Dolphin Island

Johnny was content to let the dolphins do all the navigating until he was well clear of the reef. Their wonderful sonar system, filling the dark sea with echoes beyond his hearing, told them exactly where they were. It revealed to them all the obstacles and all the larger fish for a hundred feet around. Millions of years before men invented radar, dolphins (as well as bats) had perfected it in almost every detail. True, they used sound waves and not radio waves, but the principle was the same.

The sea was choppy, but not too rough. Sometimes spray would break over him, and occasionally the board would nose down into a wave, but most of the time he skimmed comfortably across the surface. It was difficult to judge his speed in the darkness. When he switched on his flashlight, the water seemed to be racing past him at a tremendous rate, but he knew that it could not be much more than ten miles an hour.

Johnny looked at his watch. Fifteen minutes had already passed, and when he glanced back, there was no sign of the island. He had expected to see a few lights, but even these were gone. Already he was miles from land, racing through the night on a mission that would have terrified him only a year ago. Yet he was unafraid—or at least he could control his fears, for he knew that he was with friends who would protect him from harm.

It was time he set his course. Navigation was no problem. If he traveled even approximately west, he was bound to hit somewhere on the thousands of miles of Australian coastline, sooner or later. When he glanced at his compass, he saw, to his surprise, that there was no need to make any change of direction. Susie was already on course, heading due west

It was the clearest and most direct proof of her intelligence that he had ever received. Mick’s “HELP!” signal had been enough. There was no need to point to the one direction in which help could be found; she already knew it, as she probably knew every inch of the Queensland coastline.

But was she traveling as swiftly as she could? Johnny wondered whether to leave that to her, or whether to impress upon her the urgency of the mission. Finally he decided that it would do no harm to press the FAST button.

He felt the board jerk slightly when he did so, but he could not tell whether there had been any appreciable increase in speed. The hint should be sufficient. He was sure now that Susie knew exactly what she was doing and was operating at her best cruising speed. If he insisted that she go faster, she would only tire herself.

The night was very dark, for the moon had not yet risen, and low clouds left behind by the storm hid almost all the stars. Even the usual phosphorescence of the sea was absent; perhaps the luminous creatures of the deep were still recovering from the impact of the hurricane and would not shine again until they had got over their shock. Johnny would have welcomed their gentle radiance, for there were moments when he felt scared by this headlong race through pitch-black darkness. Suppose a huge wave—-or even a rock—was rearing up invisibly ahead of him as he skimmed along with his nose only three inches from the water? Despite his faith in Susie, these fears crept up on him from time to time, and he had to fight them down.

It was a wonderful moment when he saw the first pale glow of moonrise in the east. The clouds were still thick, but though he could not see the Moon itself, its reflected light began to grow around him. It was too faint to show any details; but merely to see the horizon made a great difference to his peace of mind. Now he could tell with his own eyes that there were no rocks or reefs ahead. Susie’s underwater senses were far keener than his straining vision, but at least he was no longer completely helpless.

Now that they were in deeper water, the annoying, choppy wavelets over which the board had bumped at the beginning of its journey had been left behind. Instead, they were skimming across long, rolling waves, hundreds of feet from crest to crest. It was hard to judge their height; from Johnny’s prone position, they doubtless seemed much bigger than they really were. Half the time, Susie would be climbing up a long, gentle slope; then the board would hover for an instant on the summit of the moving hill of water; then there would be the swoop down into the valley—then the whole sequence would begin again. Johnny had long since learned to adjust himself to the climb and the swoop, shifting his weight automatically along the board. Like riding a bicycle, he did it without conscious thought.