Even if everything went well, he still had five or six hours of traveling ahead of him.
He let the dolphins have a fifteen-minute break while he relaxed on the board, rising and falling in the swell of the waves. Then he pressed the call button and waited for them to return.
After five minutes, he began to get a little worried. In that time they could swim three miles; surely they had not gone so far away? Then he relaxed as he saw a familiar dorsal fin cutting through the water toward him.
A second later, he sat up with a jerk. That fin was certainly familiar, but it was not the one he was expecting. It belonged to a killer whale.
Those few moments, as Johnny saw sudden death bearing down at thirty knots, seemed to last forever. Then a faintly reassuring thought struck him, and he dared to hope. The whale had almost certainly been attracted by his signal; could it possibly be… ?
It was. As the huge head surfaced only a few feet away, he recognized the streamlined box of the control unit, still anchored securely in the massive skull.
"You gave me quite a shock, Snowy," he said when he had recovered his breath. "Please don't do that again."
Even now, he had no guarantee of safety. According to the last reports, Snowy was still on an exclusive diet of fish; at least, there had been no complaints from the dolphins.
But he was not a dolphin, nor was he Mick.
The board rocked violently as Snowy rubbed herself against it, and it was all that Johnny could do to keep himself from being thrown into the water. But it was a gentle rub—the gentlest that fifteen feet of killer whale could manage—and when she turned to repeat the maneuver on the other side, Johnny felt a good deal better. There was no doubt that she only wanted to be friendly, and he breathed a silent but fervent "thank you" to Mick.
Still a little shaken, Johnny reached out and patted her as she slid by, so silently and effortlessly. Her skin had the typical, rubbery dolphin feel—which, of course, was natural enough. It was easy to forget that this terror of the seas was-just another dolphin, only on a slightly bigger scale.
She seemed to appreciate Johnny's rather nervous stroking of her flank, for she came back for more.
"I guess you must be lonely, all by yourself," said Johnny sympathetically. Then he froze in utter horror.
Snowy wasn't by herself, and she had no need to be lonely. Her boy friend was making a leisurely approach— all thirty feet of him.
Only a male killer had that enormous dorsal fin, taller than a man. The huge black triangle, like the sail of a boat, came slowly up to the surfboard upon which Johnny was sitting, quite unable to move. All he could think was, " You've had no conditioning—no friendly swimming with Mick."
This was far and away the largest animal that he had ever seen—it looked as big as a boat—and Snowy had suddenly shrunk to dolphin size by contrast. But she was the master—or mistress—of the situation, for as her huge mate patrolled slowly around the board, she circled on an inner orbit, always keeping between him and Johnny.
Once he stopped, reared his head a good six feet out of the water, and stared straight at Johnny across Snowy's back. There was hunger, intelligence, and ferocity in those eyes
—or so it seemed to Johnny's heightened imagination —but no trace of friendliness. And all the time he was spiraling in toward the surfboard; in a very few minutes he would be squeezing Snowy against it.
Snowy, however, had other ideas. When her companion was only ten feet away and filling the whole of Johnny's field of view, she suddenly turned on him and gave him a nudge amidships. Johnny could hear the "thump" clearly through the water; the impact would have been enough to stave in the side of a small boat.
The big whale took the gentle hint, and to Johnny's vast relief began to move farther outward. Fifty feet away there was another slight disagreement, and another thump. That was the end of it. Within minutes, Snowy and her escort had vanished from sight, heading due north. As he watched them go, Johnny realized that he had just seen a ferocious monster converted into a henpecked husband, forbidden to take snacks between meals. The snack concerned was devoutly grateful.
For a long time, Johnny sat on the board, trying to regain control of his nerves. He had never been so scared in his life, and he was not ashamed of it, for he had had plenty to be scared about. But at last he stopped looking over his shoulder every few seconds to see what was coming up from behind, and began to get organized. The first order of business was: Where were Susie and Sputnik?
There had been no sign of them, and Johnny was not surprised. Undoubtedly, they had detected the killers and had wisely kept their distance. Even if they trusted Snowy, they would know better than to come near her mate.
Had they been scared completely away, or—horrible thought—had the killers already caught them? If they did not return, Johnny knew that he was finished, for he must still be at least forty miles from the Australian coast.
He was afraid to press the calling button a second time; it might bring back the killer whales, and he had no wish to go through that again, even if he could be sure that it would have the same happy ending. There was nothing he could do but sit and wait, scanning the sea around him for the first sign of a reasonable-sized dorsal fin, not more than a foot high.
Fifteen endless minutes later, Sputnik and Susie came swimming up out of the south.
They probably had been waiting for the coast to clear. Johnny had never been so pleased to see any humans as he was to greet the two dolphins. As he slipped off the board to fix the harness, he gave them the little pats and caresses they enjoyed, and talked to them just as if they could understand him. As, indeed, they certainly did, for though they knew only a few words of English, they were very sensitive to his tone of voice. They could always tell when he was pleased or angry, and now they must surely share his own feeling of overwhelming relief.
