Charlene settled onto Terry’s lap one day in December. She rested her head on his right shoulder and nestled her mouth up to his neck and planted a slow and tender kiss.

“What brought that on?” exclaimed her suspicious lover, his right hand around her back and caressing her right arm.

“You asked me what I want for my birthday next year. Remember?”

“Sure. Do you want what I think you want?” he teased.

“No, silly! Something special. Very special.”

“Okay, what is it?”

“A vacation. Just the two of us—far, far away from everybody.”

“Does it have a golf course?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Then I’m not going.”

“Terry!” She punched him in the ribs. “I’m serious! I want to go far away and I know just the place.” She gave him another peck on the neck.

“You’ve got me curious. Am I going to find out where this mysterious place is or do I have to guess?”

She replied in a teasing voice, “Guess.”

“Is it in California?”

“No.”

“ Ohio?”

“No.”

“ Michigan?”

“No.”

“In the United States?”

“No.”

“Okay,” he added. “ Canada?”

“No.”

“You little stinker. Is it in South America?”

“No.”

“I get it. You’re not going to tell me,” he said.

“Oh, I’ll tell you all right. But you are thousands of miles from it.”

“Well, let me see. Europe?”

“No.”

“ Asia?”

“No.”

“ Australia?”

“No.”

“ Africa?” he asked.

“No.”

“I give up!”

“The south Pacific.”

“Who do we know in the south Pacific?”

“That’s the point. We don’t know anybody. I want to go on an island, with a small cabin and the nearest person miles away,” said Charlene.

“Do you have any particular island in mind?”

“Marotiri.”

“Probably won’t have a golf course,” he teased.

“We can find a golf course on the way.”

“What’s this going to cost me?”

She whispered in his ear.

“You gotta be kidding me! Can we afford that?”

“We can now,” she added and grinned. “I got a new contract.”

And so it was agreed. Charlene got on the Internet and made plans. Unfortunately, all flights during January were already booked in that region of the world. The closest date was the second week in February.

#

Two months later, Terry and Charlene began to wonder just how far away this island was. After flying all day, they spent one night in Tahiti before they boarded a small plane for Rimatara in the Austral Islands, a French territory.

The two travelers, weary from twenty hours in planes, welcomed the stopover of a few days. Beside, they had to wait until a storm passed over the chain of islands to the east that would be their final destination.

Although neither spoke French, they found the natives to be very friendly and happy for the chance to practice their English on the two tourists. It seemed that not many Americans find this isolated part of the world in their travel guides.

To Terry’s disappointment, there was no golf course on Rimatara. The hotel owner said their small vacation island of Marotiri had plenty of grass. Short grass too, since a few wild goats lived on the island. The chubby dark-skinned mayor of Rimatara loaned him a set of four golf clubs that had been left behind by another tourist. For a fee, of course.

Charlene admired the Polynesian women’s skill at weaving hats and bought two to take home. It helped to keep the sun off their faces too. She purchased a mat with a pattern that was hand woven to look like Terry and her. The white sandy beaches were marvelous but you had to be careful swimming too far out. The coral reefs come close to the surface and could cause nasty scrapes. They swam among the reefs and were amazed at the variety of brightly colored fish.

Beyond that, there wasn’t much to do and after they had visited all eight stores in town, they opted to ride a pair of horses up the mountain trail to visit a cattle and hog ranch. On the return path, they stopped at a banana plantation to enjoy the native coffee.

On the third day, as they drank iced tea at an outside table in front of their hotel lobby, a small black Polynesian boy came up on his bicycle with a message on paper. Their plane was leaving that very afternoon for their final airport at Rona. They would take a boat from the airport to their dream island of Marotiri. But they had to hurry, because the pilot planned to leave within the hour. It seemed his mother was ill and he wanted to fly further to the island of Rapa to visit her after dropping his American passengers off.

