Brianna didn't speak as we struggled to keep ourselves moving and steady. As we approached the island, I could see that there was no easy way to put us ashore. There were high jagged rocks all along the front, and we both knew we'd be smashed if we tried to get anywhere close to them.
“We need to go around to the back of the island,” I shouted.
“My armsâ¦I can barely move them. I don't know if I can.”
I felt much the same way. This wasn't like anything we'd done before. This was a constant struggle. “I don't think we have a choice,” I told her.
“We're not going to make it,” she said.
It was the first time I'd heard her say anything like this. I knew she was really scared. So was I. I used all my strength to change our course slightly so we would not be going straight to the island but off to one side. The island wasn't very big. If we could get around it, we'd be somewhat sheltered from the wind and waves. We'd have a chance.
Just then we got slammed by a wave that was bigger than all the rest. I felt it coming and braced myself. Brianna screamed when the water came down on top of us. I held tight to my paddle and used it to brace us and keep us balanced.
The wave had pushed us rapidly forward, and I could see we were getting too close to the rock face of the island. I dug in my paddle after the wave had passed and turned us to the right. I knew Brianna was dead tired, but she kept paddling.
We were being drawn by the waves and currents straight toward the jagged rocks as we both struggled to move us away. There was a break in the incoming waves, and I knew it was our only chance. “Paddle harder!” I shouted.
She nodded, and I knew she understood. Now or never.
After several desperate minutes, we slid past the final outcropping and were caught by a strong landward current that pulled us along the side of the island. And I realized we were getting to where we needed to be. The waves were still coming from behind us now, but they were pushing us faster and not breaking.
I think it was more luck than skill.
The wind continued to get stronger and stronger, but that too was in our favor. Finally we were able to begin to turn into the calmer waters behind the island, and I saw a sandy stretch up ahead. Brianna knew we were out of the worst of it and stopped paddling. I think her arms just gave out. So I did what needed to be done. And then, at last, we were finally sliding up onto the gravelly beach with a grinding sound that was the most beautiful thing that I'd ever heard.
I just fell over onto the sand as Brianna pulled the release on the spray skirt and struggled free. She fell down beside me and hugged me with all her might.
We lay there, breathing heavily when suddenly the skies opened up and a heavy rain began to pour down on us. “It's the hurricane,” I said, still rather breathless. My words almost got lost, the sound of the rain and wind was so powerful. I knew we were still in plenty of trouble.
Brianna clung to me. “It's like we're being punished.”
But I knew it wasn't that. It was bad timing, bad luck and not taking things seriously enough. We'd been reckless. I thought we'd been brave. But it wasn't that.
The rain continued to pound down on us, and I knew we couldn't just lie there. Brianna had her fingernails digging into my side. Her eyes were closed. Neither one of us felt like we had any energy to move. But we had to. I loosened her grip, stood up and felt dizzy, wobbly. I could barely stay standing.
But I grabbed the rope on the front of the kayak and dragged it up the beach as high as I could go. Then I went back for Brianna, lifted her to her feet, and we trudged up the steep incline of the beach as the rain suddenly stopped.
“Thank god, that's over,” she said.
“It's not over. It's just beginning. If this is the hurricane they predicted coming ashore here, we need to get to someplace safe. That was just a little rainstorm. The real thing will come later. I think we're going to have to find some way to get help.”
“No,” she said emphatically, pushing me away suddenly. “I'm not going back there. I know where they'll send me now, and I know it's not going to be some summer camp.”
She didn't need to worry. We were on an uninhabited island. The weather was going to be god-awful. If they had been looking for us, they would give up the search when the real storm hit.
We were on our own.
Despite the sudden change to good weather, I felt in my bones that things would only get worse. I pulled the kayak even farther up into the forest and lashed it to a sturdy spruce tree. I tied the two paddles as well and opened the sea hatch, hauled out the tent and the few supplies. Brianna didn't look too happy.
“Cameron, I think I'm going to have to continue on without you,” she said.
