This story is for persons of eighteen years or over. All comments, good or bad, are welcome and all will be answered.
Part Two.
After my departure from Kingston, I rounded the island and set my course northwards, though setting it a degree to the west not really knowing exactly how far they had travelled before hitting that reef. On re-reading her message from the bottle, I then realised that my boat Alice, was attempting to find and rescue another Alice. Now I took this to be an omen that I would succeed in my venture.
If Alice had been correct in her direction during that storm, she would have finished up somewhat to the west of Vanuatu, to which the islands now belonged, so I thought it best to hit Vanuatu first to get my bearings and I could then work my way westward, crossing off the islands from the charts that I checked out in my quest to find Alice. After reading several books of people marooned on deserted islands, they usually spent a lot of time looking out seaward in the hope of seeing a ship or a boat and would no doubt have assembled enough wood to light and make a beacon to attract any passerby. But that is if she had some flint or glass to set alight such a fire. Only time would tell though I was going to make it a point to stop at every island I came to just to check and see if there was any sign of somebody cohabitating there.
Now that I really was on my quest, found that I had made one big error, and that was the sailing of the boat for more than just a few hours like I did when I was with my dad. Then it would only be a short time of handling the tiller and steering it to catch the wind. Now I was having to not only steer, but sometimes adjusting the sails and spending the rest of the time steering the craft.
It was only when I was sure of the wind staying in the same direction for a short while that gave me time to get some food from the galley, kitchen to landlubbers, or have a crap, to lash the steering arm to be able to do one or the other. I am using non nautical terms for those who know nothing about boats and would otherwise be confused in my wording, so I am making it as easy as I can. The foresail is the jib at the front, a small one that is only really used when the main sail, the big one, is down in bad weather to be able to steer the boat and not be capsized by a over large gust of wind. The other things I will mention as and when it is appropriate.
But back to the steering for twenty four hours is an impossibility without nodding off to sleep at the helm. So quite often, I would tie the rudder, or the steering arm to myself as I dozed off, and spent more of my time there than anywhere else on the boat. Sometimes, when it was fairly calm, I would heave over the side, the sea anchor. A canvas bag that held the sea water and brought the boat to an almost standstill so that I could get a few hours of sleep down in the cabin.
I kept a daily log and every noon, knowing the time by my watch and the clock on board, used my most treasured possession, a sextant, and having been taught by my dad, knew how to use it to find my exact position while out at sea. It was quite difficult sometimes with the boat bouncing about in the waves but I think I managed quite well in the circumstances. This position would then be noted in the log and the chart marked as to be where, I assumed, I was at the time.
To supplement my food stores, I would also trail a fishing line aft, that's behind the back end of the boat, forrard being the front, to catch some fish which was good in both saving my stores and having a change of diet. During the day, especially prior to midday and after, I would cover my body from the burning sun and then at night because of it being the exact opposite by being cold, though I did get a lovely sun tan to augment that that I already had, also being naked so that I tanned all over and didn't have any white bits left.
You might think it exciting to being able to steer a boat out in the middle of the ocean, but I can assure you that it is effing boring. You finish up singing any song that came into your head or started reciting almost long forgotten poems. The dirty ones as well as the real ones. So day after day we ploughed northward, still sending back a daily message to the Harbour Master at Townsville. That is until I was a day out from Vanuatu.
I hadn't had any problems until then except when this bloody big cormorant of a bird came to rest on the aerial, not only settling on it, but snapping the damn thing off and the bird almost falling down onto the boat in shock. It was me that went into shock at seeing the aerial fall and disappear in the sea, it being my only means of talking with Australia. Boy, didn't I curse that bird for stranding me like this without any contact now available. So I now had to land at Port Vila, that being the only port of the main island, to get a message sent off back to Australia about what had happened to my aerial and try and find another one there. This I didn't, but it still wasn't going to stop me on my search.
Now even though the distance between Norfolk Island and Vanuatu was slightly shorter, it still took me twelve days to reach it, but like Norfolk Island, I was not really made welcome, which hurt me somewhat. But I shrugged this off and made know my quest, to which they had no knowledge of, which was to be expected, but the bad thing was that they couldn't supply me with a new aerial. But they did let me use their radio in Port Vila to contact the Harbour master back in Townsville to tell him what had happened, and that I was still going to carry on though I would be out of contact until I could return to Port Vila. When was the question. No idea was my reply. Just listen out for me.
