A famous explorer once said adventures were just bad planning. Or that adventures were what other people had. Or was that Bilbo Baggins? Dammit, girl! I chided myself, you've got to start documenting your citations!

Focus. I was deep into editing the material from Camera Two. Whitman was going to hate it. Sucked to be him. He'd flubbed the fish thing totally, so no point in editing it up as the kind of fluffy filler we'd intended to shoot. But cut it from the hand-held to give it that cinema verité flavor, put the focus on him dropping the fish and his little tantrum and cut in some bits of the guys goofing off - yeah, that would fly.

Whitman was the star of the show, but he didn't realize what kind of star he was turning out to be. His sympathy for out-of-the-mainstream archaeological theories had attracted my family's attention. And, yes, they were serious in seeing if it was possible to learn something about the fabled Yamatai and my famous maybe-ancestor Queen Himiko.

But the Nishimura's were also businessmen, and they knew out-of-the-mainstream sold. The public didn't care about good science. They weren't going to tune in to watch someone dig test pits or sort potsherds. But put a rugged man in khaki on a beaten-up tramp steamer looking for a lost island full of magic and lost treasure, and, yeah. Whitman's flair for publicity and his short temper only made him better copy. There was even rumors of a messy divorce proceeding in the wings.

If the public couldn't have a hero, they'd have a poseur and gleefully watch as he self-destructed. He had the whole package. Lecturing down at everyone like he was Neil deGrasse Tyson or something. Vest with pockets and sports watch on a manly band - one of those ones that gives the phases of Mars and humidity and water temperature in Waikiki - but watch him move, and you'd quickly realize a flight of stairs would leave him winded. Some outdoors-man!

He was in short a total prick and I wasn't sure how much longer I'd be able to put up with him.

There. I paused and marked the frame, just as Jonah Maiava paused in his turn, holding the gutting knife in one hand and the fish in another like some sort of religious offering to a temperamental god. You could practically hear the laugh track. Hey, it wasn't National Film Board material, but you worked with what you could get...

"What the FUCK!?"

There was a giant noise, all the lights flickered, and the damned wall went out of its way to come over to my bunk and hit me in the face.

"Ow!" I said. "What the hell?!" The door had popped open and now everything was wet. Water was ankle-deep on my floor and more was coming in and the Attack Wall was dancing in for a second go at me. I grabbed the camera and cradled it against my chest to protect it as I staggered to my feet and tried to walk uphill to the door.

More water. My room - sorry, "cabin" - was too wet to stay in. I staggered outside. All dark except for flashing lights from somewhere. That was a big help. I looked left. Err, port. Err, aft. Whatever! I squinted doubtfully. It was all dark down that way and didn't seem friendly. I looked the other way.

"Oh, fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!"

White water filled the passageway and was roaring down on me like the bulls in Pamplona.

It hit. I was rolling over, smashing into things in the dark and water, trying to breath. I was blacking out. In our darkest hour...we ask if someone could find a damn light bulb! Yeah, that's how I was going to die. Trying to remember a quote I'd heard somewhere. Write the shit down, Sam! I told myself.

And all of a sudden, sodden, I was on the deck. The ship looked like a mess. The sea was in the wrong place, and wouldn't stay still. Clouds hurtled overhead, lit by lighting. It looked like that IMAX documentary Stormchasers out there. I didn't want to be in the eye of a hurricane!

Suddenly there was Angus, doing something to one of the lifeboats. Battening the davits or whatever you did to launch the things. "Y'r gill be nae to whence a'ga comin'!" he said. Yeah, don't look at me. I can't understand a word he says. I think you have to be born Glaswegian.

"Hey!" I said. Angus had shoved me into the lifeboat. Hard. I fell face-first. This was a bad day for faces. The Endurance's captain turned, gesturing towards someone, or something...and another wall of water came out of the sky and whipped him out of sight. His arm must have hit the release as he went, because my boat was in motion. The Endurance jumped away from me. Then swung back for another try, the steel wall of the hull looming over my head about to flatten me. Hung that way for eons. Then slid away again.

And then I could see and hear nothing but water and storm. Rain was tearing out of the clouds in such great sheets it was impossible to tell sea from sky, and my little boat was wallowing about so much you didn't know which way was up to begin with.

There was a tarp covering most of the boat. I crawled under that, found grabbing-on things to grab on to, and huddled like a wet kitten, waiting out the storm. Wasn't like I had any small-boat handling skills. Even assuming — as against the groaning and clattering sounds it was making — it wasn't about to be dashed to pieces in the next second. I was exhausted. I was wet. My head hurt. And the noise! No-one who hasn't been in heavy seas can understand just how overwhelming the noise is. Okay; maybe one of those guys from the Somme in The Great War, getting shelled by artillery until they could hardly think.

Long story short…I was battered senseless and left to be carried where the winds and waves willed.