My recurring nightmare was the mosquitoes at night. From dusk onward they searched me out, buzzed in on me and ate me alive. There was no hiding place. My nights were one long torture, and in the morning I would scratch myself raw in places. Some of the bites, particularly on my legs, had now swelled up and become suppurating red sores. I found relief from them only by dunking myself often in the cool of the sea.
I tried sleeping in another cave, deeper and darker, but it smelled dreadful. Once I had discovered it was full of bats, I left at once. Wherever I slept, the mosquitoes found me soon enough. It got so that I dreaded the coming of every night. I cried out aloud in my misery as I swiped and flailed at them. I longed for the mornings, for the cool of the sea and the cool of the wind on my hilltop.
Here I would spend the greater part of my day, sitting on the very summit, looking out to sea and hoping — sometimes even praying, too — for the sight of a ship. I would close my eyes tight shut and pray for as long as I could, and then open them again. Every time I did it, I really felt, really believed, there was a chance my prayers would be answered, that this time I would open my eyes and see the Peggy Sue sailing back to rescue me, but always the great wide ocean was empty, the line of the horizon quite uninterrupted. I was always disappointed, of course, often dejected, but not yet completely despondent, not in those early weeks.
I had severe problems, too, with sunburn. I had learned rather late that I should keep all my clothes on all the time, and I made myself a hat to keep the sun off my face and my neck. It was very broad and Chinese-looking, made of palm leaves, the edges folded into one another. I was quite pleased with my handiwork.
Sunburn, I discovered, was a discomfort I could help to prevent, and that seawater could soothe. At noon I would go down the hill to shelter in my cave from the burning heat of the afternoon sun, and then afterward I would go swimming. This was the moment Stella longed for each day. I spent long hours throwing a stick for her. She loved it and, to be truthful, so did I. It was the highlight of our day. We’d stop only when the darkness came — it always came surprisingly quickly, too — and drove us back once more to our cave, back to my nightly battle with my bloodsucking tormentors.
One day, after yet another fruitless morning of watching on the hill, Stella and I were coming out of the forest when I spotted something lying on the sand just outside our cave. At a distance it looked like a piece of driftwood. Stella got there before me and was sniffing it excitedly. I could see it now for what it was. It was not driftwood at all, but a roll of rush matting. I unrolled it. Inside, and neatly folded, was a sheet, a white sheet. He knew! The old man knew my miseries, my discomforts, my every need. He had been watching me all the time, and closely, too. He must have seen me scratching myself, seen the red welts on my legs, on my arms, seen me sitting in the sea every morning to soothe away my sores. Surely this must mean that he had forgiven me now for lighting the fire?
I carried the matting inside the cave, unrolled it, wound myself in the sheet, and just lay there giggling with joy. I could pull the sheet right up over my face. Tonight there would be no way in for those cursed mosquitoes. Tonight they would go hungry.
I went racing along the beach to the boundary line, where I stopped, cupped my hands to mouth, and shouted, “Thank you! Thank you for my bed! Thank you! Thank you!” I didn’t really expect an answer, and none came. I hoped he might come himself, but he didn’t. So I wrote my thanks in the sand right by the boundary line and signed it. I wanted so much to see him again, to talk to him, to hear a human voice. Stella Artois had been a wonderful companion to me, good for confiding in, good for a cuddle, good for a game, but I so missed human company — my mother, my father, lost to me now, perhaps forever. I longed to see the old man, to speak to him, even if he was a bit mad, even if I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying.
That night I was determined to stay awake for him but, comfortable on my new matting bed, protected and swaddled in my sheet, I went to sleep quickly and never woke once.
The next morning, after a breakfast of fish and jackfruit and coconut, Stella and I made our way back up to the top of my hill, or “Watch Hill,” as I now called it — the other one I had named “His Hill.” I was repairing my Chinese hat, replacing some of the palm leaves — it never seemed to hold together for very long — when I looked up and saw a ship on the horizon. There was no mistake. It was the long, bulky profile of a supertanker.
