Free Omnibus.The.Sea.Witch.2012 by Stephen Coonts Page A

We’d be ant food before anyone ever found us. If they did.
    Of course, if the Japs found us before the Americans, we wouldn’t have to worry about survival.
    POTTINGER:
    Fighting the currents and swells washing over that uneven reef and through the lagoon while dragging the ensign was the toughest thing I ever had to do. The floor of the lagoon was uneven, with holes in it, and sometimes Hoffman and I went under and fought like hell to keep from drowning.
    We must have struggled for an hour before we got to knee-deep water, and another half hour before we finally dragged the ensign and ourselves up on the beach. We lay there gasping, desperately thirsty, so exhausted we could scarcely move.
    Hoffman got to his knees, finally, and looked around. The beach was a narrow strip of sand, no more than ten yards wide; the jungle began right at the high-water mark.
    At his urging we crawled into the undergrowth out of sight. The ensign we dragged. He was still breathing, had a pulse, and thank God the bleeding had stopped, but he didn’t look good.
    The
Witch
was about a mile out on the reef. The tail stuck up prominently like an aluminum sail.
    “I hope the Japs don’t see that,” Hoffman remarked.
    “If we can’t find water, it won’t matter,” I toldhim. “We’ll be praying for the Japs to come along and put us out of our misery.”
    After some discussion, he went one way down the beach and I went the other. We were looking for freshwater, a stream running into the sea … something.
    At some point I became aware that I was lying in sand … in shade … in wet clothes … with bugs and gnats and all manner of insects eating on me.
    My head was splitting, so I didn’t pay much attention to the bugs, though I knew they were there.
    I managed to pry my eyes open … and could barely make out light and darkness. I thrashed around awhile and dug at my eyes and rubbed at the bugs and passed out again.
    The second time I woke up it was dark. My eyes were better, I thought, yet there was nothing to see. I could hear waves lapping nervously.
    The thought that we had made it to the island hit me then. I lay there trying to remember. After a while most of the flight came back, the flak in the darkness, the Zero on floats, settling toward the water with one engine dead and the other dying …
    I became aware that Pottinger was there beside me. He had a baby bottle in his survival vest, which he had filled with freshwater. He let me drink it. I have never tasted anything sweeter.
    Then he went away, back for more I guess.
    After a while I realized someone else was there. It took me several minutes to decide it was Hoffman.
    “Are we the only ones alive?” I asked, finally.
    “Yes,” Hoffman said.

SIX
    The next day, our first full day on the island, I was feeling human again, so Pottinger, Hoffman, and I went exploring. Fortunately, my head wasn’t bleeding, and the headache was just that, a headache. We had solid land—okay, sand—under our feet, and we had a chance. Not much of one, but a chance. I was still wearing a pistol, and all of us had knives.
    We were also hungry enough to eat a shoe.
    We worked our way east along the beach, taking our time. As we walked we discussed the situation. Hoffman was for going out to the plane and trying to salvage a survival kit; Pottinger was against it. There was a line of thunderstorms off to the east and south that seemed to be coming our way. Still hours away, the storms wereagitating the swells. Long, tall rollers crashed on the reef, and smaller swells swept through the lagoon.
    Watching the swells roll through the shallows, I thought the wreck of the
Sea Witch
too far away and the water too dangerous. Then we saw a group of shark fins cruising along, and the whole idea of going back to the plane sort of evaporated. We certainly needed the survival kits; we were just going to have to wait for a calmer day.
    I had seen the island from the air, though at a low angle, and knew it