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The contents of this story are fictional. Any resemblance of the characters to any other persons is strictly coincidental. Certain characters engage in sexual acts, which may or may not be legal in the state or country in which you the reader may reside. Any reader with objections to graphic descriptions of sexual encounters between males who may not have reached the legal age of consent, or whose local, regional, state or national jurisprudence prohibits such descriptions, should not read further. rick19uk@ntlworld.com
The Castaways...
Copyright by rick19uk 14 February 2004
We began to take stock of our situation. It seemed from the lack of any noise that we must be alone and quite what had happened to Jack coming with an axe was a mystery. The memory of The North Sea was vivid in my imagination and I had no doubt in David's too. I was very frightened what would happen to these two boys I had grown to love and myself included. I couldn't imagine that the trials we had come through already in our few short months, as mariners would end in our oblivion and ultimately, us drowning.
Brian, the biggest and strongest of us began to examine the partitioning that made up the wall of our cabin. His logic was that it had been erected in some haste to be a quick solution to our accommodation needs. As it transpired, his logic turned out to be flawless, however, it didn't turn out to be as temporary as we first thought and took us several hours using the lathes torn from our bunks to prise off just one plank. Once we had got one of them loose it proved to be relatively easy to insert a lathe into this portion of the wall partition and prise others loose until I, as the smallest, was able to wriggle through and go looking for better tools.
I went up onto deck and was appalled at the scene of destruction I faced. One of the first priorities as far as I could think was to look how far we were from land and also if at all, land was indeed visible. It turned out we were stuck on a coral reef not unlike the one that ringed the island we had last visited. At the point we had "hit", I estimated we were about a mile from the shore of what appeared to be an island of similar size. I looked for signs of smoke and habitation but none were visible and I prayed that the inhabitants, if there were any, were not the cannibals Jack told us inhabited many of these islands. Having satisfied my self that we were near to land and would be able to relay this to my friends I set about sizing up the situation aboard.
Not one of the three masts remained except one, which was lying over the side with great tangles of rigging all over the place. I made my way with difficulty to the stern of the ship and on into the carpenters store which was located to one side of the steering platform, which sat atop the captains and officers accommodation. The whole scene was ghostly quiet given the usual hive of activity that was usual in a sea going ship. I managed to open the store and found a crowbar and long handled sledgehammer. I tucked a small axe into my belt as an afterthought and made my way back to our cabin. Once I had passed the tools through to David and Brian, they made short work of smashing through the remaining planks until the hole was big enough for them to clamber through. We made our way back up top and as we emerged onto the deck I watched the shock and dismay register on their faces.
Our first priority was to begin to look all over the ship, or as much as we could get to, for any sign of survivors. After a fruitless two hours clearing away lots of debris in order to gain access to different parts of the ship, we came to the conclusion that we were totally alone. By this time we were famished and began to hunt for food. We entered the galley and began to search the cupboards and store for something we could quickly wolf down to assuage our terrible hunger. As in the storm during the rounding of The Horn, the galley fires always remained unlit whilst we were in the grip of a storm. A soon as the ship broke free the fires would be lit and hot food prepared and served to the passengers and crew who would have subsisted on hard bread and water. This was normal practise due to the fire hazard it would have presented. Fire aboard a wooden built ship and the obvious prevailing winds that would whip it into a blazing inferno in a matter of seconds, was one of the seafarer's greatest fears. We found a barrel containing hard bread and a keg filled with the sweet water from the island paradise we had so recently visited and a further search revealed the cooks carefully stored fruit horde. We all three ate ravenously.
As we were eating we debated how to get ourselves to the mile distant shore and also how we would manage to get any provisions and supplies there too. Of the ships longboats, there was no sign. I went to the officer's quarters and directly into Jacks cabin and brought his log, a bottle of ink and a handful of quills. We then began to decide what we would need to take if, as it seemed certain, we were marooned on the island. I began the laborious task of writing a list, and entering it into Jacks log book. Whilst Brian and I composed the list, David began to gather the materials together in order to build a raft. We had decided that this was the only way possible to get our supplies and ourselves onto the beach so tantalizingly close to hand yet so far away. There was also the fact that even though we had taught David to swim he was still quite a weak swimmer and we doubted he would in fact be able to swim the mile needed to get to the beach. With the list compiled we gathered what tools we would need, empty casks and planking and a goodly supply of manila (rope). By the time we had got about half of what we needed assembled onto our cleared area of deck, the light began to quickly fail so we decided to have another scratch meal of bread and water then retire to our cabin till` morning. We were exhausted and quickly fell asleep and slept the deep sleep of youth till we all awoke refreshed next morning.