In an instant I was on my feet, shouting at the top of my voice and waving frantically. I leaped up and down screaming for them to stop, to hear me, to see me. “I’m here! Here! I’m here!” Only when my throat was raw and I could shout no longer did I stop. The tanker crept tantalizingly slowly along the horizon. It did not turn, and by then I knew it would not turn. I knew, too, that no one would be looking, and that even if they were, this entire island would be little more than a distant hazy hump on the horizon. How then could they possibly see me? I could only look on, helpless and distraught, as the tanker moved inexorably farther and farther away from me until it began to disappear over the horizon. This took all morning long, a morning of dreadful anguish.
As I stood watching on the summit of Watch Hill, my despair was replaced by a burning anger. If I had been allowed to have my fire, there would at least have been a chance they could have spotted the smoke. True, the old man had brought me a sleeping mat and a sheet. He was looking after me, he was keeping me alive, but he was also keeping me prisoner.
As the last vestige of the tanker sank from my view, I promised myself that I would never again let such a chance go by. I felt in my pocket. I still had my precious fireglass. I determined I would do it. I would build another fire, not down on the beach where he could find it, but up here on Watch Hill, behind the rocks and well out of his sight, even if he did have binoculars — and I now had to presume that he did. I would gather a great beacon of wood, but I would not light it. I would set it all up and wait until the moment I saw a ship. If this one had come, I reasoned, then another one would come, had to come, and when it did, I would have my fireglass ready, and a cache of paper-thin, tinder-dry leaves. I would make such a blazing inferno of a fire, a fire that would send up such a towering smoke signal that the next ship that happened along would have to see it.
So now I no longer spent my days just sitting on Watch Hill and waiting. Every hour I was up there I spent building my beacon. I would drag great branches up over the rocky scree from the forest below and pile them high, but on the seaward side of the hilltop, the perfect place for it to be seen by ships, when it was lit — but, in the meantime, not by the prying eyes of the old man who I thought of now as my captor. And he would be watching me — I was quite sure of that now. Through all the fetching and carrying, I kept well out of his sight. Only eyes from the sea could possibly have known what I was doing, and there were no eyes out there to see me.
It took several days of hard labor to build my secret beacon. I had almost finished when someone did indeed discover what I was up to, but it wasn’t the old man.
I was heaving a massive branch onto the pile when I felt a sudden shadow come over me. An orangutan was looking down at me from the rock above — I could not be sure it was the same one as before. He was on all fours, his great shoulders hunched, his head lowered, eyeing me slightly sideways. I dared not move. It was a standoff, just as it had been before down on the beach.
He sat back and looked at me with mild interest for a while. Then he looked away, scratched his face nonchalantly, and loped off, stopping once to glance back at me over his shoulder before moving on into the shadow of the trees and away. It occurred to me as I watched him go that maybe he had been sent to spy on me, that he might go back and tell the old man what he had seen me doing. It was a ridiculous thought, I know, but I do remember thinking it.
A storm broke over the island that night, such a fearsome storm, such a thunderous crashing of lightning overhead, such a din of rain and wind that sleep was quite impo
ssible. Great waves roared in from the ocean, pounding the beach, and shaking the ground beneath me. I spread out my sleeping mat at the very back of the cave. Stella lay down beside me and huddled close. How I welcomed that.
It was fully four days before the storm blew itself out, but even during the worst of it, I would find my fish and fruit breakfast waiting for me every morning under my tin, which he had now wedged in tight under the same shelf of rock. Stella and I kept to the shelter of our cave. All we could do was watch as the rain came pouring down outside. I looked on awestruck at the power of the vast waves rolling in from the open sea, curling, tumbling, and exploding as they broke onto the beach, as if they were trying to batter the island into pieces and then suck us all out to sea. I thought often of my mother and father and the Peggy Sue, and wondered where they were. I just hoped the typhoon — for that was what I was witnessing — had passed them by.
Then, one morning, as suddenly as the storm had begun, it stopped. The sun blazed down from a clear blue sky, and the forest symphony started up where it had left off. I ventured out. The whole island steamed and dripped. I went at once up Watch Hill to see if I could see a ship, perhaps blown off course, or maybe sheltering in the lee of the island. There was nothing there. That was a disappointment, but at least I found my beacon had not collapsed. It was sodden, of course, but still intact. Everything was sodden. There could be no fire now until it had dried out.