Terry had his doubts about the small plane with its four small seats, two abreast. The rear section was packed high with cardboard boxes, a half dozen string bags of fruit, and a wire cage with two hens. But Charlene was eager to get going so they squeezed their luggage in and boarded.

The flight in the twin-engine craft was a bit bumpy. It seemed another storm was moving in from to the north. Soon, all they could see out the small windows was water and sky. After another two hours, the sky grew darker and rain began. Strong winds buffeted the plane as the pilot struggled to go around the fast approaching storm. Flashes of lightning lit up the sky ahead.

Charlene looked at the compass on the dashboard. It was spinning. By this time, Charlene was willing to turn around and go back to civilization.

Nobody expected the lightning that struck the plane.

The engines spluttered to death and the plane dropped. “Hold on!” yelled the pilot, as if they had any other choice. “Remember to stay with your seat. It has a flotation pillow!”

When they crashed, the plane flipped end over end a couple times before breaking into pieces and throwing all three into the water.

Charlene struggled to unfasten her seat belt, fearing the seat would turn over and drown her. The loud rain and wind made it hard to hear anything. She shouted for Terry but got no response. All she could see was a wing and the tail of the white plane, bouncing in the waves. There was no sign of Terry. “Oh God!” She managed to get free of her belt and swam to the wing.

She shouted, “Terry! Terry!” over and over again until her throat was sore. She could not hear anything but the wind and rain. She cried, wondering if she was the only one to survive the crash. Was she going to die?

The waves tossed her and her wing for an hour until the wind calmed down and the hot sun came out. Would she drift like this until she died? She wondered how long it takes to die of thirst. She heard a shout and propped herself up on the wing to see where it might have come from. A hundred yards away, a yellow life raft bobbed up and down as the pilot rowed toward her.

Once she was in the raft, she asked, “Did you see Terry?”

The old man shook his head and passed her a bottle. The water tasted very good to her dry, salty lips in the bright sun.

The pilot showed her a small radio beacon with its flashing yellow light. They could not hear anything or call anyone, but he assured her the beacon was sending out a locator signal. Someone would come looking for them for sure. Charlene’s stomach didn’t like the constant motion of the sea.

Three hour later the wind grew still. Charlene heard a noise and turned to see a red and yellow seaplane approach. A man waved from the co-pilot seat to let them know they were seen.

Once on board the plane, Charlene insisted they circle the area to find Terry, but after an hour, the new pilot said they were running low on fuel and would have to return to Rimatara.

Search planes returned to the area where Charlene was picked up, but there was no sign of Terry anywhere. Even the wing and tailpiece could not be found. They were probably at the bottom by now.

The authorities tried to convince her, in their broken English, that no one survived. Terry was presumed to have died. Even if he managed to stay afloat, the prevailing currents had probably taken him too far south. They told her stories of many people lost out there over the centuries in the shark infested waters and frequent tropical storms. There was no way anyone could survive in the open water.

Charlene couldn’t give up so easily. She begged the old pilot to go back but he said he had bills to pay and needed to resume his flights to the main islands in his one remaining plane. She offered to pay him for his time and they agreed he would make his runs to the local islands, but every second day, he would take her out over the area where they were found in the water.

The only problem was she was running out of money on the one credit card she managed to save from the crash.

#

Just after the crash, Terry drifted on his seat pillow. He called over and over for Charlene but the roar of the wind and the splashing of the rain made it all but impossible to hear anything. After twenty minutes, he was hoarse and too tired to try anymore

Eventually the winds and waves died down and he floated for another half day in the glaring sun. Occasionally sharks would circle and his heart pounded until they left. He could tell by the waves splashing on their top fins that he was in a strong current. He wondered if he was drifting toward help or away. He remembered looking at a map of the Austral Islands and realized there weren’t many islands in this part of the Pacific Ocean. He could drift until he died a hundred miles from the nearest human.

As darkness fell, he worried about falling off his flotation seat, so he fastened the seat belt around him tight and rested his head on the cushion. The bobbing of the waves and his fatigue overcame all reluctance to fall asleep with danger in the waters. He conked out.

