The Secret of the Lonely Isles (14 page)

Professor Penhall harrumphed and stroked the end of his moustache. ‘Nonsense, nothing you couldn't have handled by yourself, m'dear. I was just along to keep that old Cromarty's hands off everything. Can't trust the beggar.'

‘Well, the Professor was able to prove that I was
conducting research, and that the stolen map and papers were indeed what he had given to me, and that the whole story of the
Gryphon
was actually true.' She stopped to drink some coffee.

‘What confused me was how anyone else knew what we were doing, that is, anyone who was likely to try and steal the statue. The police have questioned the three men, and I'm afraid, Maddy, that one of them says he knows you quite well, that you had told him all about the
Gryphon
. His name's Drake.'

Maddy gasped. ‘Drake? Drake wouldn't do anything like that, he's a nice person, he's …' Her voice trailed off and she looked horrified.

‘This Drake claims that you told him there might be a valuable statue at the island. He works for a local dive shop, which is also a salvage company, and according to the police, a front for some shady operations they've long suspected but never been able to prove. Drake told his boss about it and they decided to follow us and see if we found anything. Then they'd know the location of the settlement and be able to take anything of historical value and sell it on the international market.' She paused for a moment. ‘He was the third person on the boat, Maddy, the one who was below because he banged his head.'

Maddy looked ashamed and tears started to run down her cheeks.

‘It's all right, Maddy darling, I know you had no idea he had other motives. You thought you were just chatting to a good friend,' said Ella, patting her on the hand. ‘It's not your fault.'

She went on. ‘They were very clever, really. Must be all that TV, like Tyler said. Remember when you thought you saw something at the window, in the Professor's house, Jem? Apparently that young fellow so intently reading at our table in the library was there to eavesdrop on us. Drake knew we were going to the library that morning, and his boss sent this other person along to see if he could hear anything useful. He followed us to the Professor's house the next day, and looked in through the window. That's how they knew we had a map.'

Maddy gave a loud groan and buried her face in her hands.

‘But we never saw anyone following us. How could they have known where we were without us seeing them, when we were on the yacht?' said Jem trying to deflect the attention away from his sister.

‘Well there's the other part of the puzzle. Zac!'

Everyone stared at Zac, who blinked back at them, looking equally bewildered.

‘The dive shop just happens to be the same one that Ricky works at part-time. Remember the GPS
that we switched on and left on the nav table? It was left switched on the entire time, just as Ricky told Zac to do. Unbeknown to us, it wasn't an ordinary GPS, but one that sends a tracking signal to a base station. Ricky's boss gave it to him to give to Zac as a safety measure, so that Zac couldn't be lost. Very thoughtful of him. But what Ricky didn't know was that his boss was making sure they could find
Freya
, without having to actually follow us. They knew when we would be at Port Essington, and it was easy for them to find us after that.' She drank some more coffee.

‘But, fortunately, they didn't have old Robert Perceval helping them, like we did, telling us how to get safely out of the strait. They stole the statue and rushed out in the dark, and hit the reef fair and square. It's a miracle they didn't sink.'

They all sat there digesting this information for a while.

‘How did they get into the cove at all?' asked Jem. ‘We would've seen their dinghy, and they can't anchor close to the island anyway.'

‘That was the beauty of it being a dive business, you see,' said Professor Penhall. He was clearly enjoying the unravelling of the mystery. ‘The
White Pointer
is a fully equipped dive charter boat, and it was very easy for it to drop two divers at the entrance to the cove, which they
discovered when there was no – what was it Ella? – no whirlpool in front of it, and the tide was weaker. The divers just swam in and waited for you to leave the yacht and disappear over the hill. You almost caught them when you came back the first day you all went ashore, and they only just hid themselves in time, apparently. They swam up to the boat and heard you say you'd be away overnight, so they planned to keep you onshore when you came back, to give them a chance to see if you'd found anything. Quite ingenious, for a mob of crooks.'

‘So now the police are charging them with theft and with damaging a reef,' continued Ella. ‘The Lonely Isles are a protected marine park these days. Victor Martin took exception to finding a huge great game fishing boat, as he describes it, crunching up an important reef habitat. They had fishing gear on the boat, and some reef fish in the freezer, so they're in trouble with the sea rangers already. And, Victor said to tell you that if an old uncle of ours is buried on that island, then it's his business too, because the Isherwood and the Martin families are as good as related in his eyes.'

A few days later, Steve and Karen came home. Jem was amazed at the difference in his father – the old Steve was back.

‘Those fools had me on the wrong medication! I was goin' outta my head, worryin' about everything, and feelin' depressed. It's okay now,' he said, squeezing Jem's shoulder gently. ‘I'm sorry mate – I was pretty horrible to live with, I know. But you didn't give up on me, did you?'

Karen just glowed with happiness, like she used to.

Maddy had already sorted Drake out. She found him at the pizza café one evening, just before Steve and Karen came home. Jem and Tyler were with her. She marched straight up to him, in a room full of people, and tore strips off him.

‘Wow,' whispered Jem to Tyler, ‘she's just as good as Mum! Only louder …'

Drake went pale, and then red, and then all kinds of colours as he tried to pretend there was nothing wrong, just a crazy girl yelling at him. But when Maddy picked up his pizza and turned it upside down on his head, sauce and melted cheese everywhere, all Drake's friends applauded and laughed.

