Deep Trouble II (6 page)

We furiously scooped the water out. But the rain filled the boat as fast as
we could empty it. What were we going to do?

I took off one of my sneakers and tried bailing water with it. It worked
better than nothing. So Dr. D. and Sheena used their shoes to bail too.

The rain roared down for hours. “I’m so tired!” I complained. I threw down my
shoe. “I can’t bail any more water. I can’t!”

“Don’t give up, Billy,” Dr. D. scolded. “We’ll make it.” He didn’t sound as
if he really believed it, though.

“Don’t worry,” he said, shouting over a boom of thunder. “We’re going to be
all right.”

I don’t see how, I thought. If we don’t starve to death, we’ll sink! There’s
no one around to save us. No one…

The rain finally stopped. By then it was night. Totally dark. No moon. No
stars. Just a black sky blanketed by clouds.

“I’m so cold,” Sheena whined.

“I’m hungry,” I added.

“I’m seasick!” Dr. D. admitted.

“I’m all three,” I told them. “Plus thirsty, tired, and wet.”

We all laughed. What else could we do?

When things get
this
bad, it suddenly seems ridiculous!

We huddled together for warmth. My stomach growled.

But I was so tired… so tired. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I fell asleep.

I woke up with a
THUMP.
The boat had hit something.

I opened my eyes. And stared out at a silvery, pale world.

I’m dreaming, I thought. I closed my eyes again.

But then I felt my wet clothes sticking to my skin.

No, I realized. I’m awake.

My eyes flew open. Sheena and Dr. D. sat up, yawning and stretching.

“What’s happening?” Sheena murmured.

“The boat’s not moving,” I realized. “It stopped.”

I reached out to touch the water. Instead of water, my fingers sifted through
sand.

Dry land!

“Hey!” I cried. “We’ve landed somewhere!”

The sky lightened a little. The sun was just rising. I could begin to make
out where we were.

“Land!” Sheena shouted. She jumped out of the boat. “Hurray! Land! I don’t
believe it! I don’t
believe
it!”

Dr. D. stood up and stretched. “Wow! That feels good.”

The sun shone brighter now. I threw myself on the sand. “Bake me, sun!” I
sighed.

“I wonder where we are,” Dr. D. said softly, gazing around.

“Wherever we are, I hope they’ve got food,” Sheena added.

Our lifeboat had landed on a sandy beach. Up a slope I could see a stand of
palm trees. Other than that, nothing. No docks, no boats, no houses.

“No sign of any people,” Dr. D. noted. “I’m going to take a look around.”

“I’m coming too,” I said.

“Me too!” Sheena said.

We followed Dr. D. along the beach. We walked along the edge of the water.

“Look! A coconut tree!” Sheena pointed to a tall tree on the beach. A few
coconuts nestled in the sand beneath it.

“Let’s open one,” she insisted. “I’m starving!”

Dr. D. grabbed a coconut and smashed it against a rock. The coconut split
open.

Sheena and I pounced on it. We picked up the broken pieces and chewed the
coconut meat.

“Feel better?” Dr. D. asked, sipping coconut milk from the shell.

I wiped the sweet liquid from my chin. “A little,” I said. “But I could sure
use a hamburger. Make that two. And a double order of french fries with tons of
catsup.”

“Or a pizza,” Sheena added.

“We’ll catch some fish later,” Dr. D. promised. “We can build a fire and cook
them.”

We continued our way around the island.

“Maybe we’ll find a restaurant,” Sheena wished out loud.

But after about ten minutes, Dr. D. groaned. “Oh, no!”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Look.” He pointed a few yards down the beach.

Our lifeboat. We were right back where we’d started.

“You mean, that’s it?” I asked. “We’ve seen the whole island in ten minutes?”

“That’s it.” Dr. D. sighed. “It’s tiny.”

Sheena sighed too. “I’m still hungry. And I don’t want coconuts!”

“Looks as if we’ve landed on a deserted island,” Dr. D. said. “But don’t
worry. We’ll find something to eat.”

I touched my face. My skin was hot. The sun had felt so good at first—but
now I was getting sunburned.

Another question nagged at me. But I was so hungry, I tried to push it out of
my mind.

