The Secret of the Lonely Isles (12 page)

‘Well, it's as I thought; there's a dead person in there.'

Maddy gasped and put her hand to her mouth, and Zac and Tyler looked scared. Jem waited.

‘Perhaps not so much a person now as a skeleton, mostly. I'm no expert but I'd say he died an awfully
long time ago. There's a bed in there, and it looked like he just died in his sleep, comfortable as you please. He was old – his hair's completely white.' She closed the door firmly behind her. ‘We'll just leave him be, eh?'

They went back inside the house. The air was a little less musty since they had opened the door and windows. Ella looked around at the room. ‘If this was where the last survivor lived, then it's where we'll find any information, if there's any to find. I'm thinking of a journal, or a box of papers perhaps? Have a look around, but do be careful not to damage anything, won't you?'

They wandered around the room, searching everywhere. Finally, Maddy gave a shout.

‘I think I've found something! Look!' and she held up a pressed metal box, about the size of a telephone directory. It was heavy. Ella placed it on the table and carefully prised open the lid. Inside was a cloth-bound book.

‘Bingo!' she said softly. ‘Brush this dust off the table, and pull up a chair. We've got some reading to do.'

For the next two hours, Ella read out passages from the journal of the Quaker settlers. It listed the names of the twenty would-be colonists, and their ages, and the names of the crew. And at the end, there it was: Jack Tremayne, native of Cornwall, age fifteen years. Jem felt a shiver run up and down his spine when he saw the name.

The Quakers, the journal told them in faint spidery writing, had elected to leave England because war was coming, and they were against all forms of violence. They believed there might be conscription of able-bodied men into the armed services, and so this group had decided to leave and begin a colony somewhere out of the way of the turbulent world, and set up a new home for others to follow. They were being financed by Montgomery Fox, the man to whom Robert Perceval had addressed his letter.

They managed to get all the way to the Lonely Isles, only to come to grief at the end of their journey. A sudden squall had driven them onto the rocks near the western entrance to the Hole in the Wall, in spite of the old map they had obtained. The ship held together long enough for them to launch its little cutter and ferry all the passengers and supplies, and as much as they could salvage of the ship itself, in several trips. They found their way into the hidden cove, and chose a spot to live while they waited to be rescued. Every day someone was on watch on the cliff top, looking out to sea for a passing ship, but no ship ever came.

‘Oh, listen to this next bit – this is what we need to know!' said Ella.

She looked up at them. ‘We certainly needed to know that to get out of here safely!'

After a year, the crew had mutinied. There was a terrible fight in which Captain Nancarrow was killed. The mutineers stole the cutter and the captain's map and, with two of the young Quaker men, left the island to try and get to the mainland. They were never heard from again.

The rest of the colonists moved further into the island, where the soil was better, and built houses and gardens. Ella leafed through the journal, reading aloud bits about the building, the paving of the square and the paths, the great day of inaugurating the Meeting House. Several babies were born, several people died. The carefully managed food stores they had rescued from the
Gryphon
had disappeared completely by 1918, but the gardens were producing some food, and the coconut plantation thrived. The goats that had been brought from the ship had lived for a few years, but as the billy goat had drowned in the shipwreck, there were no kids being born, and eventually the milking goats dried up, and one by one they were eaten before they became too old. The chickens survived for a lot longer. They foraged in the bush for food, and provided eggs and meat for several more years, but gradually they went wild and were seldom seen.

By 1930 many of the colonists had died, leaving just eight people existing on a diet of fish, coconuts, a few poor vegetables and the occasional seabirds' eggs which Jack collected on the cliff tops. One entry told a sad story:

The entries became sparser, listing over the years the eventual deaths of Ann and Albert Hathaway and Desmond Cluny. The vegetable gardens were all but gone, being plagued by insect attacks. Ella stopped reading aloud at this point, and stared hard at the book, her eyes filling with tears.

‘Oh – it's about Jack …' and she continued to read.

