Kensuke's Kingdom Read online

  They’re both asleep down below. Dad’s really wiped out. I’m at the wheel in the cockpit. I’ve got Eddie’s soccer ball with me. It’s been lucky for us so far. And now we really need it. We need Mom to get better, or we’re in real trouble. I don’t know if we could stand another storm.

  Thank God it’s calm. It’ll help Mom sleep. You can’t sleep when you’re being slammed about all 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 said, rolling the ball from hand to hand. “Come and get the ball.” I felt the boat turn a little in the wind, 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 the deck watching it bob away into the darkness. I was furious with myself for being so stupid.

  I was still cursing myself when I thought I heard the sound of singing. 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. I knew then I had just lost a great deal more than a soccer ball.

  I was angry with Stella. The whole thing had been her fault. She was still barking. I couldn’t hear the singing anymore. 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 life jacket on, you shouldn’t be doing this. Then the boat veered violently and I was thrown sideways. With my arms full I had no time to grab the guardrail. We were in the cold of the sea before I could even open my mouth to scream.

  The terrors came fast, one upon another. The lights of the Peggy Sue went away into the dark of the night, leaving me alone in the ocean, alone with the certainty that they were already too far away, that 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 impenetrable darkness about me for something, anything to swim toward. There was nothing.

  Then a sudden glimpse of white in the sea. The breaking of a 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 toward 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 realize my mistake. Stella’s head was mostly black. This was white. It was my ball. 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, 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 soccer ball, 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 ball. I had a chance.

  I kept telling myself that over and over again. But the world stayed stubbornly black around 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 the sound of my own voice. It made me feel less alone in the sea. And always I looked for the gray glint of dawn, but it would not come and it would not come.

  Eventually I fell silent and my legs just would not kick anymore. I clung to my ball, 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 anymore. I floated away into sleep, into my dreams. And in my dream I saw a boat gliding toward 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 upward and out of the water. I lay there on the deck, gasping for air like a beached fish.

  Someone was bending over me, shaking me, talking to me. I could not understand a word that 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 down 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 around 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. I called until the tears came and I could call no more, until I knew there was no point. I stood there for some time trying to work out how I had got here, how it was that I’d survived. I had such confused memories, of being picked up, or being onboard the Peggy Sue. But I knew now I couldn’t have been. I must have dreamed it, dreamed the whole thing. I must have clung to my soccer ball and kept myself afloat until I was washed up. I thought of my ball then, but it was nowhere to be seen.

  Stella, of course, was unconcerned about all the whys and wherefores. She kept bringing me sticks to throw, and would go galloping after them into the sea without a care in the world.

  Then came the howling again from the trees, and the hackles went up on Stella’s neck. She charged up the beach barking and barking, until she was sure she had silenced the last of the echoes. It was a musical, plaintive howling this time, not at all menacing. I thought I recognized it. I had heard howling like it once before on a visit to the London Zoo. Gibbons, “funky gibbons,” my father had called them. I still don’t know why to this day. But I loved the sound of the word “funky.” Perhaps that was why I remembered what they were. “It’s only gibbons,” I told Stella, “just funky gibbons. They won’t hurt us.” But I couldn’t be at all sure I was right.

  From where I now stood I could see that the forest grew more sparsely up the side of a great hill some way inland, and it o
ccurred to me then that if I could reach the bare rocky outcrop at the summit, I would be able to see farther out to sea. Or perhaps there’d be some house or farm farther inland, or maybe a road, and I could find someone to help. But if I left the beach and they came back looking for me, what then? I decided I would have to take that chance.

  I set off at a run, Stella Artois at my heels, and soon found myself in the cooling shade of the forest. I discovered a narrow track going uphill, in the right direction, I thought. So I followed it, only slowing to a walk when the hill became too steep. The forest was alive with creatures. Birds cackled and screeched high above me, and always the 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 were being watched by a thousand inquisitive eyes. I think Stella did, too, for she had been strangely quiet ever since we had 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 tried it. I looked all round me now. Sea. Sea. 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 more. It was shaped a bit like an elongated peanut, but longer at one end than the other. There was a long swath 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 situation, I remember thinking how wonderful it was, a green jewel of an island framed in white, the sea all around it a silken shimmering blue. Strangely, perhaps comforted somehow by the extraordinary beauty of the place, I was not at all downhearted. 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 gibbons set up a renewed chorus of howling and hooting in the forest, and a flock of raucous birds clattered up out of the canopy of the trees below us and flew off across the island to settle in the trees on the hillside opposite.

