by Bear Grylls
James grinned. ‘You should have read that magazine article about Beck more closely, Mum. He said that the human body is seventy-five per cent water. Even if you lose just five per cent of that, then you start to deteriorate, big time.’
Now Beck came to think of it, he remembered giving that interview. The reporter had loved hearing the gruesome descriptions. Heart rate and body temperature shoot up, muscles cramp, fatigue knocks you out and your body shuts down.
Back on the ship, Beck doubted James would ever have spoken to his mother like that. That was before he had started to feel part of the team. Beck liked the change. He was pretty sure Abby didn’t. She gave her son a sideways look.
‘There might already be some water on the island,’ she pointed out.
‘There might,’ Beck agreed. ‘But there might not, and if there isn’t, then we need to start thinking smart.’
He looked over at their small pile of possessions. It wasn’t much. The first-aid box, the biscuits, the bag of water, the boat’s canvas cover, and the tin box with the flares in it. Beck’s eyes settled back on the first-aid box – just what he needed. He tipped the contents into a neat pile.
‘Now I need some fabric – something good and absorbent . . .’
He ran his eyes over each of them in turn, and looked down at himself. He wasn’t going to ask Abby to undress, so that left him, James and Farrell. They all wore cotton T-shirts, but the captain’s was twice the size of the ones the two boys wore. Beck could also see that he still had his vest on underneath, which would at least give him some protection from the sun.
‘Captain, I, uh, need to borrow your T-shirt . . .’
Farrell’s eyebrows shot up, but he peeled it off and handed it over without comment. Beck hurried down to the water’s edge with the empty first-aid box and filled it to the brim. Coming back to the others, he laid it on the ground and stretched the captain’s T-shirt over the top. He tied the shirt in place with a strip of bandage around the edge of the box, and laid it on a flat piece of sand where the sun would fall right onto it.
‘I’m sure we’ll get some water at the end of this,’ Abby said, ‘but I’ve no idea how.’
‘He’s making a salt-water still, Mum,’ James said impatiently. All eyes turned to him and he flushed. ‘We can’t drink salt water,’ he explained. ‘It just dehydrates us even more. This way, the sun will evaporate the salt water in the box. It turns to steam but the salt stays in the box. The steam soaks into the shirt, and it’s fresh, so we can drink it, uh, somehow . . .’ He trailed off.
Beck was impressed: James had obviously done a lot of reading up on survival skills. He finished for him. ‘We wring the shirt out into here to collect the water.’
He opened the tin box. It still had the two flares in it: thin metal tubes about twenty centimetres long, with a pull-tab at one end to fire them. He tucked one into his pocket and tried to stick the other one in too, but there wasn’t room. He passed the second flare to the nearest person, who was Abby.
‘Could you hold onto that, please? Thanks. Captain, it’s your shirt – could you be in charge of wringing it out?’
Farrell smiled for the first time since the ship had sunk, and saluted. ‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘Next . . .’ Beck looked from Abby, to James, and back. There were two more jobs he could think of that needed doing. He could do one of them and he knew who he would prefer to have with him.
‘Miss Blake, please could you be in charge of marking out a nice big “SOS” on the sand?’
‘And what do I do for the other twenty-three hours and fifty-five minutes of my day?’
Beck smothered a smile. ‘It will take you more than five minutes to do it properly. From a plane, the letters will look tiny. They need to be five, six metres high at least. Mark them in the sand, but also use sticks, rocks . . . anything you can find. And keep them above the high-water mark so that the tide doesn’t just wash them away when it comes in.’
‘Nice and big. Sticks and rocks. Got it.’
‘And keep an eye on Steven,’ Beck added. ‘Keep on giving him water from the bag. Meanwhile, James and I will explore the island.’
CHAPTER 25
‘I can’t believe you were just telling my mum what to do.’ James looked at Beck with respect as they clambered over a fallen tree trunk. The centre of the island was a dense cluster of trees and bushes. They were out of sight of the sea, though they could still hear the sound of waves breaking.
