Read Online Wild Jack by John Christopher - Free Book Online Page B

diminishing rapidly.
    Sunyo woke up in order to be sick, or rather to retch from an empty stomach. It was not long before Kelly followed suit, as the sea grew rougher and the dinghy tossed on it like a cork. I held out longer but succumbed at last. Clouds crossed the moon—in wisps at first, then thicker till it was completely obscured. I could scarcely see the sea but could hear it well enough, in wind and wave, and feel it when a wave slapped over the gunnels and drenched me through.
    After a very long time there was light in the east. It slowly brightened, but the sky stayed gray and cloud-covered, and the sea was gray all round us. I strained my eyes for a sight of land, but there was nothing, not even a sea bird to break the heaving monotony of the waste of water.
    The others were also awake and looking about them. Kelly asked Sunyo how he felt, and he said he was all right. Surprisingly, he did look a little better.
    Kelly said, “Not much for breakfast, I’m afraid.”
    His grin included me, and I willingly took the olive branch. I said, “I was thinking of eggs and bacon. Three eggs, no—four. And half a dozen rashers. With a very big cup of coffee. Creamy coffee.”
    â€œHam and eggs for me,” Kelly said. “Buckwheat cakes and honey. And fresh orange juice. A lot of fresh orange juice.”
    The thought made me realize how thirsty I was. I did not feel like going on with that particular game, and neither, it seemed, did Kelly. We stared glumly at the surrounding sea. Sunyo was staring at it, too. He spoke, more to himself than anyone else, and I thought I’d misheard him. I asked, “What was that?”
    â€œIt’s beautiful.”
    â€œBeautiful?” I had heard him right. “What is?”
    â€œThe two colors of gray: the sky and the sea. They’re almost the same, and yet there is a contrast. My father had a picture in which there was an effect something like that. It was a scroll which you held in one hand and unrolled with the other, showing a panorama of landscape starting high in the mountains and going down to the sea. That was where the two grays were.”
    Incredible, I thought, that he could talk about pictures in a situation like this. Though it could be an advantage. Anything was which took our minds off the spot we were in. As though thinking along the same lines, Kelly started talking about his home, but in connection with dogs, not pictures—his father bred King Charles spaniels as a hobby. I contributed our tropical fish tank, which took up one wall of the sitting room.
    Sunyo remained silent, meditating maybe, but Kelly and I went on trying to reminisce ourselves out of this watery wilderness. He spoke of the race course they had in Jacksonville, something London could not boast. I countered it by describing the stretch of river just inside the wall which had been designed as a swimming center, with individual pools on the north bank and the temperature of the whole river raised more than ten degrees by heating elements on the riverbed. Londoners were proud of the amount of energy they could afford to spend in that way.
    â€œKind of a waste, isn’t it?” Kelly said. “I mean, heating up a whole river.”
    â€œYou waste land on a race course. All our public land is parks.”
    I spoke a bit sharply, and he replied in the same tone. “Our parks are as good as any you have in London, with poinsettias and jacaranda and oranges growing out in the open. You can walk through a Jacksonville park and pick oranges off the trees and eat them.”
    The image was powerful and made my throat seem more parched than ever. I said dispiritedly, “Jacksonville or London—what’s the difference? We’re a long way from either.”
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    Time dragged by. The cloud cover remained unbroken, a heavy pall stretching from skyline to dim skyline. A sight of the sun, even a patch of brightness,