He tightened the buckles of Sputnik's harness, checked that blowhole and flippers were clear of the straps, and climbed back onto the board. As soon as he was lying flat and properly balanced, Sputnik started to move.
This time he did not continue westward toward Australia; instead, he headed south.
"Hey!" said Johnny. "That's the wrong direction!" Then he thought of the killer whales and realized that this was not such a bad idea after all. He would let Sputnik have his head and see what happened.
They were going faster than Johnny had ever traveled on the board before. Speed so close to the water was very deceptive, but he would not be surprised if they were doing fifteen knots. Sputnik kept it up for twenty minutes; then, as Johnny had hoped and expected, they turned west. With any luck now, it would be a clear run to Australia.
From time to time he glanced back to see if they were followed, but no tall dorsal fin broke the emptiness behind them. Once, a big manta ray leaped clear out of the sea a few hundred yards away, hung in the air for a second like an enormous black bat, then fell back with a crash that could have been heard for miles. It was the only sign of the ocean's teeming life that he saw on the second lap of his journey.
Toward midmorning, Sputnik began to slacken, but continued to pull gamely. Johnny was anxious not to halt again until the coast was in sight; then he intended to switch back to Susie, who would have had a good rest by that time. If his guesses of speed were correct, Australia could not be much more than ten miles away, and should be appearing at any moment.
He remembered how he had first glimpsed Dolphin Island, in circumstances which were so similar—yet so dif-ferent. It had been like a small cloud on the horizon, trembling in the heat haze. What he was approaching now was no island but a vast continent with a coastline thousands of miles long. Even the worst navigator could hardly miss such a target—and he had two of the best. He had not the slightest worry on this score, but he was getting a little impatient.
His first glimpse of the coast came when an unusually large roller lifted the surfboard.
He glanced up, without thinking, when he was poised fo
r a moment on the crest of the wave. And there, far ahead, was a line of white, stretching the full length of the horizon…
His breath caught in his throat, and he felt the blood pounding in his cheeks. Only an hour or two away was safety for himself and help for the Professor. His long sleigh ride across the ocean was nearly over.
Thirty minutes later, a bigger wave gave him a better view of the coast ahead. And then he knew that the sea had not yet finished playing with him; his worst ordeal was still to come.
Chapter 21
The hurricane had passed two days ago, but the sea still remembered it. As he neared the coast, Johnny could make out individual trees and houses, and the faint blue humps of the inland hills. He also saw and heard the tremendous waves ahead. Their thunder filled the air; all along the coast, from north to south, white-capped mountains were moving against the land. The great waves were breaking a thousand feet out, as they hit the shelving beach. Like a man tripping and falling, they gained speed as they toppled, and when they finally crashed, they left behind them smoking clouds of spray. Johnny looked in vain for a break somewhere along those moving, thundering walls of water.
But as far as he could see—and when he stood up on the board, he could see for miles—
the whole coastline was the same. He might waste hours hunting along it for sheltered bays or river mouths where he could make a safe landfall. It would be best to go straight through, and to do it quickly before he lost his nerve.
He had with him the tool for the job, but he had never used it. The hard, flat coral so close to shore made surf-riding impossible at Dolphin Island; there was no gentle underwater slope up which the breakers could come rolling into land. But Mick had often talked enthusiastically to him about the technique of "catching a wave," and it did not sound too difficult. You waited out where the waves were beginning to break, then paddled like mad when you saw one coming up behind you. Then all you had to do was to hang onto the board and pray that you wouldn't get dumped. The wave would do the rest.
Yes, it sounded simple enough—but could he manage it? He remembered that silly joke:
"Can you play the violin?"
"I don't know—I've never tried." Failure here could have much more serious consequences than a few sour notes.
Half a mile from land, he gave Susie the signal to halt and unbuckled her harness. Then, very reluctantly, he cut the traces away from the board; it would not do to have them whipping around him when he went barreling through the surf. He had put a lot of work into that harness, and hated to throw it away. But he remembered Professor Kazan's remark: "Equipment can always be replaced." It was a source of danger now, and it would have to go.
The two dolphins still swam beside him as he paddled toward the shore, kicking the board along with his flippered feet, but there was nothing they could do to help him now.
Johnny wondered if, superb swimmers though they were, they could even help themselves in the boiling maelstrom ahead. Dolphins were often stranded on beaches such as this, and he did not want Susie and Sputnik to run that risk.
This looked a good place to go in: the breakers were running parallel to the beach without any confusing cross-patterns of reflected waves. And there were people here, watching the surf from the tops of some low sand dunes. Perhaps they had seen him already; in any case, they would be able to help him to get ashore.
He stood up on the board and waved vigorously—no easy feat on such an unstable platform. Yes, they'd seen him; those distant figures had suddenly become agitated, and several were pointing in his direction.
Then Johnny noticed something that did not make him at all happy. Up there on the dunes were at least a dozen surfboards, some resting on trailers, some stuck upright in the sand. All those boards on land—and not a single one in the sea! Johnny knew, for Mick had told him often enough, that the Australians were the best swimmers and surfers in the world. There they were, waiting hopefully with all their gear, but they knew better than to try anything in this sea. It was not an encouraging sight for someone about to attempt his first shoot.