Late in the afternoon of the next day, he spotted some trees and swam on his flotation pillow toward them. He scraped his right leg on something hard and sharp under the water as he approached. His wound smarted in the salt water and he rushed to get ashore. He climbed up high on the sandy beach and rested.

God he was thirty! His pants were torn around a gash over his right thigh, but the bleeding soon stopped. When he had recovered from his exertion, he went exploring. It would be dark in a while and he wanted to find a less exposed place to sleep than on the beach. Lord knows what kind of animals might live on this island.

He spent the night wrapped in palm leaves, shivering in the space between two fallen trees.

The next day, he found a small cave. Well, not really a cave. More like a wide crack in the volcanic rocks that jutted about twenty feet above the water. But at least it would keep the rain off his head and protect him from the searing sun during the day. He covered the hard pumice stones with palm leaves to make a simple mat to rest upon.

The island turned out to be an atoll, a horseshoe-shaped three-quarter ring of sandy beach and palm trees, about a mile wide with a small hill in the middle part. The island didn’t look big enough to have predators—except maybe snakes.

He built a fire the old fashioned way, rubbing a stick set into a crack in another stick until smoke appeared, then adding dried palm leaves until flames welcomed his efforts. He sat back, exhausted. “Hell of a way to make a fire!”

By now, hunger and thirst were foremost on his mind. Coconuts provided some moisture and nutrition and he built a series of shaped leaves leading to a small depression on a rock to collect rainwater.

He used his shirt as a crude net to catch some fish in the shallow lagoon. Without any utensils, he cooked the fish with sticks and ate with his fingers.

Every day, he toured the island, gazing out to sea in hopes of spotting some sign of a boat or plane. After a week, he gave up hope of ever being rescued. He had no idea where he was and suspected that storm had forced their plane far off course. If someone were looking, they surely would have found him by now.

One night, while trying to figure out a way to put larger logs on his fire so it would stay lit longer, he got the idea of using small rock fragments to form a wedge. With another large rock as a hammer, he managed to split some fallen trees into smaller pieces. That night, he had his first fire that lasted through the chilly hours.

The next morning, he decided to build a raft. His days became consumed with finding suitable dead and dried trees and taking twice daily walkabouts to scan the horizon for signs of rescue.

He chose the center of the island, its thickest part, for his staging area, mostly because it was the closest to the rocks. He struggled for hours each day to drag logs to his new camp. He quickly discovered he needed to use palm leaves wrapped around his hands to hold the sharp pumice rocks. Using the rocks as crude saws or files, he scraped notches near the ends of several logs.

He cut the bark of some trees and pulled it down in strips. He gathered some rocks in the water to create a damn in a small pool of water. With the bark strips, he tied together his logs into a crude raft, with ten logs lined up and three logs across them, with notches where the logs intersected.

He collected a dozen coconuts and saved up rainwater in them, using reeds as plugs. He also dried several small fish and put them in a rudimentary basket he made of palm leaves. He would need some food and water at sea.

When he pushed his crude raft off the beach, he slipped on a rotten log and cut his left calf. He cursed and washed it with salt water, grimacing from the sharp pain.

Using a narrow palm tree as a paddle, he rowed his way out of the lagoon. The current was strong and since he had no idea in which direction he should head, he let the current carry him.

The next day, he noticed his calf was not healing. The area around the cut was dark red. He had an infection.

On the third day, he woke from a nap to find himself immersed in water. He gasped for air and struggled to pull himself back on his raft. It was smaller now. He watched as three logs drifted away. He had no way to reattach them even if he could bring them back. He wondered if this was how he was going to end, as more logs would loosen from the constant jostling by the waves.

He ran out of water and food. His leg hurt like hell and he was too weak to stand to search the horizon. He spent his time in and out of naps. Dreams of being cooked on a hot plate haunted him.

