Kensukes_Kingdom_Book

Kensuke's Kingdom

Map of Kensuke's Kingdom

. EGMONT First published in Great Britain in 1999 by Egmont UK Limited This edition published 2017 by Egmont UK Limited The Yellow Building, Nicholas Road London, WII AAN Text copyright 0 1999 Michael Morpurgo Inside illustration copyright 01999 Michael Foreman Cover illustration t 2017 David Dean The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asw•rted ISBN 978 1 4052 2174 0 www.egmont.Co.uk A CIP catalogue record for chis title is available from the British Library Printed and bound in Great Britain 25741/054 All rights NO part Of this publication may be reproducd, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic , mechanical , photocopying, recording or otherwise, Without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright Stay safe online. Any website addresses listed in this are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont is not responsible for content hosted by third parties. please aware that online content can be to change and wel"ites can content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet. Egmont takes its responsibility to the planet and its inhabitants very seriously. All the papers we use are from "'ell-managed forests run by suppliers. For graham and Isabella My thanks to Isabella Hutchins, Terenc,e Buckler, and Proßsor Seigo Tonimoto and his family, for all their kind help with this book..

. ä7k 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 7k 7k 7k Writ. ( In I-Av) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Contents Peggy Sue Water, water everywhere Ship's log Gibbons and ghosts I, Kensuke Abunai! All that silence said Everyone dead in Nagasaki The night of the turtles Killer men come Postscript Glossary Map of route 25 45 69 85 99 117 145 163 164 66.

. Chapter 1 Peggy Sue I disappeared on the night before my twelfth birthday. July 28 1988. Only now can I at last tell the whole extraordinary story, the true story. Kensuke made me promise that I would say nothing, nothing at all, until at least ten years had passed. It was almost the last thing he said to me. I promised, and because of that I.

. have had to live out a lie. I could let sleeping lies sleep on, but more than ten years have passed now. I have done school, done college, and had time to think. I owe it to my family and to my friends, all of whom I have deceived for so long, to tell the truth about my long disappearance, about how I lived to come back from the dead. But there is another reason for speaking out now, a far, far better reason. Kensuke was a great man, a good man, and he was my friend. I want the world to know him as I knew him. Until I was nearly eleven, until the letter came, life was just normal. There were the four of us in the house: my mother, my father, me and Stella — Stella Artois, that is, my-one-ear-up and one-ear-down black and white sheepdog, who always seemed to know what was about to happen before it did. But even she could not have foreseen how that letter was going to change our lives for ever. Thinking back, there was a regularity, a sameness about my early childhood. It was down the road each mormng to 'the monkey school'. My father called it 2 that because he said the children gibbered and screeched and hung upside down on the climbing- frame in the playground. And, anyway, I was always 'monkey face' to him — when he was in a playful mood, that is, which he often was. The school was really called St Joseph 's, and I was happy there, for most of the time, anyway. After school every day, whatever the weather, I'd be off down to the recreation ground for football with Eddie Dodds, my best friend in all the world, and Matt and Bobby and the others. It was muddy down there. Cross the ball and it wouldjust land and stick. We had our own team, the Mudlarks we called ourselves, and we were good, too. Visiting teams seemed to expect the ball to bounce for some reason, and by the time they realised it didn't, we were often two or three goals up. We weren't so good away from home. Every weekend I did a paper round from Mr Patel's shop on the corner. I was saving up for a mountain bike. I wanted to go mountain biking up on the moors with Eddie. The trouble was, I would keep spending what I'd saved. I'm still the same that way. Sundays were always special, I remember. We'd go dinghy sailing, all of us, on the reservoir, Stella Artois 3.

. barking her head off at the other boats as if they'd no right to be there. My father loved it, he said, because the air was clear and clean, no brick dust — he worked down at the brickworks. He was a great do-it-yourself fanatic. There was nothing he couldn't fix, even if it didn't need fixing. So he was in his element on a boat. My mother, who worked part time in the office at the same brickworks, revelled in it, too. I remember her once, throwing back her head in the wind and breathing in deep as she sat at the tiller. 'This is it,' she cried. 'This is how life is supposed to be. Wonderful, just wonderful.' She always wore the blue cap. She was the undisputed skipper. If there was a breeze out there, she'd find it and catch it. She had a real nose for it. We had some great days on the water. We'd go out when it was rough, when no one else would, and we'd go skimming over the waves, exhilarating in the speed of it, in the sheer joy of it. And if there wasn't a breath of wind, we didn't mind that either. Sometimes we'd be the only boat on the whole reservoir. We'd just sit and fish instead — by the way, I was better at fishing than either of them — and Stella Artois would be curled 4 up behind us in the boat, bored with the whole thing, because there was no one to bark at. Then the letter arrived. Stella Artois savaged it as it came through •the letterbox. There were puncture holes in it and it was damp, but we cou}d read enough. The brickworks were going to close down. They were both being made redundant. There was a terrible silence at the breakfast table that morning. After that we never went sailing on Sundays any more. I didn't have to ask why not. They both tried to find other jobs, but there was nothing. A creeping misery came over the house. Some- times I'd come home and they just wouldn't be speaking. They! argue a lot, about little niggly things and they had never been like that. My father stopped fixing things around the house. He was scarcely ever home anyway. If he wasn't looking for a job, he'd be down in the pub. When he was home he'd just sit there flicking through endless yachting magazines and saying nothing. I tried to stay out of the house and play football as much as I could, but then Eddie moved away because his father had found a job somewhere down south. 5.