So after taking on some more water and fresh food, I set sail the following day to began the laborious task of checking each island that was on the map, slightly concerned that I would now be out of radio contact with both Port Vila and Townsville. So it was to the north west that I steered to visit the first island closest to Port Vila, though not expecting this first to be the one where Alice was marooned, and I wasn't wrong. That took two days to get there and after that, I would find the next within a day. This day would then be spent circling the island before making a landfall and checking to see any signs of habitation. If not, I would stay moored for the night and head of for the next island at first light.
Sixteen islands later, and just a few days short of a month, I steered into a cove and saw a woman on the beach. Her hand up to shade her eyes from the sun and got a wave and I was over the moon at finding Alice. Wrong! For as I got closer to shore, I saw another female come out of the trees and join her, and as I dropped anchor, four children also emerged from the same clump of trees and a man too. I had to moor quite a distance from the beach because of the keel and so jumped overboard and swam the short distance to where this group were waiting for me.
I took them to be natives for they were very dark skinned and the two women only wore grass skirts, being topless, and very nice they looked too. The four children were the same colour and naked while the man, the same colour, wore a grass skirt too. It was him that came forward to meet me as I waded ashore.
`Welcome to Ile de Banz,' he said in English which surprised me.
Ile de Banz?' I queried. It's not listed as being named according to my charts,' I said, shaking his hand.
Didn't think it would be,' he chuckled. It's a name that we have given it. My name is Robert Carlton, English and these are my two wives, Judy from Australia and Tiki from New Zealand. Hence the name we have given the island. B for Britain. A for Australia and NZ for New Zealand, hence Banz. My four children are Lali, Robbie, Marina and John, all born on this island.' I said my hellos to them all and told them my name and asked how the three of them of different nationalities came to be on this island.
`Let's talk in the shade,' he said and led me up to the trees, followed by the others until we came to what looked like a rough shelter, though found that it was quite sturdy and that they had running water laid on. Though it wasn't a tap to open or close, but a spigot.
I was offered this water or had a choice of some mango fruit but opted for the water as I was told to sit on the big bed that this hut had. He then told me the incredible story of how they finished up on the island having been there now for eleven years. It was a plane crash with only twelve of the passengers surviving and over that first year, was split up into two groups which developed into being what was akin to a war between the two groups, these three being the only ones not to be killed. I won't go into his whole story as it has already been published in this series of books under the title of `The Ridge', which gives a full account of what exactly happened.
At the end of his tale, he asked what was I doing in this part of the world and told him of the message in a bottle and my quest to find this stranded woman.
`Do you know when the message was written?' Robert asked me.
`It would be about nine months now, at least,' I told him.
`Well there's only two answers to that. She's either still alive, or she's dead,' was his response which wasn't very heartening.
Oh Bob,' Tiki cried. She called him Bob and not Robert as I was now told to call him, though not in the way that the women of the island had come to call him by them appellation of his name. Look on the bright side. We survived and she hasn't got the problems that we had being all on her own.'
Yes,' Judy piped in. It's so romantic, coming all this way to save a girl in distress.' I had no answer to that for romance wasn't in my thoughts at the time, though I agreed it did appear to be of that vein, like something out of `The Waverly Novels' of Sir Walter Scott.
I actually spent the whole of the next day with them too, being shown over the island and where the fighting took place, of their water supply and the fish corral that they had constructed. Also of the only other visitors that they had received except for the added boat that brought them out the supplies that they had requested.
So I left the happy family that had opted to stay and live on the island rather than return to the world they once knew, waving back to them all waving from the beach as I sailed out of the lagoon to carry on the search for Alice.
It was fifteen days and nearly that many islands later that I was circling after leaving Banz Island that I saw smoke rising up from the trees of an island about the same size of Banz. I cruised round to find a lagoon and steered in towards it. My heart leaped when I saw a single female come running down the beach to the water's edge, waving her hands in a frantic gesture. They kept swinging to her right as she waved and I waved back and carried on into the lagoon. With the wind behind me, I was doing at least five knots of speed that suddenly came to a sudden and vicious stop. I was thrown forward and fell into the cabin as I felt the hull being shredded on a coral reef. I was dazed from the fall and had to shake my head to try and make sense of what had happened, which was apparent by having sea water coming into the cabin from both sides and then realised why she had been frantically waving and point off to her right. I'd piled my boat up onto a hidden reef and now it was a wreck.