“Billy, run into that clump of palm trees,” Dr. D. ordered. “See if you can
find some wood to build a fire.”

I wandered into the grove, hunting for something to burn. There wasn’t much
to be found. Mostly a lot of vines.

And that nagging worry wouldn’t go away.

We were stuck on a tiny island, with nothing but a rubber raft.

And I had one question, a question I was afraid to ask out loud:

How were we ever going to get off?

I found a few sticks and carried them back to the beach. Dr. D. was digging a
pit for the fire.

“Good job, Billy.” He took the sticks from me. “This will do for now.”

Sheena was wading near the shore. I sat down on the sand. “Dr. D.—” I began.
“What are we going to do? Do you think we’re far from the
Cassandra
?”

Dr. D. sighed. “I’m afraid I have no idea where we are,” he admitted.

“So—what’s going to happen? Are we going to rot on this island?” I knew we
couldn’t last long. So far, we’d had nothing to eat but coconuts.

Dr. D. rubbed two of the sticks together, trying to get them to light. “Maybe
someone will see our fire. Maybe a plane will fly over us, or a boat will pass
by. Maybe someone will find the
Cassandra
empty and come searching for
us.”

I leaned back and gazed at the empty sky. “But that could take forever!” I
cried. “Nobody even knows we’re missing! Except Dr. Ritter—and I don’t want
him
to find
us.”

I heard a shriek. I turned and saw Sheena running up the beach, waving
something in one hand.

“Look! Hey—check this out!” she shouted. “I caught a fish! I caught a fish
with my bare hands!”

She held out a small, wriggling silverfish.

“It’s puny,” I said.

“So? Let’s see
you
catch one!” she shot back.

Dr. D. took the fish and set it on the sand. “It’s better than nothing.”

“I’ll catch a bigger one,” I declared.

Sheena and I raced back to the water. We waded in hip-high. A few small fish
darted around us.

“These are all pretty small,” I complained. “We need some of Dr. Ritter’s
plankton to make them grow.”

“I wouldn’t want to eat one of his giant fish,” Sheena replied, making a
disgusted face. “Yuck.”

“Maybe if we go a little deeper we’ll find bigger fish,” I suggested.

We waded in farther. A silverfish with a black stripe swam past me.

“That one is a little bigger,” I said. I made a grab for it. Missed.

I tried again. I swam out a little farther, chasing the fish.

I guess I waded out deeper than I meant to. Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in
my foot.

At first I thought Sheena was pinching me. But the pain quickly swept up my
whole leg. “Hey—what’s going on?” I cried. I lowered my gaze to the water—and let out a frightened scream.

“Oh, nooooo!” I moaned.

I stared down at the water—down at the creature beneath the water.

I saw a hairy back. A brown-purple shell. Enormous pincers.

And knew I’d been grabbed by a giant crab!

The crab was as big as a card table. And it squeezed my toe in a pincer the
size of my dad’s lug wrench!

“Help!” I screeched. “Ohhhh, help!”

The crab snapped its claws. I managed to slip my toe out of its grip.

Slipping and stumbling, I scrambled back to shore as fast as I could.

“A giant crab!” I shouted. “Hey—look out! It’s following me!”

Sheena let out a gasp and came splashing out of the water.

The giant crab scrabbled onto the sand, moving sideways, its hairy legs
moving rapidly.

“I don’t believe it!” Dr. D. cried.

The crab moved toward us with amazing speed, snapping its claws.
Click…
click… CLICK.

“Into the trees! Quick!” Dr. D. shouted.

We ran into the palm tree grove. I scrambled up a tree, out of the crab’s
reach. Sheena climbed up behind me. Dr. D. grabbed the branch of another tree
and swung himself up.

The crab watched us from below. It raised its hairy claws as if reaching for
us.
Click… CLICK.

“If only we could cook it!” Sheena exclaimed hungrily. “That thing could feed
us for a week!”

“It must have eaten some of Dr. Ritter’s plankton! Its huge size has made
this crab
very
hungry!”

The crab clicked its big claws, trying to grab us. Its body heaved in and
out, in and out.

It stood there for what seemed like hours.

“How long will it wait before it gives up?” I asked.

Dr. D. shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

I heard a
crack.