. Football just wasn't the same without him. The Mudlarks disbanded. Everything was falling apart. Then one Saturday I came home from my paper round and found my mother sitting at the bottom of the stairs and crying. She'd always been so strong. I'd never seen her like this before. 'Silly beggar,' she said. 'Your a silly beggar, Michael, thaft what he is.' 'What's he done?' I asked her. 'He's gone off,' she told me, and I thought she meant for good. 'He wouldn't hear reason, oh no. He's had this idea, he says. He wouldn't tell me what it was, only that he's sold the car, that we're moving south, and he's going to find us a place.' I was relieved, and quite pleased, really. South must be nearer to Eddie. She went on: 'If he thinks I'm leaving this house, then I'm telling you he's got another think coming.' 'Why not?' I said. 'Not much here.' 'Well there's the house, for a start. Then there's Gran, and there's school.' 'There's other schools,' I told her. She became steaming angry then, angrier than I'd ever known her. 'You want to know what was the last straw?' she 6 said. 'It was you, Michael, you going off on your paper round this morning. You know what your dad said? Well, I'll tell you, shall I? "Do you know something?" he gays. "There's only one lousy wage coming into this house — Michael's paper money. How do you think that makes me feel, eh? My son's eleven years old. He's got a job, and I haven t. She steadied herself for a moment or two before she went on, her eyes filled with fierce tears. 'I'm not moving, Michael. I was born here. And I'm not going. No matter what he says, I'm not leaving.' I was there when the phone call came a week or so later. I knew it was my father. My mother said very little, so I couldn 't understand what was going on, not until she sat me down afterwards and told me. 'He sounds different, Michael. I mean, like his old self, like his very old self, like he used to be when I first knew him. He's found us a place. "Just pack your stuff and come," he says. Fareham. Somewhere near Southampton. "Right on the sea," he says. There's something very different about him, I'm telling you.' My father did indeed seem a changed man. He was waiting for us when we got off the train, all 7.

. bright-eyed again and full of laughter. He helped us With the cases. not far,' he said, ruffling my hair. 'You wait till you see it, monkey face. I've got it all sorted, the whole thing. And it's no good you trying to talk me out ofit, either of you. I've made up my mind.' 'What about?' I asked him. 'You'll see,' he said. Stella Artois bounded along ahead of us, her tail held high and happy. We all felt like that, I think. In the end we caught a bus because the cases were too heavy. When we got off we were right by the sea. There didn't seem to be any houses anywhere, just a yachting marina. 'What are we doing here?' my mother asked. 'There's someone I want you to meet. A good friend of mine. She's called Peggy Sue. She's been looking forward to meeting you. I've told her all about you.' My mother frowned at me in puzzlement. I wasn't any the wiser either. All I knew for certain was that he was being deliberately mysterious. We struggled on with our suitcases, the gulls crying overhead, the yacht masts clapping around us, 8 and Stella yapping at all of it, until at last he stopped right by a gang plank that led up to a gleaming dark blue yacht. He put the cases down and turned to face us. He was grinning from ear to ear. 'Here she is,' he said. 'Let me introduce you. This is the Peggy Sue. Our new home. Well?' Considering everything, my mother took it pretty well. She didn't shout at him. She just went very quiet, and she stayed quiet all through his explanation down in the galley over a cup of tea. 'It wasn't a spur of the moment thing, you know. I've been thinking about it a long time, all those years working in the factory. All right, maybe I was just dreaming about it in those days. Funny when you think about it: if I hadn't lost my job, I'd never have dared do it, not in a million years.' He knew he wasn't making much sense. 'All right, then. Here's what I thought. What is it that we all love doing most? Sailing, right? Wouldn't it be wonderful, I thought, if we could just take off and sail around the world? There's people who've done it. Blue water sailing, they call it. I've read about it in the magazines. 'Like I said, it was just a dream to start with. 9.

. And then, no job and no chance of a job. What did the man say? Get on your bike. So why not a boat? We've got our redundancy money, what little there was of it. There's a bit saved up, and the car money. Not a fortune, but enough. What to do with it? I could put it all in the bank, like the others did. But what for? Just to watch it dribble away till there was nothing left? Or, I thought, or I could do something really special with it, a once- in-a-lifetime thing: we could sail around the world. Africa. South America. Australia. The Pacific. We could see places we've only ever dreamed of.' We sat there completely dumbstruck. 'Oh, I know what you're thinking,' he went on. 'You're thinking, all we've ever done is reservoir sailing, dinghy sailing. You're thinking, he's gone crazy, loopy in the head. You're thinking, it's dangerous. You're thinking, we'll be flat broke. But I've thought it all out. I even thought of your gran — there's a thing. We won't be gone for ever, will we? She'll be here when we get back, won't she? She's perfectly healthy. 'We've got the money. I've done my sums. We're going to do six months' training. We'll be away a year, eighteen months maybe, just so long as the money lasts. 10 We're going to do it safe, do it properly. Mum, you'll do your Yachtmaster's certificate. Oh, didn't I say? I didn't did I? You'll be the skipper, Mum. I'll be first mate and handyman. Michäel, you'll be ship's boy, and Stella — well Stella can be the shipk cat.' He was full of it, breathless with excitement. 'We'll train ourselves up. Do a few trips across the Channel to France, maybe over to Ireland. We'll get to know this boat like she's one of us. She's a forty-two foot. Bowman, best make, best design. Safest there is. I've done my homework. Six months' time and we'll be off round the world. It'll be the adventure of a lifetime. Our one chance. We'll never get another one. What do you think then?' . cell ent,' I breathed, and that was exactly what I thought. 'And I'll be skipper, you say?' my mother asked. 'Aye aye, Cap'n,' and my father laughed and gave her a mock salute. 'What about Michaelk school?' she went on. 'I've thought of that, too. I asked in the local school down here. It's all arranged. We'll take all the books he'll need. I'll teach him. You'll teach him. He'll teach himself. I'll tell you something for nothing, he 'II II.

