Disclaimer: This story is full of plot devices, which include fresh water on an island that probably doesn't have any. I have no idea what the island actually looks like, so I pulled it out of my ass. I have no idea how much luck you'd have fishing in that depth of water on the boat. It's fiction, just roll with it and enjoy!
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Emily couldn't sleep. She tossed and turned in frustration as the cruise ship she was on bucked wildly in heavy seas. She signed up for the trip to the Seychelles expecting a fun, relaxing week of glass-smooth seas, days spent relaxing on the beach, nights spent at the pool bar before turning in to do it all again the next day, in search of some exotic man to wash out the memory of her recently estranged ex-husband. She had imagined trading in the "lawyer dress code" of hose, blouse, and skirt-suit for tiny bikinis with a sarong coverup and flip-flops. Now, she was contemplating the life vest stowed in her chest of drawers. Nothing in the online brochure mentioned the possibility of cyclones. From everything she'd read, they were sailing through a freak storm, far more southern in nature than the typical cyclones that rocked the Bay of Bengal and the northern Indian Ocean, not off the eastern coast of Africa. The freak status of the storm, however, did little to calm her down. "Just great," she thought to herself, "The odds of this happening are like being struck by lightning while scratching off a winning Lotto ticket. I always wanted to be killed by a freak."
Having grown up in Maine as the daughter of a lobster fisherman, she was used to rough seas, but trying to sleep in this was too much. Finally, with a loaded sigh, she gave up on sleep and stood, not bothering to even attempt to make her bed. She saw no point, as the mattress and box springs would likely be on the deck in the next five minutes. Dressing quickly in her cutoff denim shorts and a halter top over a bikini, she tossed the rest of her diminutive wardrobe in her lavender L.L. Bean backpack before stumbling out into the companionway outside her door. The main salon was not far from her, and someone there would be able to explain the situation to her and assuage her fears.
Inside the salon, Emily did find about twenty members of the crew, as well as a hundred passengers; The Emerald Princess housed two hundred ninety six passengers with a full complement of two hundred twenty crewmembers. They were huddled around the flat-screen monitor which showed a Doppler radar image from Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles. The image from the Doppler showed what could best be described as a savage storm, relatively small by hurricane standards, but making up for its size in sheer ferocity. A tall, stately Kenyan man in an officer's uniform stood by the large monitor with a pointer in hand. "We are here," he stated with a trace of a Swahili accent, pointing to the area of the storm southwest of the eye. "In theory, with unlimited fuel, we could match the speed of the storm and remain in the peaceful eye. However, we have limited fuel, and to attempt this would leave us dead in the water approximately here, leaving us to weather the storm with no means of propulsion." he gestured to the area to the northeast of the outer edge of the storm. "Matching its pace would simply burn too much fuel."
"Why not stay here and let the storm blow us by?" A blonde woman in her early thirties asked.
"Staying in one location is too hazardous. The possibility of capsizing is too great. We are not a Carnival-style megaship, The Emerald Princess is much smaller. If we were aboard a larger ship, this may be feasible. We are making for Comoros as scheduled, where we'll make port for a day or so until the storm takes its course north. From there, we will make for the Seychelles, as scheduled. We should be out of the storm by dawn. I strongly encourage you to stay here in the salon. I am Second Officer Kafil Mathagani, and I will be here."
Emily sat down, and asked a steward for hot tea, contemplating the tall Kenyan. The sheer blackness of his skin contrasted vividly with his dress whites and brilliantly white smile. He was quite an attractive man, by her standards. She idly watched as most of the passengers went back to their cabins; around fifty stayed. Although she wasn't particularly worried about the storm, her second wind had kicked in and she felt that sleep would not come this night. When the steward arrived with her tea, she took a moment to gaze at her reflection in the back of the spoon. Her long, wavy copper hair was slightly disheveled, the sort of look that women try to attain. Her emerald-green eyes were as bright as ever, but the lack of sleep added dark circles under her eyes. A dash of freckles across her button nose and high cheekbones accentuated her pale skin perfectly. Finally, she stirred in some goat's milk to the strong Kenyan tea, and sipped the potent brew gingerly. Time crawled by as she sipped. "Am I really going to make it? Will this just be a footnote in my life?" She wondered as she drank. She had lost count of the number of times she had been out with her father on the lobster boat when strong storms hit. She hoped this time would be like then; however, she would always trust her dad more than any other person when it came to being at sea. After having her tea refilled twice, she decided to take a walk around the ship in the covered companionways.
