The Secret of the Lonely Isles (13 page)

‘The cemetery?' said Tyler, half irritably. ‘Why? We found the statue, and we know what happened to everyone. Why do we need to find a dumb old cemetery?'

‘Yeah, shouldn't we go back to the boat now?' said Zac, spreading jam on the last of the crackers.

Jem stood up. ‘Well you guys can if you want, but I'm going to look for it.'

‘Wait!' said Maddy, tipping out her pannikin. ‘I'm coming with you. Besides, we should stick together. You can't go off by yourself. And,' she said, turning to Tyler and Zac, ‘neither should you.'

Ella had been listening to them, and opened her pack. She pulled out the metal box containing the journal, and said, ‘I think it's a good idea, Jem. Let's have a quick look in here and see if there are any indications about the direction it might be in, shall we?'

A little while later, armed with some clues from the journal, they headed off across the creek, past Robert Perceval's house. As they went, they noticed flat stones
here and there, the remains of the path Jem had followed Jack along in his dream. He led the way, searching in the tangled scrub for the path. Sure enough, it led to a gateway, two sagging posts either side leading into an area that was obviously once cleared, but now overgrown with bushes and trees that were younger than the surrounding forest. Within a few metres, Tyler tripped over something.

‘Hey, here's a gravestone!' he called, picking himself up out of the weeds.

Now they knew what to look for, they could pick out the others, lined up in several short rows, the names clearly carved into the rocks. Mary Cavendish, Augustus Jellicoe, Elizabeth and Isabel Penhaligon. Off to one side was Captain Henry Nancarrow.

But where was Jack? Jem looked around for the place Robert Perceval had described. ‘Beneath a pretty tree at the western end of the cemetery.' There was a stately tree at the far end, away by itself. It must have grown a lot since 1940. Jem headed straight for it, closely followed by Ella and the others. At the foot of the tree, in among the litter of fallen bark and leaves, was a rough rectangle of white stones, faintly visible beneath the undergrowth, with a large black stone at one end.

‘This is it,' breathed Jem, ‘we've found him.' He fell
to his knees and began pulling out the tangled growth. Maddy, Tyler and Zac helped, and within a short time, they had cleared the area of weeds and bushes.

Ella smiled at them. ‘Your great-grandfather Jem would have been proud of you. When I began studying history,' she said, ‘and asking him about Jack and the Quakers, he made me promise that if ever I found Jack, if I found the place where he'd died, that I'd mark his final resting place. He made this himself.' She opened her backpack, and pulled out a piece of wood carved with the words:

 

Jack Tremayne
born Penryn, Cornwall 1899
died 19..

Always loved, never forgotten
by his brother Jem

 

She took out a small chisel, and began to add the last two digits. ‘This'll do for now, but we'll put a proper headstone here later.'

While Ella dug away at the wood, Jem stood there, staring down at the grave and the disturbed earth where the weeds had been pulled out. Suddenly he understood what Jack had been trying to tell him. He knew what he had to do.

‘Have you got a plastic bag or a box or something with you?' he asked Ella. ‘Anyone?'

They searched their packs, and Tyler came up with a small glass jar he'd been intending to put bugs in. Jem unscrewed the lid, and bent down to the grave and filled the jar with the dry dark earth.

‘Here Ella, you have to take this back to Jem's home, back to where he's buried.
That
's what Jack wants.'

She smiled at Jem, her eyes full of tears, nodded, and carefully, tenderly, put the jar inside her pack. ‘Thank you, Jem,' she said softly.

The walk back to the little cove seemed to take half the time it had taken on the way out, and they arrived there about an hour before sunset. There was
Freya
, floating serenely two hundred metres out from the beach where they'd left her, waiting for them. But the dinghy was gone.

‘I tied it right to this log!' said Tyler. ‘Right here! And Ella checked my knot!'

They stood on the beach staring around but there was no sign of the blue inflatable.

‘It musta come undone somehow. Maybe the tide came in and moved it around and loosened it or something?' suggested Jem.

‘We can swim out to the yacht!' said Zac. ‘It's not that far, we can get there easy.'

Ella sighed and shook her head. ‘I can't swim that far, I'm afraid. It's much too far for me. Oh dear, what are we going to do?'

They were silent for a few moments. ‘Well,' said Maddy shrugging her backpack to the ground. ‘We can worry about it in the morning. We have to camp here for the night. The boys can swim out tomorrow and get anything else we need, or we can make some kind of a raft to get Ella back there, but right now we need to organise some food. Tyler, you and Zac light a fire.'

She and Jem went down to the spring with the empty water bottles, and Ella laid out the mattresses.

While Tyler and Zac prepared the fire and put the billy on to boil some water, Ella sat on her mattress and took the statue out of her backpack. She unwrapped it from the oilskins just as Maddy and Jem arrived back from the spring.

‘It's quite beautiful, isn't it?' she said, turning it around in the last of the sunlight. It glowed and shone while she told them what she knew about gryphons.