The journal went on for a few more pages, the entries becoming less and less legible, and then:

Ella turned to the back, and there was a yellowed envelope tucked in between the cover and the last page. She glanced up at the others, who all seemed to be holding their breaths.

‘Well, as we're Jack's nearest relatives, I think that gives us the right to open this letter.' She lifted the flap, and extracted several sheets of closely written paper. It was dated several years after the shipwreck, and detailed the mutiny of the crew, the murder of Captain Nancarrow, and the difficulties they were facing. But it went on:

Ella fell silent, and sat staring at the letter in her hand. ‘My father was forty-eight when I was born. He was always an old man to me. It's strange hearing his twin brother's voice as a young man.'

She picked up the journal, and turned to where
she had left off. The entries became harder to read as they went on, until she reached the last entry in the book. It was barely readable, but the thoughts were clear:

They were all silent for a while, imagining the loneliness of that last person alive on the island, the person whose remains lay in the little shed out the back.

‘Whoa,' breathed Maddy finally. ‘That's pretty heavy, hey?'

Ella nodded. ‘It's very sad. He probably had a family back in England who never knew what had happened to him. As did all of them.' She stared at the journal for another few moments, and stood up. ‘Well, at least we know, and maybe that'll count for something.'

‘What happens now, with all this stuff?' asked Maddy, as she took another couple of photos of the inside of the hut. ‘Don't we have to tell someone about it?'

‘As soon as we get back, I'll see the museum and heritage people and they'll come out and inspect it for themselves. They'll declare the island a heritage site, and begin a study of everything here, and write up its history and so on.' She placed the journal carefully back in the metal box. ‘We'll take this with us,' she said, stowing it inside her backpack. ‘It's all the proof they'll need.'

‘They'll have to be quick,' she added, ‘because as soon as word gets out, souvenir hunters will swarm all over the place, especially if they think there's a valuable statue hidden somewhere.'

Jem looked up. He'd been only half-listening to Ella, his mind on the words in the journal about Jack.

‘Maybe we should go and look for it now. Jack's told us where it is, hasn't he?'

It was hard work to get to the top of the cliff. The knowledge that Jack had died up here searching for birds' eggs didn't make them feel any safer, so they took their time, picking their way carefully around the rocky crevices and fallen boulders. The sun was high in the sky, making them perspire, but eventually they clambered onto the top of the grey outcrop they had first seen from the opposite side of the island the day before.

‘Man, it seems like weeks since we were over there!'
puffed Zac. ‘Feels like we've gone back in time or somethin'.'

‘I know what you mean,' said Tyler. ‘We've been thinkin' and talkin' about all these dead people, and walkin' around a dead village, and inside dead people's houses … ugh!' He shivered.

‘Well, don't pick archaeology for a career, Ty, will you?' said Maddy with a snort. ‘I think it's fascinating. And we're related to one of them! That makes it
totally
different.'

‘So where to, Jem?' said Ella quietly, while the others were talking.

Jem looked at her, a little startled. Why did Ella think
he'd
have any idea where to start searching? He glanced around. The outcrop was completely bare. He couldn't see a tree anywhere let alone one that looked remotely like the tree Jack had described. It had probably died and fallen down long ago. He walked carefully along the top of the rocks, and gazed out to sea. The horizon stretched all around him without a break, an endless shimmering divide between water and sky. To the southwest lay the rest of the Lonely Isles, small green patches on the dark blue. Due south was Pollux, Castor's twin. From this angle the strait was invisible, and it looked like one complete island. East and north there was nothing but the empty sea. As
he turned back and gazed westwards, in the direction that Jack had spent his time staring out to sea, Jem felt sad and tired.

He wondered about the anger that had driven Jack to leave his family, to leave his own twin brother, and run away to sea. He must have spent a lot of time wishing he hadn't done that, he thought. How many times did he sit here, thinking, I should've said this, or I shouldn't have said that … and now it was all too late.

