Fiction: Group 2
Chaos on the Pearl River
Victoria Shanghai Academy, Au, Ehtan - 10, Fiction: Group 2
aul and Nancy watched as a magnificent rainbow appeared before their eyes and disappear behind the
fog. It had just finished raining, and now except for the sound of water hitting the ferry, there was
silence. Paul and Nancy Garson were on a boat trip, returning back to Hong Kong from a vacation
in Macau. Both were looking forward to travel back to the heart of Central, where the brother and sister
shared a flat.
Both were 20 years old and had black hair. Paul was tall and skinny. As he loved golf, he also
always carried a golf club and wore jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers. Nancy wore a t-shirt, a skirt and heels.
She also had a habit of putting one of her flip-out Swiss army knives with her in her pocket and recording
almost everything in her diary.
After they got settled down on the ferry, Nancy read and Paul dozed on the seat. The boat was
rocking quite hard, and Nancy put her book aside. She opened the deck door, and walked on to the deck.
There were a few passengers up there. There were also pieces of wood lying on the floor. Nancy took one,
then went inside the passenger compartment, flipped out her knife, began carving some figures and wrote in
her diary. After 45 minutes, Paul woke. He went out onto the deck, leaned against the railing and looked
at the wonderful scenery.
A few minutes later, he saw a big blue ferry approaching. It was headed straight for their boat. A
bell from the other ship rang out, and they heard the captain’s voice coming through the loudspeaker.
“May all passengers resume to their seats and buckle up, the ferry is going to turn quickly because there is a
ship in front of us, thank you.” Paul quickly hurried back into the passenger compartment.
Suddenly, the boat braked, and swerved sharply to the left. Some passengers, who had ignored the warning
were thrown out of their seats and smashed against the locked door that separated the deck and the
passenger compartment. As Paul and Nancy was sitting beside the window on the right side, they could see
that the other boat turned sharply, narrowly missing the tip of Paul and Nancy’s boat but still scraping the
side of it and that the passengers riding the boat on the other side were squished up against each other.
There was a loud screech as the boats failed to miss each other through the fog and the sides of
both boats were scraped and had a huge hole. The boat’s emergency lights came on, and they once again
heard the captain’s voice over the loudspeaker, “Passengers, please do not panic, put your life vests on and
remain seated. The emergency department has already been contacted and rescue is coming”.
However, in such a state, most people did what they were not told to and panicked, shouted, and threw
their life vests everywhere. It was useless; the two boats gradually started to sink. Then they heard the
captain’s voice again “Passengers, it will be about 25 minutes before the boat sinks…unbuckle your seat belt
now and hold on to…” His voice trailed off. Paul and Nancy were flung around in their seats, and they
knew they had to unbuckle their seatbelts otherwise they would be dragged down when the boat sank.
Some of the passengers were screaming, some of them were banging on the plastic windows, and
the rest were trying to unlock the doors that led to the deck, but they could only be opened from the
captain’s cabin and he was still contacting the rescue department. Paul and Nancy thought hard about ways
to escape from the boat. Nancy used her knife and cut it at the opposite window’s edges, leaving deep
scratch marks along the perimeter of the window.
P