He paddled slowly forward, and the roaring ahead grew steadily louder. Until now, the waves that swept past him had been smooth and unbroken, but now their crests were flecked with white. Only a hundred yards in front of him they would start to topple and fall thundering toward the beach, but here he was still in the safe no man's land between the breakers and the sea. Somewhere a fathom or two beneath him, the advancing waves, which had marched unhindered across a thousand miles of the open Pacific, first felt the tag and drag of the land. After that, they had only seconds left to live before they crashed in tumultuous ruin upon the beach.
For a long time, Johnny rose and fell at the outer edge of the white water, studying the behavior of the waves, noting where they began to break, feeling their power without yielding to it. Once or twice he almost launched himself forward, but instinct or caution held him back. He knew— his eyes and ears told him plainly enough—that once he was committed, there would be no second chance.
The people on the beach were becoming more and more excited. Some of them were waving him back, and this struck him as very stupid. Where did they expect him to go?
Then he realized that they were trying to help—they were warning him against waves that he should not attempt to catch. Once, when he almost started paddling, the distant watchers waved him frantically onward, but he lost his nerve at the last second. When he saw the wave that he had missed go creaming smoothly up the beach, he knew that he should have taken their advice. They were the experts; they understood this coast. Next time, he would do what they suggested.
He kept the board aimed accurately toward the land while he looked back over his shoulder at the incoming waves. Here was one that was already beginning to break as it humped out of the sea; whitecaps of foam had formed all along its crest. Johnny glanced quickly at the shore and caught a glimpse of dancing figures wildly waving him onward.
This was it.
He forgot everything else as he dog-paddled with all his strength, urging the board up to the greatest speed that he could manage. It seemed to respond very sluggishly, so that he was barely crawling along the water. He dared not look back, but he knew that the wave was rising swiftly behind him, for he could hear its roar growing closer and louder every second.
Then it gripped the board, and his furious paddling became as useless as it was unnecessary. He was in the power of an irresistible force, so overwhelming that his puny efforts could neither help nor hinder it. He could only accept it.
His first sensation, when the wave had taken him, was one of surprising calm; the board felt almost as steady as if moving on rails. And though this was surely an illusion, it even seemed to have become quiet, as if he had left the noise and tumult behind. The only sound of which he was really conscious was the seething hiss of the foam as it boiled around him, frothing over his head so that he was completely blinded. He was like a bareback rider on a runaway horse, unable to see anything because its mane was streaming in his face.
The board had been well designed, and Johnny had a good sense of balance; his instincts kept him poised on the wave. Automatically, he moved backward or forward by fractions of an inch, to adjust his trim and to keep the board level, and presently he found that he could see again. The line of foam had retreated amidships; his head and shoulders were clear of the whistling, blinding spray, and only the wind was blowing in his face.
As well it might be, for he was surely moving at thirty or forty miles an hour. Not even Susie or Sputnik—not even Snowy—could match the speed at which he was traveling now. He was balanced on the crest of a wave so enormous that he would not have believed it possible; it made him giddy to look down into the trough beneath.
The beach was scarcely a hundred yards away, and the wave was beginning to curl over, only a few seconds before its final collapse. This, Johnny knew, was the moment of greatest danger. If the wave fell upon him now, it would pound him to
pulp against the sea bed.
Beneath him, he felt the board beginning to seesaw—to tilt nose down in that sickening plunge that would end everything. The wave he was riding was deadlier than any monster of the sea—and immeasurably more powerful. Unless he checked this forward lurch, he would slide down the curving cliff of water, while the unsupported overhang of the wave grew larger and larger, until at last it came crashing down upon him.
With infinite care, he eased his weight back along the board, and the nose slowly lifted.
But he dared not move too far back, for he knew that if he did so he would slide off the shoulders of this wave and be left for the one behind to pulverize. He had to keep in exact, precarious balance, on the very peak of this mountain of. foam and fury.
The mountain was beginning to sink beneath him, and he sank with it, still holding the board level as it flattened into a hill. Then it was only a mound of moving foam, all its strength stolen from it by the braking action of the beach. Through the now aimless swirl of foam, the board still darted forward, coasting like an arrow under its own momentum.
Then there came a sudden jolt, a long snaky slither—and Johnny found himself looking not at moving water but at motionless sand.
At almost the same instant he was grabbed by firm hands and hoisted to his feet. There were voices all around him, but he was still deafened by the roar of the sea and heard only a few scattered phrases like, "Crazy young fool—lucky to be alive—not one of our kids."
"I'm all right," he muttered, shaking himself free.
Then he turned back, wondering if he could see any sign of Sputnik and Susie beyond the breakers. But he forgot all about them in that shattering moment of truth.
For the first time, as he stared at the mountainous waves storming and smoking toward him, he saw what he had ridden through. This was something that no man could hope to do twice; he was indeed lucky to be alive.