Oh, God, Tracy thought, we can't possibly survive that. It 's going to dash us in pieces down this cliff.  But the giant wall of water actually surged onto the little island with a thundering noise and filled not over the top, but out to the sides of it, as if the tiny piece of land actually were a stumbling block in its path.

They screamed as the water rose around them, breaking and crashing against the cliffs, but filling in the ocean floor and the crevices they'd seen before. Richard stood on top of the rock, hanging on to the vines and ropes that bound them all together. He could see the water foaming and boiling, uprooting everything that wasn't already smashed from the twister. It was too much water, he thought. Too much. It rose and filled the ravine, covered the beaches and trees, and finally breached the flat plateau. He was yelling at Tracy but he saw she couldn't hear him as she struggled to keep the little raft upright as the waves crested and a torrent of white water lifted the tiny craft and tumbled it threateningly. It wasn't as if this was one wave and it was going to recede or simply fill in space where it had been before. The high water kept going beyond.

Clouds of dirty coral filled bubbles withdrew like the hesitation just before the decision to destroy. Tracy's eyes sought Richard's as he struggled to stay on top of his perch. He had thought it might give them a chance to help each other if they were separated, but together they'd have experienced the same thing.... 

The water suddenly dipped and then plunged the little raft down the hillside, hitting trees, coconuts, leaves and branches, and suddenly rose above them all, as it floated. Tracy held the girls down with her body, pinning them all to the raft, grasping the rough sticks with all her might while shouting encouragement to Danny. The raft rose and then bobbed on a crest, fell down again and then rose, still on top.

They cleared the known edges of the island and plunged down a huge white breaker as if they were a rag toy in a giant child's bathtub. The raft teetered on the edge of capsizing, as another wave washed up and over them. Tracy felt her body lifted away from the raft, but she held on and kicked with all her might. She screamed with effort, all her surf training coming to her aid. It wasn't enough. If anyone knew the ineffectual endeavors of a human being against the raging power of the ocean, it was Tracy. She felt them falling head over heels and steered the raft as best she could through the inside of the wave. She gasped for air when they surfaced, and tried to whip her hair out of her eyes to confront the next --

Rock. She saw no more.

                                                                                             *****

Perpetual motion. The ocean rocked relentlessly. A baby cried. A child moaned. Something brushed her legs. Tracy opened an eye or thought she did. She couldn't see.

She realized she was submerged in water, fairly warm water at that, and that her upper arm was wrapped in rope and burning with each bob of the raft.

''Danny?" she choked.

"I'm here, momma." came his voice. "We're all here. We're all okay. I can see the island. You have blood all over your head."

Something brushed her again, something cold and solid and not the raft. She wiped her free hand across her eyes and instantly knew the blood caking her eyes came from the side of her head where the pain was blooming. Something about bleeding in the ocean water bothered her, gave her a sense of foreboding.

She opened her eyes again. "Wby'm l in th' water?" she slurred her words, again feeling the strange bobbing next to her leg.

"You fell off the raft . I wrapped the rope around you to hold you on, it came loose from the big rock, but I can still see the island." Danny said.

"Island." Megan echoed. 

"Baby?" Tracy managed.

"I pulled her off you so she could breathe."  Danny said, "I tied her down right here, so she can't fall off."

Now Tracy could hear the baby's thin wails. But her mind was still cloudy. "Um bmmm ." She said. She assumed the head wound was making her this way. 

"She wants you momma." Danny told her calmly.

Tracy kicked trying to feel the solid thing, but it had drifted away. She pulled herself up onboth elbows and assessed that the children were actually all on board, and then looked over Danny's bright head toward the island a good 500 yards away. It was the north beach that faced her, with its longer shoreline, no longer littered with quite so much debris. That stuff seemed to be floating all around them. 

She had no energy. Even though she wanted to kick toward the shore, her body didn 't want to obey her. Then came the sudden brush with the hard object and she looked down. Tracy gasped. The object wasn 't a rock or a piece of driftwood as she'd originally assumed. It was a giant sea turtle lazily swimming alongside her about four feet beneath the surface. She pulled her feet up, not knowing if the turtle was dangerous. Danny had seen it earlier.

"She's our friend." He explained. "She's been with us the whole time you were asleep." 

"Friend," Megan said, puckering her thumb out of her mouth for a brief second so she could repeat the word.

"Have I been asleep long?" 

"Om, maybe...." He looked skyward and she knew he was about to make an exaggerated guess. "About 50 hours."

It had been mid-afternoon or evening when the wave struck, and it was light as noon now. Had she been knocked out all night? She looked up at the island and tried to regain her strength to kick them toward it. She could hear the reef ahead and marveled that they had been thrown out farther than the reef.

Strangely enough the sea turtle seemed to know the way, and with it's little nudges, also seemed to be pushing them toward shore. Tracy checked the clear water periodically as she paddled them in the general direction to see if she were following the turtle and tried to go with it. lt wasn 't as hard as it had at first seemed. The current drew them onward. The baby's thin crying was an annoyance. Her natural inclination was to take care of the children first, but right now, taking care of them meant getting them back to the island.

The sea turtle knew the way. It swam gracefully, it's powerful flippers, a dark gray smudge flying dynam ically on each glide. It's huge beak often came close enough to her legs to touch and then it would veer away, but she reached out and touched it's shell, expecting to feel a tough hard thing, and instead it felt a little rubbery and barnacles clung to it tenaciously. The beautiful dark liquid eye turned to her knowingly.

She tired easily. "Mom, why don't you let me off and I can help swim? I'm a good swimmer." Danny asked. At first thought the answer was a resounding, no. He could get hurt and she wouldn 't be strong enough to help him. She was barely hanging on to the raft as it was, kicking feebly every now and then and drifting slowly on the oncoming current, hoping to make it through the reef. She realized that without his help, it wasn't likely she'd make it back at all. She nodded and Danny slipped off the raft, to the twins piercing screams, and Tracy felt the shock of energy as he began to kick them to shore. The sudden jolt of control was reassuring and gave her impetus to try harder. The faster they went the louder Melia screamed. Tracy knew right off that Danny had been telling her some horrible stories by the way she was babbling.

Their unlikely guide did lead them straight through the reef without even a new scratch or brush with the deadly coral. In fact they were able to follow the turtle right into the shallows where she tried to touch the bottom, and walk the raft the rest of the way to shore. Her feet touched and then the sand slid away and the undertow took her again. Sbe knew if she were unhurt, this would be a piece of cake, riding the waves back to shore was a normal every day experience for her, but right now, she felt dizzy and unaware. Just getting to shore through the swelling waves was going to be a chore. Without Danny, she knew she'd never have made it.

Tracy stopped kicking, feeling the way the current shifted warmly and then as the cooler water bit from the lee side of the island, she shivered. She needed to get out of the water. Her head was aching unbearably. The baby had stopped crying  and for that she was thankful, but one look at Megan's face alerted her to something very bad.

What more could this nightmare hold? Tracy turned to see where the chubby baby hand was pointing. "Big fishy."Megan said.