Swimming to Freedom.

As if a big bite had been taken out of the land the cliff face curved around in a crescent with each end collapsing into two long spits of crumpled rock that reached out into the sea on both sides of the shore.

“Well, I don't think that I can climb off this beach?”

Manu hobbled along the beach and gathered up bits of flotsam caught among the piles of branch debris. These included a fishing buoy a little bigger than a basketball and two empty plastic jerry cans that were used to carry water, all tied together with a length of rope. He recognized these items as coming from their boat which had gotten picked up by last night's storm and dumped onto the beach minus the crew, he had been entangled with these items when he washed ashore soon afterward.

Manu set about creating a small raft out of these items to help him negotiate the water since his elbows and knees had taken a beating when he landed on the rocky shore.

“Not stable enough to sit on but should help me stay afloat if I laid on it like a surfboard,” he said to himself as he inspected his alterations with some satisfaction. “It'll be low tide soon, better hurry before it turns.”

Negotiating the rocky shore the stones bit into his soles causing him to lose his balance twice before finally reaching the water dragging his load. The cold water made Manu gasp as he let it take the weight off his aching body and tortured feet. Relieving his legs of any more pain Manu used his arms to paddle as he set off to round the spit.

The ferocious ocean from the storm last night was now a calm sleeping giant, the slow undulating swells carried Manu out toward the tip of the spit. The sunlight sparkled brilliant rainbow needles from the diamond-tipped wavelets. The morning breeze cruising in from the turquoise ocean felt warm. Birds had started to gather in the sky above with a raucous squeaking and squawking. Their cries of excitement alerted Manu to wonder what all the fuss was about. Pushing himself onto his forearms he waited till the next swell lifted him and his craft with its rise. He could see a bubbling boiling mass on the surface of the water in the distance.

“Ah your breakfast is here,” Manu thought, as he watched the different sea birds dive-bombing the bubbling mass of confused fish. He wondered what predatory fish was driving the school to the surface from below? Then as the next large swell lifted him high in the water he spotted some dark familiar shapes moving among the boiling mass.

“Sharks!”

The thought sent electrical waves surging through Manu's body causing him to freeze. Manu was covered in freshly opened wounds and there was a feeding frenzy only a few hundred meters in front of him. He still had to get past that school of sharks to go around the spit. As each swell brought him closer he could make out more clearly the dark dorsal fins rising and falling amongst the mass. Then almost as if he had called to it, one of the fins peeled off and started to head towards him.

Only now did Manu realize how far he had let himself drift away from the bar of rocks whose line out to sea he had started to follow. He drove his arms deep to pull himself across the water to the line of rocks as fast as he could but his flotation wasn't designed to travel through water at any speed. Normally Manu could have just swum the distance around the spit but with wounded knees and elbows, he didn't trust that he could do it without some sort of aid.

Manu's body was laying over the two square-shaped water bottles that he had lashed one behind the other, on the front, he had lashed the buoy onto which he rested his upper chest as he paddled. He was able to keep his feet out of the water to reduce some drag but that dorsal fin was closing in fast. The sea-worn rocks loomed in front of him, he could almost touch the lips of hundreds of mussels that protruded from the base of them. The rise and fall of the swells seemed to take him closer to the rocks then push him away again. Manu fought the waves in desperation swinging his head around every now and then to see where his antagonist loomed. He imagined his pounding heart leaking his precious blood out of every cut and wound in his wracked body. His breathing was labored and his arms burnt, “Ignore the pain.” Manu thought as he pushed himself on.

“Nearly there, nearly there, come on not much further...Where the hell has he gone?”

Eyes bulging, a knot in his throat, Manu swung his head around as he searched for that menacing dorsal fin that was bearing down on him. The flash of a gaping wide mouth ringed with vicious jagged teeth came straight at his face from directly below just before, BOOM! The foam whiteness of the seawater filled his vision.

Spluttering back up to the surface one of Manu's flailing arms hit a rock, he used it to haul himself out of the water. Catching his breath on a boulder that formed part of the spit, he looked around to see what had just happened. His little raft was now being rapidly pulled along in the water by the shark as it rolled and flipped in the water taking the raft with it. Manu's chest hurt where he had been laying across the buoy its protruding seam had left a long red mark across his chest. It looked as though the shark was in some kind of strife also? It appeared that the shark had hit the buoy so hard that it now had it lodged in its wide-open jaws and no matter what the shark did it could not dislodge it. The buoy with the two accompanying large water bottles was making it impossible for it to dive.