The air was hot and heavy all that day. It was difficult to move at all, difficult to breathe. Stella could only lie and pant. The only place to cool off was the sea, so I spent most of that day lolling lazily in the water, throwing the occasional stick for Stella to keep her happy.
I was lying in the sea, just floating there and daydreaming, when I heard the old man’s voice. He was hurrying down the beach, yelling at us as he came and waving his stick wildly in the air.
“Yamero! Abunai! Dangerous. Understand? No swim.” He did not seem to be angry with me, as he had been before, but he was clearly upset about something.
I looked around me. The sea was still heaving in, but gently now, breathing out the last of the storm, the waves falling limp and exhausted onto the beach. I could see no particular danger.
“Why not?” I called back. “What’s the matter?”
He had dropped his stick on the beach and was wading out through the surf toward me.
“No swim. Dameda! Abunai! No swim.” Then he had me by the arm and was leading me forcibly out of the sea. His grip was viselike. There was little point in struggling. Only when we were back on the beach did he at last release me. He stood there breathless for a few moments. “Dangerous. Very bad. Abunai!” He was pointing out to sea. “No swim. Very bad. No swim. You understand!” He looked me hard in the eye, leaving me in no doubt that this was not meant as advice, this was a command that I should obey. Then he turned and walked off into the forest, retrieving his stick as he went. Stella ran after him, but I called her back.
I felt at that moment like defying him openly. I would charge back into the sea and frolic as noisily, as provocatively as I could. That would show him. I was bristling at the outrageous unfairness of it all. First, he would not let me light my fire. Then I was banished to one end of the island, and now I wasn’t even allowed to swim. I wanted to call him every name I could think of. But I didn’t. I didn’t go swimming in the sea again, either. I capitulated. I gave in, because I had to. I needed his food, his water. Until my secret beacon of wood dried out, until the next ship came by, I would have to do as he said. I had no choice. I did make a man-size sculpture of him lying in the sand outside my cave, and I did jump up and down on him in my fury and frustration. It made me feel a little better, but not much.
Until now, except for occasional gut-wrenching pangs of homesickness and loneliness, I had by and large managed to keep my spirits up. But not anymore. My beacon stayed obstinately damp. Every day I went up Watch Hill hoping to sight a ship, and every day the sea stretched away on all sides, empty. I felt more and more isolated, more and more wretched. In the end I decided not to go onto Watch Hill anymore, that it just was not worth it. Instead I stayed in my cave and curled up on my sleeping mat for long hours during the day. I lay there drowning in my misery, thinking of nothing but the hopelessness of it all, how I would never get off this island, how I would die here, and my mother and father would never even know what had happened to me. No one would, except the old man, the madman, my captor, my persecutor.
The weather stayed heavy and humid. How I longed to plunge into the ocean, but I dared not. He’d be watching me for sure. With every day that passed, in spite of the fish and fruit and water he continued to bring me, I came to hate the old man more and more. Dejected and depressed I may have been, but I was angry, too, and gradually this anger fueled in me a new determination to escape, and this determination revived my spirits. Once again I went on my daily trek up Watch Hill. I began to collect a fresh cache of dry leaves and twigs from the forest edge and squirreled them away in a deep cleft in the rock so that I would always be sure they were dry when the time came. My beacon had dried out at last. I built it up, higher and higher. When I had done all I could I sat and waited for the time to come, as I knew it must. Day after day, week after week, I sat up on Watch Hill, my fireglass polished in my pocket, my beacon ready and waiting.
As it turned out, when the time did come, I wasn’t up on Watch Hill at all. One morning, with sleep still in my head, I emerged from my cave, and there it was. A boat! A boat with strange red-brown sails — I supposed it to be some kind of Chinese junk — and not that far out to sea, either. Excitement got the better of me. I ran helter-skelter down the beach, shouting and screaming for all I was worth. But I could see at once that it was hopeless. The junk was not that far out to sea, but it was still too far for me to be either seen or heard. I tried to calm myself, tried to think … the fire! Light the fire!