Jem turned around, and looked along the rocks at his feet. Something caught his eye – something that didn't look natural. Moving closer and squatting down beside it, he could see the letters
J T
scratched into the surface of a block-shaped stone. Jack Tremayne. It was the right size and shape for sitting on and staring out to sea. Well, this is the right place then. So where's the black dog? He forced himself to slow down, and to look at the rocks as if he wasn't really looking at them, but past them at something else. He dragged his eyes slowly across the outcrop, and suddenly there it was. It was like looking at cloud shapes. If you stared directly at them, they might even disappear, but if you used your peripheral vision, their shape became clearer. A little to the right was a dog-shaped rock. He smiled, thinking of Jem and Jack with their dogs, suddenly seeing them as two brothers like himself and Tyler with their dogs,
mooching around the place, scaring up wallabies, or in Jeremiah's case rabbits, he supposed.

He climbed down below the rock a little way, and there it was, a cleft just big enough to reach into. He touched a wrapped object. His fingers closed around it and he carefully dragged it out. It was heavy for its size, wrapped in oilskin and tied with a thin rope.

‘Ella!' he called. ‘I've got it,' and he passed the package up to her.

‘Ty – give us a torch will ya?' he said. He'd felt something snag on the package as he pulled it out, and he wanted a closer look. Tyler handed down the torch, and Jem shone it into the rock cleft. There was something lying on one side. He reached in, and pulled out a small object wrapped in a piece of the same kind of oilskin. He climbed back up to the top of the cliff. The others gathered around Ella as she removed the rope from the parcel, and carefully opened the stiff canvas wrapping. A small figure gleamed dully in the sunlight.

They craned to see. Ella held it up. It was the gryphon, the fearsome mythical creature, part eagle, part lion. Its cruel beak was open in a savage snarl, and muscles stood out on its lion's legs.

She turned it over in her hands, weighing it. ‘It's very heavy for its size. It must really be made of solid gold, I think.'

‘Wow!' said Zac. ‘That's gotta be worth a lotta money!'

‘Yes, it probably is,' said Ella. ‘A pity that a man was killed because of it.'

‘Who owns it?' asked Tyler. ‘Finders keepers?'

‘I really don't know. Perhaps Montgomery Fox's descendants, seeing he bought it. Someone else will worry about that, anyway. I'm more concerned about what happens to the island. The sooner it's all declared a heritage site and protected from souvenir hunters the better. But then, it is a long way off the tourist trails. Someone would have to be awfully keen to get here if they wanted to take anything.'

Tyler looked across at Jem, who was staring at something in his lap.

‘Did you see anything with the torch?'

Jem nodded. ‘It's the knife Jack bought for Jeremiah.' He held up a small silver and ivory pocket knife. The silver was tarnished with age, but the elephants on the yellowed ivory handle were clearly visible.

By the time they climbed down the cliff and hiked back to the village square, the sun was low in the west. They made camp for the night in a clear spot beside the square, well away from the last house and its sad little shed. Tyler
cooked dinner – instant noodles and biscuits. ‘Well they don't weigh much do they!' Tyler had retorted when the others complained about his choice. Then they rolled out their beds around the fire, and lay quietly talking for a while, looking up at the clear star-studded sky.

‘Ella, would you have gone looking for the Lonely Isles if Jack wasn't your uncle?' asked Maddy.

Ella considered this for a few moments, and swirled the tea around in her pannikin. ‘Hmm, probably not,' she said. ‘A rumour about a lost treasure and a sunken ship wouldn't have interested me enough to go searching, I think.'

‘If Jack hadn't had a fight with his father, then you'd never have found all this,' said Tyler.

‘If Jack hadn't had a fight with his father, then his family wouldn't have spent their lives wondering what had happened to him,' said Maddy hotly. ‘All because of a stupid fight!'

‘Well Jack didn't think it was stupid, obviously,' said Tyler. ‘He didn't mean to get shipwrecked, Maddy.'