While The Emerald Princess was a smaller cruise ship, she was by no means Spartan. She featured all the amenities of a larger, more mainstream vessel. There was a casino, a spa, five-star dining, a basketball court, a state-of-the-art gym, a beauty salon, and a few designer shops. As she walked down the passageway past the still-open casino, a fire alarm sounded, causing her to jump in combined alarm and primal fear. Emily tore down the passageway, back the way she came, and sprinted up the stairwell, taking the stairs three at a time. As she ran, more passengers began to join her, surging from belowdecks to the main deck.
Once inside the main salon, she noticed that the population who decided to come from their cabins was rising. Most were still in their pajamas, although as more time passed, the stragglers were showing up fully dressed, in stylish clothes. Emily rolled her jewel-green eyes at their vanity. When finally it seemed the last of the stragglers had arrived—dressed in a suit and a cocktail dress, no less—a tall, slim, hawk-featured man in officers' dress whites stood upon a table.
"I am Captain Sunderland. I am sure you are all frightened and upset by the alarm," Sunderland said, smoothing back his salt-and-pepper hair. He spoke with a strong, basso profundo upper-crust English accent. He reminded her of the late English actor Christopher Lee. "A fire has started in the engine room. Our fire control and containment technologies are state-of-the-art and should contain the blaze. In the interest of the safety of our passengers, the alarm did sound. We apologize for the inconvenience and the loss of sleep."
Bedlam erupted after Sunderland finished speaking. "Please, one at a time." He called, waving for quiet. "Madame in the red robe," he indicated.
"How big is the fire?" the woman asked.
"To paint a picture, we have three diesel engines, each the size of a London double decker bus. There's a space of three meters in between them, and the engine room stretches the entire beam of the vessel. The fire is approximately the size of half of one of the engines."
"Will we still be able to travel with an engine down?" A shirtless man in basketball shorts asked.
"Yes," Sunderland replied. "Although we will not be able to cruise at our maximum speed of 28 knots, we will be able to continue with the trip."
From deep within the ship, almost as if waiting on a cue from the tall Englishman, an explosion sounded from deep within the vessel, sounding like rolling thunder in an echo chamber. The fire had reached the fuel lines of the ship, tracing it back like a line of gunpowder in a spaghetti western, where it detonated a fuel tank. Wholesale pandemonium broke loose; children started to wail, and passengers began to push for the exits, a seething mass of humanity not unlike a heavy metal concert's mosh pit.
Adding to the clangor, the signal to abandon ship keened its high, mournful, unbroken wail. "Families with children first!" The crew began to shout. The old tradition of women and children first had fallen by the wayside after the sinking of the Titanic, when so many women were left widows and so many children left fatherless. The line of thought was to keep families intact if at all possible. Emily, being single and childless, fought to the rear of the crowd, both in order to keep from being trampled and to make more room for those with first priority. Methodically, the crew began assigning people to boats and launching them. They had drilled for this sort of occasion, and performed well. Within the course of thirty minutes, most of the boats had been loaded and launched, leaving behind fifteen passengers and thirty crew members, who took the second-to-last boat. Emily was among these, and was helped into the enclosed orange boat by a tall, handsome blond man and the second officer, Mathagani. After the boat launched, her adrenaline quit pumping, and she realized just how tired she was. She found an empty section of bench and promptly fell asleep.
Emily awoke some time later. The noise of the storm had abated, and was replaced by the familiar sound of rain on a tin roof. She smiled to herself before she opened her eyes; still in a daze, she mistakenly thought she was at her grandmother's house. Many a time as a child and teenager, she had fallen asleep to the gentle tattoo of rain on her grandmother's metal roof in Bar Harbor, Maine. She opened her eyes, and her first thought was that she was in an oven; everything around her was blaze orange. She could tell she was on a covered lifeboat, but aside of that had little idea.
