He looked up and saw at once that he was too late. The Tigé was traveling at about forty miles per hour and the first swimmers were only yards away. Alex could see the horror in their eyes as they took in what was about to happen. They were frozen with fear. On the beach, sunbathers were rising out of their loungers, staring openmouthed, watching the disaster unfold in front of them. Someone screamed. Alex could pull back the throttle, cut the engine. But even that wouldn’t help. Propelled by its own momentum, the boat would still shoot forward, its prow crashing into the swimmers before it hit the beach and stopped. People were about to die. He had no doubt of it at all.
In the last remaining seconds, Alex threw himself forward. Ignoring the unconscious driver, he grabbed hold of the wheel and wrenched it to one side. The prow swung around, missing the first of the swimmers by inches. There were people everywhere. Alex swung the wheel the other way, weaving through them. He heard more screams rising even above the roar of the outboard motor. Somehow, he managed to avoid them all. But the Tigé had reached the beach. The sand was right in front of him. The bottom of the boat was grinding against the shallows. Finally, Alex pulled back on the throttle even as the propeller came into contact with the ocean floor and shattered. He felt the whole deck shudder.
The boat had left the water. He was on dry land, sun loungers and umbrellas on one side of him, beach towels on the other, a blur of astonished faces watching him as he shot past. At the very end, he twisted the steering wheel one last time. There was narrow gulley with boulders on both sides and, straight ahead, directly underneath the Promenade des Anglais, a dark tunnel with a wire fence blocking the entrance. Some sort of storm drain. The boat was slowing down, dragging against the ground. The prow hit the wire.
The boat finally stopped.
Alex heard shouting behind him—a gabble of French voices. Quickly, he unfastened the life jacket and the harness. Someone else would look after the unconscious driver, and he had no desire to answer questions. Before anyone could reach him, he dropped out of the boat and ran up a flight of steps leading to the main road.
He had no sooner reached the top than he saw Celestine on the other side, coming out of an ice cream shop with a cone in each hand. Alex was dripping wet. He was only wearing his swimming shorts. Fortunately, in Nice, he didn’t look out of place.
Dodging the traffic, he ran over to her.
“Alex!” She was surprised to see him. “What happened? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Alex had no intention of telling her what had happened. He looked back. He had moved so fast that nobody had seen where he had gone.
“Where’s your T-shirt? And your sandals?”
“They were stolen.”
“Stolen? But that’s terrible!”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve got more back at the house.” Alex took one of the ice cream cones. He needed something to cool him down. “Can we go home?” he asked.
“Of course. But how was the parasailing? Did you enjoy it?”
Alex glanced back one last time. He could hear the scream of an approaching ambulance. He could imagine the pandemonium on the beach. “Well,” he said. “It was certainly quite a ride.”
Anthony Horowitz, Quite a Ride
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