At first, I thought it was the crab claws snapping.

Another
crack.
Too close to be the crab.

Coming from right beneath Sheena and me.

The tree branch.

Crack.

To my horror, I realized that Sheena and I were too heavy for it. The branch
was breaking off the tree.

My sister and I were about to drop into the crab’s waiting claws.

With a low cry, I reached up both arms. I tried to grab the branch above us.

I reached… reached…

No. My arms were too short.

“We—we’re falling!” Sheena cried.

With a loud
craaaack,
our branch broke off.

And we tumbled down… down… onto the crab’s hairy back.

No.

Onto the hot sand.

“Huh?” I gasped and spun around.

The crab had moved away. It was scrabbling rapidly back toward the water.

Sheena sat up, her expression still startled.

Our uncle climbed down from his branch. “Are you two okay?”

We watched the huge creature splash back into the ocean.

“I’m
never
going back in that water,” I declared.

“Who knows what other monsters are waiting in there!”

“But how will we catch any fish?” Sheena wailed. “We’re going to starve to
death!”

Dr. D. wasn’t listening to us. He had turned away and was gazing down the
beach. “Oh, no!” he cried. “The tide—it came in! The life raft!”

All three of us started running to the spot where we’d left our lifeboat. But
it was gone.

I stared out over the ocean—and I spotted a yellow speck in the distance.
The lifeboat.

The tide had carried it away.

“Now we’ll never get off this stupid island!” I cried. “Never.”

Dr. D. didn’t reply. He didn’t need to say anything. The worried expression
on his face said it all.

We passed the rest of the day keeping in the shade, chewing coconut meat.

“I’ll never eat coconut again,” Sheena whined. “Not even in candy bars!”

We didn’t talk much. What was there to say?

Night fell slowly. We watched the sky fade from blue to purple to black.

Dr. D. sat up suddenly. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

I sat up too. And listened hard.

“What is it?” Sheena asked.

“It’s coming from the beach,” Dr. D. said.

We walked quickly down to the beach. Two huge animals splashed and played in
the water.

“Whales!” Sheena cried.

“No—not whales,” Dr. D. said. “Dolphins!”

The dolphins ate the plankton too, I realized.

“What’s that yellow thing they’re playing with?” Sheena asked. “It looks like—”

“It is!” I shouted. “Our lifeboat! The dolphins brought it back!”

The lifeboat rope had tangled around the middle of one of the dolphins.
Wherever the dolphin swam, the boat trailed behind it.

“Let’s go rescue it!” Dr. D. cried. He splashed into the water. Sheena and I
followed him. No time to worry about giant crabs. We had to get that raft.

We swam out to where the dolphins played. They gurgled at us. They didn’t
seem afraid of us at all.

Why should they be? They were a lot bigger than we were!

They’re only dolphins, I told myself. Dolphins don’t hurt people.

But I was a little afraid of them. Especially since our visit from the giant
crab.

Dr. D. grabbed the edge of the rubber raft. Sheena and I climbed in.

“Now, if I can just get that rope from around this dolphin…” Dr. D.
groaned.

He tugged on the rope. The dolphin began to swim.

“The dolphin is carrying us away!” Sheena said. “Wait, dolphin! Stop!”

The dolphin didn’t stop. It kept swimming, faster and harder.

Dr. D. hauled himself into the boat.

The island was a speck behind us now. We couldn’t swim back to it if we
wanted to! The dolphin was carrying us far out to sea.

“We might as well settle back and enjoy the ride,” Dr. D. said. “There’s
nothing else we can do.”

The dolphin pulled us all night long. The sea was calm that night. We slept
in the boat again.

When I opened my eyes, everything was gray. Misty.

I heard the dolphin gurgling and chirping, as if it were talking to us.

The sun was just about to come up. The ocean was covered with a thick blanket
of fog.

The dolphin poked its head over the side of the boat. It had slipped the rope
off. It was free now.

With a splash, it swam away. It quickly disappeared through the thick fog.

I peered through the fog. I could barely see past the lifeboat. We were still
in the middle of the ocean. But I thought I saw something nearby. Something big
and white.

Like a boat.

My heart sank.

Oh, no, I thought. I think I’ve seen this boat before.