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. soaked to the skin. I wore all the right gear — the skipper always made sure of that — but somehow the wet still got through. Down below too, everything was damp, even the sleeping bags. Only when the sun shone and the sea had stopped its heaving, could we begin to dry out. We would haul everything out on deck, and soon the Peggy Sue would be dressed overall, one great washing-line from bow to stern. To be dry again was a real luxury, but we always knew it could not last for long. You may think there was not a lot for three people to do on board, day after day, week after week. You'd be quite wrong. In daylight there was never a dull moment. I was always kept busy: taking in sail, winching in, letting out, taking my turn at the wheel — which I loved — or helping my father with his endless mending and fixing. He often needed another pair of hands to hold and steady as he drilled or hammered or screwed or sawed. I'd forever be mopping up, brewing up, washing up, drying up. I'd be lying if I said I loved it all. I didn't. But there was never a dull moment. 18 Only one of the crew was allowed to be idle Stella Artois — and she was always idle. With nothing much to bark at out on the open ocean, she spent the rough& days curled up on my bed down in the cabin. When it was fine and calm, though, she'd usually be found on watch up at the bow, alert for something, anything that wasn't just sea. You could be sure that if there was anything out there she'd spot it soon enough — an escort of porpoises perhaps, diving in and out of the waves, a family of dolphins swimming alongside, so close you could reach out and touch them. Whales, sharks, even turtles — we saw them all. My mother would be taking photographs, video and still, while my father and I fought over the binoculars. But Stella Artois was in her element, a proper sheepdog again, barking her commands at the creatures of the sea, herding them up from the deep. Annoying though she could be — she would bring her smelly wetness with her everywhere — we never once regretted bringing her along with us. She was our greatest comfort. When the sea tossed and churned us, and my mother felt like 19.

. death from seasickness, she'd sit down below, white to the gills, with Stella on her lap, cuddling and being cuddled. And when I was terrified by the mountainous seas and the screaming wind, I would curl up with Stella on my bunk, bury my head in her neck and hold her tight. At times like that — and I don't suppose they were that frequent, it's just that I remember them so vividly — I always kept Eddie's football close beside me as well. The football had become a sort of talisman for me, a lucky charm, and it really seemed to work, too. After all, every storm did blow itself out in the end and, afterwards, we were always still there, still alive and still afloat. I had hoped my mother and father might forget all about the planned school work. And to begin with it seemed as if they had. But once we had weathered a few storms, once we were settled and well into our voyage, they sat me down and told me the unwelcome news. Like it or not, I was going to have to keep up with my schoolwork. My mother was adamant about it. I could see that any appeals to my father 20 would be pointless. He just shrugged and said, 'Mum's the skipper.' And that was an end of the matter. At least at home she had been my mother and I could argüe with her, but not on the Peggy Sue, not any more. It was a conspiracy. Between them, they had devised an entire programme of work. There were maths course books to get through — my father would help me with that if I got stuck, he said. For geography and history I was to find out and record all I could about every country we visited as we went round the world. For environmental studies and art I was to note down and draw all the birds we saw, all the creatures and plants we came across. My mother made a particular point of teaching me navigation, too. 'Barnacle Bill taught me,' she said, 'I'm teaching you. I know it's not on the curriculum, but so what? It could come in handy, you never know.' She taught me how to use the sextant, take compass bearings, plot a course on the chart. I had to fill in the longitude and latitude in the ship's log, every morning, every evening, without fail. 21.

. I don't think I had ever really noticed stars before. Now, whenever I was on watch in the cockpit at night; With the Peggy Sue on her wind- vane self-steering, the others asleep below, the stars would be my only company. Gazing up at them I felt sometimes that we were the last people alive on the whole planet. There was just us, and the dark sea about us and the millions of stars above. It was on watch at night that I would often do my 'English'. This was my own version of the ship's log. I didn't have to show it to them, but I was encouraged to write in it every few weeks. It would be, they said, my own personal, private record of our voyage. At school I had never been much good at writing. I could never think of what to write or how to begin. But on the Peggy Sue I found I could open up my log and just write. There was always so much I wanted to say. And that's the thing. I found 1 didn't really write it down at all. Rather, I said it. I spoke it from my head, down my arm, through my fingers and my pencil, and 22 on to the page. And that's how it reads to me now, all these years later, like me talking. I'm looking at my log now. The paper is a bit crinkled and the pages are yellowed with age. My scribbly writing is a little faded, but it's mostly quite legible. What follows are just a few chosen extracts from this log. The entries are quite short, but they tell the tale. This is how I recorded our great journey. This is how it was for an eleven- year-old boy as we rode the wide oceans of the world on board the Peggy Sue. 23.

. DAILY NOTES AND SKETCHES LOG OF sue FAREHAM AROUND THEWORLD./ Oct. IJ r-ea_ sk-e,'k_ t rut .raa, / Chapter 3 Ship's Log September 20 It'S five in the morning. I'm on watch in the cockpit and no one else ts awake. We left Southampton ten days ago now. The Channel was full of tankers. There were dozens of them going up and down. So, either Mum or Dad took turns on watch the first two nights. They wouldn't tet me. I don't know why not. There wasn't 25.

