Victor Shorty

My name is Jack. One year after the accident, I called my aunt and uncle in Russia to see if my friends and I could visit them for a month because my parents were going to a meeting in Washington D.C. for three weeks. My uncle said it was up to my mom and dad. Well, they said the same thing, to ask him. My uncle replied that my friends and I could stay with them just as long as we didn't get into trouble. They asked how many of my friends were coming? I said, only three of my best friends, Simon, Piggy, and Ralph. We would start heading over tomorrow on the noon flight.

That night my friends and I stayed up late until 4:30 in the morning. We played games like monopoly which is my favorite game. We got up the next morning an hour before our plane took off. We had to rush around to get our luggage together, then we called a cab to take us to the airport. It took us about 1 5 minutes to get to the airport. Then the cab overcharged us. I payed it but I told Ralph that next time he had to pay it. He agreed, and when we got out of the cab we ran up to the terminal and showed them our tickets. Then we ran to the plane and made it just one minute before they closed the door.

On our way over to Russia, while we were crossing the Bering Sea, the pilot announced that we were going to have an emergency landing. I was still too sleepy to understand but I could feel the plane suddenly losing power. I told my friends to put their heads down so nothing would happen if we crashed. While we were going down I was saying a prayer that my mom taught me from church. I was really scared when we crash landed in the ocean near an island.

When we were swimming in the water I dived down to save the pilot.

About 30 seconds later I came up out of the water with the pilot. His face had a lot of cuts on it from broken glass. I was shocked when I saw him. He looked like he was dead. Then I told Ralph to dive under and get the rubber raft and get a couple of paddles so we could get to the island. Forty-five seconds later Ralph came out of the water with the raft. All of us then climbed into the raft and paddled across to the island. It took us about an hour to paddle to the island because the ocean was rough. But as soon as we got near the island it started to get calm. After pulling up the raft, I told Ralph and Piggy to gather wood and big leaves so we could make a shelter and fire, and warm up.

Even though we were all thirsty and hungry and tired, we decided to go to bed and then check around in the morning for food and water. The next morning Simon got up early and took a walk around the island. After he found water, he rushed back to us and woke us up.

Two days later we were rescued by some Russian sailors. The sailors then took us to their ship where we were so happy we started to cry. They said we would be heading home soon, but first we had to go to Petropavlovsk to refuel. Maybe an American plane would be there to meet us? We sure hope so.