I staggered out of the now wet floored cabin to see that the boat was at unusual angle and that the main mast had snapped off at the base and was hanging over the bow. I was at a loss as to what I should do, this never having happened to me before. The boat now appeared to be stable even though the hold, that being the cabin was half full of water and it wasn't moving at all.
It was only then that I looked up to see who could only have been Alice, still waving at me, though this time, her hands were moving in towards herself, telling me to get ashore. Well the boat looked secure enough for the time being and with me being about thirty yards from the beach had no option but to dive into the sea and swim ashore. When close enough, I began to wade ashore, shaking my head loose of the water that had collected there.
`Another fine mess you've got us into Stanley,' she said, hands on hips.
`Now I liked Laurel and Hardy, but I don't think this is funny. I've wrecked my boat and I just hope that you are Alice in this Wonderland.' Her face broke into a lovely big smile.
You got my message then!' she cried and threw herself at me and with her arms tight round me, gave me one hell of a nice kiss. Boy, did I get a boner or not at having this scantily clad and well tanned woman kissing me in this fashion. She leaned back still holding onto me, her body still up tight to me and I'm damn sure she felt what I had inside my shorts. When did you get it? How long ago?' She asked, her eyes shining and I'm sure I caught a sense of humour there as she kept her body up to mine.
`Nearly two months ago. It was number four, and I left Townsville two days after finding it,' I said and had her interrupt me.
`You lovely man. And you came straight out to rescue me?' The way she moved now told me that she certainly felt that I was aroused.
`Yes, but I'm now in the same boat as you, having wrecked mine,' and began to laugh at the pun I'd made. She laughed too and let go of me and I saw her give a quick glance down at my front.
`Well I hope that you've got plenty of bottles on the wreck and some paper for us to send out some more distress signals. Didn't you see my hand signals, telling you to steer off to the left, for that's the same reef that we piled up on during the storm?' she said, her face serious now.
`I saw you waving your hands and I just thought it was the pleasure at seeing me arrive in the lagoon,' I said, now letting my eyes run up and down her lithe body, her tattered clothes not hiding the fact that she was nicely built up top.
Well as I said. We plied up on the same reef and that's when I lost my boyfriend. I was washed ashore but he wasn't and I never saw him again. His body wasn't even washed up, though I spent two days after the storm scouring the beaches,' she said, her voice strained as she said this. Shark bait was my first and only thought. They must have been onto him straight away. She was damned lucky to have made it ashore, but I didn't say this as she was already upset. I don't suppose you've got a radio on the boat?' she asked.
`Yes, but it's of no use now with my antenna gone. Some bloody great cormorant landed on it and broke it off one day out of Vanuatu. I tried to get a replacement there, but they didn't have one, so as I said earlier, I'm stuck here with you,' I said.
`Does anyone there, in Townsville, know where you were headed?' she asked.
`Yes, the Harbour Master and few others who got to hear what I was going to do. I was called a silly bugger for attempting it and they were right,' I said, shaking my head.
Well in a way, I'm glad you did for now I've got someone to talk to. The trees or birds don't answer me,' she said, her face smiling once again. Did you search many islands before this one?'
`This is island number thirty one. Nearly a month and a half all told. No, not quite, for I spent two days on another island with some other stranded people there,' I said.
`Others stranded? How long have they been there and will they be rescued?' she asked, a little agitated now.
`Eleven years,' I said.
`Bloody hell! Eleven effing years! They must be raving mad by now,' she said.
`Not in the slightest. One man and two women and they have four children now. They had a visit two years ago and were offered to be taken back to civilisation but they refused. They had come to terms with living on the island and so they stayed, I told her.
Eleven years,' she mused, and now the women have had babies by him.'