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. 1 But Mum joined in on my side and we won. Brazil 3. Mum invited them back for Mudlarks 5 — a Coke on board afterwards. Stella growled at them and bared her teeth, so we had to shut her down in the cabin. They tried out their English on us. They only knew two words: 'Goat' and 'Manchester United'. That's three, I suppose. Mum had the films developed. There's one of some leaping dolphins, another of me at the winch. Mum at the wheel, another of Dad hauling down the 0 Ax orc s care Verde Rro 30 mainsail and making a right mess of it. There's one of me diving off a rock into the sea when we stopped in the Canaries. There's one of Dad fast asleep and sunbathing on deck and Mum giggling. She's about to dribble the sun cream all over his tummy. (l took that one, my best photo.) Then there's one of me doing my maths, sulking and sticking my tongue out. December 25 Christmas Day at sea. Dad found some carols on the radio. We had crackers, all of them a bit soggy so none of them cracked, and we had the Christmas pudding Gran made for us. I gave them a drawing each — my flying fish for Dad and one of the skipper, in her hat, at the wheel for Mum. They gave me a realty neat knife they'd bought in Rio. So I gave a coin back. You're supposed to do that. It's for tuck. When we were good scrub down. inside and outside, on a lot of stores in Rio we gave the Peggy Sue a She was tooking a bit manky but she's not any more. We took and water for the long haul to 31.

. 1 South Africa. Mum says we're doing fine, just so tong as we keep south, so [ong as we stay in the west-to-east South Atlantic current. We passed south of an island called St Helena a jew days ago. No need to stop. Nothing much there, except it's the place where Napoleon was exited. He died there. Lonely place to die. So, of course, I had to do a history project on Napoleon. I had didn't tell them that. Stella's sulking on my bunk. Maybe it's because no one gave her a Christmas present. I offered her a taste of Gran's 'Christmas pudding, but she hardly gave it a sniff. Can't say I blame her. I saw a sail today, another yacht. We shouted Happy Christmas and waved, and Stella barked her head off, but they were too far away. When the sail to took him up in the encyclopaedia and about him,' It was quite interesting, really, 32 write but disappeared, the sea felt suddenly very empty. Mum won the chess this evening. ahead now, twenty-one games to twenty. She's Dad said he tet her win because it was Christmas. They joke about it, but they both want to win. January I Africa again! Cape Town. Table Mountain. And this time we're not just sailing by — we're going to put in there. They told me this evening. They didn't want to tell me before in case we couldn't afford it, but we can. We're going to stay for a couple of weeks, maybe more. We're going to see elephants and lions in the wild. J can't believe it. I don't think they can either. When they told me, they were like 33.

. a couple of kids, alt laughing and happy. They were never tike this at home. These days they really smite at each other. Mum's getting stomach cramps. Dad wants her to see a doctor in Cape Town, but she won't. reckon it's the baked beans. The good news is the baked beans have at last run out. The bad news is we had sardines for supper. Eeeyuk! February 7 We're hundreds of miles out in the Indian Ocean, and then this happens. Stella hardly ever comes up on deck unless it's flat calm. I don't know why she came up. I don't know why she was there. We were all busy, I suppose. Dad was brewing up down in the galley, and Mum was at the wheel. I was doing one of my navigation lessons, taking bearings with the sextant. The Peggy Sue was pitching and rolling a bit. I had to steady myself. looked up and I saw Stella up at the bow of the boat. One moment she was just standing there, the next she was gone. drill We had practised the 'man overboard' dozens of times back the Solent with Barnacle Bill. 34 Shout and point. Keep shouting. Keep pointing. Turn into the wind. Get the sails down quick. Engine on. By the time Dad had the mainsail and the jib down, We were already heading back towards her. I was doing the pointing, and the shouting too. She was paddling for her life in the green of a looming wave. Dad was leaning over the side and reaching for her, but he didn't have his safety harness on and Mum was going mad. She was trying to bring the boat in as close and as slow 35.

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. and jumped up and down. It's sailors ever to discover it. Stella as if we were mad as hatters, are. But we've done it. We've like we're the first Artois barked at us which we probably sailed atl the way from England to Australia. That's halfway round the world. And we did it on our own. Mum's been getting her stomach cramps again. She's definitely going to see a doctor in Australia. She's promised us and we'll make her keep to it. A USTR4Z/8 38 May 28 At sea again after nearly six weeks with Uncle John. We thought we were going to stay in Perth for just a few days, but he said we had to see Australia properly while we were there. He took us to stay with his family on a huge farm. Thousands of sheep. He's got masses of horses, so went riding a lot with my two little cousins, Beth and Liza. They're only seven and eight, but they could really ride. They called me Mikey; and by the time we left they both wanted to marry me. We're going to be penpals instead. I saw a snake catted a Copperhead. Uncle John said it could have killed me if I'd trodden on it. He told me to watch out for Redback spiders in the toilet. I didn't go to the toilet very often after that. They called us their 'pommy cousins' and we had barbeques every evening. They gave us a great time. But I was happy to get back to the Peggy Sue. I missed her while was gone, like I miss Eddie. I've been sending him cards, funny animal cards, if I can find them. I sent him one of a wombat. I saw a 39.

