Writing competition "133" - A place in wonderland

Mark woke up hearing people screaming. He ran onto the deck of the ship and went outside for the first time in a week. They finally had reached land.

After days and days in the storm, the ship had finally overcome the bad weather and found itself sailing in calm waters. That cruise, which started very badly, perhaps wasn't so bad after all. The island was beautiful, with lush vegetation, waterfalls and lakes, beautiful animals. However, no port could be seen, perhaps that stop was not planned.

Mark saw an officer and went to ask him which island he was on. “We don't know, sir,” he replied, and continued walking. In fact, all the other passengers were muttering, that island wasn't included in their vacation and they didn't understand where in the Pacific Ocean they were. Consulting the cell phone was useless because there was no signal.

Mark saw that a small boat was moving away from the large ship to reach the small island. It seemed very strange to Mark, if there was no stopover why didn't they go straight ahead instead of going to see the island? They weren't explorers!

All passengers were on deck watching the small motor boat reach the island, when, at a certain point, the boat disappeared. People began to scream in shock, the few officers on the bridge were bombarded with questions.

After a few minutes, a little boy's cry was heard: "here they are!". The boat was going back!
It approached the ship and one of the officers exclaimed: “who are these people? Notify the commander!”

In fact the people on board were not the ones who left. They were very old and no longer wore uniforms. The boat was also in bad shape. Yet people identified themselves with the same names as the officers who had left.

One of them said "we looked for you for years, but we couldn't find the ship anymore, we could have taken you with us, we discovered a wonderful world!"

The now elderly officers told of a fantastic world, rich in fruit and flowers, crystal clear waters and infinite horizons. They said that on the island they were always happy, they were never sad or angry. They had been there for 50 years, but every day someone on the boat did reconnaissance to look for the cruise ship without success.

They thought they had found a space-time portal, and they absolutely wanted to warn the others, but they couldn't get there. But now they had found a passage and wanted to share their discovery with the world.

The end.