The Bryce Walton Boys' Adventure by Bryce Walton

Author:Bryce Walton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adventure, young adult, action, fire fighter, gunner
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

HURRICANE REEF

Copyright © 1970 by Bryce Walton.

DEDICATION

For Dr. Sidney Rose, an old friend who swims with me.

CHAPTER 1

Steve Birney squinted through a cobwebby blur into some kind of weirdly glowing dark. It was faintly luminous with a pearly phosphorescence, like the inside of a giant clamshell. Something in the dark was moving toward him, and he was afraid of it. But he didn’t know what it was.

He didn’t even know where he was. He might be adrift in the soggy hold of a rotting abandoned derelict ship. There was a slight sea-rocking motion, a dank smell of wet cordage, seaweed, salt wind, decaying coral, and the mewing cry of sea gulls.

No, he couldn’t be entirely at sea. There were also land sounds. Dry palm fronds scraping on rock walls, bamboo shoots rustling, wind brushing over sand, ocean surf pounding on rocks.

So he didn’t even know if he was on sea or land.

He was supposed to be home; he knew that much. Sleeping in the attic bedroom of the old family farmhouse south of Pitchford, Missouri. But he hoped he wasn’t there. If he really was back in those dry, Midwestern hills, thinking he heard sea gulls and palm trees, why then he was in a bad way. He’d have to be crazier than a coot—

Suddenly he was wide awake, listening to the tired clanggggg of the old alarm clock running down.

He sighed, pushed his hand through the torn mosquito bar, and turned off the alarm. Then he stretched on his narrow wooden bunk and blinked up toward the darkened ceiling.

He’d been partly awake, dazed with sleep, half dreaming. That explained his nightmarish confusion. But he was fully awake now, and of course he knew exactly where he was. He was a long sweet way from the old homestead for one thing, and if he was lucky, he’d never have to go back.

He was lying in his room at the base of the old crumbly lighthouse that sat high on the ridge of a coral atoll. The lighthouse had not been used as a lighthouse for over a hundred years, but it was a great place to live.

He was spending the summer on his Uncle Scully’s island in the Florida Keys, a fabulous coral atoll south of Key West, with the blue-green swells of the Gulf of Mexico and the Straits of Florida stretching away on all sides to the far horizon. Spaniards and pirates had called the atoll many appropriate names over the centuries—Shark Island, Lagoon of Lost Ships, Pirate’s Cay, Hurricane Reef—now it was Scully’s Island.

At least Uncle Scully called it his island because he’d leased it from the state of Florida. In return for the lease, Uncle Scully said he’d agreed to live on the island, improve it, repair the ruined lighthouse, and turn the whole place into a resort for skin diving, spear-fishing, underwater sight-seeing tours, and other submarine sports.

Anyway that was the explanation Uncle Scully had written in a letter to his sister, who also happened to be Steve’s mother.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.