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. with rne. It's been really need it. We in real trouble. I another storm. lucky for us so jar. And now we need Mum to get better, or we're don't know if we could stand Thank God it's calm. It'll help Mum to steep. You can't sleep when you're being slammed about atl the time. It is so dark out there. Black. Stella's barking. She's up by the bow. She hasn't got her harness clipped on. Those were the last words I ever wrote in my log. After that it's just empty pages. I tried calling Stella first, but she wouldn't come. So I left the wheel and went forward to bring her back. I took the ball with me to sweeten her in, to tempt her away from the bow of the boat. I crouched down. 'Come on, Stella,' I saict rolling the ball from hand to hand. 'Come and get the ball.' I felt the boat turn a little in the wincL and I knew then I shouldn't have left the wheel. The ball rolled away from me quite suddenly. I lunged after it, but it was gone over the side before I could grab it. I lay there on 42 the deck watching it bob away into the darkness. I was furious with myself for being so silly. I was still cursing myself when I thought I heard the sound of singifig. Someone was singing out there in the darkness. I called out but no one replied. So that was what Stella had been barking at. I looked again for my ball, but by now it had disappeared. That ball had been very precious to me, precious to all of us. 1 knew then I had just lost a great deal more than a football. I was angry with Stella. The whole thing had been her fault. She was still barking. I couldn't hear the singing any more. I called her again, whistled her in. She wouldn't come. I got to my feet and went forward. I took her by the' collar and pulled. She would not be moved. I couldn't drag her all the way back, so I bent down to pick her up. She was still reluctant. Then I had her in my arms, but she was struggling. I heard the wind above me in the sails. I remember thinking: this is silly, you haven't got your safety harness on, you haven't got your lifejacket on, you shouldn't be doing this. Then the boat veered violently and I was thrown sideways. With my arms full I had no 43.

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. my cries for help could not possibly be heard. I thought then of the sharks cruising the black water beneath me — scenting me, already searching me out, homing in on me — and I knew there could be no hope. I would be eaten alive. Either that or I would drown slowly. Nothing could save me. I trod water, frantically searching the impene- trable darkness about me for something, anything to swim towards. There was nothing. Then a sudden glimpse of white in the sea. The breaking ofa wave perhaps. But there were no waves. Stella! It had to be. I was so thankful, so relieved not to be all alone. I called out and swam towards her. She would keep bobbing away from me, vanishing, reappearing, then vanishing again. She had seemed so near, but it took several minutes of hard swimming before I came close enough to reach out and touch her. Only then did I realise my mistake. Stella's head was mostly black. This was white. It was my football. I grabbed it and clung on, feeling the unexpected and wonderful buoyancy of it. I held on, treading water and calling for Stella. There was no answer. I called and I called. But every time I opened my mouth now, 46 the seawater washed in. I had to give her up. I had to save myself if I could. There was little point in wasting energy by trying to swim. After all, I had nowhere to swim to. Instead, I would simply float. I would cling. to my football, tread water gently and wait for the Peggy Sue to come back. Sooner or later they had to discover I was overboard. Sooner or later they would come looking for me. I mustn't kick too much, just enough to keep my chin above the water, no more. Too much movement would attract the sharks. Morning must come soon. I had to hang on till then. I had to. The water wasn't that cold. I had my football. I had a chance. I kept tellihg myself that over and over again. But the world stayed stubbornly black about me, and I could feel the water slowly chilling me to death. I tried singing to stop myself from shivering, to take my mind off the sharks. I sang every song I could remember, but after a while I'd forget the words. Always I came back to the only song I was sure I could finish: 'Ten Green Bottles'. I sang it out loud again and again. It reassured me to hear 47.

. 1 the sound of my own voice. It made me feel less alone in the sea. And always I looked for the grey glint of dawn, but it would not come and it would not come. Eventually I fell silent and my legs just would not kick any more. I clung to my football, my head drifting into sleep. I knew I mustn't, but I couldn't help myself. My hands kept slipping off the ball. I was fast losing the last of my strength. I would go down, down to the bottom of the sea and lie in my grave amongst the seaweed and the sailors' bones and the shipwrecks. The strange thing was that I didn't really mind. I didn't care, not any more. I floated away into sleep, into my dreams. And in my dream I saw a boat gliding towards me, silent over the sea. The Peggy Sue! Dear, dear Peggy Sue. They had come back for me. I knew they would. Strong arms grabbed me. I was hauled upwards and out of the water. I lay there on the deck, gasping for air like a landed fish. Someone was bending over me, shaking me, talking to me. I could not understand a word that 48 was being said. But it didn't matter. I felt Stella's hot breath on my face, her tongue licking my ear. She was safe. I was safe. All was well. I was woken•by a howling, like the howling of a gale through the masts. I looked about me.. There were no masts above me, there were no sails. No movement under me either, no breath of wind. Stella Artois was barking, but some way off. I was not on a boat at all, but lying stretched out on sand. The howling became a screaming, a fearful crescendo of screeching that died away in its own echoes. I sat up. I was on a beach, a broad white sweep of sand, with trees growing thick and lush behind me right dowri to the beach. Then I saw Stella prancing about in the shallows. I called her and she came bounding up out of the sea to greet me, her tail circling wildly. When all the leaping and licking and hugging were done, I struggled to my feet. I was weak all over. I looked all about me. The wide blue sea was as empty as the cloudless sky above. No Peggy Sue. No boat. Nothing. No one. I called again and again for my mother and my father. 49.

