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get the image of the young boy with his wild, staring eyes, out of my head, or the terrified screaming of the man as he was torn apart. I felt there was something deeply wrong with a world where such things could happen. I couldn’t wait to get back to civilisation and get so drunk that those images would be erased from my mind, at least for a few hours.

  Chapter Three 
     
    Sometime in the night the wind shifted around to the west, and with it came a strange smell. It was barely discernible at first, but it grew stronger the closer we got to the Florida coast. Mostly, it smelt of smoke; not wood smoke but something thicker, more acrid, with an undertone of singed flesh. Bill had gone down to his bunk a couple of hours before, and Jon had replaced him on watch. As we discussed what the smell might be, CJ brought out a coffee for Jon and a tea for me.
    CJ looked towards the front of the boat, standing on tiptoes to get a better view over the cabin.
    ‘Hey, is that the sun coming up?’
    ‘Don’t be daft, Cammy.’ Jo n took a sip of his coffee, ‘We’re heading west. The sun rises in the east, doesn’t it?’
    ‘Well, there’s something going on over there,’ CJ retorted. ‘It definitely looks like a sunrise.’
    She sounded so certain that Jon and I stood up to see what she was talking about. Sure enough there was an orange glow on the horizon.
    ‘Must be some kind of brush fire.’ Jon didn’t sound convinced, but it seemed logical.
    We watched for the next hour. By then, we could make out flames leaping high into the darkness. The fire explained the strange smell, or at least it seemed to, but the smoke didn’t smell like a brush fire, it smelt more industrial. I scanned the horizon. The flames were strung out in loose clusters along a stretch of coast about half a mile long, and directly ahead of us. On either side there was nothing but darkness. That in itself was odd.
    ‘I can’t see any lights. Miami’s a big city. We should be able to see some by now.’ I looked over at Jon. ‘I think we’ve wandered off course.’
    ‘I don’t see how, I’ve been keeping a very close eye on the compass.’ Jon’s reply was defensive.
    ‘I’m not blaming you. Maybe the currents are stronger than we thought.’ I’d run through possible scenarios in my head and it was the only one that seemed viable. ‘Go get Bill and we’ll see if he can work out where we’ve gone wrong.’
    ‘CJ can go.’
    CJ glowered angrily at Jon for passing the buck before she turned and stormed back into the cabin.
    A few minutes later, a sleepy-looking Bill appeared. I handed him the binoculars and he scanned the coast for a minute, then went inside. He returned seconds later with his sextant. We watched as he worked away, moving back and forth between the chart table in the cabin, where he did the calculations, and the foredeck, where he measured the height of Polaris, the pole star, above the horizon. He took much longer than usual but, eventually, he came back to the cockpit, scratching his head.
    ‘I checked three times. We’re directly east of Miami. It must be something in the city that’s burning.’ Bill pulled out the binoculars and scanned the horizon again, trying to get a better idea of what it was. ‘It’s huge. I wonder what it is? Something at the port maybe? Fuel tanks, something like that.’
    Bill’s tone sounded slightly lost and a worried look had crept onto his face. Jon, CJ and I glanced uneasily at each other. Even in the height of the storm Bill had given off an aura of certainty. Now there was something in his voice that made us wonder if he felt as confused as the rest of us.
    After a few moments, Bill seemed to pull himself together. ‘Right, here’s the plan. We’ll carry on heading towards Miami for now, but we might have to divert to Fort Lauderdale if it looks like the port’s closed.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Sun up’s in an hour. We’ll be able to get a better idea of what’s