‘They're very ancient mythical beasts with, as you can see here, the head and forelegs of an eagle, and the
hindquarters of a lion. They were supposed to have the strength and bravery of both, and were said to guard great treasure. Perhaps that was why Montgomery Fox wanted this statue. He was a very wealthy man. Or maybe it was because he had a ship called
Gryphon
, and this was just an old man's whim. We'll probably never know.'

She handed it to Jem. ‘Here, you can all have a good look at it. Once it gets to the museum it's unlikely that anyone will be allowed to touch it.'

As it was passed around the group, Jem felt uncomfortable. The back of his neck was prickling, and he looked around at the water and the cliffs. The sun was going down behind the sandhill, and the light in the cove was dimming. Just as he looked away from the cliffs he stopped and jerked his head back. There had been some kind of a flash, just momentary, but he was sure he'd seen it. He scanned the rocks again closely but there was nothing else. Must have been some of that basalt glinting in the sun, he decided. Last ray of sunlight or something. Maybe it was that white bird again …

Maddy passed the statue back to Ella, who rewrapped it in the oilskins and put it inside her pack.

‘Let's eat!' said Tyler and pulled out some more packets of noodles.

The first thing they saw when they woke next morning was the dinghy, floating just out of reach, its mooring rope dragging in the water. With a yell, Tyler and Zac rushed into the water and swam out to it, pulling it back into shore.

‘Well, it must've got lonely and come back during the night,' said Maddy. ‘How weird!'

Ella shook her head. ‘It's very odd. But then we don't know anything about how the tides work inside the cove. Maybe it has some odd currents, and maybe Tyler's knot wasn't as good as I thought!'

They loaded everything into the dinghy, motored back out to
Freya
and made their plans to leave.

‘It's not a neap tide,' said Ella, looking at the tide chart. ‘The current will be running fast through the strait, but we'll be on the other side of the whirlpool when we leave the cove, so we'll be safe now that we know about keeping to the south side and maintaining that angle once we're out of the passage. We'll wait till after ten o'clock to leave, because then we'll have the best visibility when we go out the other side. Just to be sure, I'll have you all up the front looking out for reefs.'

It was a little tricky negotiating the entrance. Jem was struck again by how difficult it was to pick the spot where the cliffs overlapped. Ella kept the boat steady and they motored out through the gap between the cliffs, and into the dim passage. The tide was running strongly, and Ella had to work hard to steer the yacht across the surging current in the centre of the strait and along beside the south wall. As they shot out of the eastern entrance into the bright light, they were amazed to see a large white motor yacht up ahead, leaning drunkenly on top of the submerged reef. Two men could be seen dancing around on the deck, waving madly and shouting at them. As they drew near, keeping well away from the reef, they could hear one of them:

‘Hey there! Hello, hello!! We need some help!'

Tyler grabbed the binoculars and trained them on the boat.

‘You know what? That's that bloke we met at Black Point! The guy who was asking all those questions!'

‘You're kidding!' said Jem, and peered through the binoculars himself. It was the same man, mirror sunglasses and all. ‘Hah! The map might have got him inside the strait, but it didn't tell him about the rest of it. Serves him right!'

‘Well, I'm not going to risk
Freya
anywhere near those rocks,' said Ella. ‘If they start to sink we'll get them off with the dinghy, but I think they're pretty safe there for a while. I'd better go and talk to them, anyway. Jem, you come with me.' They found a place to anchor nearby, and lowered the dinghy into the water. They motored slowly across, stopping short of the reef.

‘Hello there! Are we glad to see you!' called one of the men. ‘We had a bit of a wild ride coming through the passage. Lost our radio mast, and our sat phone got smashed, and we ended up on this reef.' Jem could see a bad scrape along the side of the hull where the boat must have hit the wall.

‘Is anyone hurt?' asked Ella.

‘No no, we're fine. We just need a lift!'

‘What are you doing way out here?' she asked.

‘Oh, um … fishing! We're fishing!' answered the man in the sunglasses.

Ella assured the men that she would get them off the boat if they looked like sinking any time soon, but that
Freya
would wait nearby till help arrived.

Back at the boat, Ella had a look at the radio, fixed a loose wire and made a distress call. It was picked up by a sea rangers' base at Maningrida, the same little town where Zac's uncle worked. The rangers would be out there as soon as they could, hopefully by the afternoon.

Ella went downstairs to put some gear away, and came back up on deck almost immediately. ‘Did any of you take the statue out of my pack?' she asked.

They all looked at each other, and shook their heads.

‘That's odd. I know it was here last night. I stowed it right at the bottom so that it wouldn't fall out into the water when I climbed aboard.'

‘Are you sure you didn't just put it away somewhere, you know, so it would be safe?' asked Maddy.

‘No, I put my pack in my cabin, and then we got ready to leave. I don't understand it. I couldn't have dropped it.'