“You can't do that,” I said.
“Don't worry. When I get ashore, I'll have someone phone and tell them about you. Someone will come and get you.”
“It's not that,” I insisted. “It's you. You can't go back out there.”
It was still windy but very warm, and the sun was out.
“I got you ashore, didn't I? I can handle this,” she said. “I'll go toward the mainland and hug the shoreline. I got this far, didn't I?”
I was getting mad at her now. “You can't go back out there,” I shouted.
“I don't like people telling me what to do,” she snapped back. “And I don't like being shouted at.”
I calmed myself. “If you go back out there now, I think you might die.”
“Nobody would even care,” she said, now sounding more hurt than angry.
“You got that wrong,” I said. “You need to stay here with me tonight. We have to ride this storm out. Tomorrow we'll come up with a plan.” I didn't know what else to do to make her see my point, so I kissed her hard on the mouth. She pulled away a little at first but then suddenly changed, and she kissed me back.
In about an hour, the wind came up stronger, and the sky began to get darker. We wandered into the forest. I knew the tent wasn't going to be enough to keep us dry and safe. Halfway up a small rocky hill, there was a stone outcropping facing away from the wind. We stopped. We were both exhausted.
“Here,” I said. “This is the best we're going to find. We'll tuck in there and wrap ourselves in the tent. “It's gonna be one hell of a night.”
She smiled at meâalmost a shy smile. The girl was tough, but she had no idea what we were in for. I had been outside once at Lawrencetown Beach when a hurricane had come ashore. You could lean into the wind, and it would hold you up. It was wild. Stuff was flying through the air, and I got hit in the head with a piece of asphalt shingle that gave me a large cut. They said that it was a Category 2. What Chris had said was that this one might be a Category 3. That could be deadly.
There was a flat area covered with moss under the rock outcropping. It wasn't exactly a cave, but it was the best shelter we were going to find. I rooted in the pack and found the water-proof container with five matches left.c “I'm gonna make a fire,” I said. “Get us dry and dry out the tent. And then we're going to stay put right here until it's all over.”
She nodded. I began to gather dry twigs and pine needles from beneath the rock and bigger branches from nearby. Without saying another word, Brianna began to gather more dead wood. It took two of the precious matches, but I got a fire going. All the damp wood made for too much smoke, but soon I had a big blaze with flames leaping when the wind gusted. I wanted to go back to the shoreline to search for clams and mussels, but I was afraid to leave her. We kept the fire going for two hours until we were mostly dry.
It was late afternoon, and the wind was getting stronger. We sat on the life jackets and wrapped up in the tent beneath the rocky outcropping. I meant to just close my eyes for a minute and rest, but I fell asleep. So did Brianna, I guess.
I awoke later in the pitch-dark to the howling, horrifying sound of wind. Not far away, I heard a tree snap in half and topple to the ground. The fire was out, and rain was driving down in buckets. We were protected from the worst of it, but the sound was as frightening as anything I had ever heard. Brianna was awake as well. She was clinging to me, and I held tightly to her. She was speaking to me, but her words were lost in the sound of the storm around us. Trees were being uprooted and knocked to the ground. Branches were breaking off and flying through the air. We could not see a thing, but the sound was terrifying.
We clung to each other for hours in the deafening roar. Alone on an island like this in the middle of a hurricane, I knew that our survival depended upon keeping our wits, staying put and doing nothing but wait it out.
And then the wind began to diminish. I had never experienced anything like that in my life. We remained tightly wrapped in our tent like a cocoon. I had chosen well. The rocks had protected us. Eventually Brianna, still clinging to me, fell asleep. My plan was to try and stay awake until I was sure the storm was completely over but exhaustion overtook me and I fell asleep as well.
In the morning when I awoke, I was alone. Brianna was nowhere in sight, and what had once been a forest on the hillside now looked like a war zone.