‘If we’re all going to survive,’ Beck said with a shrug, ‘we have to do it together. Everyone has to do something. We can’t carry passengers.’
And he couldn’t deny that, deep down, he had enjoyed giving instructions to Abby Blake. He had guessed that being told what to do by anyone was a rare experience for her, and James had just confirmed it.
‘Yeah, but . . . Never mind.’ James stopped and his gaze ran up a palm tree in front of them. ‘Hey, look – coconuts!’
Beck followed where he was staring. The palm tree rose up a good ten metres or so and, sure enough, there was a cluster of them at the top, where the leaves emerged. They were the size of footballs and green, each one wrapped in a layer of leaf.
‘That’s cool.’ Beck was very pleased to see them. They couldn’t live off coconuts for ever, but the flesh inside the shell was nutritious and the coconut milk was refreshing and hydrating. ‘We’ll gather some up later. For the time being we’re just looking for water.’
‘Do you think there’s any animal life here? Apart from us?’
Beck stopped and rested his hands on his hips. His gaze travelled slowly over the tightly packed bushes. ‘To be honest, I doubt there’s anything larger than an insect around here.’
The island was uninhabited. He was certain of that. The trees and bushes were too dense. There were no natural pathways because no one, human or animal, had pushed a way through them before.
But there would be insects. They got everywhere.
‘Yeah? I had French-fried caterpillars in Mexico once. They were pretty good,’ James stated.
‘Cool! Well, maybe we can find some caterpillars to French-fry,’ Beck said with a smile. James didn’t get squirmy over eating insects: that was another good sign. Other people would, and Beck was prepared to bet that James’s mother was one of them.
It would still be nicer to eat fish, or maybe crabs. He could get them from the shoreline. They would have to cook them, because though fish is OK to eat raw, raw crab can be toxic.
But water was the main thing at the moment. He knew they would struggle to collect enough evaporated sea water to live off. If they could find a spring – even a pool that wasn’t stagnant – that would be perfect.
James kicked his heel at the ground. The earth was a dirty mixture of sand and pebbles.
‘There has to be water down here or the trees wouldn’t be growing. The roots must be reaching down to water underground.’
‘True, but it might be a long way down. If we dig a well, then water will soak into it – eventually – but we might not get enough back to make it worthwhile.’
James’s face fell, but he recovered in a moment. Beck was pleased to see him making the decision to be cheerful. You needed a good mental attitude to keep one step ahead of what life threw at you. James had probably read that in the magazine too.
‘So, what were you doing in Mexico?’ Beck asked, making conversation as they pushed their way further through the undergrowth.
James shrugged. ‘Oh, you know . . .’ Beck didn’t. ‘Kind of . . . work experience. For the family firm. In fact that’s pretty much all I do when I’m not at school. Not a lot of time for anything else.’
Beck thought of his friend Peter again. He was still sure that Peter would get on well with this boy. They would be able to talk to each other for hours. But Peter also played cricket, loved swimming, and was also pretty musical . . . The thought of spending your entire teens just doing work experience was a bit depressing.
‘Yeah, well . . .’ James shrugged. ‘Granddad’s kind of determined. So, anyway, how about you? What do you do with your time?’
It was a pretty obvious way of changing the subject, but Beck thought it was a probably a fair question.
‘Me? I . . . uh . . . I . . . uh . . .’
‘Apart from have adventures, that is,’ James said. He added a grin to show it was a friendly question, not a dig.
‘Hey, I don’t get into them deliberately!’ Beck protested. And then he stopped. Actually, he reckoned, that wasn’t quite true. Yes, quite a few of his adventures had been accidents – but he had only been able to survive because when he was younger he had gone out of his way to learn the skills of indigenous people around the world. It hadn’t been an accident that he had learned so much. All those things had happened to him because he had sought them out.
‘I guess . . . yeah, I guess it’s work experience too!’ Beck had never really thought about it like that before. He had certainly never put it into words. But suddenly, at that moment, he knew what he wanted to do with his life. ‘I want to put it all into practice. In a few years I want to work for Green Force. Like my mum and dad did.’
