Read The Island - Part 2 (Fallen Earth) for Free Online Page B

pushed hard on the tiller to bring her back around enough to quarter the wave. A white sheen of spray exploded across her bow.
    She clawed her way into deeper water, smacking against steep waves that pounded rather than lifted. Wave height can be completely misunderstood. The swells could have been running twenty feet high. The problem lay in how precipitous the slope. Long and gentle meant a slow rise, and equally slow fall. Steep meant running into, and through rather than riding over. Angel rode over nothing. Everything we hit slammed as if we had struck rock. Twice her bow disappeared, digging in the face of the next wave while still riding down the back of the last one.
    A bigger boat could have taken the water without much fuss. Five to six -foot waves on a twenty-three footer ,however, meant that at the bottom of trough, anyone riding in the cockpit would be seated maybe a foot above the waterline, and would be looking up at the next crest bearing down like a giant gray hand ready to smack them into oblivion.
    I beat into the waves for half a mile or better, before I realized that the battle had become surviving the sea rather than finding Zachary. I had been spending so much time just trying to keep Angel from being broadsided that I could have passed within five feet of his kayak and never seen him.
    . What I couldn’t understand was: Why hadn’t he turned around? Halfway down the back of a huge wave, the answer hit me.
    He had.
    The next wave struck a massive blow, jerking the tiller out of my hands and shooting a fountain of water high across the bow. Salt water rained down in the cockpit.
    I lurched feverishly for the tiller, and pulled hard to swing her bow into the wave already forming just ahead, knowing all the while that I had to turn her around and knowing just as well that the water coming across her bow could capsize the boat if it struck her broadside. I had hope , though. Every fifth wave came one gentler than the others. In the confusing cauldron where wind and water clashed, salvation had a home and it lay in that fifth swell. I waited, counting to make sure, letting half a dozen cycles pass under her before making my move. The instant the Angel smacked through the crest of the fourth wave, I gunned the engine and cut her deep to port.
    She came around quickly, but not quick enough. The next wave hit dead on her beam. She heeled as if struck a mortal blow. For what seemed an eternity, Angel hung precariously between that precious moment of righting herself, and giving up the battle and falling over. The engine screamed, clawing at the water, forcing her to turn. I saw the next wave rising off to the right and hung on with every ounce of strength I had. The right blow could not only send her to the bottom, but just as easily catapult me across the gunwale and into the sea.
    It struck on her rear quarter, sending a wall of water cascading into the cockpit, but shoving her forward more than sideways. Inch by inch she pulled herself up straight. As soon as the stern came about, she leapt forward, propelled by the engine, by gravity pulling her down the face of the wave that had nearly swamped her.
    I kept the throttle shoved forward as far as it would go out of fear of being swamped from behind. With the current under her keel, Angel raced along shoreline half a mile distant, catching up and sliding over waves rather than being beaten by them. The sudden lull in violence would have been almost pleasurable if it hadn’t been for the storm gathering to the south. Rain already lashed the boat. Lightning wouldn’t be far behind.
    I slid around the back of the island in what seemed only minutes, passing behind it and into the edge of a channel I knew from charts stretched almost a mile wide. The island had no real high ground and didn’t stand tall enough that the lee side cut much of the wind. The water though smoothed out noticeably. After the monstrous ride through the inlet, the chop on the sound seemed