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"What are they called?"
"Danger Islands"
"They sound like the setting of an adolescent pirate novel"
Giordino thuh a coastal reference manual
"Ships are advised to give the sharply froh waters Then it lists the ships that have piled up on theave Pitt a very narrow look "Not exactly a place where kids would play"
From Seymour Island to the mainland the sea was as smooth as a mirror and just as reflective The rockbound mountains soared above the water and their snowydetail West of the islands the sea was cals that rose fro ships fro of human manufacture marred the incredibly beautiful seascape
They skirted Dundee Island, not far below the extreme tip of the peninsula Directly ahead of theer Islands like the bony finger of the old guy with the scythe signifying his next victim The calm waters ended off the point As if they had walked froh a door into a storm outside, they found the sea suddenly transfor in fro up and caused the helicopter to sway like a toy loco around a model train layout
The peaks of the three Danger Islands ca out of a sea that writhed and thrashed around their base They rose so steeply that even seabirds couldn't get a foothold on their sheer walls They thrust angrily froainst the unyielding rock in rapid explosions of foam and spray The basalt forht by aTheir polished walls ran up to vertical peaks that possessed no flat spaces wider than a good-sized coffee table
"No ship could live long in that bedlam," said Pitt
"No shalloater around those pinnacles," Giordino observed "The water looks to drop off a hundred fathoms within a stone's throw of the cliffs"
"According to the charts, it drops over a thousand meters in less than three kilometers"
They circled the first island in the chain, a wicked, broodingviolence There was no sign of floating debris on the tor this island froe that re down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon No ship's captain would be crazy enou
gh to take his vessel within a cannon shot of this place
"See anything?" Pitt asked Giordino as he struggled to keep the helicopter stable against the unpredictable winds that tried to sla cliffs
"A seethingmore"