The Other Side of Nowhere Read Online Free PDF Page A

squealing wind filled my head. Struggling to think or to reason, I just huddled low in the cockpit, near paralysed, gripping the guardrail wire. My hands were bleeding from holding the wire so tight.
    I shot a glance at the others. Matt was clinging to the other side of the cockpit guardrail, looking as pale and over it as I felt. But I couldn’t believe how in control Nick and George looked. With George at the wheel, Nick moved quickly around deck doing what he could to make it easier for her to keep The Dolphin ’s nose into the oncoming waves. As I clung helplessly to the guardrail, Nick pulled in the mainsail and furled in much of the smaller headsail. Then he passed out life jackets.
    ‘Just in case,’ he said, passing me a jacket and casually dropping his own jacket at his feet as if to show it wasn’t such a big deal.
    I glanced at George through squinted eyes as the wind whipped up another burst of spray. She was right in the firing line of the darts of stinging water, but she didn’t falter. She just buried her face in her life jacket for a moment without letting go of the wheel. When it was all I could do not to scream, I couldn’t believe her coolness.
    There were a lot of wrong things about our situation, but the worst was that we were mostly going up and down on the spot. The island always there, in the distance, but we never got any closer.
    After what seemed an eternity, Nick finally motioned for us to gather round.
    ‘Change of plan,’ he said bluntly, raising his voice against the wind. ‘We’re running out of time to get to the other side of the island before dark, so we’ll need to drop anchor somewhere on this side.’ He paused, ducking instinctively as another wave of foam broke over the bow and flushed through the cockpit. ‘We don’t have any way of getting to shore, so we’ll have to spend the night on board. Might be a bit rock and roll, that’s all.’
    ‘Can’t be any worse than this,’ mumbled Matt wiping some remnants of a recent vomit from his chin. It was rare to see something get the better of Matt, but neither of us had been in anything like this before.
    Nick didn’t answer. He turned away and took the wheel from George. It was obvious to me that his ‘rock and roll’ comment was a massive understatement. The idea of staying out in the open ocean all night terrified me.
    A flash of lightning announced that the storm was right on top of us. Then came another and another. I watched through a mist of sea spray as the lightning splintered the blackened sky and I couldn’t help feeling doomed. A bolt of lightning flashed, filling the sky with light, followed by two cracks of thunder a split second later. I noticed how perfectly they blended into the terrifying soundtrack of crashing waves and wind. I stared out over the guardrail, hoping, wishing for a miracle.
    As we crested another wave, I saw the island come back into view. There were a couple of bays not too far from us, but they looked way too small. They were more like narrow indents stuck between steep cliffs and rocky points, nothing like the long stretches of sand we’d seen on the other side of the island.
    Suddenly George cried out above the noise of the storm. ‘ Look out! ’
    The next thing I knew I was shooting through the air like I’d been fired from a cannon. The Dolphin shuddered to a halt and I slammed into the cabin bulkhead and then slid across the deck. Lying there, winded in a crumpled heap, I struggled to make sense of what had just happened. One thing was for sure: we’d rammed into something solid. But even as I lay there moaning, The Dolphin was resisting. I could feel her under me. I reached out wildly, trying to grab something that would stop me sliding across the tilting deck. But there was nothing and soon I was airborne again.
    This time I flew backwards into Nick, bounced off him and kept sliding across the deck. The impact caused Nick to let go of the wheel and it started spinning