Chapter 13
Castaways
Timor began to explore the pockets
in the life-raft. He found some hooks and fishing
line, some blades and a can opener, a torch, a
first aid kit, some sun tan cream, a device for
collecting water and some collapsible containers.
We began to collect the rainwater straight away.
The high seas and squally weather lasted for three
days before the sky cleared, the sea calmed and
the sun reappeared. I looked out of our enclosed
raft hopefully but there was nothing but sea all
around.
“I’m very hungry
Timor,” said Vince. We were all hungry.
“Time to eat,” said
Timor.
He unwound some fishing line
and trolled out the hooks behind the boat. “We
must be very careful,” he said, “That
we don’t puncture the life-raft.”
In minutes he had caught a small silvery fish
which took one of the unbaited hooks. “We’ll
use part of this one to catch something bigger,”
he said Timor. Two hours later he was pulling
a young Dorado on to the boat. First he gutted
it with his knife and washed it. Then he began
to cut off pieces of raw fish. “Sushi,”
said Pat. If anyone had offered us this at home
we would have said no, but not this time.
Uncle Bob was too shocked to
speak at first. He had swallowed a lot of water.
But gradually he began to revive and regain his
strength. It was just as well. We drifted for
days and began to lose track of time. It was fish
for breakfast, lunch and dinner but at least Timor
kept catching a steady supply. The fishing wasn’t
easy because every time that anyone moved - and
fishing needed someone to move - the rest had
to shift their weight so it was spread evenly.
I began to suffer from leg cramps which made matters
worse. We stopped washing the fish when their
blood began to attract sharks. At one stage a
large snout poked out of the water and snatched
a newly caught fish in its razor teeth out of
Pat’s hand.
On another day we saw a school
of whales. “Sperm whales,” said Timor,
“Just like Moby Dick.” One of the
whales, a large black bull not 300 yards away,
was sitting quite still, high out of the water
like a submarine. It must have been 85 feet long.
It’s black eye, like a large billiard ball
appeared to be fixed on our raft.
“Best not attract its attention,”
said Timor.
“Why?” asked Vince.
“It’s very rare but
they have been known to attack if threatened.
You’ve probably heard the story of Moby
Dick, the great white whale that sank the Pequod,
the ship that was trying to hunt it down. But
maybe you don’t know the true story behind
the book.”
“Moby Dick isn’t
true,” I said.
“No, but the beast that
sank the Essex is true enough,” said Timor.
The Essex, he said, had been
a Nantucket whaler searching for whales in the
Pacific in the year of 1820. A school of sperm
whales was sighted and the crew had put out three
skiffs to make chase. But a big bull whale, enraged
at the attack on its family, made straight for
the Essex, ramming her twice in the side, so brutally
that the ship sank, leaving the three rowing boats
and 20 crew thousands of miles from the nearest
land.
“They were 93 days at sea
in those skiffs,” said Timor, “with
little respite from the thirst and the hunger.
At one point they found an island and were able
to replenish their water supplies and eat some
sea birds’ eggs. All but three of them decided
to go on. One by one the rest of them began to
fade and die. Then the crew did something only
the most desperate of people ever do. They began
to eat the dead. Finally they drew lots to see
who would live and who would die.” Timor’s
voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Five
men came out of those boats alive. Later they
rescued the three left behind on the island.”
Vince had not taken his eyes
off our own whale. It stayed where it was, like
a sentinel, until it was no more than a tiny speck
in the distance.
“Please Timor,” I
said. “No more stories like that.”
Pat was able to entertain us
for a while with the hand-held global positioning
system he had strapped in a pouch attached to
his belt. This remarkable little gizmo was able
to pin point our exact position on the globe to
within a few feet.
“Wonderful,” I said,
“We know exactly where we are but nobody
else does. We have no map and no means of communication.
Terrific.”
At one stage an inquisitive leatherback
turtle came up to the raft. “We could kill
it,” said Pat. “No,” said Timor.
This is my friend. “Man has killed too many
of these wonderful creatures.”
Another day passed. My skin was
beginning to chafe with the salt water, my lips
were cracking and the drinking water was running
low. We had been rationing our supply. Without
more rain we would not survive for very long.