“It must have thought that was my head?”

Then Manu saw another reason why the shark should be in such a panic to free himself, the other sharks had become attracted to all the thrashing around and were starting to drift over to investigate.

As the troubled shark began to tire, Manu winced as one out of the group of onlookers swimming around inquisitively, took a bite out of it. Then another one took a bite, then another until all were fighting over the carcass of the shark with a buoy jammed in its mouth.

Manu stood agape mesmerized by the scene unfolding in front of him. Although that particular shark would have died anyway, nature can be pretty savage to watch when it is doing what it is designed to do. Manu was impressed with the speed and efficiency that the school dispatched the shark in strife that had probably mistaken him for something else? Manu always had a healthy respect for sharks, although it came from his own fear of them. As one has, when confronted with an animal that they are not too familiar with.

When it was over Manu looked around to gauge his situation. He noticed that he was standing on one of a row of smaller rocks that lay at the base of some larger rocks that rose behind him. Climbing over them looked out of the question since the sea had scoured the base of the larger rocks and they now curved up forming a small ledge over his head.

“If I can get just that little bit further out I could probably climb over the spit from there rather than go all the way around it? That would mean getting back into the water to get there though? With them out there? Not to mention that the tide will be coming back in soon?”

“Hmmm...”

Almost as if the sharks had read his thoughts, he could see their dark shapes moving off towards the shoreline. He hadn't noticed till now that the tide had already turned and begun to come back in, he could even see his little craft drifting back towards the beach that he just earlier escaped from. The head of the luckless shark bobbing lazily in the swells still attached to the buoy dragging behind the two water bottles. A gull was using its wings to steady itself on the head so that it could maneuver itself to a better position to peck one of its eyes out.

A dead body left back on the beach seemed to have caught their attention. The washed-up remains of one of the three men that had kidnapped him from his village so that they could use him as leverage to force his father to sign a deal allowing them to mine for minerals in the area. The birds and crabs had obviously opened it up, now the water had come up to cover part of the body.

“They're just waiting till the tide comes up enough...Then you're gone. Their job is to keep the sea clean of garbage like you.”

Manu knew that this was the best time if any to make his move. Eyes pinned to the dark shapes in the distance Manu climbed back into the water. He made his way over the short distance to where the rocks that made up the bar were a lot lower. Every nerve in his skin was awake to any unusual movement in the fluid that he surreptitiously pulled himself through. He dreaded every time the swells would hide the distant fins from his view. The sight of a shark getting torn apart by its peers until its intestines burst from its body, still fresh in his mind.

Manu finally made his way over to a spot that looked manageable. Pulling on the rocks to once again haul himself out of the water Manu hoped that the other side of the spit was a little more promising than the side he was now on.

“It's beautiful.”

On the other side, the cliff dropped to a gentle slope that faded into the ground and this was faced by a long wide sandy strip that curved slowly inward and disappeared far into the distance to the overhanging bush. This too was strewn with debris from the storm the night before.

Behind the beach, the land rose green and steeply, culminating in a peak that wore a crown of mist. Manu smiled when he saw the reason why the sharks discontinued their harassment of the large school of fish. The school had drifted into an area that now had a pod of dolphins rounding them up. Climbing back into the water on that side of the rocks, the sight of dolphins leaping out of the distant blue sea made him far less apprehensive. Manu felt that he had just climbed out of hell and found Eden.

He used his strength just to keep himself afloat and let the incoming tide take him toward the beach. Soon the ache of gravity pulled at his limbs and body as he dragged himself from the water. The pale warm sand cracked softly and clung to his wet feet as he made his way toward the high tide mark of the beach. The trees and palms showed battering from the high winds that had pelted this island the night before. Most of the debris had been washed up further than the grassy verge that normally marked the high tide and lay in piles against the base of these trees as if the sea had been trying to hold back the forest. Nevertheless, there was plenty of wood to create a signal fire with a good likelihood of getting home before his father signed anything.