I knew that Brianna was one crazy girl, but I wasn't ready for this. I called out her name over and over as I began to stumble through the maze of fallen trees. I was hoping I was wrong, but I had no choice but to head for the shoreline. Nothing of the island looked like anything we had seen the day before. There were few standing trees left, and I had to climb over piles of fallen limbs and trees to make headway to get to the water.
When I got there, the kayak was gone. My paddle was still there, and she had left me the backpack with the matches inside. There was a note on a scrap of paper inside the pack.
Dear Cameron,
I'm sorry. I really am. You are the best thing that ever happened to me. I think I love you. I will send help, I promise, but you will never see me again.
Love,
Brianna
The sky was blue now. The sea looked brown and frothy, and there were still large waves rolling by, but the wind was just a light breeze now. If I looked up and away across the water, it was as if nothing at all had just happened. I sat down on a smooth wet rock, feeling more alone and sad than I had ever felt in my life.
She was out there somewhere, still headed toward Port Joseph, still planning to escape and run to Montreal. And she'd left me behind.
Brianna was in real danger though. The waves would be treacherous out beyond the protection of shore. And she was alone. She was tough, but not that tough.
I sat frozen for nearly twenty minutes. It was like I was paralyzedâmy mind and my body. I wanted to shake myself and make this all go away. But I had to face the reality of what I'd let us get into. What I felt now was much worse than the fear I had felt during the hurricane.
Finally, I got up. I looked around. I decided to walk the shoreline of the island. Maybe she tried to leave and was washed back in, or maybe I could see her if I looked in all directions. It seemed pretty hopeless, but it was the only thing I could do. I put on the backpack and picked up my paddle and began to pick my way along the rocky shoreline, heading east toward the seaward-facing part of the island. There was washed-up debris and fallen trees to climb over. It was slow going.
When I first saw it, I thought it was some kind of trick my eyes were playing on me. It was just a flash of orange in a mass of seaweed up along the tree line. I stopped and looked at it in disbelief.
My kayak had washed ashore in the storm. As I stumbled toward it, wobbling on the boulders, I knew that it was probably smashed, but it was buried in kelp and rockweed, and I couldn't really tell. I knelt down and slowly began to pull the seaweed off.
It was damaged, yes, and filled with water and more seaweed. But as I unearthed it, I began to pray that it would be seaworthy. I had not prayed in a long time. But I prayed.
Some cracks in the hull, but no real holes. The rudder was smashed, but I knew I could still steer with my paddle if I had to. I took a hard look at the sea in front of me. The waves were large, and I knew how difficult they could be. Was I really getting ready to go out there?
I decided to shut my mind down, to stop thinking about anything but bailing water out of the kayak. I ran along the shoreline until I found a cracked plastic pail that had washed in. I began to furiously bail the seawater from the boat and couldn't believe how much was in there. My heart was pounding. I knew that for each minute that went by, Brianna would be farther and farther away. If she was still afloat.
Finally, I had emptied enough water so that I could flip the boat over and drain the rest. Funny, I kept thinking that somethingâI don't know whatâwould happen and I wouldn't really have to face up to the sea journey. But here it was.
I had worn my life jacket through the night. I had a paddle. And I now had a boat to follow Brianna. I dragged the kayak along the shoreline looking for an easy place to launch where the waves were not slapping hard on the shoreline. Looking east, I saw the next island. For the most part, Brianna and I had been island hopping, staying on the landward side to avoid the larger waves and the wind. As I slid the kayak into the water, I almost chickened out. I had no spray skirt. It wouldn't take much to swamp me. I took the pail because I knew I'd have to bail water slopping in. All I had to do was keep the little boat upright and keep me inside. Keep the waves behind me. Keep my brain focused. Damn. How had I got myself into this?
I sat in the kayak in the shallows and took a long, deep breath. This was a very bad idea. I now blamed Brianna for getting us into this mess. I suddenly wasn't sure she was worth dying for. I put my hands on the side of the boat and began to lift myself out. No way was this going to work.