My spirits were starting to sink but the turtle
must have been a good omen. Just after mid-day
Badger raised his head and looked over to the
south west. His eyes blinked before suddenly he
jerked his head upwards and cried out: “Land.”
Lolling heads were raised slolwly.
“Over there,” he said. He was pointing
to a low island. All of us, with the exception
of Pat, began to paddle furiously with our hands.
He had refused to touch the water since his close
encounter with the shark.
It took four hours. Each of us had become so exhausted
that only Timor was paddling in the end, but finally
we reached a narrow beach between two peaks of
protruding coral. The raft was gashed and punctured
by coral in the shallows as we closed on the beach.
We dragged it up the beach and inspected the damage.
It would not float again and the realistion struck
each of us in turn: now we were truly marooned.
Every one of us collapsed on
the sand. The motion of the sea had deadened our
balance and we swayed like drunken sailors when
we rose. There were two palm trees at one end
of the beach offering some meagre shade. We dragged
ourselves over to them in an effort to escape
the sun. Once in the shade we each of us, even
Timor, sank into an exhausted sleep.
When I awoke it was almost dusk.
I could see the figure of Timor silhouetted by
the sinking sun. He was fishing in the surf. I
don’t know why but I felt safe. This man
who had become our friend would not let us down.
We were all awake when Timor had returned with
his catch - a brace of parrot fish. Apart from
the two palm trees there was some low lying scrub
nearby. Timor had been busy collecting dead wood
to form a small fire. Meanwhile he had been drying
a piece of flat driftwood. Into its side he cut
a notch with his hunting knife, then out of his
pocket he pulled a ball of string. He also had
two sticks: a short, pointed one into which he
had cut a groove about half way down the stick,
and a longer one which he fashioned into a bow
with the string. He then looped the string into
the groove of the short stick which he held vertically
above the notch. The top of the stick he held
rigid by means of a hollow shaped pebble.
“Now Badger,” he
said, as he began to twirl the stick with a sideways
motion of the bow, “as soon as you see the
wood begin to smoke I want you to bring this dry
grass into contact and let’s see if we can
get a flame.” Within minutes he was blowing
on some smouldering grass which suddenly flickered
into flame.
“I’d have had a badge
for that,” in the cub scouts,” said
Badger.
Pat, who had been watching the
whole operation, reached into his pocket and pulled
out a sealed plastic bag containing a box of matches.
“I find these work much better,” he
said, striking a light. “I should have been
a boy scout.”
Timor and Badger looked at each
other but neither said a word. Two minutes later
we were cooking our parrot fish on a crackling
fire.
Food was only part of our problem.
Uncle Bob was sick and we needed water desperately.
The island was quite small, perhaps a mile wide
by about a half a mile across, fairly flat with
just a few palm trees and thorny bushes. The next
day we scoured every rock and gully but could
not find water.
Timor shinned up a palm tree
and cut away some leaves to use for shelter. The
rest of us, apart from Uncle Bob who was too weak
to move much, had constructed a small hut, arranging
the leaves across a few bent sticks we had tied
together using scraps of clothing and what remained
of Timor’s ball of string. It was just big
enough to shelter us from the sun.
The palm tree also had coconuts, not the hard
brown nuts we used to try and knock-off their
mounts in fairground coconut shies, but large
green husks, full of sweet tasting watery milk.
Timor sliced their tops off with his knife and
fashioned the tops as scoops that we could use
to salvage the white pithy flesh from the inside.
“I wonder how long we can
survive here?” I said to no-one in particular.
“There’s more food
than you think,” said Timor. “There’s
plenty of fish and shellfish on the reef and at
night we can find land crabs and hermit crabs.”
I had seen the tiny tracks of hermit crabs on
the sand when I awoke. Still we did not find water.
We slept part of the afternoon in our shelter,
keeping our fire alight in case there were any
passing ships. That evening we ate fish again.
While most of us were becoming listless and lethargic
now, Timor kept up his search.
Some of the time he would just
sit on a rock, looking at places, as if he was
thinking about something. The sun was well up
in the sky the next morning when Timor crawled
into our shelter. No-one felt able to get up.
“Take this and drink,” he said, passing
round hollowed-out coconuts. Each coconut cup
was filled with water.