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. howling wailed and wafted through the trees, but more distantly now. It wasn't the sounds of the forest that bothered me, though, it was the eyes. I felt as if I was being watched by a thousand inquisitive eyes. I think Stella did, too, for she had been strangely quiet ever since we entered the forest, constantly glancing up at me for reassurance and comfort. I did my best to give it, but she could sense that I, too, was frightened. What had seemed at first to be a short hike now felt more like a great expedition into the interior. We emerged exhausted from the trees, clambered laboriously up a rocky scree and stood at long last on the peak. The sun was blazing down. I had not really felt the burning heat of it until then. I scanned the horizon. If there was a sail somewhere out there in the haze, I could not see it. And then it came to me that even if I were to see a sail, what could I do? I couldn't light a fire. I had no matches. I knew about cavemen rubbing sticks together, but I had never fried it. I looked all round me now. Sea. Sea. 52 Sea. Nothing but sea on all sides. I was on an island. I was alone. The island looked perhaps two or three miles in length, no mote. It was shaped a bit like an elongated peanut, but longer at one end than the other. There was a long swathe of brilliant white beach on both sides of the island, and at the far end another hill, the slopes steeper and more thickly wooded, but not so high as mine. With the exception of these twin peaks the entire island seemed to be covered with forest. So far as I could see there was no sign of any human life. Even then, as I stood there, that first morning, filled with apprehension at the terrifying implications of my dreadful sitüation, I remember thinking how wonderful it was, a green jewel of an island framed in white, the sea all about it a silken shimmering blue. Strangely, perhaps comforted somehow by the extraordinary beauty of the place, I was not at all down-hearted. On the contrary I felt strangely elated. I was alive. Stella Artois was alive. We had survived. I sat down in the shadow of a great rock. The 53.

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. my reckoning. This place was so much bigger than it had seemed from high up on the hill that morning. Despite all my searching, I had found no water, nothing to eat. I could go no further, and neither could Stella. She lay stretched out beside me on the sand, panting her heart out. We would have to stay where we were for the night. I thought of going into the forest a little way to sleep on ground under the trees — I could make a nest of soft dead leaves, the jungle floor was thick with them — but I dared not venture in, not with the shadow of night falling fast over the island. The howling had started up again far away in the forest, a last mellifluous evensong, a chanting that went on and on until darkness covered the island. Insects (that is what I presumed they were anyway) whirred and whined from the forest. There was hollow tapping, like a frantic woodpecker. There was scraping, scratching, and a grunting grating noise that sounded like frogs. The whole orchestra of the jungle was tuning up. But it wasn't the sounds that frightened me, it was those phantom eyes. I wanted to be as far as possible 58 from those eyes. I found a small cave at one end of the beach with a dry sandy floor. I lay down and tried to sleep, but Stella would not let me. She whined at me in the pain of her hunger and thirst, so that I slept only fitfully. The jungle droned and cackled and croaked, and all night long the mosquitoes were at me too. They whined in my ears and drove me mad. I held my hands over my ears to shut out the sound of them. I curled myself round Stella, tried to forget where I was, to lose myself in my dreams. I remembered then that it was my birthday, and thought of my last birthday back at home with Eddie and Matt, and the barbecue we'd had in the garden, how the sausages had smelled so good. I slept at last. The next morning I woke cold and hungry and shivering, and bitten all over. It took me some moments to remember where I was, and all that had happened to me. I was suddenly overwhelmed by one cruel reality after another: my utter aloneness, my separation from my mother and father, and the dangers all around me. 59.

. I cried aloud in my misery, until I saw that Stella was gone. I ran out of the cave. She was nowhere to be seen. I called for her. I listened for her, but only the gibbons howled in reply. Then I turned and saw her. She was up on the rocks high above my cave, half hidden from me, but even so I could see that her head was down. She was clearly intent on something. I clambered up to find out what it was. I heardher drinking before I got there, lapping rhythmically, noisily, as she always did. She did not even look up as I approached. That was when I saw that she was drinking from a bowl, a battered tin bowl. Then I noticed something strange up on a flat shelf of rock above her. I left Stella to her water feast and climbed up further to investigate. Another bowl of water and, beside it, palm leaves laid out on the rock and half covered by an upturned tin. I sat down and drank the water without pause for breath. Water had never tasted so wonderful to me as it did then. Still gasping, I lifted aside the tin. Fish! Thin strips of translucent white fish, dozens of them, laid out 60 neatly in rows on the palm leaves, and five, six, seven small red bananas. Red bananas! I ate the fish first, savouring each precious strip. But even ag I ate I was looking around me, looking for a telltale trembling of leaves at the edge of the forest, or for a trail of footprints in the sand. I could see none. Yet someone had brought this to me. Someone must be there, someone must be watching me. I wasn't sure whether to be fearful at this revelation or overjoyed. Stella interrupted my thoughts. She was whimpering pitifully at me from the rock below, and I knew it wasn't love or comfort she was after. She caught every strip of fish I threw her, snaffled it in one gulp and waited for the next, head on one side, one ear pricked. After that it was one for me, one for her. Her beseeching eyes would not let me do otherwise. The fish was raw, but I did not mind. I was too hungry to mind, and so was Stella. I kept the red bananas all to myself. I ate every single one of them. They weren't at all like bananas back home, but much sweeter altogether, much juicier, much.