Eventually, he was so weak he could not even lift himself. He knew he was dying and he grew delirious from thirst.

#

On the last day of her search, with no more money left, Charlene gazed through binoculars from the open cockpit of the small plane, hoping against all odds to see something. They had flown over all the uninhabited islands except the one farthest from Rimatara.

“Lady, we’re getting low on fuel,” the pilot yelled over the noise of the engine. “This damned cross wind is picking up speed. We hafta turn back.”

“Just five more minutes,” she pleaded, holding up her hand with her fingers spread out.

The pilot shook his head and frowned.

When her last extra minute was up, he shouted, “We must go back now or we’ll end up in the water like before.”

Something bright yellow bobbed in the water at the edge of her vision. She ignored the pilot and wiped the wet lens of her binoculars for a better look. Yes! Something was in the water.

She turned her head toward the pilot and yelled, “Over there!” She pointed. “I saw something over there!”

The pilot let his shoulders slump and shook his head. But he banked the plane in her direction. “This is the last pass, lady. We’re running out of fuel, I tell ya!”

As they approached whatever it was, Charlene could make out what was moving up and down in the water. A raft. And on it was someone lying down, motionless.

The pilot warned. “Don’t expect much, lady. It’s been three weeks. Nobody can last that long out here without food and water. That’s probably a corpse.”

When they passed low over the water, Charlene recognized the Hawaiian shirt and yelled, “It’s Terry!”

“I’ll radio our coordinates back to Rimatara so they can send a rescue plane. We have to go back now.”

But Charlene couldn’t leave him—not again. She unfastened her seat belt and looked for her water bottle. She snapped its clasp around the belt on her slacks.

“What are you doing, lady?”

“I’m going down there,” she calmly replied.

“Are you nuts? We don’t have any parachutes!”

“Just slow down as much as you can and get close to him.” She unlatched her door and started to climb out onto the wing struts.

“Lady! You’re gonna kill yourself! We’re going too fast. You’ll break your arms or legs at this speed jumping into the water.”

She climbed back in. “Okay, then how can I get down there?” She glared at him. “Because I’m not going to leave him!”

The pilot shook his head and yelled, “If you’re gonna commit suicide, at least take your seat cushion with you. Fasten it tight with the belt to your belly. When you jump, cross your ankles and try to land feet first or you could break your legs. Hang on tight to the cushion to protect your arms. I’ll try to take her as slow as I can when you’re ready.” The pilot shook his head as he turned the plane around for another pass.

She fastened the cushion and then climbed out on the struts. “Get as close as you can to him!” she yelled back. As they dropped closer to the water, she wondered if the pilot was right. The waves were passing by pretty fast.

When they were almost upon the raft, the pilot yelled, “Now!”

She inhaled and jumped. She crossed her ankles and held on tight to the cushion. She landed harder than she expected. Her life vest helped her regain the surface, despite an aching left arm. She looked around and found the raft about twenty yards away. Her left arm was killing her so she had only one arm to swim with. When she got to the raft, she struggled aboard.

Terry did not move. She turned him over. He was red from sunburn and the skin on his face was peeling off. His lips were white and cracked.

And he was not moving.

She saw a knot of a strip of his shirt material tied around his left leg. Below the knot was an ugly black wound and below that his leg was bluish. She didn’t know if it was gangrene but it looked pretty bad.

“Terry! Terry!”

But he did not respond.

Her shoulders slumped. I’m too late! She lay next to him and cried. Between sobs, she thought she heard something. She stopped to listen.

“Help!” came from his parched lips.

She sat up and kissed him on his cheek. “You’re alive! It’s me, Char!” She unfastened the water bottle from her belt and poured some water over his cracked lips as he tried to swallow.

He said in a faint voice, “Char? Must be a dream.”

“No, you crazy hunk! It’s me!”

“What are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t stop till I found you.”

He opened his eyes and stared at her. In a raspy voice, he said, “Hell of a vacation. Is this far enough away from everybody for you?”