“We can’t drink so
much. This is all the water we have,” I
said.
“Not any more,” he
said. “I’ve had some luck.”
When the tide had been out early that morning
Timor had noticed some seabirds drinking by a
rock some feet below the high water. He tasted
the water and found it was a fresh water spring.
The discovery lifted our spirits.
We filled up our canister and began to cut up
the torn life raft to make other containers for
water. Badger noticed something yellow, like a
large plastic torch, caught in rope on the underside
of the raft. We knew what it was immediately.
“The Eperb,” he said.
The letters EPRB stand for “Emergency Positioning
Radio Beacon.” Each one has its own code
that can be tracked to the ship to which it belongs.
The beacons are activated by water pressure or
by a switch on the side but they need to have
sunk to a depth of more than six feet before they
can trigger automatically. Snagged in the rope,
our beacon had remained inactive like a wand awaiting
its wizard.
“Look everyone,”
I said, flicking the switch. The light began flashing.
“We’re going to be
saved,” said Vince.
“I wouldn’t count
on it,” said Badger.
Using the same satellite connections
as the global positioning system, The Eperb was
transmitting an emergency signal with our exact
position on the planet to the nearest coastguard
station.
“The problem is,”
said Badger, “That station will be in radio
contact with the Endeavour. If the Endeavour says
the beacon has been triggered accidentally - and
these things happen all the time - we’re
back at square one. Why should Prospero come here
when he wanted rid of us?”
Timor had been listening to our
debate. “I can think of one very pressing
reason,” he said. “The treasure.”
What was he talking about? “Timor,
come to your senses,” I said. “Prospero
has the treasure. He has the treasure, he has
our boat and he has my parents.”
“Right on two points. Wrong
on the other.”
We waited for the rest. Four
children in tattered shorts, shirts and unkempt
hair, were standing before him, a ragtag audience
on a desolate beach in baking sunshine, hundreds
of miles from anywhere.
“He doesn’t have
the treasure,” said Timor. “No-one
does. Not Prospero, not us. No-one. I threw it
over board.”
“You what?” we chorused
as one.
“It’s at the bottom
of the sea.”
Pat, me, Vince, looked at each
other. Each of us looked massively dismayed, as
if, to quote my mum, we had “lost a shilling
and found a sixpence”. Only Badger was smiling.
He was ahead of the rest of us in understanding
the implications.
“You just don’t get
it kids, do you,” said Timor. “What
use is all the gold in the world in this place?
Will it feed you? Will it quench your thirst?
Will it protect you from the sun? Will it rescue
you? Gold, money - all the wealth in the world
- is useful only for one thing - and that’s
to make something happen, to help us do something,
to satisfy a need. Money is just a tool. You can’t
eat it. Your biggest need right now, our biggest
need, is to be rescued. I don’t know how
long we could survive here, maybe a long time,
maybe not. Bob needs medicine.”
Badger was nodding in agreement
at Timor’s every word. “This means,
Timor, doesn’t it,” he said, “that
Prospero is going to track us down?”
“I’m counting on
it,” said Timor. “I thought Prospero
would come looking for us but without the Eperb
I didn’t see how we could be found. Now
we have to wait. Without the treasure, he’ll
be coming for sure. I would love to have seen
his face when he opened the storage box. Anyway,
whatever happens we’re no longer alone.
Someone somewhere knows we’re here. They
have our exact co-ordinates.”
“Which are,” said
Pat, reading from his little black box - the hand
held global positioning device: “Sixteen
degrees, forty-five minutes north, seventy eight
degrees, twenty minutes east.”
Suddenly our spirits had changed. The treasure
was forgotten. “They’re going to make
dad better and we’re going to see Joy and
Rory again,” shouted Vince, “Oh I
do hope so, please let it be so.”
“I’m sure we’ll
be saved,” said Timor, with a sense of assurance
that was hardly reflected in his face.
As dusk began to fall that night
Timor asked the three boys and me to gather at
the edge of the beach, a little way from our camp
which was tucked some distance back from the sand.
“I want you to wait here and watch,”
he said. “Sitting on my rock last night
I saw something very special and I want you to
see it too.”
We waited maybe half an hour
in the fading light when I saw what I thought
was a rock down at the water’s edge, move
quite distinctly. Then I saw another dark shape
and another, like rounded hummocks advancing slowly
up the beach.