I ran all the way up Watch Hill without once stopping, Stella hard on my heels and barking. All around me the forest was cackling and screeching and whooping in protest at this sudden disturbance. I readied my cache of dry leaves, took my fireglass, and crouched down beside the beacon to light my fire. But I was trembling so much with excitement and exhaustion by now that I could not hold my hand still enough. So I set up a frame of twigs and laid the glass over it, just as I had before. Then I sat over it, willing the leaves to smolder.
Every time I looked out to sea, the junk was still there, moving slowly away, but still there.
It seemed an age, but there was a wisp of smoke, and shortly afterward a glorious, wondrous glow of flame spreading along the edge of one leaf. I bent over it to blow it into life.
That was when I saw his feet. I looked up. The old man was standing over me, his eyes full of rage and hurt. He said not a word, but set about stamping out my embryo fire. He snatched up my fireglass and hurled it at the rock below, where it shattered to pieces. I could only look on and weep as he kicked away my precious pile of dry leaves, as he dismantled my beacon and hurled the sticks and branches one by one down the hill. As he did so the group of orangutans gathered to watch.
Soon nothing whatsoever now remained of my beacon. All about me the rock scree was littered with the scattered ruins of it. I expected him to screech at me, but he didn’t. He spoke very quietly, very deliberately. “Dameda,” he said.
“But why?” I cried. “I want to go home. There’s a boat, can’t you see? I just want to go home, that’s all. Why won’t you let me? Why?”
He stood and stared at me. For a moment I thought I detected just a flicker of understanding. Then he bowed very stiffly from the waist, and said, “Gomenasai. Gomenasai. Sorry. Very sorry.” And with that he left me there and went off back into the forest, followed by the orangutans.
I sat there watching the junk until it was nothing but a spot on the horizon, until I could not bear to watch anymore. By this time I had already decided how I could best defy him. I was so enraged that consequenc
es didn’t matter to me now. Not anymore. With Stella beside me, I headed along the beach, stopped at the boundary line in the sand, and then, very deliberately, I stepped over it. As I did so, I let him know precisely what I was doing.
“Are you watching, old man?” I shouted. “Look! I’ve crossed over. I’ve crossed over your silly line. And now I’m going to swim. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care if you don’t feed me. You hear me, old man?” Then I turned and charged down the beach into the sea. I swam furiously, until I was completely exhausted and a long way from the shore. I trod water and thrashed the sea in my fury — making it boil and froth all around me. “It’s my sea as much as yours,” I cried. “And I’ll swim in it when I like.”
I saw him then. He appeared suddenly at the edge of the forest. He was shouting something at me, waving his stick. That was the moment I felt it, a searing, stinging pain in the back of my neck, then my back, and my arms, too. A large, translucent white jellyfish was floating right beside me, its tentacles groping at me. I tried to swim away, but it came after me, hunting me. I was stung again, in my foot this time. The agony was immediate and excruciating. It permeated my entire body like one continuous electric shock. I felt my muscles going rigid. I kicked for the shore, but I could not do it. My legs seemed paralyzed, my arms, too. I was sinking, and there was nothing I could do about it. I saw the jellyfish poised for the kill above me now. I screamed, and my mouth filled with water. I was choking. I was going to die, I was going to drown, but I did not care. I just wanted the pain to stop. Death I knew would stop it.
I smelled vinegar, and thought I was at home. My father always brought us back fish and chips for supper on Fridays and he loved to soak his in vinegar — the whole house would stink of it all evening. I opened my eyes. It was dark enough to be evening, but I was not at home. I was in a cave, but not my cave. I could smell smoke, too. I was lying on a sleeping mat covered in a sheet up to my chin. I tried to sit up to look around me, but I could not move. I tried to turn my neck. I couldn’t. I could move nothing except my eyes. I could feel, though. My skin, my whole body, throbbed with searing pain, as if I had been scalded all over. I tried to call out, but could barely manage a whisper. Then I remembered the jellyfish. I remembered it all.