`There were twelve to start with. Being survivors of a plane crash. Six men and six women, but there was a split up between them and one guy wanted to rule the island and so they had a mini war and these were the last three left. They've lived off the fruit and what they've been able to grow themselves as well as catching fish. That being their main diet. The guy had even got water to travel down to their hut so they were never short of that. Do you have water here? Oh, you must have to have survived this long,' I said.
Oh yes. There's a pool a little way up the hill behind us that has fresh water and the trees have plenty of fruit, though I'd give anything for some meat to eat,' she said. I got a piece of meat, but not for eating, I said in my mind. Do you have any on the boat?' she asked, looking out toward the wreck.
`Yes. Tinned though,' I said.
`I'd eat if it was raw. Can we get some now?' she asked, moving to the edge of the water.
`Yes. Can you swim?' I asked watching her start to wade out into the sea.
`Brought up swimming,' she said as she then dived in and I then quickly followed her, and we both swam out to the stranded boat. She got there first, that's because I kept pausing to look for any shark fins sticking up out of the water. That terror of the ocean, especially the Pacific. That's what I had to do when I was lifeguard at Bondi Beach. Not only looking to help any swimmer in distress, but keep a sharp look out for sharks and had a loud klaxon that I could sound off if I spotted one. Boy, didn't the swimmers really move then, heading for the beach, aiming not to be the last in line. If only they had them in the swimming pool during the Olympic Games, everybody would break the world's records in no time.
`Where did you learn to swim like that?' I asked as we clambered aboard to sit at the stern.
`Bondi Beach,' she replied.
`Hey! I used to be a guard there once,' I said.
`Never saw you. Where's this meat?' It seemed that meat was more on her mind than talking.
`Down below in the lockers,' I said as I got up and went down below to the cabin with her following me. There was about a foot of water covering the deck and I was thankful that my log book, charts and sextant and other perishable items were in the top lockers. I opened a locker by the sink and pulled a can of corned beef and passed it over to her. She grabbed it and before you could say Robinson Crusoe, she had the tin open and was gouging out the meat with her fingers and stuffing it into her mouth. I'd never seen a can of that meat ever eaten so fast.
`Anymore?' she as she chewed on what was left in her mouth, and so I passed her another tin that was emptied as quick as the first one. I was emptying the locker, pulling things out and placing up on top as she finished her eating and I wouldn't give her another one yet as she asked for more.
`Let's get it all ashore first before you eat it all. We've got to portion it out to make it last,' I said.
`Pity we don't have another boat to ferry it all ashore,' she said.
`I've got a dinghy in the forward locker,' I told. This was in the bow and I told her to get what she could out of the cabin and up out to the cockpit while I got the dingy out. So I went out and forrard and open the hatch and worked my way inside it and found the dinghy, but to my dismay, found that it had been puncture in several places with it now being below the waterline and must have taken shards of the bow when we hit the reef, so that was useless.
`Well the dinghy's fucked,' I called out, sticking my head up above the hatch.
`Shit!' she replied. How are we going to get this lot ashore without carry the odd can or two at a time.'
I didn't have to wrack my brains on that for the answer was right in front of my eyes. The mast had sheared off near the base and was half hanging over the side of the bow. The sail itself was of canvas and the tins were water tight. So I clambered out of the forrard hatch and began releasing the halyards that had held the sail up on the mast. This itself floated on the water and I dragged it to the stern and tied some of the halyards to the boat and with the mast pushed out a little way, had a means to transport ashore as much as the sail would hold without splitting it.
`Good thinking Batman,' she said as we started heaving the cans into the sail, seeing them disappear under the surface and put as many as I though the sail would hold before I called a stop to over filling it and so we both entered to water again and I had her tow the mast ashore while I hung onto the halyards to make sure that the tins didn't slide out and into the depths.
We managed to make another run before the light started to go from the sky, now having at least eighty odd cans on the beach.
`Look Alice. I've got to go back out there for I must get my sextant and charts just in case the boat disappears overnight. Can you get these tins further up the beach?'
`No problem. I'll get them up to the shelter I've made,' she said, and it was only then that I noticed that she wasn't wearing a bra and that the nipples of her breasts were clearly to be seen through her wet and ragged shirt she was wearing. I had to quickly get back into the water for I had gotten a massive hard on at seeing them, the first for a very long time.