  “We’ll be all right,” I told Stella. “Mom and Dad, they’ll come back for us. They’re bound to. They will. They will. Mom’ll get better and they’ll come back. She won’t leave us here. She’ll find us, you’ll see. All we’ve got to do is keep a lookout for them — and stay alive. Water, we’ll need water. But so do those monkeys, right? We’ve just got to find it, that’s all. And there must be food, too — fruit or nuts, something. Whatever it is that they eat, we’ll eat.”

  It helped to speak my thoughts out loud to Stella, helped to calm the panic that came over me now in waves. More than anything, it was Stella’s companionship that helped me through those first hours on the island.

  It seemed to make sense not to plunge at once into the forest looking for water — to be honest, I was too frightened, anyway — but rather to explore the shoreline first. I might come across a stream or river flowing out into the sea and, with a bit of luck, on the way I might find something I could eat as well.

  I set off in good spirits, leaping down the scree like a mountain goat. Where monkeys lived, I reasoned, we could live. I kept telling myself that. I soon discovered that the track down through the trees was bereft of all edible vegetation. I did see fruits of sorts, what looked to me like fruit, anyway. There were coconuts up there, too, but the trees were all impossible to climb. Some rose a hundred feet, some two hundred feet from the forest floor — I had never seen such giant trees.

  At least the intertwining canopy did provide welcome relief from the heat of the day. All the same, I was becoming desperately thirsty now, and so was Stella. She padded alongside me all the way, her tongue hanging. She kept giving me baleful looks whenever our eyes met. There was no comfort I could give her.

  We found our beach once again and set off around the island, keeping wherever possible to the edge of the forest, to the shade. Still, we found no stream. Again, I saw plenty of fruit, but always too high, and the trees were always too smooth, too sheer to climb. I found plenty of coconuts on the ground, but always cracked open and empty inside.

  When the beach petered out, we had to strike off into the forest itself. Here, too, I found a narrow track to follow. The forest became impenetrable at this point, dark and menacing. There was no howling anymore, but something infinitely more sinister: the shiver of leaves, the cracking of twigs, sudden surreptitious rustlings, and they were near me, all around me. I knew, I was quite sure now, that eyes were watching us. We were being followed.

  I hurried on, swallowing my fear as best I could. I thought of the gibbons I had seen back in the zoo and tried to persuade myself how harmless they had looked. They’d leave us alone, they’d never attack us. They weren’t man-eaters. But as the rustlings came ever closer, ever more threatening, I found it harder and harder to convince myself. I began to run, and I kept running until the track brought us out onto rocks, into the blessed light of day, and there was the sea again.

  This end of the island appeared to be littered with massive boulders that lay like tumbled cliffs all along the coast. We leaped from one to the other, and all the while I kept a keen eye out for the trickle of a stream coming down through the rocks from the forest above, but I found none.

  I was exhausted by now. I sat down to rest, my mouth dry, my head throbbing. I was racked with desperate thoughts. I would die of thirst. I would be torn limb from limb by the monkeys.

  Stella’s eyes looked up into mine. “There’s got to be water,” I told her. “There’s got to be.” So, said her eyes, what are you doing sitting here feeling sorry for yourself?

  I forced myself to my feet and went on. The sea-water in the rock pools was so cool, so tempting. I tasted it, but it was salty and brackish. I spat it out at once. You went crazy if you drank it. I knew that much.

  The sun was already low in the sky by the time we reached the beach on the other side of the island — we were only about halfway around, by 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 farther, 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 ways to sleep on the 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 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 cack
led and croaked, and all night long the mosquitoes were at me, too. They whined in my ears and drove me crazy. I held my hands over my ears to shut out the sound of them. I curled myself around 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 hot dogs 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.

  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 heard her 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 farther to investigate. Another bowl of water and, beside it, palm leaves laid out on the rock and half covered by an upside-down 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 the tin. Fish! Thin strips of translucent white fish, dozens of them, laid out neatly in rows on the palm leaves, and five, six, seven small red bananas. Red bananas!

  I ate the fish first, savoring each precious strip. But even as 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.