Page 257 - harryDEC12_clean.iba

Suddenly I became aware of a shadow, and when I looked up I saw a shark circling above me. I could not place it, since I had never had acquaintance with that species.
At any rate it was of considerable size, and I felt a rush of panic. Stay calm, I kept on saying to myself, and then I remembered the words that Daphne, the medium in London, had said to me years before:
„Do not fear things in existence because fear looks into the future and imagines the worst that can happen.”
I struggled with my fear, swam up, and looked for the yacht. It was about 200 metres away from me. The shark was close by, but I avoided making hectic moves, and swam with calm strokes and cramped heart to the yacht and climbed up the ladder. The shark was nowhere to be seen and I decided to say nothing about the incident. Then we set off on the return trip. Fred looked ahead; there was a long sandbank almost like an island. Fred looked at the map and said there was a shallow passage in the middle we would take. I was skeptical, and as we approached the „passage“ I saw surf that broke on the passage.
„Turn around immediately, Fred,“
I yelled from the forecastle, but Fred answered that he knew the area, and that was the „so and so“ shallow. I went into the cockpit, looked at the map, took a bearing on the surrounding islands and said:
„That’s not the so-and-so passage, we’re steering for another sandbank - can’t you read a map?“
Fred looked at the map again and turned the steering wheel abruptly to port side and thus we avoided of being beached by a fraction of an inch. Fred asked me to say nothing about it to the others. That would throw a bad light on the CEO of the Yacht Club. I kept that promise.
So both events remained hidden experiences. The days passed quickly, as is the case with all lovely moments in our life. We flew two days later to Melbourne, had a look at the operation of the Yacht Club, and Hughes and the other two underwriters flew back to London. John and harry decided to stay a few more days. After all, there was a lot to discuss.
oOo
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