The pallet was there when he sat up, and he thought at first it had been there all night.
Six metres off the right-hand edge of the raft, a broken pallet rode low in the water.
Two boards were still attached.
A third hung loose.
It rose and fell with the raft but did not come closer.
He opened the panel.
[Health 100% | Hunger 70% | Thirst 60% | Stamina 85% | Temperature: Normal ↑]
Sixty.
He had gone to sleep at sixty-six and slept, in the end, four or five hours, and the number had taken six from him for that.
His mouth had a taste in it he could not place and his lips were rough when he ran his tongue over them.
He unscrewed the cap of the bottle in the corner and looked at the seawater and screwed it back on.
The current carried the pallet and raft together.
He could swim the six metres, but the soaked wood would slow him on the way back.
Every swell hid the pallet for a second or two.
From the water he could lose sight of the raft as well.
There was no rope and nothing on the raft that would reach six metres.
The pallet could give him the wood for a pole.
He only had to swim once.
He got his boots off.
Socks inside them.
Jeans, folded, on top, with the keys and the dead phone and the receipt and the biro rolled inside the jacket, in the centre of the raft where a swell would not take them.
T-shirt on top of that.
He stood in his boxers on the edge of the raft with the sun on his shoulders and the boards under his feet, and the pallet went down a swell and came up again at six metres, and he sat, and put his legs in, and went.
The water was warmer than the air had been at dawn and colder than it had felt through his hand.
It closed over his head and he came up with his eyes stinging and the raft behind him, higher off the water than he had thought.
He turned away from it and swam.
Not well.
He could swim well enough to reach the side of a pool.
There was no side here.
Halfway out, a swell covered his mouth.
He came up coughing and stopped until he could breathe without swallowing water.
The pallet vanished behind the next rise.
When it appeared again, he aimed at the loose board hanging from its side and kept his head above the surface.
That made his strokes awkward, but he could not afford to lose it.
Twelve strokes and his hand hit wood.
The soaked pallet was heavier than it looked.
He first pushed it broadside, but it hardly moved.
He turned its narrow edge toward the raft and tried again.
The loose board dragged behind it.
Every few kicks he had to stop it swinging around, and each stop cost him ground.
He lifted his head to find the raft.
Water.
A slope of it, rising, grey-green and smooth, and the top of the slope was the sky.
He kicked over the swell.
At the top, the raft appeared ten metres off to his left.
He had turned without knowing.
He aimed for it, pushed the pallet ahead, and counted twenty kicks before looking again.
Eight metres.
He had lost ground.
The pallet was pushing water in front of it like a door.
He shifted to one side and pulled it after him.
That worked until his hand slipped from the wet wood and he had to catch it again.
The raft disappeared below the next swell.
He kicked toward where it had been, holding the pallet with one arm.
He put his head down and kicked until his legs cramped.
The raft’s edge appeared a foot from his face.
He grabbed the rope holding its boards together and caught his breath with the pallet pressed against his chest.
A swell lifted the pallet against the raft, then pulled it away.
He tried to lift it before the next one came.
His arms shook and the wood dropped back into the water.
He could barely hold himself up.
He ducked under the pallet and drove it up with his shoulder.
For a moment its weight pushed him under.
He came up against the raft, tried again as the swell lifted both of them, and caught one corner on the edge.
The loose board bent but held.
He shoved the rest aboard, hung from the rope for another minute, then rolled onto the planks.
His heels drummed against them as he shook.
He did not open the panel for some time.
When he did the Stamina number was in orange again, and he closed it.
The sun dried him.
He put his jeans and boots back on, left the T-shirt and jacket on the planks, and knelt by the pallet.
When he put a hand on the pallet, a line came up.
[Broken Pallet: 3 Wood.
20 min.
Requires: hands or tool.]
He confirmed it, then pried the wet boards apart with his boot.
The rest of the pallet vanished.
Three lengths of wood remained.
[Wood: 4.]
Twenty minutes, near enough.
The Hook Pole needed two wood and one rope.
One rope needed three cloth.
He looked at the jacket, T-shirt and drying rag.
The rag gave him one Cloth Scrap.
He worked the key into the lining’s seam, split the stitching and tore the thin fabric free.
He kept the outer shell for cover.
The T-shirt he tore down the side seam and then across.
It took longer than he expected.
Cloth Scrap, 3.
Crafting: Rope.
He confirmed.
The panel said fifteen minutes by hand.
The three strips lay where he had put them.
He picked up the ends and began to twist.
The System would hold the fibres together, but it would not do this part for him.
He had never made rope.
He twisted two strips as if wringing out a towel, then worked in the third.
The first section was uneven, but the System held the cloth fibres together where they crossed.
He kept twisting until he had two metres of rope, a little thicker than a finger.
The panel showed Rope, 1.
He laid out two boards and the rope, then confirmed the Hook Pole recipe.
The rope wound itself around the boards.
The wood joined and the far end bent into a hook.
Ten minutes later the panel said Hook Pole, 100/100.
He picked up the three-metre pole.
It was light, though most of its weight sat at the hook end.
He had nothing to hook.
He stood with it in his hands anyway and watched the water.
The plank came in the last hour of light, from behind and to the left, the current bringing it up past him on a line that would clear the raft by three metres.
He saw it at thirty.
At ten he was at the edge on his knees with the pole out flat over the water and the hook turned down.
At three the crook went over the end of the plank and he pulled, and the plank came, sideways, through the water, to his hand, and he lifted it out.
Wood, 3.
Hook Pole, 98/100.
He set the new plank beside the others.
He laid the pole within reach and pulled the empty jacket shell over his shoulders.