‘That's the whole point!' retorted Maddy. ‘He just rushed off in a temper, and didn't even think about what could happen, or about anyone else. Then it was too late to come back and say sorry.'

They talked on, quietly bickering and arguing. Jem rolled over. His own father came to his mind, and he
wondered what he was doing, down in Adelaide with the doctors. He realised with a start that he hadn't thought about his parents for several days. It was good being away from home, doing something else, something that took up all his attention and time, and where no one was yelling or criticising. He felt a bit guilty thinking like this. Steve would've loved seeing this place, and reading the journal about the colony. He would have had lots of ideas about why they built things where they did, and how long things would've lasted, and how they might have survived so long. He felt a knot forming in his stomach and shut his eyes tightly. At least, he reminded himself, at least he would be going home to
his
father, when they left the island. Fights or no fights, I won't run off, not like Jack did.

He shifted on his side to find a more comfortable spot, felt the elephant knife in his pocket and pulled it out. He had cleaned some of the tarnish off it earlier, and it gleamed a little in the starlight. It was warm and solid in his hand, and he closed his fingers around it tightly. ‘You keep it, Jem,' Ella had said. ‘Jack showed you where it was. I think he would want you to have it.'

That night Jem dreamt of Jack again, only this time he wasn't sitting on the cliff top gazing out to sea. Jem was
following him along a path paved with flat stones. They came to a neat little cemetery, the headstones lined up in tidy rows. Jack stopped beneath a tree, and stared down at the ground. There was a mound of fresh earth beneath the tree, with a large black rock at one end, and a border of white stones around the edge of the heaped up soil. Jack bent and scooped a handful of it. He turned towards Jem, a pleading look on his face.

Jem woke in a sweat. Ella was bending over him, stroking his hair gently. ‘Ssshh, Jem, it's all right, there now, there now …'

He realised he'd been moaning and calling out, but luckily the others were too deeply asleep after all the exertion of the day. Only Ella had woken up.

‘You were dreaming about Jack,' she said quietly. ‘He must be telling you something, Jem. Don't be afraid. Let him tell you. He's family. He'll do you no harm.'

Jem raised himself up on his elbows, and waited for his heart to stop trying to fight its way out of his chest. ‘Why do I get these dreams Ella? It's not the first time it's happened. I often get feelings like – like I know what's going to happen. I
hate
it!'

Ella nodded, and Jem could see her pale hair gleaming in the moonlight. ‘It's because you've got what my grandmother called “the Sight”. She had it, I have it, and it looks like you're the next one in the family. It
seems to skip a generation, generally. Often it's just a feeling about something, a bit vague, and not troubling, but other times you can't ignore it, can you?'

Jem looked at her. It was difficult to make out her face in the weak light, but her voice sounded a bit sad and resigned. ‘Other people think it must be a great thing, a gift, but it's different when you're the one who's got it. Life can be very confusing. I find the best thing is not to ignore it. Don't pretend it's not there, Jem. Listen to what you're feeling, or dreaming, and see where it fits.'

She smiled reassuringly at him, and said briskly, ‘But now you need some sleep. Think about what Jack's trying to tell you, and tell yourself you'll try and understand it in the morning. It will be all right. You see, I have a feeling about this too.' She patted him on the shoulder, and went back to her mattress.

Jem lay there for a while, doing as she said, thinking about the boy and the tree and the pile of earth. There was something else, he was sure of it. Somehow he didn't think that Jack would have bothered to try and show him where some old statue was hidden. It wasn't important to Jack Tremayne. No, it was something else. The next thing he knew, it was getting light, and he'd had a deep and dreamless sleep.

‘We need to find the cemetery,' Jem said, as they lingered over breakfast. The sun hadn't yet cleared the caldera rim, but the valley was bathed with a pearly light, giving the huts a look of life and habitation, as if people might step out their front doors at any moment, stretching and yawning and going about their chores.