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

thing I knew for certain was that we were not leaving the dock under cover of darkness. I needed to see what we were facing. That meant waiting for sunrise another hour away.
    The deteriorating weather also meant that even if we could leave, I would miss the deadline for travel. I wouldn’t take the same route back and that meant adding hours to the transit time. The thought of going to Atlantic didn’t bother me as much as the idea that I might not be able to leave it again. I couldn’t dock with Little anywhere in sight. If I did, I would most certainly be detained. Given his mood the last time I’d seen him, being detained might turn out to be the best of my options.
    I looked again toward Angel . No lights glowed in the cabin windows that stretched down her side.  If Elsie had been awake, she would have been busy cooking breakfast and making coffee.
    A gust of wind, maybe fifty knots strong, buffeted the cove. I had no reason to wake them until I could see the ocean and the inlet. I also had no reason to sit outside until the sun came up. Had I been alone, coffee would already be perking on the stove. With nothing to do but wait, I headed back to the tent.
    Nearly two hours later I crawled outside for the last time to a gray and ugly sky. Back down on the shoreline, the water carried its own nasty scene. Plumes of white froth shot up across the thin finger of island at the point. Across the inlet, swells running four to five feet raced through the passage joining sound to ocean. The wind tore white caps from the tops of them and pushed them into curlers when they closed in on shallower water. I wasted no time cutting across the point to look at the ocean. The best chance Angel had was running across the edge of the sound, through waters known for their turbulence in bad weather--so well known that locals had dubbed that particular stretch as the washing machine. Even then we would be navigating sandbars in wild water, and hunting the channel back to Atlantic.
    We could do it. I had a better chance of being struck by lightning than I did finding a spot on the odds meter that didn’t point directly between shitty and stupid , though. 
    Metal clanging against metal came from the direction of the boat. I’d heard that particular sound dozens of times on the trip with my father. Elsie or Daniel had just set a pot or pan atop the stove inside the boat. Craving coffee, warmth, and needing to talk to them both, I took off for the dock.
    I called out as I approached the boat. With the tarp stretched out over the cockpit, neither would be able to see me coming. I had no desire to either startle them or walk in on Elsie still in her nightgown.
    Her voice sounded muffled and distant when she answered.
    “Come on in, Hill William.”
    I climbed aboard at the point where the cabin joined cockpit, easing aside the tarp and stepping down into the cockpit floor. Elsie sat on the starboard b unk, wearing sweat pants, sweatshirt, and sneakers. She sipped from a steaming cup. The smell of fresh brewed coffee filled the cabin. Daniel still lay burrowed inside his sleeping bag on the port bunk.
    She pointed to the stove. A frying pan sat on one burner. Dad’s o ld coffee pot sat on the other with a tiny yellow flame licking around the base. The heat it gave off felt good after a cold, windy night under the stars.  Even turned down to the lowest setting, the old kerosene stove had the cabin at least twenty degrees warmer than the air outside.
    “I hadn’t got around to starting breakfast yet. The coffee’s ready though. Pour yourself a cup. See how you like it. This is from my store.”
    To the left of the stove, my father had installed two sections of galley rail. One ran down the sink top, forming a shelf on the side. Above it he had built another shelf, again using galley rail around the edge as a lip to keep the items stored there from sliding off when the boat heeled. I’d stored coffee cups on the upper shelf. The bottom one