“Turtles,” whispered
Badger.
“Green Turtles,”
said Timor. By the light of a full moon we watched
perhaps a dozen mature females drag themselves
gingerly up the beach and begin to scoop out hollows
in the sand with their flippers. Finally they
narrowed their digging to form deep cylinder-like
trenches into which they began to lay score upon
score of white round eggs, like ping pong balls.
Hours later they made their way back down the
beach into the sea.
“You know,” said
Timor, speaking to all of us. I could see the
moonshine glistening on his head as he spoke,
“Wherever you go in life, whatever you do,
whatever you achieve, whatever you become, I doubt
whether life will ever be much better than this
night. It might be as good, but not better. Enjoy
the moment and remember always.”
For me, anyway, those few hours,
watching those turtles, was as good as life gets.
Timor was right. You have to recognise those times
and savour them for what they are. Otherwise you’ll
always be chasing shadows, always trying to reach
out for the unattainable, always disappointed
with what you have.
“Wasn’t finding the
treasure as good as it gets?” said Vince.
“If you think so Vince.
You have to decide for yourself,” said Timor.
“Some people may think
that riding jet skis in the Caribbean sea is as
good as it gets. I don’t. The important
thing is that you recognise in yourself that something
you are doing at one specific moment is good and
that, no matter how long you live, life will never
be better than that moment. The more you realise
that, the more such moments you will know. Of
course you must dream but you must not let dreams
imprison your joy in the here and now.”
“Dad used to say something
similar when we went fishing,” I said. “That’s
why he never bought a lottery ticket. When you
buy a ticket, what are you buying? You’re
buying hope, he’d say, and you’re
turning your back on the promise of achievement.
Easy money kills ambition. That’s what dad
says.”
“Your dad is right,”
said Timor.
The next day was as hot as the
last but at least the morning was cool enough
to fish and wade in the warm sea. “One of
the wonders of nature,” said Timor, surveying
the beach, as the sun still sat low in the sky.
The beach was striped with long tracks of newly
churned sand.
We had more freshly caught fish
for breakfast with some boiled turtles’
eggs and Uncle Bob began to speak although he
seemed confused. “Where am I?” he
said.
“Just rest Bob,”
said Timor. “Everything’s going to
be OK.”
As the rest of us sat back, our
hunger subsiding for the first time in days, Vince,
who had been looking out to sea, rose quietly,
peering into the distance. “Can you see
what I can see? Something on the horizon, over
there,” he said. We were all straining to
see now. Within a minute we were certain. It was
a ship. Within ten minutes we knew the ship; it
was the Endeavour.
“Now what, Timor?”
I asked.
“Now we wait,” he
said. “But first there is something you
must remember, particularly you Vince. It’s
very important. When Prospero asks about the treasure,
you say nothing. Let me do the talking. Understand?”
Vince nodded vigorously.
In 20 minutes the boat was dropping
its anchor about eighty yards from the shore.
I could see dad at the wheel and my heart leaped.
Then I saw Prospero lowering the canoe and clambering
in. He was wearing his top hat. As he paddled
closer we could see he held a cutlass between
his teeth. Not only that, his head was clouded
in smoke issuing from two slow-burning fuses tucked
into his hat, just like those worn by Blackbeard
himself. He looked like some kind of wild-eyed
demon, not the Prospero I remembered.
“You thieving, lying, cheating,
blackhearted dogs,” he bellowed, waving
the cutlass in our direction.
“Get back,” said
Timor to our group.
He drew his hunting knife and
tomahawk and stood between us and the canoe with
its terrible-looking occupant. Prospero stepped
out of the canoe and advanced towards him, cutlass
held high. Timor raised his tomahawk and let it
fly in a whirling blur. The cutlass was knocked
clean out of Prospero’s hand and Timor sprang
towards him reaching Prospero in a single bound.
The impact took both of them off their feet, sand
spraying, their figures shrouded in the smoke
from Prospero’s devilish locks. But when
the smoke cleared we saw that it was Timor who
had Prospero pinned beneath him.
“Pat, quickly, the rope,” cried Timor.
