Island of the Sequined Love Nun

deprivation. He looked around for the stars, the moon, a highlight or shadow somewhere, but there was nothing but wind and wet and cold and ache. He shivered and nearly curled into the fetal position in the bow to wait for death. The navigator's screaming gave him a bearing.
    "We need light!"
    Tuck braced himself, then dug into the saturated pack until he came out with two waterproof flashlights. Bless you, Jake Skye.
    He hit the sealed switches.
    Light. Enough to see that Kimi was steering them parallel to an ominous wall of water. They would be swamped. The navigator slammed the outboard to one side and gunned it. The little boat whipped around just in time to meet the oncoming wave, ride up and over it. Tucker clung to the boat like a newborn monkey to its mother.
    Tuck lashed the lights to the anchor pulley at the bow, one pointed forward, one into the boat, then he resumed bailing.
    A monster wave rose up thirty feet and slammed down over them. When Tuck blinked the salt out of his eyes, he saw that the boat was all but a foot full of water. Another wave like that would swamp the motor. Without the motor to steer, they were lost. Bailing wasn't enough.
    We're going to die, he thought.
    Then the noise of the storm was gone.
    "No, you're not," came the voice, "you fuckin' mook." The roar of the wind and the screams of the navigator were gone. There was only the voice. "There's a tarpaulin in your pack. Lash it over the boat so you don't take on any more water. Then move to the stern and bail."
    Now there was a picture in Tuck's mind of what he was to do. There were eyelets on the outside of the gunwales to accommodate the line around the edges of the tarp. He needed only to hook the line around the boat and tie it off back by Kimi, leaving just enough of the boat open for the navigator to steer and him to bail water.
    "You got it, ace?"
    Tuck could see it and he knew he could do it. "Thanks," he said. Forget questioning where the voice was coming from. He nodded. The storm roared back over him.
    Five minutes later the boat was covered and began to rise in the water as Tuck sat next to the navigator and bailed.
    "You steer!" Kimi screamed.
    Tucker took the tiller as the navigator let go and tried to rub his hand out of a cramped claw.
    Tuck took the boat up the face of a monster wave and the skiff went airborne. With no resistance on the propeller, the motor shrieked and Tuck dumped the throttle to keep it from blowing up. The bow tilted skyward and Kimi grabbed the gunwale just in time to avoid being dumped off the stern. They landed hard and the motor nearly went under. The motor sputtered. Tuck worked the throttle to bang it back to life.
    They were already going up the face of another wave, steeper than the last. If the wind caught them at the top, they would flip. Tuck suddenly remembered a surfing move from his youth. The cutback. There was no way they could continue into the wind and into the waves. Halfway up the face of the wave, he twisted the throttle and threw the motor sideways. It coughed as if expelling a hairball, then roared, sending them across the face of the wave.
    "What you doing?" Kimi shouted.
    Tuck didn't answer. He was looking for the pocket, the place where the face of the wave would stay the same. If only the motor could maintain speed.
    The wave was creeping up on them, looming above their backs, but then they were high enough for the wind to catch them. Just enough boost. Just enough speed. The boat flattened out on the face of the wave. They were surfing, a thirty-foot wall of water waiting to crush them from behind should Tuck lose the pocket.
    Strangely, Tuck felt elated. It was a small victory, maybe even a temporary one, but they were running with the storm and he was in control of something for the first time since the plane crash. He watched the angle of the boat on the face of the wave, gauged its speed, its steepness, and made the adjustments that would keep them alive. The black water seemed to eat up the flashlight beams, but he could see the wave becoming steeper and rising higher as it climbed the ocean shelf toward the hungry reef.

18 – Land Ho
    The island was little more than a coral cupcake with a guano frosting. Not a hundred yards wide at its widest point and only five feet above sea level at its highest, it served as a resting place for seabirds, a nesting place for turtles, and purchase for forty-eight coconut palms. The foliage and coconuts had all been torn from