean. On one hand, that’s great, because it means the storm is breaking up over there.
On the other hand, we can see exactly what we’re getting into.
There’s a mass of island rising right before us.
“Oh my god,” I whisper.
We’re still far out but we’re moving fast and, more than that, the light is shining on the tops of the waves breaking just a few hundred meters in front of the ship.
“It’s a reef!” Richard yells. “Collision eminent!”
Again, does this guy think he’s in charge of the Starship Enterprise?
That snarky little thought feels good before the feeling of immense dread sets in.
We’re fucked.
“What?” Tai says, bounding up the stairs and onto the cockpit. He stands beside Richard and stares at the sunrise.
Atarangi.
The morning sky, showing us our fate.
“We’re going to hit,” Tai says. He looks to us. “Go downstairs, get everything and throw it up here!”
I don’t hesitate. I scramble down the stairs with Lacey in tow.
I’m panicking, as I think anyone would in this situation, when the boat you’re on is going to collide with a reef and you all might potentially die. I’m not even thinking, I’m just doing, grabbing everything we all had gathered and passing it to Lacey who is throwing it all up top.
“Is this it?” Richard asks when we come back up.
We nod. We all have our own bag, plus a bag of food and a bag of supplies. We’re wearing rainproof gear and lifejackets. We’re ready for something.
Or, we should be. I glance at the bow of the boat again just as we slam down another wave and the landmass looms larger, a murky sun behind its silhouette. The island seems fairly big, though with the way the boat is moving, it’s hard to say. In the distance I can see another glimpse of a much smaller island.
But it’s the reef that terrifies me. The way the waves are breaking, indicating how shallow it is. In fact, the body of water between the reef and the island, the lagoon, isn’t as rough as it is out here in the deep.
The deep.
I feel so scared I might pee my pants.
“We’re going to collide soon, another twenty metres,” Tai yells at us, going back toward the life raft, which is housed in a large cylinder. “If anyone is clipped in, you need to unclip now. We can’t afford to be dragged if that’s the case. We need to get in the raft, now.”
“Hold on!” Richard yells, and with a groan flips open the bench seats, revealing the storage underneath. He grabs a fishing pole.
Tai nods at him. Good idea.
Meanwhile I’m thinking our survival might depend on Richard’s fishing skills.
Then Tai lifts up the life raft cylinder, which must be at least four feet long and wide as a tree trunk, and raises it above his head with a huge feat of strength, tossing it in the water where it’s immediately swallowed by waves.
It pops back up, and Tai begins to tug on the line attached to it as it drags behind the boat
“Come on, come on!” he yells, yanking at the line, trying to get the cylinder to open and inflate.
