Page 4 of The Lighthouse Keeper and the Mermaid
The boat held a foot of water and she wasn’t sure they were going to be able to take another wave without sinking completely. It was taking forever to turn, even if she settled on only making it a small quarter turn to set them up better, but weighted down as it was in the water, it was like trying to move the rocky cliffs.
“We’re sinking again,” whimpered the redhead, so clearly close to tears that she felt bad for him.
“Bail!” screamed the blond. “Bail!”
She wasn’t sure the little handfuls made that much of a difference, but by God, how he scooped as if they could.
Now was the test. Here came the next wave.
She braced herself as she quickly calculated how far away shore was. At least a mile if she had to guess and she was sure it would be a fight the whole way. They weren’t near any shoals that she knew either; they had come too far with the current for that. And given how tired they looked, the redhead and blond didn’t have it in them. Hell, she wasn’t sure she did either, not against these waves. She had to keep this boat floating.
Was there anything else she could do? She paddled forward to meet the wave, trying to break through it as fast as possible though at a bit of a quarter angle so that the nose wouldn’t dip and take on evenmore water.
“We’re going to make it!” screamed the first man, and it seemed they almost might.
The boat heaved through the crest and more water did gush over the bow but at least they had made it through that one. Could they take two? She wasn’t sure, especially not if they started getting bigger ones again. They seemed to have taken on more water than the men had bailed.
“Keep bailing like your lives depend on it!” she screamed as another wave crashed over their bow and gallons upon gallons rushed in. “Because they do!”
She needed to turn this thing around and head to shore. Forget the captain. They weren’t going to make it themselves at this rate. The only problem was she wasn’t going to be able to turn this thing around fast enough, not with how short they had between waves and not without taking on enough water to kill them.
Maybe if she went backwards? The boat wasn’t built for it and surely it would not be as fast but it was better than nothing.
“There he is!” hollered the blond. The captain must have only been twenty feet away. Damn. She’d be heartless to leave a man so close, peril or no.
She paddled forward harder, as quickly as she could. With the swirl of the waves, he ended up on their starboard side towards the back where she was closest. “Take the oars,” she told the first man, who quickly obliged and passed the bucket to the blond. He seamlessly took her place as she leaned over for the captain.
It all happened so fast. She wasn’t sure if it was a sneaker wave or if they were so swamped she shouldn’t have leaned, but two things immediately happened. One, the boat tipped, and with it, it was like everything slowed and each second became a minute and she could feel herself falling toward the open sea.
And two, she had been right. The captain looked dead but something below the surface was holding him up, something that looked so very human and yetnotthat she almost screamed.
Thank God she didn’t for she would have had a lungful of sea water if she had.
She toppled into the water, falling face first toward the dead man and the creature.
And whether it was the oar or the hull itself, something hit her in the back of the head and it all went dark.
CHAPTER 3
“There are creatures in the sea, Daria,” Father said, his grey eyes twinkling as they always did when he started a story. “And I’m not talking about sharks or whales but actual monsters, monsters like you’ve never seen.”
“Nope, nope, nope,” she had said, only about nine. “I’m not falling for that again. There are no ghosts and there are no monsters.”
“Ah, but monsters are just a term for the unknown, aren’t they, Daria? No one calls a shark a monster, even though they’ve killed more men than any true ‘monsters’ combined.”
“So a monster is just something unknown.”
“Mmm, it can be,” he agreed. “Or something truly evil.”
“Is whatever this creature you’re about to tell me real?”
“It is.”
“Is it evil?”
He paused for a second and thought. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Then why’d you call it a monster? See! You were just trying to scare me! I knew it!”
