Chapter 1

Becky Thatcher’s mental count reached three hundred, and she waited a moment for one of the long, oily swells to lift her. As it neared its highest point, she lifted herself out of the water and looked ahead. Nothing. The wave passed, and on the backside, she checked behind her. Nothing there, either. She was alone in the middle of the dark ocean, not exactly lost but certainly nowhere near found. Nowhere near any place in particular. Dawn of a new day.

Becky spent another second orienting herself in what she thought was the right direction, then rolled onto her back and started kicking with her legs, giving her arms a rest. Three hundred kicks, and it would be time to take a break, she calculated. Maybe I’ll take a nap. She laughed at the thought. Napping out here in the middle of nothing was an exercise in extreme caution. She slept on her back, and as long as she just drowsed, she wouldn’t sink. If she fell deeper asleep ... well, she’d swallowed a mouthful of water both times. Not fatal, but dangerous.

It had been yesterday, near dusk. The good ship Hampton Roads, a full-scale replica of a nineteenth-century sailing schooner, had been under all-plain sail. Her crew of high school students and a few counselors had mostly been below decks because of the weather. They had been crossing a thick line of heavy squalls, and the seas were running high. Becky had been one of two deckhands watching carefully to make sure everything stayed trimmed up; the Roads had been really ripping along, fourteen, maybe fifteen knots. The breeze was stiff, the ocean rough; swells running fifteen to twenty feet, everyone was wearing safety harnesses. Becky had gone forward to clear a windlass that had been reported fouled.

She’d had to unhook; it was part of life on a ship like the Roads. She’d been careful too, always a hand for the ship, always a firm grip. She’d gotten forward, was nearly to the windlass, when it had felt like Hampton Roads had hit a brick wall. The force of the impact jerked her off her feet and she’d pivoted around her grip on the safety rope, slamming her alongside the hull, her feet dangling in the water. Then the ship jerked again, breaking her hold as neatly as if someone had intended it. She’d gone into the dark black roaring sea like a shot.

Even so, she’d had a second’s time; even half stunned, she’d taken a deep breath. True, she’d planned on using it to haul herself back onto deck, but she was well prepared to hit the water. She’d hardly touched the water when something slammed into her hard: the hull of the schooner itself. She’d been dazed and stunned again and had come up out of the water confused for a few seconds.

She’d recovered, took another breath and looked for the ship; she’d seen it only for a second, and hadn’t recognized what she was seeing for several minutes. Then what she’d seen finally made sense. Only the top six feet of the main mast had been visible, canted at an angle to the surface. She’d hardly had a chance to glimpse it, before it slid away, beneath the sea.

She’d crisscrossed the area several times; there were a few things, nothing much. No people, no real debris. A water bottle, partly full. A few odds and ends.

Just like that, she’d thought. Wham! Bam! Ship’s gone! The older seamen told stories about accidents like that, and you thought they were just that: stories. Less than a minute, she thought. Much less than a minute from the time I hit the water, until I saw the tip of the mast go under. Maybe safety lines weren’t all that safe!

She had looked around; the sun had been ready to kiss the horizon. All around her was the vast expanse of the ocean, heaving and twisting, lashed by the squalls. Right in the middle of all that monstrous madness was Becky Thatcher, pretty nearly sixteen. Skinny and tall, a kid with an attitude, a kid whose father hated her guts. She called him the bastard, but she never laughed when she thought about her father. He was the one who laughed whenever he thought about Becky.

A summer vacation; one just like you’d expect from the very wealthy: a month aboard a real sailing schooner. There in the water, Becky made a vow as the twilight spread across the ocean, and the waves began to subside. Whatever it took! Whatever she had to do! Somehow, she wanted to walk in, surprise the bastard, and tell him she’d survived anyway. Yes!

Most of the other students aboard the schooner had had some interest in sailing; even so, they were mainly interested in the mechanics of the art. Only two or three, Becky included, had shown much interest in navigation; for all that it was required of everyone. They had put out from Tonga; their next stop was to have been American Samoa, four hundred miles to the north-northeast. They had been, if she remembered the chart correctly, about a hundred fifty miles due south of Pago Pago.