Zac was so proud of his Uncle Victor. The sea rangers appeared on TV, grinning at the camera as they described how the flash game fishing boat got stuck on the reef, but that the old lady and the kids had navigated their way safely out of the Hole in the Wall. ‘Number One sailor, that old aunty,' Victor told the reporter.

Zac and his father were going out to stay with Victor at the next holidays and taking Tyler with them. Both Zac and Tyler were planning to become sea rangers when they grew up.

Jem was sitting out in the backyard, turning the elephant knife over in his hands, and thinking about the dark-haired boy on the cliffs. It was hard to believe he was really his own great-great uncle, and not a kid practically his own age.

‘He'll always be around you, Jem,' a gentle voice said. Ella was looking down at him. She sat on the garden seat beside him, and they watched the chickens scratching around in the grass. ‘I don't think Jack will ever be too far away from you.'

Jem passed her the knife and she held it lightly in her hand.

‘What are you going to do now Ella?' asked Jem. He felt bleak suddenly, as if a cloud had passed over the sun, at the thought that she might disappear again so soon.

‘Well, I'm not sure. I was thinking that
Freya
and I might take a break for a while, and have a rest here, where the weather's so warm and friendly. And of course, there's the work that the museum has offered me …'

Jem looked up at her. ‘Work? Here? So you might stay here then?'

Ella nodded. ‘Would you like me to stay a while, Jem? Do a bit more sailing perhaps?'

‘Yes! I mean, well, I don't really want to go sailing again. I really
don't
want to go sailing again, no offence. But it'd be great if you stayed around for a while – you're our family, you should be here with us, not by yourself all the time.'

Karen's voice drifted out of a window. ‘Ella? Ella – cup of tea's ready!'

Ella patted Jem on the shoulder, handed him back the silver knife and stood up. ‘It'll be fine now Jem. We've all come home again.'

Neenie opened the door of her little flat and saw Jem sitting on the garden seat.

‘Oh, Jem! There you are. Grandpa's just gone to get the paper, and he might bring us back an ice-cream. How about a lovely game of snakes and ladders?'

Jem put the elephant knife away in his pocket, and smiled at his grandmother.

‘Sure thing, Neenie – set them up!'

In July 2007 my family and I sailed our 46-foot yacht
Malaika
from Cairns to Darwin, and we were amazed at the sheer remoteness of the coast, with so few towns or people in all those miles. This sparked the idea of a little hidden colony that might have existed undetected for a long time.

Some of the places in the book are fictional, such as the Lonely Isles, including Castor and Pollux. I've put them out in the Arafura Sea, about 70 kilometres north of Maningrida, a real town. The real ‘Hole in the Wall' is situated in the Wessell Islands, where a narrow strait between two islands has the tide ripping through it twice a day and churning up a wall of white water across the entrance. I've moved it out to the fictional Lonely Isles further west and north.

Port Essington, Black Point and Victoria Settlement are real places. Victoria Settlement was the site of one of the first attempts at settlement along the far north coast. It was established in 1838, and a small contingent of Royal British Marines, with a few civilians, was stationed there until 1849 when the settlement was abandoned. It was a very difficult life and many people died, mainly of malaria. All that remains are ruins of
the buildings and the little cemetery. It's a haunting, sad place even today, and still a long way from anywhere.

Quakers are certainly peace-loving people, opposed to war and conflict. As far as I know, they have never tried to establish a haven of their own in Australia. But other people have done this in the past in other places. In 1893, a group of Australians set off for Paraguay in South America and set up a community called ‘New Australia', because they weren't happy with life back home. The colony lasted only a short time before it split into two groups, and within a few short years many of the settlers had returned to Australia.

The sea rangers of Maningrida are also real, and work with Australian Customs to protect that part of the coast, checking for illegal fishing vessels and retrieving lost or abandoned fishing nets from the sea. Maningrida is a town of about two thousand people, mainly Aboriginal, in northeast Arnhem Land. The Djelk Rangers, the organisation to which the sea rangers belong, manage some 12,000 square kilometres of land and 2000 square kilometres of sea and coast.

The invention of GPS – Global Positioning System – has made navigation much easier, and means you can see exactly where you are on the map very quickly without having to do complicated calculations. When Captain Cook sailed to Australia, he used a sextant and a clock
to work out where he was. Some of his charts are still in use today, so it was possible to be very accurate, even with eighteenth-century technology.

Do you think Ella might seem to be a bit old to be sailing by herself? While sailing through South-East Asia, we met many older people – older than Ella – who were sailing either on their own or as a couple, so it's definitely something people can do for a long time if they're fit and healthy enough.

As well as older people, we met many families at sea with school-age kids on board. Most of them kept up with their schoolwork via correspondence lessons, mainly when they were at an anchorage or in a marina. We were really impressed by how those children were totally at home on their boats. Most could handle a dinghy by quite a young age, take their turn at steering and help with anchoring. It's a wonderful way to grow up, meeting people from all over the world and learning about other cultures firsthand.

Lex and I are looking forward to our grandchildren joining us for some sailing adventures in the future.

Joanne van Os
September 2010