The trees, clearly visible, were clustered on the small areas of sand that filled the cracks of the rocks.
Pitt now realized the island was much closer than it had seemed at first view. It lay no more than eight or nine kilometers away, the tops of the trees giving the impression of a shaggy rug being pulled over the horizon.
Pitt took a bearing on the island, noting that it precisely matched the kea's course. Next he checked the wind direction and drift, and determined that the current would carry them around the northern tip.
They would have to sail southeast on a starboard tack as Maeve had, amazingly, pictured in her imagination.
"The little lady wins a prize," Pitt announced. "We're within sight of land."
Both Maeve and Giordino struggled to their feet, clung to Pitt and gazed at their distant hope of refuge.
"She's no mirage," said Giordino with a big grin.
"I told you the kea would lead us to a safe harbor," Maeve whispered softly in Pitt's ear.
Pitt did not allow himself to be carried away by elation. "We're not there yet. We'll have to replace the sail and bail like hell if we're to land on its shore."
Giordino judged the distance separating them from the island, and his expression sobered considerably. "Our home-away-from-home won't make it," he predicted. "She'll split in two before we're halfway."
The sail was raised, and any length of line that could he spared was used to tie the splitting hull together. With Maeve at the rudder, Giordino bailing like a crazy man and Pitt sloshing the water in sheets over the side with his bare hands, the ruptured boat set its bow directly toward the small, lowlying island a few kilometers distant. At long last they had visible proof that Pitt's navigation had paid off.
The mind-drugging fatigue, the overwhelming exhaustion had dropped from Pitt and Giordino like a heavy rock. They entered a zone where they were no longer themselves, a psychological zone where another world of stress and suffering had no meaning. It didn't matter that their bodies would pay heavily in agony later, as long as their sheer determination and refusal to accept defeat carried them across the gap separating the boat from the beckoning shore. They were aware of the pain screaming from their shoulders and backs, but the awareness was little more than an abstract protest from the mind. It was as if the torment belonged elsewhere.
The wind filled the sail, shoving the boat on a course for the solitary outcrop on the horizon. But the heartless sea was not about to release them from its grip. The current fought them, forking as it ran up against the shore and flowing in a loop past the outer limits of the island, threatening to push them back into the vast nothingness of the Pacific.
"I think we're being swept around it," Maeve said fearfully.
Facing forward as he frantically scooped the surging water out of the boat, Pitt seldom took his eyes off the nearing island. At first he thought they were seeing only one island, but as they approached within two kilometers he saw it was two. An arm of the sea, about a hundred meters in width, separated one from the other. He could also make out what appeared to be a tidal current running through the gap between the islands.
By the wind streaks on the surface and the spraying foam, Pitt could tell that the following breeze had shifted even more in their favor, blowing the boat on a sharper angle across the unfriendly current. That was a plus, he thought optimistically. The fact that the water this far south was too cold for coral reefs to form and wait in ambush to tear them to shreds didn't hurt either.
As he and Giordino fought the incoming water, they became conscious of a sullen thunder that seemed to grow louder. A quick pause, and their eyes locked as they realized that it was the unique sound of surf pounding against rock cliffs. The waves had turned murderous and were drawing the boat ever closer into a fatal embrace. The castaways' happy anticipation of setting foot on dry land again suddenly turned to a fear of being crushed in a thrashing sea.
Instead of a safe haven, what Pitt saw was a forbidding pair of rocks jutting abruptly from the sea, surrounded and struck by the onslaught of massive breakers. These were not tropical atolls with inviting white sand beaches and waving friendly natives, the stuff of Bali Hai, blessed by heaven and lush plant life. There was no sign of habitation on either island, no smoke, no structures of any kind to be seen.
Barren, windswept and desolate they seemed a mysterious outpost of lava rock, their only vegetation a few clusters of low nonflowering plants and strange-looking trees whose growth appeared stunted.
He could not believe that he was in a war with unyielding stone and water for the third time since he had found and rescued Maeve on the Antarctic Peninsula. For a brief instant his thoughts raced back to the near escape of the Polar Queen and the flight from Kunghit Island with Mason Broadmoor. Both times he had mechanical power to carry him clear. Now he was fighting a watery burial on a little waterlogged boat with a sail not much bigger than a blanket.
The master seaman's first consideration when encountering rough seas, he recalled reading somewhere, was the preservation of the stability of his boat. The good sailor should not allow his boat to take on water, which would affect her buoyancy. He wished that whoever wrote that was sitting beside him.
"Unless you see a stretch of beach to land on," Pitt shouted at Maeve, "steer for the breach between the islands."
Maeve's lovely features, drawn and burned from the sun, became set and tense. She nodded silently, tightly gripped the rudder lines and focused every bit of her strength on the task.
The jagged walls that climbed above the crashing surf looked more menacing with each passing minute. Water was pouring alarmingly into the boat. Giordino ignored the approaching upheaval and concentrated on keeping the boat from sinking under them. To stop bailing now could have fatal consequences. Ten seconds of uninterrupted flow of seawater through the damaged boat and they would sink five hundred meters from shore. Struggling helpless in the water, if the sharks didn't get them, the surge and rocks would. He kept bailing, never missing a beat, his faith and trust entirely in the hands of Pitt and Maeve.
Pitt studied the cadence of the waves as friction with the bottom slope caused them to rise and slow down, measuring the break of the crests ahead and astern and timing their speed. The wave period shortened to roughly nine seconds and was moving at approximately twenty-two knots. The swells were beating in on an oblique angle to that of the rugged shoreline, causing the waves to break sharply as they refracted in a wide turn. Pitt did not need an old clipper ship captain to tell him that with their extremely limited sail power, there was little opportunity for maneuvering their way into the slot. His other fear was that of backwash swinging off the shoreline of both islands and turning the channel entrance into a maelstrom.
He could feel the pressure of the next wave surging beneath his knees, which were pressed into the bottom of the hull, and he judged its mass by the vibrations as it rumbled under him. The poor boat was being cruelly thrust into a tumult her designers never intended. Pitt did not dare put out the makeshift sea anchor as demanded by most sailors' manuals when traveling throu
gh violent seas. With no engine he believed it in their best interests to run with the waves. The drag of the anchor would most certainly pull the boat apart as the immense pressure from the waves drove them forward.
He turned to Maeve. "Try and keep us in the darkest blue of the water."
"I'll do my best," she replied bravely.
The roar of the breakers came with a steady, rolling beat, and soon they saw as well as heard the hiss of the spray as it burst into the sky. Without direct and manual control, they were helpless; the whims of the restless sea took them wherever it desired. The surge was building ever higher now. On closer inspection the slot between the rock outcroppings seemed like an insidious trap, a silent siren beckoning them to a false refuge. Too late to sail out to sea and around the islands. They were committed and there could be no turning back.