‘Your mum and dad . . .’ James pulled a face, and for a while they trudged along in silence.
Beck was used to this: people hear about your parents being dead and suddenly don’t know what to say.
‘It’s OK,’ he said gently. ‘I mean, it’s not OK – it sucks as big as anything can suck – but I’m OK with it. Even though I really miss them. Especially at family times – you know, like Christmas.’
It was always a struggle, and Beck knew it affected Al too, though he never admitted it. Al had lost a brother and a dear friend when Beck’s parents died. No matter how much fun they tried to have with all the celebrations and parties, sooner or later their thoughts would always return to the two empty spaces in their hearts.
James seemed quite happy that the subject had changed.
‘Yeah, Christmas! We’ll be staying in Miami—’ Then, unexpectedly, he laughed. ‘Has it occurred to you that we’re both going into the family firm?’
It wasn’t long before Beck was pretty sure that the waves he heard ahead of him were closer than the ones behind. They were already more than halfway across the island.
Several times, Beck dropped to his knees to study the roots of a tree or bush. They all disappeared into the sandy mixture that passed for earth in this place, but there was never any that looked darker than the rest. That meant that there was no water close to the surface.
There was plenty of fallen wood. They stopped at a tree that had fallen across their way, and Beck used a stick to pry back chunks of bark. He wasn’t going to use his bare hands in a tropical climate, where things with sharp, poisonous teeth or stings might lurk under any bit of wood, and even a scratch could quickly go septic. He wished he had a decent knife – or, even better, a machete.
Several pale, wriggling insect grubs tumbled out and writhed away from the light. He let one drop into his hand and held it up for inspection.
It wasn’t a type he recognized, but it felt plump between his fingers. A few of these in anyone’s stomach would stop them going hungry. He held it out to James.
‘What do you think?’
‘Um . . .’ James wrinkled his brow, obviously trying to remember the survival tips he had read. ‘They’re not furry, so that’s good.’
‘Right,’ Beck agreed. Fur on an insect was always bad news. It was probably poisonous, and even if it wasn’t, then it was designed to get under the skin of any predators and itch like mad, maybe leading to infection. So you didn’t want that in your mouth and going down your throat.
‘And there’s no black dots.’
James meant black patches that showed through the skin – another sign that the grub was very bad for eating.
‘So . . .’ He suddenly looked a lot less enthusiastic as he realized what he was saying. This wasn’t French-fried. It wasn’t served up with lots of spices. It was a raw, live insect. ‘It’s probably OK . . .’
‘Almost certainly,’ Beck agreed, popping it into his mouth. He crunched it between his teeth and felt the insides spurt onto his tongue. The little creature’s insides had the consistency of snot, and it had spent all its life on a diet of wood, so that was what it tasted like. Wood-flavoured snot. It wasn’t the greatest taste in the world, but it wasn’t the worst.
Beck held another one out for James. ‘Give it a go? Just think of it as French-fried caterpillars, without the French-frying.’
James’s mouth twisted as he studied the thing between Beck’s fingers. All the things he had read about were turning into actual reality. It was quite a leap to make, but he took the grub, popped it into his mouth and swallowed, all at once.
‘It wriggles all the way down,’ he gasped.
‘You’re meant to bite on it first.’
James still looked as if he was about to bring it back up again, but the urge soon passed. He gave an uncertain smile, as if he was amazed at himself.
‘I think it’s gone . . . OK, that wasn’t too bad . . .’
He was looking at the ground. Suddenly he let out a whoop and slipped his hand under a shrub.
‘French-fried caterpillar coming up!’ he proclaimed, and proudly brandished one of the largest centipedes Beck had ever seen. It was a good thirty centimetres long and as thick as a banana. The segments of its body were each at least one or two centimetres across. They glistened a silvery blue, like polished steel. The creature looked like it had been built in a factory rather than hatched. It writhed in James’s grasp, stubby legs waving helplessly.