Pat had been waiting with a length of the life-raft
painter, as Timor had instructed. Prospero was
struggling and gasping but Timor was too strong
for him and, with Pat’s help, he quickly
bound Prospero’s brother’s hands and
feet.
“OK kids,” said Timor,
“Get Bob in to the canoe. Mo, Vince, take
the paddles. Pat, Badger, we’ll have to
swim.
“Sorry Timor,” said
Pat. “I’ll stay here. There’s
no way I’m going in that water with those
sharks about.”
“I’ll swim,”
I said.
“OK,” said Timor.
“There’s no time to argue. Get in
the canoe Pat.”
“Don’t be afraid,”
I said to Badger.
“I’m not,”
said Badger as he began to wade in to the sea.
He looked terrified. So, I think, did I. Very
soon the water was up to our waists and we both
struck out for the anchored yacht.
Come on, let’s move,”said
Timor, helping Bob into the canoe. I’ll
follow. He swam with us as the others paddled
towards the Endeavour.
The water was crystal clear.
You could see the outline of coral on the sea
bed. There were darker shapes too and one of them
moved, growing in size. It was heading towards
us, its sinister familiar form enlarging in our
vision.
A triangular fin broke the surface
just yards in front of us. Badger screamed: “shark”.
Then, another fin streaming in from the side,
not black this time, but white, with a long red
welt down one flank. The shark was almost on us,
its nose cleared the water, reavealing a gaping
mouth of white jagged teeth that seemed suspended
for a moment before its whole great body was almost
flung from the water in the most awesome juddering
collison of beast on beast. Scar had smashed his
bottle nose in to the shark’s flanks.
In the same moment Timor swam
past us, his knife, drawn. As the black dorsal
fin emerged again we saw him lunge in what must
have been the direction of the head. There was
a strong thrashing by our side. Suddenly the surface
was broken again by the huge jaws gaping below
a single malevolent black eye. I screamed as the
water ran red with blood.
A dark head head bobbed up beside
us and I screamed again. It was Timor and he wasn’t
smiling.
“Swim for your lives,”
he shouted.
Other black fins were appearing
across the water. A white form appeared beneath
us and both Badger and I snatched at Scar’s
gnarled fin which dragged us towards the Endeavour.
We reached the boat and used the canoe to clamber
aboard. Behind us we witnessed a foaming feeding
frenzy as other sharks fought over the carcass
of Timor’s victim. Then, just briefly, a
pure white bottle-nosed head poked up beside the
boat and squeaked. I looked again in to those
eyes. For a fleeting fraction of a second, human
and animal were one in their understanding. Some
indefinable and unbreakable bond existed that
only death could dissolve. Before that timeless
second ended Scar had gone.
“Mo,” shouted dad.
There were tears in his eyes.
Timor freed the handcuffs with
one blow of his hatchet. Dad had a growth of beard
and straggly hair and looked so thin and exhausted.
I suppose we must have looked as bad. We released
mum from her cabin prison below decks and I hugged
and kissed her. Dad felt his aching wrist and
embraced Timor in gratitude and relief.
As the boys helped their father
to the shelter of the galley, Timor filled a canvas
bag with tins of food, a box of matches, can-opener,
fishing gear and a few other tools. I paddled
back in the canoe with him to the beach. He walked
across the sand and drew his knife.
For a second my heart missed
a beat and I could see terror in Prospero’s
eyes. Slowly, deliberately, Timor bent down and
cut the binding on Prospero’s hands. As
he turned to leave, Timor hurled the bag and shovel
on to the beach while Prospero was bending over
his feet trying frantically to release the rest
of the bindings.
“Where’s the treasure?”
screamed Prospero. “How did you get it off
the boat? You couldn’t have taken it,”
he said.
“Look for the freshly-turned
sand,” shouted Timor, “Enjoy the digging,”
“You think you’ve
got one over on old Prospero doesn’t you.
Well you hasn’t seen the last of me,”
he cried, managing to stand at last.
As we pulled up the anchor we
saw him take the shovel and begin digging. He
was laughing dementedly. Then, watching through
binoculars as we drew away, I saw him fall forward
on to a mass of white eggs, shattering the shells.
He jumped up and shook his fist in our direction.
“Now who’s got egg
on his face?” said dad.
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