She’d seen the chart and remembered the local currents as being erratic; it made no difference. It wasn’t as though she had any real choice; she would swim the distance or die trying. She’d studied the darkening sky, noted the bright glow from the sun, still visible below the horizon, pointed herself in the right direction, and started swimming.

She’d worked out a system in the hours that followed. Three hundred crawl strokes, a pause to look around, and then turn over and three hundred kicks of her legs on her back. Another pause to check and then repeat. Four times of that, then spend a six hundred count on her back, resting. Check frequently on her direction.

The sky had turned mostly clear, and it was easy to find the Southern Cross and head straight away from it after the sun was down. The night had seemed to stretch on forever, and while she didn’t feel particularly fatigued, time seemed to really drag. When the sky began to get light in the northeast, she had felt heartened. At last, she’d be able to see and maybe be rescued. Hampton Roads had radioed ahead that they were making for port. Surely someone would note that they’d fallen out of radio contact, although they hadn’t planned on making harbor before noon today, perhaps later if the winds turned ill.

It didn’t bear thinking about. She kept swimming, doggedly trying not to think about anything. In spite of that, her mind rambled in odd directions; it took a while, but she realized that the sun was well up from the horizon, and it was now uncomfortably bright and warm, and she was tending to turn directly towards the sun. Which was not only uncomfortable, but the wrong direction.

Last night she’d looped the laces of her deck shoes together and hung them around her neck. She was still wearing her dungarees and a long-sleeved 100% cotton t-shirt. Several times during the night she’d almost lost the shoes and several times she’d thought seriously of dispensing with them. Now, she dispensed with them.

Becky contemplated shucking out of the t-shirt she was wearing and wrapping it, turban-like, around her head. No, then she’d burn her back, as well as her arms. She undid her dungarees carefully, dipping under to take them off. She tied the pant legs around her head, and put the waist down her back for more protection from the sun. Save modesty for later, she thought. And if she gave a rescuer a thrill, it would be a) not much of a thrill and b) a small price to pay for being rescued; she really needed the protection from the sun.

But when she started swimming again, for the first time she felt fatigued, managed only another couple of sets of strokes, before attempting her first nap. A couple of hours later, she tried again. Finally, every two full rests, she’d try to nap, and finally, each rest she’d try. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. She sighed with relief though, when the sun began to vanish into the ocean, even if it meant it would be a million times more likely she wouldn’t be seen.

She slogged through the night, going from mostly awake to half awake to mostly asleep. Twice she thought she saw lights passing in the distance, but she could never be sure. When the sun came up, Becky grimaced and for the first time began to have serious doubts about survival. A day and a half in the water, she thought. I wonder what the record is? More, she was sure. People swam the English Channel; they swam to Cuba -- those had seemed like long swims. She remembered Wayne Fratley back in her high school. He was a trivia junkie; he’d read every edition of the Guinness Book of World Records there had ever been, looking for trivia answers. He’d know. If he was here, she could ask him...

Becky jerked away from that train of thought. He wasn’t here, he was there. And she was here, not there. She giggled, and then realized she was still losing it. She resolutely started swimming again. She would not give the bastard the satisfaction of dying.

The sun came up and she had enough awareness left to be amazed. Two nights, alone in the ocean! I did that; no one can take it away from me! She thought that even the grim reaper could only end my streak, not take it away. The sun was bright, painfully bright, and she squinted. Stupid saying about you should keep your eye on the ball. Who in the world would want to keep their eye on a ball of fire that hurt to look at? She remembered the morning before and her penchant for following the sun; she made an effort today not to do that.

Another three hundred count and switch over to her back. The ocean had been glass smooth yesterday afternoon; choppy swells the day before. Long swells the first night and the next morning, smooth last night. Today it was back to long swells. For a ten thousandth time, she did the math. Say two miles an hour. A hundred and fifty miles; that meant 75 hours. Three days. Well past halfway there, Becky thought. Three miles an hour. She snorted in derision. In my dreams, maybe! If she’d managed that, then only fifty hours; a little more than two days. This evening, she thought, at sunset. Maybe, maybe if she had all the luck in the world, tomorrow morning.