The engine sputtered. Four pairs of eyes immediately sought out the gas gauge, only now just barely legible in the dim early morning light, on which the needle was pointing slightly left to the letter "E". The "F" for "full" was on the right. The boat struggled on, sputtering more and more frequently. Jin and Walt were counting down meters—400, 350, 300, while lifelong Americans Sawyer and Michael were estimating in yards. With 250 meters to go, the engine sputtered for the last time. The boat drifted forward thanks to its momentum, but was slowing to a standstill.

Michael tried to make the best of the situation by announcing, "Well, Walt, you look like you're ready to go for a swim."

"And you don't?" Then Walt turned to Sawyer with the one useful arm and asked,

"But can you swim like that?"

"Worry about yourself, Mowgli."

"Ha! Australians are good swimmers."

"Is that so? So are you up for a little race?"

"You're on!"

"Knock it off you two, this is serious!" Michael at first couldn't believe the conversation, but then realized that anything that got their spirits up was probably a good thing.

Once again Jin was left out of an interesting conversation, and had to satisfy himself with a guess as to what Sawyer was referring to by the Jungle Book character. Jin replaced Sawyer's bandage with a fresh, unbloodied one, even though sharks normally wouldn't come this close to an island. But this was not a normal island, and it paid to be as safe as possible. Jin then used the last of the bandages to secure Sawyer's left arm to his body, to facilitate what would have to be a one-armed swimming stroke. They all looked around for life jackets, or floating seat cushions, but anything like that was knocked overboard in the collision with the sea creature Walt never saw. There wasn't even an anchor; the boat that might have led to their rescue in the future was now likely to drift away. But the important thing was to make it to shore now.

As the boat stopped moving shoreward 200 yards away, Sawyer climbed over the bow, and pushed off with a one-armed backstroke. Walt and Michael jumped in next, with Walt in the middle and Michael on the right. As Jin watched his fellow crewmates make progress, he knew he was much faster than any of them. Sawyer was drifting off to the left; it must be hard to swim straight with one arm. Jim was prepared to dive off to the left, to herd Sawyer back toward the middle. It looked like they had a good chance to make it to the beach, but Sawyer would still be in big trouble. Without antibiotics in the next few hours his wound was very likely to become infected. Medical help would be at the caves, but Jin wouldn't know where to find them from this direction. Going around to the south side and then to the caves might take two days. Jin realized he needed to summon help somehow when he remembered from his fishing village days that boats normally had whistles or horns to announce their arrivals. Having a good idea where to look, he found a cord at the edge of the dashboard, gave it a pull, and heard a low blast. He then gave the international distress signal, three long blasts, and desperately prayed that it would reach some human ear on the island. However, he was afraid that the rest of the Lostaways were too far inland to hear the signal, and he was correct that this prayer would not be answered.

As anticipated, Jin dove off to Sawyer's left, and forced him back into the correct direction. Some distance to the right, Michael blessed his mother for not being one of those miserable excuses for a parent that does not make sure their children can swim at a young age, when they are physically able to. For all her faults, Susan would not have fallen into that category. That would have unquestionably made her a less-than-perfect mother, and she would not have been able to tolerate her peers thinking that of her. Brian would have welcomed any excuse to get Walt out of their house.

Michael looked to his left, and saw that Walt was doing a better job than he was. Walt's crack about Australians being good swimmers probably had a lot of truth to it. While Michael still would have characterized himself as below average, they had come too far for him to fail now. 150 yards to go, 100, 50, … and then Michael touched bottom. Walt couldn't yet, but he didn't need to. He was only ten meters from shore when his hand hit the bottom. With Sawyer swimming crookedly, Walt won their race. The prize for winning was the opportunity to stagger onto the beach, and then collapse first. As he was passing out from sheer exhaustion, Walt managed to land on his back, making it easier to breathe. About a minute later Michael made it to shore, was infinitely grateful that Walt was obviously breathing, and collapsed himself a few feet away.

Sawyer and Jin made it out of the water a few seconds after Michael, with Sawyer letting out a pent-up scream of anguish as he stumbled a few steps onto the sand, and then rolled onto his back. The swimming had caused his shoulder to start bleeding again. Just before he passed out, he said in a soft tone, "I know you can't understand me, but I've got to thank you for all you've done, … Jin."

Jin was touched at hearing his real name spoken by Sawyer for the first, and perhaps only time. Running out of options, Jin once again applied pressure to the wound, and this time it was working to some degree. But for how long could he keep this up? Should he try to make new bandages out of leaves from the closest trees? Also, finding fresh water would soon be a priority. He checked out the father and son sprawled out on the beach a hundred meters away. It was obvious that they were breathing, rather heavily in fact, and for the moment their most likely health concern was sunburn. Sawyer's condition was much more serious, and Jin was agonizing over what to do. His crewmates weren't going anywhere without badly needed rest. He felt he could hang on himself for a few more hours, but then what? Abandoning Sawyer likely would be leaving him to bleed to death. He might help save the other two, but two out of three just wasn't good enough. Again he felt like he was being punished for past sins. In desperation he cried out for help, though his voice would never carry anywhere near as far as the boat's whistle could.


… to be continued