A Yacht Called Erewhon Read Online Free PDF Page B

eleven…’ Dad called as the rope sung. ‘Lash her off!’
    It was going to be close—just a couple of inches to spare. But so long as the weight of the hull didn’t close the gap as it passed through, we were home free.
    Matt and Dad leaped back onto Aggie, and we trundled back to the camp. As we got close, our nostrils were put onhigh alert. Over the smell of freshly turned earth, there was a new aroma coming from the barbie. In the centre of the fire was a large dixie with two tell-tale antennae poking out. I lifted the lid to see the biggest cray I’d ever laid eyes on. Mum was smiling but didn’t say a word.
    ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ Dad quizzed.
    Mum turned to me. ‘I think it’s ready, if you’d like to lift it out of the pot, Ben. Mind—it’s very heavy.’
    ‘Where the bloody hell did that come from?’ Dad repeated.
    ‘I caught it, of course!’ Mum replied. She was having fun stringing us along, and Dad was biting like a fish.
    ‘Bullshit! How?’ Dad was hooked, and Mum was reeling him in.
    Knowing how important fishing prowess was in her maledominated world, Mum couldn’t hold out any longer. ‘While you three were mucking about, I went for a walk around the point,’ she said, pointing to the northern end of the beach. ‘There’s a large rock pool there, about waist-deep, and that fellow was sitting half under a ledge looking at me, so I jumped in and grabbed him.’
    ‘Bullshit!’
    Mum raised the palms of her hands for us to see the evidence of a hard-fought battle.
    ‘After lunch, you can take me to see this pool.’ Dad still wasn’t convinced.
    ‘It’s nice to know your family doesn’t believe you,’ Mum said as she handed Dad the carving knife and the cray on a chopping board.
    Dad ignored the knife and tore the bright-red cray apart. Each leg was a meal on its own, and all four of us hoed in, quickly reducing the extra-large catch to a pile of empty shell.
    Crayfish demolition complete, we lay back in the sun, and an hour passed before Dad was on his feet and raring to go. ‘Come on, old girl, it’s time you showed us this rock pool.’
    Matt and I grabbed our snorkelling gear, thinking we might look for Erewhon ’s keel while we were at the beach.
    It was about a twenty-minute trek to get around the point, and we were surprised that Mum had tackled it on her own. She wasn’t normally one to scramble over rocks, and this all added to our suspicions. As we rounded the point, Mum pointed ahead to where the pool had been. The tide had risen, and the waves on the surf-line were now breaking into it. As we peered in, we could see how deep it was.
    It was confession time. We might have been able to believe her if the pool had been waist-deep, but over her head: no way. Mum pulled her sun-hat down over her face. ‘I had a little help,’ she admitted.
    ‘We know that!’ we chorused.
    ‘I was wandering around the rocks, looking into the pools, when I came across a folded towel on top of the rock over there. As I picked it up, a head popped out of the water. I don’t know who got the biggest shock. She wanted to know who was with me. I told her there were only the four of us and you three were occupied on your salvage mission. She said her name was Mic and she lived around here.’
    ‘What did she look like?’ I asked.
    ‘Gorgeous! Perfect olive skin, dark wavy hair, a trim figure and the most haunting brown eyes. She didn’t say much about herself, but she knew all about Erewhon and wanted to know what we were doing. I said you were taking her away to restore her and that, after seeing the hull, I didn’t think that was possible. At that point, she asked me if we’d like a crayfish, dived into the pool, and came up with our lunch. She handed it over, said goodbye, and disappeared into the bush. I tried toinvite her to lunch, but she’d vanished. I was struggling with the crayfish, so I trussed it up in my bikini top, and that worked a treat. I even had a