The Island
Millions of
JAWS
fans are waiting
to discover Benchley’s newest terror . . .
THE ISLAND
Peter Benchley has thrilled millions of enthusiastic readers with the magic of his bestselling novels . . . Now comes the latest from the man who made you think twice before going anywhere near the water. Now terror stalks the land in
The Island . . .
In the Caribbean, a few steps may lead from the sunlit villas of tanned lovers to something evil rotting in the tropical underbrush, from a world of natural perfumes and silken breezes to choking heat thick with the smell of death . . .
In the Caribbean, 610 seagoing boats and 2,000 innocent people have simply vanished . . . apparently lost forever. How could it happen? Why does no one know, or care to know?
Blair Maynard becomes obsessed with finding out what’s going on—and pursues the story to a remote archipelago southeast of the Bahamas. There, on the deceptively inviting waters of the tropics, Maynard and his son sail into as sinister a drama as has ever been played out on the sea . . .
#1 SUPERTHRILLER
THE ISLAND
Bantam Books by Peter Benchley
THE DEEP
THE ISLAND
JAWS
From the Producers of
“Jaws”
Universal Pictures and
Zanuck/Brown Productions
Present
The Most Terrifying
Motion Picture Of the 80’s
“THE ISLAND”
Michael Caine as Blair Maynard
David Warner as Jean-David Nau
Angela Punch McGregor as Beth
Jeffrey Frank as Justin
Plus the most unusual cast of
characters brought to the screen!
A Michael Ritchie Film
Produced by
Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown
Directed by Michael Ritchie
Screenplay by Peter Benchley
THE ISLAND
A Bantam Book
/
published by arrangement with
Doubleday and Company, Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY
Doubleday edition published May 1979
Bantam edition
/
March 1980
All rights reserved.
Copyright
©
1979 by Peter Benchley.
ISBN 0-553-13396-9
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc. 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019
.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
for Tracy and Clay
“Romantic adventure is violence in retrospect.”
—adage
“[In a state of nature] No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
—Thomas Hobbes,
Leviathan
T H E
I S L A N D
C H A P T E R
1
T
he boat lay at anchor, as still as if it had been welded to the surface of the sea. Normally, this far out, there would be long, rolling ground swells—offspring of far-distant storms—that would cause the boat to rise and fall, the horizon constantly to change. But, for more than a week, a high-pressure system had squatted over the Atlantic from Haiti to Bermuda. The sky was empty even of fair-weather clouds, and the reflection of the midday sun made the water look as solid as polished steel.
To the east, a splinter of gray hung, shimmering, suspended a millimeter above the edge of the world: the refracted image of a small island just beyond the horizon. To the west, nothing but waves of heat rising, dancing.
Two men stood in the stern, fishing with monofilament hand lines. They wore ragged shorts, filthy white T-shirts, and wide-brimmed straw hats. Now and then, one or the other would dip a bucket off the stern and pour water on the deck, to cool the Fiberglass beneath their bare feet. Between them, over the socket where the fighting chair would fit, was a makeshift table of upturned liquor cartons, covered with fish heads, guts, and skeins of thawing pilchards.
Each man held his fishing hand out over the stern, to prevent the line from chafing on the brass rub-rail, and felt with the tip of a callused index finger for the tick that would signal a bite, a hundred fathoms below.
“Feel him?”
“No, He’s down there, though . . . if the hinds’ll let him get near it.”
“Tide’s runnin’ like a bitch.”
“It is. Keeps takin’ my bait up the hill.”
Cooking smells drifted aft, mingling with the stench of sun-ripening fish.
“What’s that Portuguee bastard gonna poison us with today?”
“Hog snout, from the stink of it.”
In the darkness of the canyon beneath the boat, a fish of some size took one of the baits and ran with it to a crevice in the rocks.
The man was slammed against the gunwale. Bracing himself with his knees to keep from being pulled overboard, he reached out with his left hand and hauled a yard of line, then a yard with his right, another with his left. “Damn! I knew he was there!”
“Prob’ly a shark.”
“Shark, my ass! That’s Moby goddamn shark if it is.”
The fish ran again, and the man gritted his teeth against the pain in his hand, refusing to let the line burn through his fingers.
The line went slack.
“Bitch!”
The other man laughed. “Man, you can’t fish. You pulled the hook right out his mouth.”
“Bit it off, is what.”
“Bit it off . . .”
He retrieved the line slowly, careful to let it tumble in a pile at his feet, untangled. Hook, weights, and leader were gone, the monofilament severed. “I told you; bit it off.”
“Well, I told you it was a goddamn shark.”
The man tied a new hook and leader to his line. He peeled two half-frozen pilchards from the ball of bait fish, ate one, and threaded the hook through the other—in and out the eyes, along the spine, in and out by the tail. He cast the hook overboard and let the line run through his fingertips again.
“Hey, Dickie.”
“Hey.”
“What time tomorrow, the cap’n say?”
“Noontime. He’s meetin’ the plane at eleven-somethin’. Dependin’ how much crap they got, they should be at the dock around noontime.”
“What kind of doctors they are again?”
“Nelson . . . I told you a hundred times. They’s neurosurgeons.”
Nelson laughed. “If that don’t beat all . . .”
“I
still don’t see the funny in neurosurgeons.”
“Head
doctors, man. What’s head doctors doin’ goin’ fishin’?”
“Neurosurgeon ain’t just a head doctor.”
“You say. All I know is, after that fella in Barbuda hit me up ’side the head with the ball peen, they sent me to a neurosurgeon.”
“You told me.”
“I baffled him, though, so he sent me to a Czechoslovak.”
“Anyway, no law says a neurosurgeon can’t fish, too. Important thing is, cap’n say they pay cash up front.” Dickie paused. “You ’member how many there is?”
“I never did know.”
Dickie shouted, “Manuel!”
“Aye, Mist’Dickie!” A boy appeared in the door to the cabin. He was slight and wiry, twelve or thirteen years old. His skin had been tanned umber. Sweat matted his hair to his forehead and streaked the front of his starched white shirt.
“How many . . .” Dickie stopped. “You dumb, scramble-headed Portugee sum’bitch! I
told
you not to wear your uniforms when there ain’t no guests aboard!”
“But I ain’t—”
“Look at your pants boy! Looks like you crapped yourself!”
The boy glanced down at his trousers. The heat in the cabin had steamed out the creases, and the legs were spattered with grease. “But I ain’t got no other pants!”
“Well, I don’t care you have to stay up wash-in’ all night, they better be white as an angel’s ass by first light.”
Nelson smiled. “What do
we
know, Dickie? Maybe neurosurgeons like dirty little Portugees.”
“Well now, Nelson, maybe you got a point. What d’you say, Manuel? Sh’we let them nooros fool with you?”