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. , efi 1}. distance away like a flat wedge of rock protruding only very slightly from the sand. Stella was scrabbling excitedly at the edge of it. It turned out not to be a rock at all, but a long sheet of rusted metal — clearly all that was left of the side of a ship's hull, now sunk deep in the sand. I wondered what ship it was, how long ago she had been wrecked. Had some terrible storm driven her on to the island? Had there been any survivors? Could any of them still be here? I knelt down in the sand and ran my hand along it. I noticed then a fragment of clear glass lying in the sand nearby from a bottle perhaps. It was hot to touch, too hot to handle. It came to me in a flash. Eddie had showed me how to do it. We'd tried it in the playground at school, hiding behind the dustbins where no one could see us. A piece of paper, a bit of glass and the sun. We had made fire! I didn't have any paper, but leaves would do. I ran up the beach and gathered whatever I could find from under the trees: bits of cane, twigs, all sorts of leaves — paper-thin, tinder- dry. I made a small pile on the sand and sat down 64 beside it. I held my piece of glass close to the leaves and angled it to the sun. I had to keep it still, quite still, and wait for the first wisp of smoke. If only I could get a fire lit, if only I could keep it alight, then I could sleep by it at night — it would keep the flies away, and the animals away, too. And, sooner or later, a ship had to come by. Someone would spot the smoke. I sat and I sat. Stella came over to bother me — she wanted to play — but I pushed her away. In the end she went off and sulked, stretching out with a sigh under the shade of the palm trees. The sun was roasting hot, but still nothing happened. My arm was beginning to ache, so I arranged a frame of twigs above the leaves, laid the glass across it, then crouched by it and waited. Still nothing. All of a sudden Stella sprang up from her sleep, a deep growl in her throat. She turned and ran down towards me, wheeling round to bark her fury at the forest. Then I saw what it was that had disturbed her. A shadow under the trees moved and came lumbering out into the sunlight towards us. A monkey, 65.

. a giant monkey. Not a gibbon at all. It moved slowly on all fours, and was brown, gmger- brown. An orang-utan, I was sure of it. He sat down just a few feet from me and considered me. I dared not move. When he'd seen enough, he scratched his neck casually, turned and made his way on all fours slowly back into the forest. Stella went on growling long after he had gone. So there were orang-utans here as well as gibbons. Or perhaps it was orang-utans that made the howling noise and not gibbons at all. Maybe I'd been wrong all along. I'd seen a Clint Eastwood film once with an orang-utan. That one, I remembered, had been friendly enough. I just hoped this one would be the same. Then I saw smoke. I smelled smoke. There was a glow in amongst my pile of leaves. I crouched down at once and blew on it gently. The glow became flames. I put on a few more leaves, then a dry twig or two, then some bigger ones. I had a fire! I had a fire! I dashed into the forest and collected all the debris, all the dried-up coconut shells, all the wood I could find. Back and forth I went until my fire 66 was roaring and crackling like an inferno. Sparks were flying high into the air. Smoke was rising into the trees behind me. I knew I could not rest now, that the fire would need still more wood, bigger wood, branches even. I would have to fetch and carry until I was quite certain I had enough to keep it going, and enough in reserve. Stella, I noticed, would not come with me into the forest, but stayed waiting for me by the fire. I knew well enough why. I kept a wary eye out for the orang-utan myself, but I was too intent on my fire now to worry much about him. My pile of wood was huge by now, but all the same I went back into the forest one last time, just in case the fire burned itself out quicker than I expected. I had to go deeper into the forest, so it took a while. I was coming out of the trees, loaded with wood up to my chin, when I realised there was much less smoke coming from the fire than there had been before, and no flames at all. Then, through the smoke, I saw him, the orang-utan. He was crouching down and scooping sand on to 67.

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. he'd shrunk inside it. What little hair he had on his head and his chin was long and wispy and white. I could see at once that he was very agitated, his chin trembling, his heavily hooded eyes accusing and angry. 'Dameda! Dameda!' he screeched at me. This whole body was shaking with fury. I backed away as he scuttled up the beach towards me, gesticulating wildly with his stick, and harangumg me as he came. Ancient and skeletal he may have been, but he was moving fast, running almost. 'Dameda! Dameda!' I had no idea what he was saying. It sounded Chinese or Japanese, maybe. I was about to turn and run when Stella, who, strangely, had not barked at him at all, suddenly left my side and went bounding off towards him. Her hackles were not up. She was not growling. To my astonishment she greeted him like a long lost friend. He was no more than a few feet away from me when he stopped. We stood looking at each other in silence for a few moments. He was leaning on his stick, trying to catch his breath. 'Americajin? Americajin? American? Eikokujin? British?' 'Yes,' I said, relieved to have understood 70 something at last. 'English, I'm English.' It seemed a struggle for him to get the words out. 'No good. Fire, no good. You understand? No fire.' He seemed ress angry now. 'But my mother, my father, they might see it, see the smoke.' It was plain he didn't understand me. So I pointed out to Sea, by way of explanation. 'Out there. They're out there. They'll see the fire. They'll come and fetch me.' Instantly he became aggressive again. 'Dameda! ' he shrieked, waving his stick at me. 'No fire!' I thought for a moment he was going to attack me, but he did not. Instead he began to rake through the sand at my feet with his stick. He was drawing the outline of something, jäbbering incomprehensibly all the time. It looked like some kind ofa fruit at first, a nut perhaps, a peanut. Now I understood. It was a map of the island. When it was done he fell on his knees beside it, and piled up mounds of sand, one at each end — the two hills. Then, very deliberately, he etched out a straight line, top to bottom, cutting the smaller end of the island off from the larger one. 'You, boy. You here,' he said, pointing back 71.