Brian with his strength was a Godsend during the next eight or so hours whilst we laboured building our raft. It was after a particularly bad start trying to get the planking to stay together that David had the incredibly bright idea of using the hatch cover from the great forward hatch. It took us two hours to remove the debris from it before we were able, with much labour, to remove it and roll it on logs to our previously cleared work area. We had scrounged up six water casks and after setting up the carpenter's gantry, were able to lift it and attach them to the underside of the "great hatch" cover. We used the entire amount of the coils of manila we had gathered so far. Brian made sure the bungs were hammered home tight and would be watertight once we had the structure into the sea. I had managed meanwhile, to light a fire in the galley and had got one of the salted pigs cut into pieces. I added vegetables to a great pot of water and dumping the pig pieces in, left it to boil away whilst I rejoined my shipmates in our raft-building endeavour.
After breakfasting on hard bread and water and not having stopped for lunch, by the time late afternoon came we were ravenous once more. The delicious odour of my pot of slowly bubbling stew was tantalising in the extreme through most of the afternoon and was in fact absolute torture. When we eventually decided to stop, we fell to with a vengeance and devoured the lot, sopping up all the juices with hunks of the hard bread. We also raided the officer's drinks store and drank tankards of heated watered ale. After our several days of depravation, hunger and absolute terror, we began to feel human again and basked in a feeling of absolute euphoria. We were not awake for too long afterwards.
During the previous two days we had made a point of using a glass to spy on the island looking for any signs of smoke. We deduced that if any of our shipmates had got off and managed to make landfall we would see the smoke from their cooking fires. We saw none, either from them or indeed any possible natives that it may have been home to. It was very saddening yet encouraging that we would at least not be facing Jack's cannibals. The thought of ending up in a bubbling pot like the pickled pig I had just cut up made our skin crawl.
We awoke the following morning with this great feeling of anticipation and growing excitement and went hurriedly onto deck. After my great success with yesterday's stew I had been appointed by a unanimous vote, to be the chief cook. I counted my self fortunate that I had saved the back legs from the suckling pig and so was able to take slices from them and after heating a skillet and fat, proceeded to fry them. The cooks stove, which the night before, I had stoked up and had the foresight to close the flues to, was still warm, meant I was able to light-up and get it heated quickly. Whilst it was heating up I went and got coffee from the store, some pieces of sugar cane and made a great pot of coffee too. We had a delicious breakfast of which again, there was nothing left. We spent the rest of the morning using the carpenter's gantry to lift and heave the raft over the side and into the sea. Brian made sure we had stout ropes attached to stop it drifting away once we had it afloat. It floated beautifully and we stood surveying it with admiring glances and chests puffed up with pride.
Within two hours we had it loaded and after a quick snack of more hard bread and quickly brewed coffee we climbed aboard our wondrous vessel. David had used an axe and had fashioned oars, which though somewhat crude and unwieldy, worked fine enabling us to slowly set our course for the beach. It was the longest mile I had ever travelled in my life and took I estimated, over three hours to achieve. It was with great satisfaction that we jumped onto dry land once more and after securing the raft and our treasures, ran whooping and hollering up and down the beach. After we had run our selves ragged for half an hour we were brought down to earth by an ominous rumble and on looking out to sea, we saw great thunderheads massing once more on the horizon. The wind began to pick up as we set about unloading our raft; we quickly began moving the supplies and equipment we had thought to bring, well up the beach to just in front of the tree line. As we were finishing, the raft was beginning to be tossed about in a very frightening manner. We attached more lines and tied it off from several points to the nearby palm trees.
Our fear was the ship and the obvious treasure trove it represented, given our present dire straits. If we lost it to this oncoming storm our lives would be very hard indeed, not least for the great store of tools that remained aboard. We had thought it prudent to bring essentials first and so had loaded up with casks of salted meat. flour, fat, sugar-cane, coffee, yeast, salt, ale, and a case or two of wine and brandy. We had also had the foresight to load an axe, a bolt of canvas to make a shelter with and some dry bedding and spare blankets as well. After we had everything secured and a makeshift canvas shelter tied to two palm trees we knelt and prayed for our safe deliverance. We all three admitted to each other our abiding fear of the unknown, yet extreme pride in our achievements so far. For three boys aged thirteen, fifteen and sixteen we felt we had behaved in a very mature and responsible manner. We had secured our canvas shelter very well and weighted it down with rocks then driven spikes of wood deep into the ground as well in order to hold it. We put more canvas over our pile of treasure and drove deep spikes through that too in order to attempt to protect it from the impending downpour. By the time we had done this we were exhausted once more and wolfed down yet more of the hard bread washed down with unwatered ale. A very unsettled night followed under our wind and rain battered makeshift shelter, with none of us managing to sleep soundly at all. We had however survived, and though not yet too safe, were at least not hungry and were able to stay dry and warm.