Stillness

The outboard motor packed up an hour out of Blogland. I checked the fuel level - zilch! So I unbolted the old "Johnson" and despatched it to the deep. I feel so relieved to be away from those bad men. Poor Arun! What had  he done to deserve such a brutal ending? Man's inhumanity to man. And Thuza, my lovely Thuza - a P.A. whose service went way beyond her duty. Way beyond. They swung her severed head around like a hammer in that Olympics field event and tossed it  on to the lawn - less than five metres from where I was hiding. I shall never forget, never.

So I look around me. The sea is like a millpond. Not a breath of wind. I look to every direction on the compass and there is nothing - just an horizon - a line that quivers in the afternoon heat. I could row but in which direction? No fishing boats, no buoys, no signal of land anywhere.

I chopped one of my coconuts in half with the machete and ate the white meat inside before drinking a little of my precious water. Flying fishes skim the surface of the ocean. I have heard that they are good to eat. but the only way I will catch one is if it flies into this fragile, orange inflatable.

Have you ever been somewhere where the air looked like jelly - colourless jelly wobbling slightly in a heat haze? Well that's how it is for me now. The sea swells so gently that when you close your eyes you might swear that you are on solid ground. So still it is almost unbelievable.

All that I can do is to drift and hope for the best. Perhaps I'll be swept to some jungled Burmese beach or maybe I'll be blown westwards across the Andaman to the Nicobars, India or Sri Lanka. Who knows? All that I want to do is to survive. Seeing the bloody assassinations of Thuza and Arun makes me realise how very precious my life is. There will be no second chances.  And only f I am lucky will this old inflatable  become my salvation rather than my plastic, floating coffin.