Jem immediately checked his backpack. Ella had put the tin box with the precious diary into Jem's pack to
make room in hers for the statue. He'd used his pack for a pillow last night, while Ella's was lying with the other packs a few metres from where they slept. He listened to the conversation with the prickling on the back of his neck growing stronger and stronger. The flash on the cliffs, the dinghy disappearing and reappearing …

‘Those guys!' he said suddenly, pointing at the stricken motor boat. ‘They saw us last night! I saw a flash on the cliffs while we were looking at the statue, and I thought it was just a bird or something. Maybe they followed us from Port Essington, and were watching us through binoculars, saw the statue, and stole it while we were sleeping.'

‘No way!' Tyler and Zac couldn't believe anyone could have followed them so easily.

‘Yeah, and what about the dinghy? Why would that disappear and then come back like that?' said Maddy.

Jem thought for a moment. ‘Well, they knew we were looking for the settlement and a gold statue. If they wanted to steal it, their best chance was after we'd found it and brought it back here. It'd be harder to get it once we were back on board
Freya
. So they hid the dinghy to make us stay the night on the beach, then stole the statue and put the dinghy back while we were asleep. I reckon that flash was them looking at us with binoculars last night,' he finished.

‘Bro – wa-a-ay too much TV,' said Tyler, shaking his head.

‘Well it's entirely possible I suppose,' said Ella. ‘Stranger things have happened.'

‘Well let's go an' ask 'em!' said Zac, standing up and looking out at the boat on the reef.

‘No way, Zac,' said Maddy. ‘If they did, they're just gunna deny it. What'll we do then, search their boat or something? Don't be nuts!'

‘We'll report it to the police as soon as we can make a call,' said Ella, her face grim. ‘Let's wait for the sea rangers to get here. They'll have a sat phone or something.'

‘Hey! Uncle! Uncle!' Zac shouted and waved excitedly as the launch pulled up alongside
Freya
. Four Aboriginal men in green rangers' shirts and badged caps grinned back at them. One of them stood up and called back:

‘Hey young fella! What you doin' out here?'

‘He's my Uncle Victor!' said Zac happily. ‘He's da bomb. He'll save us!'

He introduced the others to his uncle, a tall black man with a beard and a big smile.

‘This is Ella, Uncle, she's Tyler's old aunty, and this is Tyler, an' Jem an' their sister Maddy.'

Ella shook Victor's hand. ‘I am very pleased to meet
you! We actually don't need saving, but those fellows over there,' she said, waving at the motor boat on the reef, ‘they might need a hand. I'm not really sure what they're doing there.'

Victor looked at them. ‘Got 'emselves in a bit of a mess, ay?'

‘Yeah, they stole somethin' real important off us,' Zac said with a rush, as Ella tried unsuccessfully to stop him. ‘We reckon they followed us from Port Essington, after they stole Ella's map and papers while we were lookin' at them old people's houses. Then we found that gold statue Ella's been lookin' for, an' her old uncle's grave and everything. Her uncle bin die on that island a long long time ago. Then last night someone took that statue outta Ella's bag while we were sleepin'. We reckon them blokes took 'em, ay.'

Victor looked at Ella and raised an eyebrow. She sighed and nodded.

‘That's it in a nutshell, pretty much.'

‘And your uncle, he buried on this island?'

‘That's right. We found a book that helped us find his grave.'

Victor frowned, and looked very serious. He stroked his beard and gazed at the motorboat. He tilted his head and looked at his men. ‘Might go 'n' have a chat to them fellas, what d'ya reckon, boys?'

Twenty minutes later the sea ranger launch came back.

‘This what you lost?' Victor asked, handing over the manila folder and an object wrapped in dirty old oilskin.

Ella took the folder and looked inside the oilskin, while Zac and Tyler yelled, ‘That's it! That's it!'

‘It certainly is. It's all here by the look of it, including the map,' she said, showing it to the others. ‘Thank you so much! How ever did you manage to get it from them?'

Victor gave a huge grin. ‘I just reminded them three fellas how long it was gunna take 'em to swim back to Darwin, that's all.'

‘Three men? We only saw two men,' said Jem.

‘Yeah, three fellas on that boat. One fella, he banged his head when they hit that wall inside the strait, so he was lyin' down on a bunk below.'

Ella put the statue and the folder away, and said, ‘Mr Martin, do you have a satellite phone by any chance?'

The sail back to Darwin took three days, and Jem was seasick the whole way. When they finally dropped anchor in the bay, and motored ashore in the dinghy, Jem could have kissed the sand with relief. It was quite
early in the morning, and he could hear the sounds of traffic as people began to make their way into the city for work. He felt a little disoriented, and strangely disappointed. Somehow it didn't seem right that life should have been going on as usual, as if nothing special had happened to them.

Inside the Isherwoods' kitchen, over a huge breakfast of bacon, eggs, fried tomatoes and pancakes, they told Carol and Neenie about the voyage and what they had discovered at the Lonely Isles. Ella hadn't stopped to have breakfast. She'd headed straight into town for a meeting with the museum and with the police. A couple of hours later, she returned, looking exhausted but satisfied. Professor Penhall was with her.

‘Well, it took a while to convince the police about what happened, but thankfully the Professor has a good reputation around here and his word carried a lot more weight than mine!'