Like most I came from an Ocean...

Chapter fourteen-Monroe County

The next day, when Rèmy and I were beginning to lose hope, we saw a ship coming our way on the horizon.

It was both an exciting and frightening moment, as we knew that if the people on board were good, they'd let us on. If not, then we'd have to wait for others again. And yet, we had to move out of the way of the ship, as its passengers may not have seen us.

Rèmy and I jumped in the water and began pushing the raft to the left.

When we knew that we weren't in danger of being crushed by the ship, we stopped pushing and hulled ourselves back onto the raft.

The ship was a white cruise-liner with the words, 'ANODYNE FLORIDA' on it.

It was naturally enormous, and there were hundreds of windows on the sides. As the ship drew nearer, Rèmy and I stood up warily and began waving and shouting to it.

It was nearly next to us, and though we thought that it would stop, it just continued on.

We shouted even more, and eventually it did halt, about 25 metres away from us.

Nothing happened in that moment. Rèmy and I put our arms down, and soon many passengers rushed to the sides to look at us.

Two ladders were thrown overboard and were so long that they reached to where we were sitting on the water.

Not knowing whether we should climb on or not, Rèmy and I faced each other strangely.

Suddenly, a loud voice from the ship caught our attention. We looked up to see a large man from the third deck with a megaphone in his hands.

'Climb aboard, young sailors,' he said, 'Are you headed for Florida?'

I shouted, 'Yes!', even though Rèmy wasn't understanding much of the man's American English.

'Leave your raft and climb up the ladders then.'

I looked at Rèmy with hope, and he looked at me worryingly.

'Come on, Rèmy!' I exclaimed, 'Its our only opportunity to get back to Florida.'

'What if it isn't?' he asked me.

I ignored him and grabbed his arm.

'What are you doing?' he asked suspiciously.

I looked at the blue waters and smiled.

'Wait!' cried Rèmy, 'No!'

I jumped in, dragging Rèmy with me.

The water was warm and I felt very comfortable to swim. We swam straight to the ship, which bobbed up and down on the ocean surface.

I let Rèmy climb up a ladder first, and then I.

It was extremely exciting, for I never thought that I'd be climbing up something so high before in my life.

It took about a minute to climb the ladder, and although my arms ached, I was so eager to confirm that I was finally saved-for a while. We still had to try to get to Texas before the month was out, which was in less than three weeks.

And how long would it take the ship to get us back there? And when we did get back there, how would we travel all the way to the different state of Texas?

Despite all of these thoughts, I climbed on. See the metaphor of what I said, Dear Reader? I will climb on.

Once Rèmy and I had reached to where the man with the megaphone was, we were hauled over by many people.

We were soaking wet, and two of the ship's workers handed us over some warm, crunchy towels, then asked us to follow them to the captain's office.

Some passengers welcomed us onboard the ship, like good people do, while others were like vultures-snapping photographs of us without ever stopping.