Beck’s eyes went wide. ‘Put it down, quick!’ he shouted – but too late. The giant centipede brought its head round and struck out at James’s hand.
CHAPTER 26
James screamed and dropped the creature. He stared in horror at the red mark blossoming on his skin.
‘Ow! Owowowowow! It hurts!’
‘Let’s see,’ Beck said.
James held out his hand. The creature had bitten him on the tip of his middle right finger. It was the finger on which he wore the silver ring Beck had noticed when they first met.
‘What was it?’ James whimpered.
Beck shot the giant centipede a look. It was slinking away into the undergrowth. He wondered if it was pleased with itself for teaching the giant mammal a lesson.
‘Scolopendra, I think.’
‘Poisonous?’
‘Yup.’ James looked like he was about to faint. ‘But almost never fatal,’ Beck added hastily.
James snatched his hand away. ‘What do you mean, almost?’ he yelped.
Beck grabbed the hand back and peered closely at the bite. It was just a red mark, a dot with an inflamed edge. ‘Almost never, to humans. Not unless you’ve got a weak heart.’
He screwed up his face, trying to remember. He and Al had been in a camp in Belize, and there had been a talk on local wildlife. Scolopendra had been one of the things the guy mentioned. Their venom was cardiotoxic, which meant that it attacked the heart. But there wasn’t enough of it to kill anything bigger than a rodent. Humans would just suffer pain. Quite a lot of it.
‘Symptoms are local pain . . .’
‘Got that.’
‘Swelling . . .’
James studied his finger dubiously.
‘There might be a bit of fever – though probably not in your case, it was only a small bite . . .’
‘Didn’t feel small.’
Beck grinned. ‘And a strange urge to run around screaming, “Aargh, aargh, giant centipede, aargh!”’
James smiled, very weakly. ‘I think I’ve got all of those.’
‘You want to see one hunting down a rat,’ Beck said. The guy in Belize had showed a film of one doing just that. It had chased, killed, and then eaten the poor animal. It sent shivers down your spine. It just wasn’t the kind of thing you thought a centipede should be able to do.
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br /> ‘You know, I really don’t—’
‘Look, have you got a hanky on you?’
‘Uh, yeah . . .’
‘OK, we’ll use that as a temporary bandage. Then we’ll go back to the camp and wash the bite, put a bandage on – that’s about all we can do for now. You’ll be OK. But take that ring off. Your finger will probably swell up and that could be a lot more uncomfortable.’
James looked reluctant for a moment. Beck remembered that the ring was a family heirloom – maybe James was worried about losing it. But he was obviously more worried about losing a finger, because he tugged it off and passed it to Beck. Beck held it lightly in his fingers while James rummaged single-handed in his pockets.
The outside of the ring was smooth, but there were letters carved around the inside. Beck held it up and squinted at the tiny writing.
It was a series of single words.
MASTERY. OBEDIENCE. SUCCESS. LOGIC. UNDERSTANDING.
‘Hey!’ James had produced a hanky, but now he saw what Beck was doing and snatched the ring back. ‘Mind your own business!’
‘Gee, sorry.’ Beck blinked in surprise at the sudden change in mood. He realized he had been sticking his nose in – it wasn’t any of his business what those words were. Supposing it was some private message – like from a loved one. But he also thought that James was over-reacting a little.
James must have thought so too because he gave a nervous little laugh. ‘Sorry. It’s just . . .’ He trailed off.
‘Family heirloom, right?’ Beck bent his head to tie the handkerchief around James’s finger.
‘Yeah.’ James forced another weak smile, and held the ring up again. ‘It’s kind of the family motto. My grandfather founded the family business and he says these are the qualities he expects us all to have. If everyone in the business has all these, then there’s nothing we can’t do . . . He says.’
Beck had finished tying the makeshift bandage. ‘You don’t sound convinced.’
James pulled a face. ‘Like I said before, Granddad expects me to go into the business too, but . . .’ He shrugged and looked around. ‘There’s more to life than just making money. I never really thought about it until . . . you know. We almost died on that ship!’