Back on the boat, I found a couple of floatable items that I could put what I wanted in them and so recovering what I wanted plus the Very light and flares and then pushed these bowls to the shore, taking my time to keep the contents dry. I pushed them both onto the beach and out of the water and carried these up the beach to where she had this shelter that she'd mentioned.
As a shelter, it was crudely constructed and knew that with one good wind or storm, it would no longer be able to be called a shelter. She'd been lucky to keep it for so long. On the sand was some big palm leaves which I assumed was what she slept on at night and scattered around were some other things that she must have gathered from the boat that she had been on and wrecked on the same reef that mine had been.
I then helped her get the rest of the tins up to the shelter and by the time this was done, it was fully dark except that we had a full moon which helped in seeing what she was doing. She had a quantity of bracken and twigs and of all strange things, she had salvaged from her boat, one of those gas lighter things that when you squeeze the two arms of it, you get some sparks from the flint that was fixed inside. With gas, you get an immediate reaction of the gas being ignited, but with this, you had to really molly coddle the thing until something caught the spark and so created a fire.
So with it having caught alight, she added some small pieces of wood and so we now had a lovely fire going and while she ate some more tinned meat, I ate some of the fruit that she had collected and then washing down our dinner, if it could be called that, with some water from the pool that she had collected in melon shells, having scraped them clean to make them into gourds.
With our meal over, she said, This is my bed,' pointing to the large palm leaves that I'd already noted, and you'll have to sleep on the sand tonight. We'll get some more palm leaves tomorrow for you.' So with that, she pulled the unburnt wood from the fire and went and settled herself down on the palm leaves, pointing to the sand next to her. So that's where I went and lay down, seeing her settle herself in the dim moonlight before we said our goodnights to each other.
She at least was wearing some sort of clothing whereas I was only wearing my shorts and I woke up sometime during the night feeling quite cold and I must have rolled over to her to share some of her body heat, for I was cuddled up to her when I awoke in the morning. She must have known this but never said a word as I rolled away from her and got up and walked out onto the beach to see that my boat was still there. I even went and had a swim and on coming back to the shelter, saw that she had set out two small palm leaves that took the place of plates and on each, was a variety of fruit which appeared to be our breakfast.
With that finished, she wanted to show me over the island but I insisted that we salvaged as much as we could from the boat before it disappeared and so that's how we spent my first full day on the island by getting everything that I could off the boat. Lunch had just been nuts and fruit but for dinner, we toasted some spam to eat and she didn't really like the fact that I would only open up one can of tinned peaches. Taking it in turns to spoon out a segment to eat and then shared the juice to drink. She thought it was delicious and wished that I would open another but I stood by what I had said from the start that we would be parsimonious with the tinned food to make it last as long as possible.
What with spending the whole day ferrying this from the boat via the sail, we forgot about getting some large palm leaves for my bed and so, like the night before, I was to sleep on the sand again next to her. But like the night before, I was cuddled up to her like two spoons in a drawer, my body up tight to hers with an arm over her and I know damn well that she felt me when I woke up, for I had a massive morning erection and it was pressed up to her backside. I rolled away from her and went straight down to the sea and dived in to let the coolness of the sea shrink my cock back down to its normal size.
Yet again, she never said a word but it showed when she said that before we tried to salvage more from the boat that we got some big palm leaves for my bed. I'm sure my face went red at her saying this but this is what we did after our breakfast. I am not going to keep repeating myself but breakfast consisted on the same fare every morning, so take it as read as to what we ate having already said what it consisted of.
So with my bed in place next to hers, we went swimming again to get the last of what could be transferred ashore. This was done by the end of the morning and the afternoon was spent in building up a fire beacon that could be lit on seeing any vessel in sight. The extra advantage was the fact that I still had the Very Light and flares to send up if needed.
Now for dinner, we had plates to eat from and not palm leaves and the tinned chicken stew went down a treat as did the tinned fruit for dessert. The cheese, what I had left over, had now gone so mouldy as to be inedible and she was going to throw it into the sea but I stopped her as it would make good bait for I had salvage my fishing gear which later came in full use for catching fish to cook and eat. I think I'm dragging this out a bit being somewhat reluctant to say what happened that night, but I suppose I'll have to.