. towards my cave at the end of the beach. 'You.' And he stabbed his finger in the mound of sand that was my hill. Then across the whole of the sand map he began to write something. The lettering was not letters at all, but symbols — all kinds of ticks and pyramids and crosses and horizontal lines and and he wrote it all slashes and squiggles — backwards, in columns, from right to left. He sat back on his haunches and tapped his chest. 'Kensuke. I, Kensuke. My island.' And he brought his hand down sharply like a chopper, separating the island in two. 'I, Kensuke. Here. You, boy. Here.' I was already in no doubt as to what he meant. Suddenly he was on his feet again waving me away with his stick. 'Go, boy. No fire. Dameda. No fire. You understand?' I did not argue, but walked away at once. When, after a while, I dared to look back, he was kneeling down beside what was left of my fire, and scooping still more sand on to it. Stella had stayed with him. I whistled for her. She came, but not at once. I could see she was reluctant to leave him. She was behaving very oddly. Stella Artois had never taken kindly to strangers, never. 72 I felt disappointed in her, a bit betrayea even. When I next looked back, the fire was not smoking at all. It had been completely smothered, and the old man Was nowhere to be seen. For the rest of that day I stayed kin my cave. For some reason I felt safe there. I suppose I had already begun to think of it as home. I had no other. I felt as an orphan must feel, abandoned and alone in the world. I was frightened, I was angry, I was completely bewildered. I sat there trying to gather my thoughts. So far as I could tell — though I couldn't be sure of it — there were only the two of us on this island, the old man and me. In which case, it stood to reason that only he could have left me the fish and the bananas and the water. Surely that had been an act of kindness, a sign of friendship, of welcome? And yet, now, this same man had banished me to one end of the island as if I was a leper, and had made it quite clear that he never wanted us to meet ever again. And all because I had lit a fire? None of it made any sense at all, unless he was out of his head and completely mad. I took a long hard look at my situation. I was 73.

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. carrying, I kept well out of his sight. Only eyes from the sea could possibly have known what I was doing, and there were no eyes out there to see me. It took several days of hard labour to build my secret beacon. I had almost finished when someone did indeed discover what I was up to, but it wasn't the old man. I was heaving a massive branch on to the pile when I felt a sudden shadow come over me. An orang-utan Was looking down at me from the rock above — I could not be sure it was the same one as before. He was on all fours, his great shoulders hunched, his head lowered, eyeing me slightly sideways. I dared not move. It was a stand-off, just as it had been before down on the beach. He sat back and looked at me with mild interest for a while. Then he looked away, scratched his face nonchalantly and sloped off, stopping once to glance back at me over his shoulder before moving on into the shadow of the trees and away. It occurred to me as I watched him go that maybe he had been sent to spy on me, that he might go back and tell the old man what he had seen me doing. It 88 was a ridiculous thought, I know, but I do remember thinking it. A storm broke over the island that night, such a fearsome storm, •such a thunderous crashing of lightning overhead, such a din of rain and wind that sleep was quite impossible. Great waves roared in from the ocean, pounding the beach, and shaking the ground beneath me. I spread out my sleeping mat at the very back of the cave. Stella lay down beside me and huddled close. How I welcomed that. It was fully four days before the storm blew itself out, but even during the worst of it, I would find my fish and fruit breakfast waiting for me every morning under my tin, which he had now wedged tight in under the same shelf of rock. Stella and I kept to the shelter of our cave. All we could do was watch as the rain came lashing down outside. I looked on awestruck at the power of the vast waves rolling in from the open sea, curling, tumbling, and exploding as they broke on to the beach, as if they were trying to batter the island into pieces and then suck us all out to sea. I thought often of my mother and father and the Peggy Sue, and wondered where 89.

. they were. I just hoped the typhoon — for that was what I was witnessing — had passed them by. Then, one morning, as suddenly as the storm had begun, it stopped. The sun blazed down from a clear blue sky, and the forest symphony started up where it had left off. I ventured out. The whole island steamed and dripped. I went at once up Watch Hill to see if I could see a ship, perhaps blown off course, or maybe sheltering in the lee of the island. There was nothing there. That was a disappointment, but at least I found my beacon had not collapsed. It was sodden, of course, but still intact. Everything was sodden. There could be no fire now until it had dried out. The air was hot and heavy all that day. It was difficult to move at all, difficult to breathe. Stella could only lie and pant. The only place to cool off was the sea, so I spent most of that day lolling lazily in the water, throwing the occasional stick for Stella to keep her happy. I was lying in the sea, just floating there and day- dreaming, when I heard the old man's voice. He was hurrying down the beach, yelling at us as he came and waving his stick wildly in the air. 90 'Yamero! Abunai! Dangerous. Understand? NO swim.' He did not seem to be angry with me, as he had been before, but he was clearly upset about something. I looked around me. The sea was still heaving in but gently now, breathing out the last of the storm, the waves falling limp and exhausted on to the beach. I could see no particular danger. 'Why not?' I called back. 'What's the matter?' He had dropped his stick on the beach and was wading out through the surf towards me. 'No swim. Dameda! Abunai! No swim.' Then he had me by the arm and was leading me forcibly out of the sea. His grip was vice-like. There was little point in struggling. Only when we were back on the beach did' he at last release me. He stood there breathless for a few moments. 'Dangerous. Very bad. Abunai!' He was pointing out to sea. 'No swim. Very bad. No swim. You understand?' He looked me hard in the eye, leaving me in no doubt that this was not meant as advice, this was a command that I should obey. Then he turned and walked off into the forest, retrieving his stick as he went. Stella ran after him, but I called her back. 91.